Page 5 of The Viscount’s Second Chance (The Lovers’ Arch: Later in Life)

T homas and Nora’s interludes progressed in frequency and duration, though they never did have another chance to experience what they’d shared in the apple orchard. Time and privacy constraints placed limitations upon what they could accomplish, but one should never discount the determined imaginations of those in love.

Once, Thomas was able to pull her into an unoccupied stall in the stables and there, amongst the sweet smell of fresh hay and the inquisitive nickering of the horses, Thomas took his time learning how she liked to be touched. They worked together to experiment until they found a perfect rhythm with his strong, calloused hands. He’d even, heaven forbid, kissed her most secret of places! That had been something Nora knew she’d not soon forget.

Together, they discovered a small bundle of nerves hidden within the swollen folds of her sex and she nearly fainted from sheer delight. The sensations elicited by Thomas’s deliberate and steady machinations were even more powerful than the accidental collisions during their first time making love. For his part, Thomas seemed to take great joy in learning and employing all the ways he could make her writhe in pleasure—nearly as much as the times when Nora performed her own explorations of his leanly muscled body and hard, steely length.

Not once did Nora ever feel shame for what they were doing. Like most girls, she’d been raised to covet her virtue and barter with her maidenhead for the most advantageous match. She, however, knew she would only ever want Thomas and everything she shared with him was beautiful. She didn’t dare sully it with the smallest bit of embarrassment.

Eight days after their meeting in the orchard, Nora began to bleed. Her courses were always regular, so it did not come as a surprise. She did not, however, look forward to telling Thomas that they would need to postpone any further interludes for the next five days or so, though. That very same morning, she had discovered a small note had been pushed beneath her door bidding her to slip out and meet in the rose garden during tea—when Beth and the viscountess would be occupied.

Nora experienced a great deal of guilt at feigning a headache to cry off, especially when Beth offered to forgo the afternoon respite and keep her company in her room.

“Thank you, no,” Nora had said pitifully, the bottom of her stomach dropping out at her friend’s concerned expression.

“If you’re certain…” She could tell Beth wanted to override Nora’s request for solitude; thankfully, however, Beth eventually capitulated. “I will check on you in a few hours. Shall I bring our book?” Beth referred to the old tome Nora had uncovered in the library all those years ago.

The book filled with myths and fairytales of the British Isles had become a touchstone for them since that day. Each time one of the girls was unwell or needed to be comforted, the book was dusted off and they’d curl up in one bed and read to one another, cuddling into the warm embrace of a safe routine.

Nora nodded, knowing Beth would notice something was off if she declined. “That would be lovely.”

After her friend took her leave, Nora silently counted to one-hundred before she sprang from her bed and slipped into the hallway, sneaking down the servants’ stairwell and out to the back of the house. In the freedom of the outdoors, Beth hiked up her skirts and ran; joy, excitement, and pure love and contentment shone upon her face; they emanated from her beaming smile. She skittered along the pathways of the various gardens until she reached the square sectioned off for roses. Thomas and Beth’s grandmother had been very fond of the blooms and had worked diligently over more than twenty years to amass quite the astonishing assortment of them. They ranged in size, color, volume, and scent, but Nora loved them all. The rich aroma beckoned to you long before you grew near enough to see the arched gate leading to the rose garden. Years ago, Beth and Nora had often pretended that it was the Roman arch from their favorite story in their book. Now, the garden held a different appeal.

It was far enough away from the house as to not be easily viewable from any windows. The surrounding hedges had taken a healthy root and now stood nearly eight feet in height. It was secluded.

And Thomas stood in the very center of it.

Nora flew into his arms and he caught her with a laugh before capturing her lips in a deep, possessive kiss.

“Where do they think you’ve gone?” he murmured. “I told them…that I…had a…headache,” Nora responded in between kisses.

“Brilliant. And I am occupied in the stables.” He gave her a wicked grin and cupped her bottom in his broad palms. “That should buy us enough time.”

Nora placed a palm on the center of his chest when he bent to kiss her once again. “I have something I need to discuss with you,” she began, her cheeks burning in mortification.

His blue eyes instantly softened and his bold, dark brows furrowed. “Is everything alright? Are you unwell?” His hold immediately gentled with concern.

“I am not sick…merely….” she was having trouble meeting his eyes. “My courses have arrived and I am afraid we cannot be together.” She gnawed on her lower lip, fearful of how he might react. She knew some men couldn’t abide womanly issues.

He cupped her cheek and tilted her face to look up into his and she knew she should have given him more credit. Thomas lived in a household full of women, afterall. “That is nothing to fret over. Are you in any discomfort? I believe Cook keeps some willowbark to brew into tea if you require it.” Nora shook her head and fell a little more in love with him. “Good.” He gave the tip of her nose a little peck. “So there will be no baby this month. We can be more careful from this moment on; though I do think a pregnancy might be just the special circumstances we require to be wed before I come of age.”

Nora’s heart leapt into her throat. “A baby!”

Thomas tilted his head. “Do you not want children? I always believed you did.”

“Of course I do,” she stammered. “I just hadn’t considered it a possibility.” “It is a very real possibility.” Thomas leaned in and nuzzled her ear; his warm breath there made her knees weak. “Especially if we carry on as we did in the orchard.”

She narrowly resisted the urge to press a hand to her cramping lower abdomen. A baby. Thomas’s baby. The idea excited her as much as it frightened her. “Maybe…we can wait just a little while longer for a child?” she asked hesitantly.

“If that is what you wish, then I will oblige. It is your body. Just know that the sight of you growing round with my child would make me a very happy man, indeed.”

Nora tossed her head back and laughed, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down for a kiss.

Some minutes passed before Thomas broke away. She recognized the now-familiar gleam in his eye.

“How about a walk, hm? I’ve some energy I need to work off.”

“Poor dear,” she feigned pity and slipped his arm through his, patting his hand as one might if comforting a small child.

“Be careful, minx.” Thomas’s grin was wolfish and made her skin tingle. “I will remember this and exact my revenge when the time is right.”

They spent two hours in pleasant conversation, meandering through the grounds and straying further and further away as they lost all sense of time and place. It was an easy thing to do when they were together. They walked until the afternoon clouds blotted out the sun, heralding an impending shower.

“You slip back in through the breakfast room and I’ll return through the front door a few minutes later,” Thomas advised Nora with a peck on her lips. “And I shall see you at supper.”

Nora sighed dreamily and allowed his arm to slip through her fingers. Two steps away and she already missed the solid strength of it. She could feel his eyes following her retreat, and it was everything she could do not to look back.

She was about to duck back through the servants’ stairs to the floor where the bedrooms were situated when a maid wrenched it open and nearly collided headlong with her.

“Oh! Miss Nora!” she bobbed a quick curtsey, her cap eschew. “The viscountess—she’s been looking for you.”

“Ah, thank you,” Nora stammered, her heart beginning to race in her breast. Could Lady Bexton have seen them in the gardens? Whatever would Nora have to say for herself if she were about to be confronted? She began to wring her hands together. The maid began to scurry away, but stopped when Nora asked where she might find her.

“Why, up in Miss Beth’s bedchamber, of course.” The wrinkle between the maid’s pale brows made Nora feel as if she’d asked a stupid question. “I’ve been sent to retrieve another bag from the physician’s cart; if you’ll please excuse me.” With that, the maid was off.

Nora’s dread quickly morphed into fear. Physician? In Beth’s room? Heart careening through her chest, Nora dashed up the servants’ stairwell rather than go all the way ‘round to the foyer and the main staircase. A curse escaped her lips when she tripped on the hem of her skirts, but she made quick work of the steps when she hiked the fabric up into her arms.

She was at Beth’s doorway in no time, though she panted and dark spots danced on the periphery of her vision. That was the last time she ran in a full corset.

The viscountess looked up at Nora’s entrance. Her pale face was drawn and her mouth was pulled into such a taut line as to be nearly nonexistent. She was perched on the edge of Beth’s bed, upon which lay Beth in nothing more than her shift. A large white bandage was wound around the side of her head and obscuring one eye, and there was a small red cut on the curve of her chin. Her perfect skin was nearly the color of the bandage. For the first time, Nora noticed the dark splotches on the visctountess’s bodice, as if she’d cradled her wounded daughter to her breast. The physician was tying off another bandage on Beth’s forearm, his gnarled hands surprisingly nimble.

“W—What happened?” Nora panted just as the maid from downstairs brushed past her with an apology and handed a folded leather case to the physician.

“A fall,” the physician answered instead of the viscountess. “Miss Bexton experienced an episode during tea and dropped her cup to the floor. It shattered where she fell.” He unwrapped the case and extracted two dark glass vials. “Luckily, the worst cut was in her hairline and should heal well. Head and facial lacerations tend to bleed quite profusely even when the wound is minor.” He placed the vials on the bedside table, walked around the bed to share a few murmured words with the viscountess, gave a deferential bow of his head, and then took his leave. The silence he left in his wake was leaden.

“Where were you?” demanded the viscountess before Nora could speak.

“I was—”

“Certainly not in your room.” This was the coldest she’d ever heard the woman she’d come to regard as a second mother. Heavy footsteps came up behind her, and Nora didn’t need to turn to know it was Thomas standing in the doorway, too, now. She could sense him as if they were bound by an invisible tether.

“What’s happened to Beth?” Nora heard the panic in every one of his heaving breaths. He’d likely sprinted just as she had when he saw the physician’s cart in front of the house.

“And you,” his mother said, not answering him as her eyes flicked to him over Nora’s shoulder. “You were nowhere to be found either.” A heavy, guilty silence followed. “Beth needed you,” she addressed both of them. “ I needed you. And you both couldn’t be bothered to be where you were supposed to be.” She wrapped Beth’s limp fingers in her own and her furious eyes settled on Nora. “It appears your headache is much improved. You should have come down to tea. Had you been there, you could have helped me catch Beth. We could have saved her from this injury.”

Nora’s eyes stung and she opened her mouth to speak, but Thomas saved her. “Mother, that is unfair.” She could feel the familiar heat of his body as he stepped closer to her back. “There is no guarantee that Nora could have done anything had she been there.”

“You have no room to speak,” the viscountess hissed at her son. “Precious time was wasted in trying to locate you at the stables. I wound up having a footman carry Beth up here and sent a stable boy to fetch Dr. Brown. Both of you have let me down today.”

Nora’s heart shattered. She’d failed her dearest friend—one person who loved her above all else. The words flayed her, but they were the truth. She should have been at tea that day, seated beside Beth as she usually was. She shouldn’t have lied to sneak out of the house. She shouldn’t have hidden her liaison with Thomas.

“I’m so sorry,” Nora sobbed, clapping her hand over her mouth as she dashed from the room.

“Nora!” Thomas called after her, but she didn’t slow. She passed her room and descended the curved staircase so quickly her feet barely touched the ground. Flinging open the heavy oak front door, she ran out into the fields. She did not register the darkening sky above as fickle Mother Nature transformed a once glorious day into a storm.

Nora should have known Thomas would find her with ease when she sat beneath the ancient oak tree beneath which she and Beth had spent many a summer afternoon reading. Aching and hollow, she wished to curl in upon herself like a beetle, but her bloody corset wouldn’t even allow her to mourn properly. Instead, she sat ramrod straight against the biting bark, caring nothing for the snags to the back panels of her gown.

“Princess?” he whispered, his boots crunching on fallen twigs and decades worth of layers of decaying leaves. A far off roll of thunder danced across the sky. Nora only stared at the earth until his boots came into view, slightly scuffed from racing after her. He crouched down and offered her his hand. “Mother never should have spoken to you that way.” Nora had no reply, so she sniffed and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet with little effort. “She was merely frightened, and I cannot blame her for that. People lash out when they are afraid. We will give her some time to calm herself and then we will tell her that I was called out to the fields and you…felt better after a brief nap and took some fresh air. That will explain why they couldn’t locate you in the house. What?” Nora had begun shaking her head as he spoke and continued even after he was done.

She heaved a painful, shaky sigh. “We cannot do this to Beth,” Nora sobbed, her heart breaking with each syllable. “She deserves our love and attention.”

There was a pregnant pause before Thomas asked evenly, “Are you saying you cannot share it?”

“I am saying that she is my priority—as she should be yours. It was bad enough that neither of us was there for her because we were off together, but it would kill her if something happened between us and we were unable to coexist.”

“Nothing will happen between us.”

“You cannot see the future, Thomas!” The finality of the last syllable made his mouth snap shut. “Beth has already suffered for our neglect. We should have been with her…” Nora’s voice quavered and tears began to blur her vision.

She hated herself for withdrawing from Thomas.

She hated the crater widening in her chest with every word.

Most of all, she despised the fact that Beth had been injured during her last spell because she and Thomas had been reckless. Thoughtless. Selfish.

Beth was her best friend in the world, and she needed Nora; that day had made it impeccably clear. How could Nora abandon her for a man—even a man such as Thomas…even a man she loved and had loved for years?

“I love Beth,” Thomas began, low and slow. “And I know you love her, too. It is one of the reasons I—I adore you so.” She couldn’t meet his eyes, so she watched the twitching of his fingers. She could tell he ached to reach for her and hold her as badly as she did, he. “To neglect yourself for Beth’s benefit…that would break her heart if she knew—”

“I am not neglecting myself!” Nora reared back, tears finally spilling onto her cheeks. “Loving Beth is not neglecting myself.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Then what did you mean?”

Thomas paused before replying. “That you can love more than one person at a time. Lord knows I do.”

The ensuing silence was as weighty as a boulder dropped into a silent lake, leaving behind its ever-expanding ripples and causing an unseen shift beneath the surface.

Love.

“I will marry you one day, Nora, if I haven’t yet made myself abundantly clear many times over.” She barely heard him over the pounding pulse in her ears; her lungs forgot their function. “You have one of the biggest hearts I know, so surely there is enough room in there for both of us. Isn’t there?” She hadn’t realized her tears were flowing freely until Thomas’s blunt thumb gently swiped them from her cheeks. “I know what happened frightened you—I was afraid as well. But Beth is recovering. We can be there for her together.” His hand closed over hers and squeezed in the most reassuring hold Nora had ever experienced. She closed her eyes, absorbing the delicious warmth…savoring it…filing it away in her heart.

On the tail of the elation and blinding joy of the truth that Thomas intended to take her as his wife was the sobering realization of what that would mean for Beth.

Doctors had made it clear that it was not recommended that Beth marry or bear children. Her sentence as a spinster was signed from the moment she was diagnosed with the falling sickness. Her condition precluded her from activities such as long-distance travel, riding, and even rigorous dancing. Her world had been watered down and shrunk before she even had a chance to experience it. Of course, Beth was always cheerful. She refused to allow her condition to hinder her spirit. Nora, however, knew she could not make the chasm between Beth and normalcy any wider than it already was.

And that included Nora remaining by her side, no matter the cost.

Slowly, she pulled her hand from Thomas’s…and her heart broke with each inch of space she put between them.

She could feel his confused gaze on her skin, but she couldn’t meet it.

“Nora?” His voice broke, and so did her spirit.

“We cannot marry,” she said, shaking her head as if to convince herself that what she was saying was the truth. “We cannot marry,” she repeated pathetically. “Why?” he demanded in an incredulous whisper.

“Because Beth—”

“Beth has nothing to do with this!”

“Beth has everything to do with this,” she cried. “How can I live my life and leave her behind? How can I move on while she is trapped in time like some perfect specimen?” Thomas released a disbelieving breath and raked a furious hand through his dark hair. “So you will trap yourself in amber and resign yourself to a life frozen in time?”

“I—”

“This is madness, Nora! Surely you can see how irrational it is? Putting your life on hold, denying a chance at love and a future to remain by her side?” He stared up at the sky as if imploring a deity for assistance. “We can bring Beth to live with us,” Thomas said finally. “She will go wherever we are. Marrying me does not equate to abandoning her. She is my sister.”

Though the kindness of his words caused her chest to cave inwardly, she knew he was missing the point—that he would quite possibly never understand it.

“I will not shove my happiness in her face. Do you not believe it cruel to parade in front of her with everything she will be missing in her life? Marriage? Children?”

Thomas dropped to his knees and grabbed her hands too quickly for Nora to avoid it. “She will be an aunt. That will doubtless bring her immeasurable joy.”

Nora was overcome by the image of a round-cheeked little boy with ice-blue eyes…a girl with long, ebony curls. She squeezed her eyes shut and locked the dream away.

“I cannot marry you, Thomas,” Nora whispered, though her heart collapsed within her breast. She knew the moment she lost him when his eyes froze over like a pond in bitter winter. He rose to his feet with slow, deliberate movements and released her hand. Every part of her ached when he took two steps back from her.

“You mean you will not marry me. Nothing is preventing you except your own misgivings.”

Nora had to bite the inside of her cheek to stave off the tears threatening to spill over. “I cannot,” she reiterated.

“When will you see that there is more to you than Beth?” Thomas demanded through gritted teeth, looking as if he wanted to give her a shake to underscore his point. “So much more.”

Nora was silent.

Thomas hung his hands behind his neck and stared at the sky as if for answers or support. He pivoted on his heel to stomp away three paces and then he quickly spun back to her. “You are making a mistake, Nora,” he snarled. His voice was angry, but his eyes were wounded. “I love you, and I know you feel the same about me. You are denying yourself a future of security and affection and undying devotion in a misguided attempt at preserving your friend’s feelings. You refuse to trust me when I tell you Beth will be nothing short of overjoyed to have you as her sister. No one appreciates your taking her feelings into account more than I, but do not martyr yourself for them.” A tear slipped free and ran down the curve of her cheek. “I will not ask you again. If this is your choice, then we both must live with it; however, I will not stand idly by as you torture me with your nearness and waste away all the possibilities our future holds.” With that, Thomas stormed away, a rolling clap of thunder overhead following in his wake.

Nora remained unmoving, even as the sky opened up and a drizzle rapidly transformed into a deluge, the drops masking the torrent of tears she finally allowed to escape freely from her eyes.