Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“ I hope you were not planning to sleep in here tonight,” Amelia said, forcing herself to keep holding his gaze, no matter how flushed her skin became.

They had been reading quietly for a while, working their way through the pot of tea on the side-table. Amelia did not mind the companionable silence, but she knew she could not waste the opportunity that was before her: Time alone with her husband.

Lionel shrugged. “I had not decided. In truth, I do not think I will sleep at all.”

“Your nightmares again?”

He tilted his head from side to side, an odd shine in his eyes. “Something like that.”

“Will you let me help you?” She set her cup down and shuffled to the edge of the reading chair. “I kept looking for you, you know, with the tea my mother used to brew, but I could not find you.”

He grimaced slightly. “I am aware but, as I mentioned, I will not go ‘underground’ again for a while.”

“You really must tell me who your spies are.” Amelia laughed away her curiosity, uncertain of who was relaying information back to him. She never saw anyone in her nighttime adventures through the manor, but clearly she was never as alone as she thought.

“I could not reveal their identity,” Lionel replied with a half-smile.

She pulled a face. “Very well, but you will allow me to help you sleep.”

Steeling herself, gathering all of her courage, she got up from the reading chair and crossed to where Lionel sat. Refusing to lose her nerve, she perched on the wide armrest and slowly brought her fingertips to her husband’s temples.

He did not stop her, gazing at her with those beautiful green eyes, gleaming behind his endearing spectacles.

“As much as I love these, I need to remove them,” she said, gently pulling the spectacles from his face.

Again, he did not stop her, watching her every move intently as she set the spectacles down and returned her fingertips to his temples. Aware that she could barely breathe, she began to massage in gentle circles, using the technique she remembered from her childhood. His skin was warm and smooth, though there was one tiny scar at the tail of his left eyebrow, and as she sought to relax him, she mapped every detail of his handsome face.

There were some flecks of gold in his fir green eyes, and faint freckles across his cheeks and nose, while a filament thin scar cut in a diagonal across his lips—so faint she had missed it before. His high cheekbones cast a shadow that made them seem even more defined, and there was a slight dimple in his chin that she longed to touch.

Every half a minute or so, she added small circles between his eyebrows and smoothed her thumbs over the arch of his eyebrows, back to his temples.

At first, he continued to gaze at her, but as she worked her magic and the tense muscles of his face began to relax, he closed his eyes and settled back into the reading chair.

“You and Rebecca do not look so much alike,” Amelia said, seeing an opportunity to ask some questions. “Does one of you resemble your mother and the other, your father?”

He nodded slowly, as if in a daze. “Rebecca is the very image of my mother. I am the very image of my father. There are portraits in the gallery of them, if you would like to see for yourself.”

“I would,” Amelia replied softly, taking a breath. “What were they like—your mother and father?”

A sad smile lifted his lips. “My father was the very best of men. I have spent seven-and-twenty years trying to be half the man that he was. He was kind, he was generous, he was endlessly amusing, and he adored us. He loved my mother most of all, and she was… simply wonderful. Beautiful and elegant and witty and playful, and so in love with my father that you would think they were newlyweds.”

Amelia heart sighed at such an image, for if she could have pictured a marriage for herself, that would have been it—a love that never faded or dwindled, as fierce later on as it had been in the beginning. And though she knew she should not hope for it with Lionel, she could not help it.

“My father died two years after my sister was born,” Lionel continued unexpectedly, as if the press of Amelia’s fingertips was kneading the past out of him. “I was twelve—too young to inherit. So, my uncle John acted as steward until I came of age.”

Amelia frowned. “Did something happen to him?”

“You could say that.” Lionel puffed out a breath. “I trusted him, and when the opportunity came for me to attend university, he encouraged me to take it instead of becoming Earl right away. My mother was gone, my grandmother was busy taking care of my sister, so I saw no reason not to.”

Amelia gasped softly. “Your mother was gone?”

He nodded. “She died the year before I came of age. A wasting disease that sapped her slowly of all of her vitality and playfulness. Perhaps, that was why I was so eager to leave for university instead of staying here—I did not want to be around the absence of them both. And my uncle was taking care of things—or so I thought.”

“That was not true?” Amelia asked, her heart aching for him.

She had only lost her mother, and that had been awful enough. She could not imagine losing two parents who were as lovely as his parents sounded. Indeed, it was no wonder that he did everything he could for the family that he had left.

He shook his head slightly. “After I was finished at university, I still was not entirely ready to return to Westyork. Part of me thought it might be for the best if I stayed away, so I went to war. My grandmother was horrified, of course, but my uncle agreed that it might be of benefit to me.” He laughed tightly. “What I did not realize was that my uncle only encouraged me because he likely thought I would die there, and he would be Earl at last.”

“Surely not!” Amelia rasped, trying very hard not to cry at Lionel’s bitterly sad story.

She had read about betrayals and coups and deceits in so many of her favorite novels, but they were fiction. She could not believe that anyone could be so wretched in real life. Even her father and brother would not stoop so low, and they were not very nice at all.

“In truth, I did not think I would return from war either,” he said quietly.

“But you did, Lionel,” Amelia urged, taking a moment to brush her thumb across his cheek, holding his face.

His eyes stayed closed, as though he could not look at her. “Indeed. I managed to return home from war, albeit injured, and what I came back to was not at all what I expected,” he continued. “I discovered that my uncle had been stealing money from our coffers for years, leaving us almost destitute. He had sold precious heirlooms and made reckless speculations to try and win back all he had lost.”

“Goodness…”

“I sent him far from here, and spent the past two years restoring the fortune that he frittered away,” Lionel concluded with a sigh, relaxing deeper into the reading chair as if he had just unburdened his mind.

“I am so very sorry, Lionel,” Amelia murmured, wishing he would look at her.

He smiled. “Why should you be sorry? It was nothing to do with you.”

“I am still sorry.” She touched the faint scar at the tail of his eyebrow. “May I ask how you were injured?”

“I took a wound to the leg and the eye,” he replied cautiously, probably not wanting to give too many gory details. “My sight will always be impaired and my leg aches in the cold, but I am otherwise recovered. Just as my family’s fortune is.”

Amelia considered asking if there was anything she could do to help the injury on his leg, but the thought made her flush with instant embarrassment, holding her tongue silent. Instead, she continued to make those small circles at his temples, watching his face relax.

“Where did you exile your uncle to?” she asked, uncertain of whether or not Lionel had fallen asleep.

“The Americas,” Lionel mumbled. “Good riddance to him.”

She smiled at that, and in a moment that might have been deemed foolish or mad, she traced her fingertips down the sides of his face and neck, before sliding her arms around him. Leaning in, she embraced him, whispering close to his ear, “I promise that I will help you to sleep. I will chase away all of those nightmares, if it is the last thing I do.”

At first, he did not embrace her in return, sending a prickle of regret through her, but just as she was about to pull away and apologize for being so bold, he wrapped his arms around her. He hugged her close to him, cheek to cheek, and though he said nothing, there was affection in his gentle squeezes.

She could not see his face as they held one another, but she could have sworn she sensed him smiling… and as she clung tighter to him, she knew she was well past the point of no return: she was falling helplessly in love with this man.

And yet, she did not know if she could ever get him to love her in return. After so much loss, who would risk gaining something else to lose?

What a pity, for I have always found the stories of unrequited love so desperately sad.