Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

S ophia devoured the book like a woman possessed, gasping and stifling tears, laughing and sighing, her heart leaping and breaking for a woman long dead, who had poured her emotions into those pages.

Eliza was a masterful writer, penning vivid descriptions and spilling all of her innermost thoughts onto the paper, sparing nothing.

Some things were almost too private, prompting Sophia to skim past them, and though she already knew how the story ended, it was like hearing it again for the first time, through the annals of decades.

The truth. The honest truth, at last.

Eliza seemed like a deeply troubled woman with a big shadow looming over her soul. She had made several mentions in her diary about how life was a lot different before she met Edmund. It seemed like she had several bad experiences already, and she mentioned trouble with finding suitors, even failing to see through some arranged marriages her family had set up for her.

Makes sense… Once a woman fails to find romantic success early on after her debut, she can’t help but be discarded to the periphery.

Sophia knew the feeling all too well. She remembered the side glances and the hushed whispers from the ladies of the ton when they saw her. The difference between her and Eliza, however, was that she didn’t mind wearing the mantle of a spinster. She had had no problem living a life without marriage or romance. If it happened, fine, but she had no plans to force it.

Eliza, however, seemed desperate for romance. Sophia could tell she was a tortured soul that begged for a tender touch, and she could see it in the way the woman talked about Edmund.

Where could it have all gone so wrong?

She continued reading. This one page was covered in wet stains. Tears?

Thursday, 3 rd of October,

My brother has forbidden me from ever seeing him again. He thinks he took advantage of me and defiled my body. He threatens to have him killed. He will not listen to me. But…

I have another soul living inside me. I can tell. I am only a few days late, but I can tell. And I know it is his. Our love child. My brother says he will not have a bastard walking around our halls, carrying the family name. I tell him it does not have to be a bastard—I can marry Edmund. He refuses to understand.

It was me. I wanted to make love to him. Everything was my fault. If I had just waited…

The entry was cut off abruptly. Sophia guessed it was probably because Eliza couldn’t stop the tears from falling. She felt her own tears welling up in her eyes and begging to come out, but she wiped them away. She couldn’t start crying now.

There was one more page. She had to finish it. For Eliza’s sake. For a woman who, even though she had lived a century ago, felt like a sister to her.

I owe this to her.

She found the last page. It had no date on the top right corner.

With a breath, Sophia read the heartbreakingly brief entry with stinging eyes.

My life is over. God willing, I will not write again. I will be gone—to dust and ash, my beloved child along with me. May we find more peace in the hereafter than we had here. I am sorry, my dear Edmund. We will wait for you. Goodbye.

Sophia shivered in place, tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt this woman’s pain, her sadness. The image of choosing to take your own life while knowing you carried a child within you…

All of this pain, this sorrow, all of the deaths, the misery, the lives lost, the hatred we planted amongst each other… because of one man’s idiotic decision eighty years ago.

The brother was clearly to blame for forbidding the marriage, but Eliza’s entries held no love for the rest of her family either. In the end, they had all conspired against her and Edmund, and it had cost them. Cost everyone, long after they were all dead and buried.

Above all, Sophia felt stupid. Stupid for believing everything that had been passed down to her. For looking at Thomas and wishing death upon him.

This can’t be…

She looked down at the book and ran several different thoughts back and forth, considering her options.

This one little book, clad in soft blue leather, stashed away in a tiny library in the middle of a small house in the middle of a tiny faraway nook, could end the feud between the two families once and for all. And perhaps even…

Perhaps we… we could even live as a real… a real couple…

She shook her head.

No. You still can’t entrust your heart to him. You don’t even know if he has a mistress or not.

She closed the book and stared at the sigil. This one little book complicated things so much. She and Thomas would need to have a long talk, uncomfortable yet necessary.

“Thomas?” Gregory shouldered him so hard that he almost fell out of his chair. “You are distracted, Nephew. Something is bothering you.”

The two men were at their usual table at the local inn, where they had often escaped when Harriet was playing the tyrant at the manor and they needed to talk about business—or nothing at all—with absolute peace and quiet.

It should have been the perfect place for Thomas to forget about Sophia, but with each measure of brandy, it grew more difficult.

“Not at all,” he replied curtly. “I am quite well.”

It is just that my wife ran off to my grandmother’s house, but I spent half a morning haring around like a madman, trying to find her because I had not yet received her note, and… I don’t know if she will come back. I think I have hurt her, and I don’t know how to remedy it. I wasn’t trained for that.

“Nephew,” Gregory said with a raised eyebrow. “I know you. And I know that your wife is not at the manor anymore. I like to think I am a reasonably intelligent, perceptive gentleman. Your sour mood and her absence can’t possibly be unrelated.”

Thomas swirled his brandy in his glass, wondering how to broach the subject that weighed so heavily on his mind. Still, if there was anyone worth telling, it was Gregory.

“I… kissed Sophia,” he said finally, choosing to make the occurrence more innocent.

He wasn’t about to tell his uncle, trustworthy and honest or not, what had really happened, primarily so he wouldn’t repeat the entire thing in his mind and yearn for it again.

“And…?” Gregory gestured expectantly.

“That’s it. I kissed her.”

The older man frowned. “Is… this Sophia person not the same Sophia you are married to?”

“What? No, never.”

Now that Thomas knew what he had been missing with his wife, he wouldn’t have dreamed of partaking in such things with anyone else.

“So, you’re telling me… you kissed your wife.”

Thomas realized how that sounded and cringed. “It’s not as simple as you think.”

“What is there to complicate it? You are married. You kissed. Married couples kiss.” Gregory sounded almost exasperated, or amused—Thomas’s mind was too foggy to tell.

“Uncle, you know about me and her and our families.”

“Of course, I do. I also know it’s a thing of the past. Wasn’t that the point of the marriage?”

If you could stop making such excellent points, that would be wonderful.

Thomas huffed out a breath. “It’s not that far back in the past. Eighty years is barely any time at all in the grand scheme of things.”

“Thomas.” Gregory steepled his fingers and blew out a similarly huffy breath. “She’s an attractive and kind young woman, and you are a handsome and kind young man, both at your prime and owners of abundant wealth and power. Did she… resist the kiss?”

“No. No, she didn’t.” Thomas cleared his throat, remembering how she had begged for his touch. “In fact, she brought up the idea.”

“Perfect!” Gregory clapped his hands together. “That means there is mutual attraction—half the battle, my good man.”

“For pity’s sake, will you keep your voice down!”

“These louts are a bottle in each. They wouldn’t bat an eye if the King showed up,” Gregory said, gesturing around them. “Besides, maybe they should overhear, for you are behaving rather foolishly—they ought to share in the ridiculousness.”

“It is foolish, isn’t it?” Thomas dropped his head into his hand. “I shouldn’t have kissed her.”

And I shouldn’t have left a note. I should have said what I wrote to her face.

He regretted that, most of all. But if he had tried to say it to her face, he knew he would have ended up kissing her, and more, again. He wouldn’t have been able to resist.

“No! That’s not what I meant.” Gregory sighed.

“Uncle, she is a Kendall .”

“Oh, not this drivel again.” Gregory clicked his tongue. “I have been sick to death of it for years, and though I know everyone thinks Rosamund is half mad, I am inclined to at least agree with her in regard to burying it as deep as it will go. Their feud is not our feud. It never should have been. It’s… more foolish than you are being right now. Has always been.”

Thomas stared at his uncle in abject shock. “All those lost lives are… foolish?”

“What would you call them? What did you call William when he returned from that duel, eh? I don’t remember you applauding him. Quite the opposite.”

Thomas grimaced, hating that his uncle was right. “Fine, let us agree to disagree that the feud has always been stupid, but… I can’t let myself fall in love with her. It would be… a betrayal. What would my father say? What would he think? What?—”

“I knew him better than anyone, Nephew. He was rash, he was obsessed with the feud, he had a vicious temper, he let hate guide him. But do you know when none of that was true? Do you know when he was gentle and kind and warm?” Gregory smiled sadly.

Thomas shook his head.

“With your mother,” Gregory said. “I never saw him sweeter than when he was with her. He loved her so very much, and the closest he ever came to ending the feud was because of her.”

“What?” Thomas sat up straighter, his foggy mind clearing.

Gregory gazed down into his drink, a crease of memory appearing between his eyebrows. “A few years after they married, when she was pregnant with you, she went missing. Your father sent out an army of people to search for her, but it was to no avail.” He paused, raising his gaze. “When days passed and she wasn’t found, a note arrived.”

“What did it say?” Thomas asked, hanging on his uncle’s every word.

“Something along the lines of ‘we have her.’ Your father thought the Kendalls had kidnapped her, so he rode over there immediately. I was with him. He begged them to return your mother, and I know he was ready to end the feud right there and then if they would only give her back. Both of you, I suppose. He intimated as much on the ride over. I’d never seen him so distressed.”

Thomas swallowed uncomfortably, uncertain whether the tale was supposed to help his situation or complicate it further. “I assume they returned her?”

“They didn’t have her,” Gregory replied with a shrug. “Your father thought they were lying, and the meeting nearly ended in bloodshed. But when I forced him to return home, the driver of your mother’s carriage was there with a bandage on his head. He explained that the carriage had overturned in the middle of nowhere, and both he and your mother were knocked out. Farmers came to help, and that was where she was—safe and sound at a farmhouse. One of them had written the note but couldn’t add more details.”

Thomas expelled a shaky breath. “It was all a misunderstanding?”

“It was, but I know your father would have given up his hatred for your mother. If you feel that there is a chance that you might love Sophia, or love might grow between you, then just know that your father would approve. He valued his love for your mother above all else,” Gregory urged. “If that isn’t clear enough, then hear me now—it is time for you to stop worrying about the opinion of someone who isn’t here anymore. Someone who was half the man that you are, in truth. Worry about being happy instead.”

His words rang loud in Thomas’s ears.

It was a lot to take in at once, the story spooling around in Thomas’s head. Gregory was right, yet again. Although his father had always been hard on him, Thomas had never seen him so much as raise his voice to his mother, always whispering in her ear, making her laugh, adoring her without shame. If his father had found a woman worth ending the feud and hatred for, then what was stopping him ? Why wasn’t he following in his father’s footsteps in that regard, too?

He had made up his mind.

“You are right,” he said quietly. “I have been foolish.”

So foolish that his wife had run away from him and might not be persuaded to return. All because of a note and eighty years of hatred that he had inherited blindly, living in the past.

He just hoped it was not too late to change the future.