Page 24 of When Jess Wainwright’s Curiosity Was Satisfied (Wainwright Sisters #4)
Chapter Twenty-Four
J ess hadn’t noticed much about his bedroom when he’d hauled her, clinging, across its threshold. But now that she was lying on top of him, her chin propped in her hands, she noticed everything. The decadent satin of the sheets against her bare feet. The scar on his chin that gleamed in the smudgy light of the kerosene lantern. The half-smile that hadn’t left his face and the way his thumb likely stroked her ribcage.
And the book on the floor. She’d almost stumbled over it - just before he’d caught her and tossed her down. It was the same one on pest control and agriculture she’d returned last week. It was flipped open to the title page and there was a scrap of folded paper inside it. She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and picked it up.
She heard his intake of breath when she started unfolding it.
It was an incredibly accurate, exquisite pen and ink rendering of a Gold-Tipped Garner.
She held it up to his face. “What is this?”
A blush spread across his cheekbones. “The color reminded me of your eyes.”
“You drew this? It’s much better than my attempts.” She turned it so she could study it more closely. “The legs always look like spindles when I draw them, but this is brilliant.”
She felt his shrug beneath her and set her hand to his cheek. “Don’t pretend this away, Cadoc.”
“I’m not,” he said. His thumb started stroking a different pattern against her ribcage. “It gave me something to take joy in besides blueprints.”
“You could illustrate my article,” she tentatively proposed.
“That would mean our association isn’t at an end. It would require close collaboration.”
“What makes you think I want to be rid of you?”
“How we’ve been tonight, it doesn’t change anything, dragonfly. I’m still a bad bargain. Even worse than the wager we made.”
She swirled her fingers through the taper of hair beneath his navel. “I don’t think you’re a bad bargain, Cadoc.”
He tensed beneath her touch. “Then why did you reject my proposal of marriage?”
“I rejected it because I won’t be tied to someone who’s only making an offer out of a sense of obligation and a means of assuaging their guilt.”
Before she could draw another breath, he’d flipped them over and was leaning over her. “That’s not why I proposed.”
She pushed futilely against the wall of his chest in an attempt to displace him. “Don’t lie to me. I saw the look on your face when you realized we’d been caught. You were terrified.”
He pushed her arms over her head and held her wrists in place. “I wasn’t terrified, Jess. I was elated. I didn’t know how I was going to convince you to stay with me once our bargain ended. Your brother-in-law’s interruption solved my dilemma.” He took a deep breath and cupped her face. “But it changes nothing. Because I’m not what you deserve.”
“How can you say that?” She brokenly asked. “Shouldn’t I be the one to decide who and what I deserve?”
“If I hadn’t cajoled and pressured you into thinking I was the man you deserved, then yes. But I’m not, dragonfly. You deserve so much more than a man who buries himself in his work and bloodies his knuckles against a sack of grain to chase away his demons.”
“You are much more than you think you are, miner. I thought I’d shown you that.”
“No one is capable of showing me that, Jess,” he tenderly pushed a lock of loose hair behind her ear. “No one but myself. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to accept my own forgiveness. I’ve always forged my own path, and it’s been one of survival, not reckoning.”
Her body went from pliant to unyielding beneath him. “I won’t beg. I’m not a woman made for begging. You’ll come to me of your own free will when you realize what you’re throwing away.”
“You were right to refuse, me dragonfly,” he repeated. “And I’ll not let you regret your decision or let it haunt you. I deserve to be the one who’s haunted.”
She pushed against his chest. “Then that’s all you’ll ever be. A man who’s haunted by possibilities because he’s too cowardly to want the reality of them. I’ll not wait for you,” she warned fiercely as she rolled from the circle of his arms.
He let her go because he could do nothing else. Because the long dark night of his soul and the bottles of whisky had shown him he wasn’t enough for her. That he was too broken to be enough.
After he’d helped her back into her clothes and released her into George’s keeping for safe transport home, he took up the bottle of whisky again.
This morning, he’d left his bed as tumbled and dodgy as he’d felt, and now he was glad of it. He had the memory of her, lying there, laughing and rosy on bedclothes he’d thrashed against and stroked himself to while dreaming of her. It was the perfect elegy and he held onto it as he nursed the whisky. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to sleep in his bed again.
He stared into the cold embers of the dying hearth, steadily swallowing his third bottle of whisky. It was where Caris found him.
“Brother, you’re an idiot,” she said.
He blinked awake. Bleary from falling asleep on the sofa that wasn’t quite long enough and the vestiges of the liquor. “I’ll not destroy her.”
“Letting her go is destroying her. And you. Can’t you see that?” She asked as she took a seat beside him on the sofa and lifted the half-empty bottle from his hand.
“I see no such thing,” he stubbornly said.
His sister groaned in exasperation. “Just as I said. Idiotic. Do you think this is what Mam or Griffin would have wanted for you? Surrendering yourself to your family and your work and leaving no room for anything else?”
“It’s not about what they would have wanted.”
Caris’s hand stroked over the broken skin of his knuckles. “Yes, it is. You’re so blinded by your sense of duty you can’t see how it’s rending you apart from the inside out.”
Cadoc rested his head against the sofa. “I sang to her. Right here on this sofa. I held her in my arms and I sang to her.”
“And you turned her away? A woman who made you sing? I thought better of you, Cadoc.”
He knew if he opened his eyes, her expression would be stern.
“You know what I am, Caris,” he said with a sigh. “You know what I’m made of.”
“Yes, I do, brother. You’re made of never giving up on the things you want. Of fighting for them until there’s not a shred of fight left in you. You’re made of all the dreams Mam and Griffin had for you, and all the years you’ve shown all of us the way you love us. We love you just as much, Cadoc, but you need to let her love you too.”
Cadoc let Caris’s words settle inside him. He knew he needed to be brave enough to face the way Jess Wainwright wanted him to belong to her. Brave enough to make the most of every day, just like his dragonfly.