Page 110 of The Soldier
“I beg your pardon?” Emmie asked slowly. “You would have offered me refuge here if Bothwell and I found we did not suit?”
“I would have offered you refuge,” St. Just said, but he wasn’t willing to hide behind that fig leaf. “I would have offered you my adulterous bed, my coin, my home, my anything, Emmie. I know that now.”
Another silence, which left him thinking perhaps his heedless abandonment of dignity had gone quite far enough, because Emmie looked more confused than thrilled with his proclamations.
“I don’t understand, St. Just. I have lied to you and to my daughter. I was under your roof under false pretenses. I have taken advantage of your kindness, and I nearly succeeded in foisting my daughter off on you under the guise of my mendacity. Why would you want to have anything more to do with me?”
“Do you recall my telling you once upon a time that I love you?” St. Just asked, rising, and leaning against the counter, hands in his pockets.
“I do.” She stared at her hands. “It was not under circumstances where such declarations are made with a cool head.”
“We’re in the kitchen now, Emmie,” he said very clearly. “It is late in the afternoon, a pot of tea on the table, and I am of passably sound mind, and sound, if somewhat tired, body. I am also fully clothed, albeit to my regret, as are you: I love you.”
That was not an exercise in sacrificing dignity, he realized. It was an exercise in truth and honesty and regaining dignity. Perhaps for them both. As romantic declarations went, however, it was singularly unimpressive.
“I see.” Emmie got up, chafing her arms as if cold, though the kitchen was the coziest room in the house.
“You don’t believe me,” he said flatly. “You cannot believe me, more like.”
“I am…” Emmie met his eyes fleetingly. “I do not trust myself very far these days, St. Just. You mustn’t think I am attributing my own capacity for untruth to you.”
“I know how your mind works,” he said, advancing on her. “You think it a pity I believe myself to be in love with you, but you can’t help but notice that in some regards, we’d suit, and it would allow us both to have Winnie in our lives. That’s not good enough, Emmie Farnum.”
***
He was speaking very sternly, and for all the tumult inside her, Emmie could hardly focus on the sense of his words. He loved her.He loved her, and he was rejecting her.
“It’s not good enough?” she asked, folding her arms over her waist.
“Not nearly,” he said, shifting to loom over her. “I know what I am. I left the better part of my sanity on battlefields all over France and Spain. I am a bastard, regardless of whose bastard, and I will fare best if I maintain a mundane little existence here in the most isolated reaches of society, where I can stink of horses and spend most of my day outdoors. I have setbacks, as you call them. I never know when a sound or a word or a memory will rise up and shoot me out of my saddle. Sometimes I drink too much, and often I want to drink too much. But I am human, Emmie. I will not shackle myself to a woman who feels only pity and gratitude and affectionate tolerance for me. I won’t.”
“So what do you want of me?” Emmie asked, bewildered.
He gave a bitter snort of laughter.
“A fairy tale. I wanted a goddamned fairy tale, where you love me and we have Winnie here with us and more children, and they tear all over the property on their ponies and the table is noisy with laughter and teasing and the house always smells wonderful because you are my wife and the genie in our kitchen. On the bad nights, you are there for me to love and to love me, and the bad nights gradually don’t come so often. I want—”
“What?” Emmie asked, her throat constricting with pain. “Devlin, what?”
“Just that,” he said tiredly. “I want that small, mundane, bucolic existence. A wife, children, love, and a shared life here at Rosecroft. That is my idea of what makes peace meaningful. It can’t be built on pity or convenience or simple affection, Em. Not with me. I’ll run you off in less than two years, but we’ll have a child by then, so you’ll stay, and next thing, we’ll have separate bedrooms, and the brandy decanter will seldom stay full for long. I won’t live that way, and I won’t let it happen to you or our children either.”
Another silence, while Emmie’s mind scrambled for what to say.
“But I do love you.”
“Of course you do.” He raised his gaze to the ceiling, a man reaching for the last of his patience, and Emmie felt a consuming fear that if she didn’t convince him of thisnow, then the brandy decanters werenevergoing to be full, and he wouldn’t have even one single child to love and to give meaning to the peace he’d fought so hard to secure. “You love that I can keep a roof over your head and that I am attached to your child. Not enough, Em, but thanks for the gesture.” He turned to go, his eyes registering surprise when she stopped him.
“No,” she said, gathering the front of his shirt in her fist. She shook it to emphasize her point and glared up at him.
“No,” she said again. “You will not make such sweeping declarations then stomp off without giving me even a minute to recover. You will stay here in this kitchen and hear me out, Devlin St. Just. You will.” He nodded carefully, and she let his shirt go then smoothed it down with an incongruous little pat of her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, returning his nod. What to say? What on earth to say to make him believe her?
“I love you,” she said slowly, her hand returning to stroke down his chest again, “because you wrestle with stone walls when you’d rather drink yourself mindless. I love you because you take my recipes seriously and you gave me your apple tart recipe, asking nothing in return. I love you because it matters to you when I cry and when Winnie is scared and difficult and lost. I love you because you pray for dead horses and you bought that awful, stinky dog so Winnie wouldn’t be so lonely. You went to see Rose and you forgave your mother and you’ve fought and fought and fought…”
She leaned in against him, her arms around his waist, while his remained at his sides.
“You fought for Winnie,” she went on, voice breaking. “You fought my stupid, wrongheaded schemes for Winnie, so Winnie wouldn’t suffer what you did, so I wouldn’t die of a broken heart as your m-mother did. I love you because you fought so hard… I surrender, Devlin St. Just. I love you, and I surrender for all time.”
She wept against him, not even registering when his arms slowly crept around her nor when his chin rested against her temple.
“You surrender?” he murmured quietly, his hands rubbing slow circles on her back. “Unconditionally?”
“Not unconditionally,” Emmie replied through her tears. “I demand you take me prisoner.”
“It will be my pleasure,” St. Just replied. “But, Em? I surrender, too.”
And thus, for the first time in history, did all sides win the war, even as they were also captured—foot, horse, heart, and cannon—by their opponents for all time.