Page 17 of The Governess’s Absolutely Impossible Wish (The Notorious Briarwoods #8)

G iselle had not expected the man in the bed to look so young. He could not have been fifty years old. In all actuality, he did not look as if he was even forty-five, which was quite strange because, in her mind, her father had been a handsome man.

But now? Now, looking back, she realized that perhaps he had been little more than a handsome boy. Her mother had been quite young when Giselle was born. She knew that. Perhaps just eighteen years of age.

Because of his wealth and position as an aristocrat, she had somehow assumed he was grown in his own right. But it seemed she had been very much mistaken.

He was a withered figure on the bed: small, sad, unwell. She could feel it even across the room, which was hushed with shadows. The curtains had been pulled, candles were everywhere, and the fire crackled soft and low. She took in that figure, a small heap underneath the counterpane, and bit down on her lower lip.

Zephyr stood just behind her. He put his hand to her middle and whispered in her ear, “I shall not leave your side. I am right here.”

She nodded. She knew she did not have to say anything to her husband.

Instead, she turned, looked up into his eyes, and embraced him. He swallowed her up into his hold, willing his strength into her, and she felt it. She felt his power, his love, and his ability to overcome anything fill her. She knew that one day, she would do the same in turn for him.

It was the beauty of their relationship. It was the beauty of their marriage. Every day since their wedding had been an opportunity to practice this with each other, for their lives together were not some perfect sort of tale. No. He still struggled with the dreariness of winter, and she had to come face-to-face now with her past.

They made each other stronger.

She pulled back slowly from him until their fingertips skimmed, and then she turned to the bed, lifted her chin, and strode to it.

“My lord,” she called.

There was a rustle underneath the sheets, and she spotted his face floating over it—pale, wrinkled, and haunted.

“Who is it?” he called with a reedy, broken voice.

“It is Miss Giselle Abbot,” she said softly. “You’ve been asking for me.”

His eyes flared wide, and he adjusted himself on the bed, his skeletal hands patting at the dark blue cloth. “You’re here. They told me you were coming, but I didn’t believe it. I thought perhaps I dreamed it. They give me so much medicine now that I was certain I couldn’t be hearing them correctly.”

“Well, I am here,” she said more firmly.

And then his cloudy eyes—cloudy from the medicine, no doubt—widened and transformed. “You look just like her.”

She stilled. Surely, he meant her mother, and she did not know how to feel about such a comment. Part of her wanted to feel warmed by it, to know that she carried on her mother’s memory and physical form too, and yet it was difficult hearing it from this man, who had abandoned them so thoroughly.

“You asked me to come,” she said, taking another step forward. “I have fulfilled your wish.”

“Yes, you have,” he said, his dried lips barely moving. “Thank you for coming.”

“What is it that you wish to tell me?” she asked, folding her hands tightly before her, her whole body racing with emotions, wondering what he could possibly want at such a time except to alleviate his conscience.

Her father’s eyes darted about as if searching for ghosts and then came back to hers. “I want you to promise me something,” he said.

She startled at that. She had not expected a demand on his part. It was a surprise. “Oh,” she queried, “a promise? I don’t engage in promises now. I have learned that they are ill-advised.”

His thin shoulders sagged at that, and he seemed to sink into the bed. “I see,” he said. “Will you but hear my request, in any case?”

“I have come all this way,” she replied evenly, “so, yes, I shall listen to what you have to say.”

“Come, come sit,” he urged.

There was no chair by the bed, and he patted his hand on the mattress. She hesitated at that, but then she looked back to Zephyr, her tower of strength in this moment, who was standing in the shadows. She did not need a nod from him. She merely wished to remember that she was not alone in this, and so she crossed to the bed and sat upon the edge of it.

“Yes?” she ventured, unable to know what to think of being so close to this man.

“I want you to promise you will never live as I have lived.”

The words cut through the sick room with surprising force, and his eyes were suddenly feverish, as if he had indeed been waiting to ask this of her for some time.

She wondered what he could possibly mean. Did he not wish her to live as cruelly, as selfishly? She wondered. But she did not say those things aloud. She did not wish to have hate in her heart, not when she had so much love now.

“Tell me more about what that means,” she replied carefully, though she longed to challenge him on what he had done to her mother.

His face twisted and his hands began to work at the blanket. “I listened to other people. I listened to my father. You see, I was such a young man. It is no excuse. I know young men who were braver and bolder and defied their father, but my father seemed so powerful and so strong. I was in love with your mother, and I loved being with her in her little apartment. I would come to visit you two, and it was the happiest time of my life, but my father demanded that I come back to England and take up my role here.”

Her father’s hands gripped the bedclothes with surprising force, his knuckles whitening. “He demanded that I come back and not, as he said, throw my life away on some silly musician and…”

Her father swung his gaze away, unable to finish, as shame seemed to cloak him.

“Me,” Giselle said for him.

He gave a tight nod of his head.

“And you did what he said,” she affirmed.

“I did,” he replied grimly, “to my ever-living horror. But you have to understand that my father was such a powerful figure in my life, in the world! All my life, I had done what he had told me to do. Loving your mother was the first thing I had ever attempted that was outside of what he had ordered, and I found that I did not have the strength to defy him so entirely. It wasn’t just that he threatened to cut me off,” he lamented.

She stilled. She had not even realized that he had considered staying with them and being cut off. “Tell me,” she said gently, tempted to touch his hand but unable to yet.

His shoulders began to shake. “My father threatened to ruin your mother’s career, to ruin your life too, to ruin all our lives if I did not do what he wished and come back here and do as a dutiful English son should.”

“How terrible,” she said, feeling his pain, feeling his self-loathing.

“I was a coward,” he growled. “And I ran away. I thought… I convinced myself I was doing it for your mother. That I left her to save her, to protect her. But it was because I was afraid of him. And the unknown. That is the truth. That is my great regret.”

“You did not help us in any way,” she blurted, her own pain rising to the surface.

“I know,” he said, meeting her eyes with a look so haunted it was almost unbearable. “There is really no excuse for what I did, how I gave myself over to my father’s power. I do not expect you to forgive me. I am not even asking for that, but I want you to know how terrible a life is if lived in fear, and cowardice, and regret. Every day, I have woken with it as a millstone about my neck. Every day, I have woken, knowing what I did to your mother and to you, and it has made me sick. It has made me ill, and it is why I think I am dying so young. It has turned to poison inside me, what I did, and I would urge you to never ever do such a thing yourself. To never ever let the rules of another dictate your life. I do not know you at all,” he said, “but I wanted to at least give you this lesson that I have learned. In the hopes that you might find what I and your mother could not.”

She gazed at him and felt her heart crack. She didn’t want to forgive him, but she understood now that he was trying in some way to show her that he wanted her to have a good life.

“You couldn’t find me?” she asked.

He let out a low, guttural moan. “My father only died six months ago,” he said. “Cruel man that he was, he had no regrets. And he lived to be eighty. I shall not see forty-five. I have lived under his shadow my whole life. I thought perhaps once I was free of him, I could find you, but it was too late, and I was already dying. Do not wait, Giselle. Do not be afraid of consequences. Do what you must. Follow love. Never throw it away as I have done, for it shall rip you to shreds, and you shall be a hollow shell of yourself. That is what betrayal does. That is what giving up does.”

How she longed to shout and scream at the injustice of it all. All this time, she had thought he had left her mother because he was callous. Left her because he did not care.

Now she knew he had left them because he was little more than a frightened boy who was not yet a man. He had been shaped by a cruel father, and it had left him weak. But not the horrible monster she had thought.

There were monsters in this world. But here, with him, she knew her father was not one. In fact, he was a victim of one. And he’d never escaped.

“Then you should know,” she began, “that I have chosen love. I have married a man who loves me, a man who supports me, a man who is kind to me.” She looked back over her shoulder and held her hand out.

Zephyr crossed to them.

“This is him,” she said. “Lord Zephyr Briarwood.”

Her father let out a note of surprise. “No one told me you’d married,” he said.

“Perhaps they were afraid that you wouldn’t handle it very well,” Zephyr replied gently.

Her father laughed on the bed. Laughed so hard he started to cough. “You are likely right, my boy. You are a good man then? I have heard many things about the Briarwoods. They are quite a collection of people who break the rules,” he said with the first smile he’d ventured. It was wan, and he looked as if he had not smiled in years. “So you are perfect for my daughter.”

Zephyr inclined his head. “I don’t know if perfection exists,” he said, “but yes, we are meant for each other. There is no question. We teach each other many things, and my life would be a great sorrow without her.”

“Yet you have chosen her despite the fact that she is not of your class,” her father said suddenly.

Zephyr tensed beneath her hand, but she shook her head. Her father didn’t mean it as offense. She could tell he admired Zephyr for it. Admired her husband for being stronger than he had been.

“Yes,” Zephyr agreed, “I have, because I do not see it as a difficulty. None of my family does.”

“I am glad for you,” her father said passionately. “Your family is far stronger than mine, far better than mine, and I’m so grateful to know that at long last, my daughter is cared for as I never could care for her.” Suddenly, her father reached out and grabbed Zephyr’s hand. It was a viselike grip for one so ill. “I left her alone in this world, Briarwood. Promise me that she will never be left alone.”

“I do not have to promise you that,” Zephyr replied carefully, his voice deep with his truth. “But I will tell you this. She does not have only me. She has my mother. She has my brothers and sisters. She has my aunt; she has my cousins. She has all of us, and she always will.”

Her heart swelled at that, and much to her surprise, her father’s face eased.

He let out a long sigh and turned his gaze, which was now not quite so tortured, back to Giselle’s. “Good because then there is indeed a happy ending to my story, to your mother’s story. Even though ours could not be complete, it is finally full of love with you, Giselle,” he whispered.

With those words, she knew that though she could not go back and change the past, it had all been leading to this moment. This moment when she knew that she was loved, and that she would give love, and that all of the pain, all of the cruelty, and all of the feelings of being alone would stop with her and her husband.

Her mother could be at peace too. And perhaps her father could be as well.

All because of love. All because Zephyr and she had chosen each other, no matter the challenges.