Page 13 of The Governess’s Absolutely Impossible Wish (The Notorious Briarwoods #8)

Z ephyr’s mother was charging about the house as if spring was around the corner. She was so filled with delight. Spring was not just about the corner, as had been evident to him this morning as he had gone through the house. The castle was bleak in winter. There was no questioning it. There were many weeks left of bleakness at this time of year.

February loomed. It was a month that could be even harder than January. But he was not thinking of that at present. No, he was simply thinking of his life now. His life with Giselle.

That did not mean the gray went away.

The family did everything they could to bring in as much light and joy to the castle as possible, but there was simply no getting around the fact that it was still very dark in the mornings, it became dark quite early, and rain fell unrepentantly from the sky.

His mother? The rain could not dampen her.

She was a sun all in herself, and if he could have but drawn rays from her, he would no doubt be perfectly fine. He could make the same argument about Giselle. If somehow he could draw her sunshine into him, he would be well, but that was not the nature of whatever befell him.

It made him feel terribly guilty.

The fact that the happiest thing of his life was happening to him at present, namely his marriage to the woman he loved, should have meant he walked about in bliss at all hours, no matter the weather or amount of light.

He felt as if he was the worst sort of cad, the worst sort of ungrateful gentleman, and he should not be allowed to…

He swallowed. He could not think such thoughts. It would do him no good.

Giselle would not approve. His lips turned as he thought of her rather stern but loving determination to help him in his difficulty.

If he could listen to her play her music all winter, surely he’d survive it always?

He could survive anything. His mother had taught him that. But now he was doing more than surviving the winter.

The wedding was to take place the day after the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . His mother had gone wild with her intimate family production. This was not a surprise. His mother dearly loved to make others happy by throwing parties.

And after Christmas, the long slog of January was trying for everyone. Not just him and his spirits.

So, invitations had gone out the moment his mother had realized that he and Giselle were no longer dancing about the fact that they were meant for each other. She was thrilled to share their performance with trusted friends and locals, for it would be a bright spot in many lives.

Once he and Giselle had announced their engagement, the entire family had crowed and celebrated. Giselle was overwhelmed but thrilled. Rehearsals had changed entirely. Somehow, she had managed to slip out of the cocoon of her caterpillar life and emerge butterfly-like.

Yes, she had left all wooden acting behind and was embracing their opportunity to make merry together, and how grateful he was for it!

How he loved to see her smile hour after hour. The play was the perfect vehicle for her to blossom and still have the things that made her feel secure. He loved to see her with the children, teaching them how to be the fairies in the fanciful play. She worked on teaching the children how to dart about the stage, which was now completely built with set pieces.

His mother had decided that since they were doing a play, they might as well really throw themselves into it. Especially the children.

With Giselle’s guidance, not only had the children helped to design the set pieces, they had also helped to paint them. Now the long room on the far side of the castle was a wonderland of a theater. It was originally supposed to be a small family affair, but he understood the nature of his mother and his aunt, and they had been unable to stick to such a thing.

When the night arrived, there would be quite a collection of people who’d come to watch. His mother would not invite anyone who would cause difficulty about a performance such as this or judge Giselle for being his wife. She had no time for such people.

Everyone who came to stay for the performance that night was expected to stay overnight and attend the wedding.

So, he should be absolutely delighted too. Every time he saw Giselle, her eyes lit. Every time they rehearsed together, he felt the excitement of her presence. It was indeed a balm to his aching soul.

It was so unfair.

If he was honest, he had hoped that perhaps once she had said yes to him, the dark melancholy of January would finally leave him. The pain of the wound would go. Surely love would cure all of that. Alas, it seemed it had not.

It was not right. A part of him wanted to rail at the heavens.

Was something wrong with him? Terribly and unavoidably wrong?

Because here he was again, in another room, staring out another window.

“Mon ami, this is too much!”

He whipped around and spotted Jean-Luc, his French cousin.

“What is it?” he asked flatly. “What is too much?”

“You,” Jean-Luc said with that shrug of his that was unapologetically French. “You are moping about the house, even though your lady love has declared for you, and I can see on your face that you feel terrible about it.”

He closed his eyes, grabbed the windowsill, and gripped it. “Of course I feel terrible,” he said. “Wouldn’t you? I have everything that I want, everything that I could possibly need. And still…”

Jean-Luc nodded, striding farther into the room. “Oui. And I can no longer watch from a distance, letting you go on like this. So, I have brought your brother to you.”

A wave of horror crashed through Zephyr and he pivoted towards his cousin, a cousin who had seen the horrors of the French Revolution but had escaped it just in time with his sisters. A cousin who knew true suffering because he had lost almost everyone he loved to the guillotine.

Jean-Luc was the one who should truly feel pain. He was the one who should truly feel sorrow, and he had, but somehow Jean-Luc had traveled about the world in the last year, come back for Christmas, and been brighter for it.

He no longer raged at the world.

“My brother isn’t necessary,” he bit out. “You can teach me to overcome this,” he declared.

“Moi?” Jean-Luc asked, his face indicating the idea was impossible as he brought his strong hand to his cravat. “No, you must ask your brother.”

And as if he had been waiting in the hall, Leander slipped into the room.

“Is this some sort of ambush?” Zephyr growled.

Leander smiled. “Indeed, it is brother. Jean-Luc made me see that you are not doing well, despite the fact that love has come to your door.”

He scowled. “It is not necessary for you to be here. I do not need rescuing. Everything is fine. Go about your business.”

“Everything is not fine,” Leander countered, taking another step into the room. His dark hair shone with a blue tinge, despite the dim light.

Jean-Luc nodded, then eyed the golden ring on his hand, collecting his thoughts before rushing, “I said to you that I cannot help you, but not because I don’t want to.”

“They why couldn’t you leave my brother out of it?”

Leander’s eyes narrowed. “Why the devil would you wish to leave me out—”

“Because his head is a mess, though luckily, not in regard to love,” Jean-Luc cut in before pinning Zephyr with a sympathetic but unyielding stare. “The reason why it cannot be me? It is because my grief and my sorrow, cousin, were from events that happened to me. The tragedy of France, the tragedy of all of my extended family and my friends, that is what gave me grief. Yours is very different than that, and I cannot help you there. But your brother can because he will understand what it is to have something that is simply a part of you,” Jean-Luc said, pointing to the duke.

Zephyr swallowed, his hands folding into fists.

Leander had struggled all his life, and they had all accepted him exactly as he was. For Leander was someone who could go too far, someone who could become wild, someone who could become completely unreasonable and burn himself out, then be consumed with sorrow. They all accepted him for exactly who he was and loved him dearly for it because he was one of the greatest men alive. And he was family.

Zephyr had not wanted to trouble his older brother. His older brother had enough to contend with.

“Jean-Luc, you should not have—”

“Of course he should have,” Leander cut in fiercely. “I count myself a failure of a brother for not understanding the extent of your difficulty.”

Zephyr winced. This was the last thing he wanted. His brother feeling guilty. His brother taking on his problems. “Leander. That is not true. You—”

“I think we have all known that you struggle sometimes in January or February,” Leander said, refusing to back down, tugging on the edge of his elegantly cut cuff. “But now, looking upon you and with the fact that Giselle, your love, is in the house and you are still burdened with this melancholy, we must discuss it, Zephyr.”

Zephyr ground his teeth. “Must we?” he bit out.

“Don’t you wish to?” Leander asked with surprising gentleness, yet with a firmness that could not be denied. Leander would not be easily dissuaded from this topic.

“I don’t need to burden you,” Zephyr ground out, swinging his gaze from his cousin to his brother, determined to show that he could do this on his own. “I don’t need help. I have handled this—”

“It is a thief,” Leander rasped suddenly, his eyes growing dark with emotion.

“A thief?” Zephyr echoed.

“Melancholy,” Leander supplied. “What’s happening to you? It is inexplicable. There is no reason to it. Some of us are born with no reason for how we feel.” Leander closed his eyes for a moment as if he was recalling a lifetime of struggle. Then he opened his eyes and lifted his resolved gaze. “Of course, there are many people who have melancholy and grief and sorrow because terrible things happen to them, as with Jean-Luc. Life can be very hard and sometimes irrationally cruel, so it is perfectly reasonable to feel waves of sorrow and sadness in those times.”

Zephyr’s gut tightened. Where was his brother leading with this? He wanted to escape. Escape this moment of truly being seen by his older brother. But…there was nowhere to go now. Nowhere to hide. Not if he wanted to be a good husband to the woman he loved.

“Go on,” Zephyr urged, though it pained him to do so.

Leander nodded, clearly relieved that his help was not being shoved away. “You and I, our parents have loved us. Our lives are ideal. Ideal as anything can be, and yet we are plagued by sorrow, Zephyr. Do not allow your mind to trick you into thinking that you need to be alone in this and that you cannot ask for help when it grows too heavy.”

Leander’s lips curled in a slow smile. “I ask for help all the time now. The family always helps me. Mercy helps me. She will not allow me to be alone, and I refuse to allow you to be alone in this. I am your brother and I love you. Jean-Luc is your cousin—”

“And I love you,” the Frenchman declared.

“Isn’t that what love is?” Leander demanded. “Being there for each other?”

Zephyr winced.

He thought of Giselle and her questions about love. How could he prove to her that love was really true if he would not be honest with his own brother and cousin?

“I think Mama knows,” Zephyr whispered, his heart feeling as if it was breaking open now that he was finally admitting the truth of it all. It had started with Giselle, her unwillingness to leave him to his sorrow. And now this.

He sucked in a breath. “But I don’t think she knows the extent of it.”

Leander nodded. “We all knew something was amiss… But you know Mama. She is, in this, waiting for you to open up to her. She loves you and when you’re ready to talk to her, you should.”

Zephyr closed his eyes as his shoulders sagged. He had tried to be strong for so long. But was it strength? Strength to not share how he was with his own family?

Leander lifted his chin. “I have no desire to allow you to suffer anymore, brother. You must not think that you need to protect the family from yourself. I’ve noticed every January for years that you’ve been quieter, that you spend a great deal of time alone, that you go out on your own and are nothing like your usual self. But it never occurred to me that you were in such great pain.”

Zephyr’s face creased as if he had been punched. The sorrow in Leander’s voice was clearly because Zephyr had not gone to him for help.

But how? How did a drowning man reach out? Well, he was being yanked out now. Yanked out by Giselle, Jean-Luc, Leander.

And he was so relieved. So relieved he almost couldn’t bear it.

“Zephyr, you are the funniest man alive with the wittiest and most cutting of barbs,” Leander began, his gaze full of admiration and hope. “You make everyone else joyful. You come to the aid of everyone else. So we must admit the truth now. There is a time of year when you cannot rise to that. When you go inward, when you do not allow anyone near you and…that cannot feel good.”

The pain started to shudder out of him. What had happened with Giselle? For so long he had kept his pain walled up, but she had helped him to put a crack in that wall. And now, the wall was falling.

“There is something wrong with me, something terribly wrong,” he rushed, desperate to be understood now. “I have everything, Leander. I have the woman I love. I’m going to marry her in but a few days’ time. How can I feel like this? How? There is no logic to this—”

“And the more you try to make it have logic, the worse it shall be,” his brother cut in, crossing to him. “There is no why, Zephyr. There is no one thing that anyone can point to and say explicitly that this is why one feels this way. Not for those like you and me.”

Leander took him by the shoulders. “So you and I, we must go side by side through all of this, and you must trust your soon-to-be wife to be there for you too.”

He thought of Giselle and the harpsichord. “She already is,” he said softly.

“Good,” Leander said. “I think all of us knew that she was the one for you because she is deeper than most. She has seen more than most, even though she does not go on about it. Is that not true?”

Zephyr nodded.

“I think next year you should not come here in January,” Leander said gently.

“I cannot miss Christmas here,” he snapped, his insides revolting at the idea of being away from the smiles of the children, the banter of his siblings, the joy of his mother.

“I did not say that you should,” Leander said. “But I do not think this part of the country is good for you. Not at this time of year.”

“Where am I to go then, alone?” Zephyr growled.

“With your wife,” Leander protested.

“Where am I to drag her? Spain, Italy? A war is coming.”

Leander frowned. “You are not mistaken about that. I’m sure we can find a solution, but we cannot allow this to continue as it is. I love you too much to allow you to suffer like this without any help.”

Zephyr took a step back from his brother and wiped a hand over his face, feeling exhausted.

“Come now,” Leander insisted. “You would not have me deny your help, would you?”

“What?” Zephyr whispered, blinking.

Leander heaved out a sigh. “Well, if you will not take my help, I will no longer take yours when I am unwell. I shall send you away. I shall denounce you, and I shall tell you that you are absolutely unnecessary.”

Zephyr started to argue.

“You see,” Leander pounced in. “We are great advisors and great friends to other people, but sometimes with ourselves, we are the very worst. So please, brother, please let Jean-Luc, let me, and let the whole family help you through these dark months so that you might enjoy your life more. You do not need to suddenly be happy. I would not require that of you because I cannot suddenly change when my spells come upon me. But you can at least let us walk with you. Will you do that?”

Zephyr swung his eyes to the window and the sky, to that unyielding depressive stretch, and wondered if he could, at long last, let anyone in to see the depth of his pain.

Perhaps he had no choice. Perhaps…

He thought of Giselle. Could he drag her through this every year? He could or he could ask for help. He turned back to his brother and cousin and nodded. “I will do whatever it takes. I’ll do whatever it takes to be well,” he said.

And with that, Leander pulled him into his arms and clapped him on the back.

Jean-Luc threw out his arms, a joyful look warming his face. “Marvelous,” he cried. “I love our family.”

The Frenchman crossed then and swallowed them up in a large Gallic embrace. And as the three men stood together, Zephyr let out a long breath, more hopeful than he had felt in years.