Chapter 28

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

L ionel’s eye twitched as the screech of a violin filtered into his grandmother’s parlor.

“Do you think she is doing that on purpose?” he asked Caroline, every note sending a shiver down his spine.

Caroline chuckled as she bit into a strawberry cake. “Undoubtedly, my dear boy. According to her friends, she plays the violin rather well.”

“I did not even say anything to offend her,” Lionel protested, groaning as a particularly high, jarring note cut through him like a knife. “I merely repeated what Amelia said to me recently, that she will find it difficult to find a suitable husband.”

Caroline pressed her lips together, clearly fighting a snort. “I doubt very much that that was what Amelia said to you.”

“Perhaps I did not repeat it verbatim,” Lionel conceded, “but it was something like that—that she would not be able to settle for less than she has received from this household, because she has been well taken care of. Amelia said it was an advantage, not something offensive.”

Caroline sighed, the sound flowing into a soft laugh. “If you had said that , we would not be listening to the Great Cacophony.” A fond smile pulled at her lips. “It is easy to forget that you are siblings instead of father and daughter, sometimes.”

“As it is easy to forget that you are grandmother and granddaughter, instead of mother and daughter,” Lionel replied, thinking of everything he had told Amelia last night.

He did not know what had compelled him to speak so honestly, for it was not something he spoke about often, but he had certainly felt lighter afterwards.

“I realize that I might have spoken out of turn earlier,” Caroline said, a short while later, during a lull in the shrill music that bombarded the Dower House. “I had forgotten something else, it seems. I am sorry. I got carried away with the thought of grandchildren.”

Lionel gazed out toward the pleasant gardens of the Dower House, frowning at the low winter sun that seemed to burn through the windowpanes.

“You are not the only one,” he murmured. Whether he had meant to say it out loud or not; he did not know.

Caroline’s eyes brightened. “You have changed your mind with regards to children?”

“Not in the grander sense of it,” he replied after a pause, his brow creasing in consternation. “It is not that I want children, or that I would risk it, but that… I find myself imagining having children with Amelia. And it is as pleasant a thought as it is a worrisome one. She had… done something to me, Grandmother.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Caroline smiled, her eyes shining with a bittersweet sort of sadness. “I could not have chosen a better wife for you, and though I know you are no great friend of fate, I cannot help but think that it has smiled on you. Think about it—what are the chances of finding a woman like her so swiftly?”

He grimaced, rubbing the heel of his palm against his chest, where an ache had formed. “Or it is a cruel joke,” he said. “To offer me such a wondrous reason to live, to make me dream of beginning a family with her, only to…” He shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the certainty that stuck like a thorn in his mind.

“I do not believe that,” Caroline said solemnly. “I believe she is a gift and a reassurance, and I think you should consider having children with her. It is natural to want that, and I see no reason why you should resist it.”

Lionel turned back to look at his grandmother. “You see no reason? Are you quite serious?”

“Lionel, I know of your beliefs and, here and there, I have found it difficult not to share them, but you cannot live your life as if it has already ended,” she urged, hurrying to wipe away a tear. “ That would be a terrible waste and… I cannot bear the thought of you missing out on so much because you fear what is coming. We all fear what might come, but we live anyway. Indeed, no one is guaranteed tomorrow.”

Glancing at the gardens once more, Lionel closed his eyes against the glare of the winter sun, a red haze permeating his eyelids. He imagined summer sunshine in its place, and the warmth of Amelia’s smile as she welcomed him home. He imagined countless seasons with her, watching the leaves fall and the buds bloom, never taking a single one for granted.

All of it impossible.

“Not everyone is like you, Grandmother,” he said softly, opening his eyes again. “Not everyone can endure loss and remain optimistic. Not everyone can lose love and continue to find reasons for existing. My mother was never the same after my father passed—you saw it for yourself. I cannot be selfish. No… I have made my choice.”

Caroline sighed wearily. “And what choice is that? To be utterly miserable? To live each day as if you are walking to the gallows? To squander the time you have?”

“No, Grandmother—to not give Amelia any reason to miss me when I am gone,” he replied, his voice catching in his throat.

“You are going underground again?”

He shook his head. “I intend to go further than that.”

“I realize that you will not listen to a word that this old coot has to say,” Caroline grumbled more firmly, “but need I remind you that your uncle is, by all accounts, alive and well. Do you think he , of all people, would be an exception?”

Lionel blinked. “You have heard from him?”

“I have heard about him,” Caroline replied. “He is two-and-forty now, Lionel. I would urge you to remember that.”

But she was right; Lionel could not listen to anything that might give him hope or sway him from his decision. “Unless I hear from my uncle directly, or see him in person, I will not believe the hearsay of others. We have no way of knowing if my uncle is alive.”

“But he was forty when you returned from war,” she insisted, her tone laced with exasperation.

“And perhaps he died on the voyage to the Americas, unable to escape his fate,” Lionel pointed out, for there had been no word from John in the two years since he had been sent away. And Lionel was not about to risk everything on Caroline’s dubious sources.

“Lionel, I—” Caroline’s words were severed by the parlor door blasting open.

Amelia’s lady’s maid rushed forward, skidding to a halt on the oak floor. Her eyes were wild, her skin gleaming with perspiration, her face flushed with exertion, as if she had run a great distance very quickly.

“It is… Her Ladyship,” the maid wheezed. “You must… come at once. She has… fallen from her horse.”

Lionel was on his feet in an instant. “What do you mean she has fallen from her horse? She does not have a horse.”

“She wanted… to learn how to ride,” Bea replied, fighting for every breath. “Mr. Wallace doesn’t know what happened. She was riding… Barley and… the mare spooked and bolted. Her Ladyship tried to cling on but… oh, she’s not waking up, My Lord. Please, come at once!”

A crushing weight struck Lionel in the chest as visions of his wife lying out in a field, pale and cold, flooded his head. He had seen bodies on the battlefield, he had held the hands of dead and dying men, and he could endure all of that, but if Amelia was lost to him—it would do what the war could not; it would kill him.

He took off, ignoring the pain in his injured leg as he ran for his own horse, praying all the while that she would be all right. I will accept my fate, I will not ask for more time or curse my destiny, as long as she is alive and well.

It was probably a foolish deal to make, but he made it anyway.

The ride back to the main manor of Westyork was relatively short, but it had never felt so long as Lionel urged his horse faster and faster along the woodland path. The sky had darkened overhead with dense clouds, threatening snow or heavy rain, like a terrible omen of what he was about to discover.

“I cannot lose you,” he growled, the wind whipping at his face. “I will not let you be the one who leaves first.”

He charged onward, finally breaking through the trees and onto the open plain of the grassy lawns. His horse did not let him down, stretching long legs into a swift stride, galloping toward the sandstone manor with every ounce of strength it possessed.

At the main entrance, Lionel had barely pulled his horse to a halt before he was leaping down and sprinting up the porch steps. Every step of the way, his leg ached and splintered with pain, but he would crawl to Amelia if he had to.

“Where is she?” he roared, exploding into the entrance hall.

Mrs. Scanlon was waiting for him. “She is in the drawing room, My Lord. The physician has been sent for, but Mrs. Bishop is tending to her in the meanwhile.”

The cook did not merely conjure delicious delicacies, but had a keen knowledge of medicinal herbs and how to brew concoctions and tonics to help with healing.

“Is she awake?” Lionel asked, catching his breath.

Mrs. Scanlon shook her head.

Without another word, Lionel strode toward the drawing room and through the door. He stopped abruptly at the sight before him, the breath abandoning his lungs as if a great hand had come down from the heavens and clenched his chest in its almighty grip.

Amelia lay on the settee, draped in blankets, looking so pale that Lionel feared he was too late—that she had already been taken from him.

There was a nasty bruise on the side of her head, and cuts and scrapes down her left arm, her dress torn in places.

I should have brought her to the Dower House with me. Guilt twisted into a tight knot in his stomach. By deciding to avoid her, he had caused this. And the worst irony was, he had wanted to avoid her because of last night, because of how… right and good it had felt to fall asleep with her, holding her in his arms; and now, all he wanted to do was hold her to him and kiss her with everything he possessed.

“Who permitted this?” His words were pellets of ice, cutting through the air in the drawing room.

Mrs. Bishop looked up from where she knelt at Amelia’s side, obviously shocked by his tone of voice. “She asked to learn how to ride, My Lord. No one could deny her; she is the Lady of this household.” Her throat bobbed. “Mr. Wallace is beside himself. Barley has never bolted before. It was… a terrible accident, My Lord, but there is no one to blame.”

“I will be the judge of that,” Lionel rasped, fully aware that he was displacing his own guilt with anger.

He walked forward and Mrs. Bishop moved aside so he could take her place next to Amelia.

Ignoring the agony in his leg, he sank down to his knees and took hold of his wife’s cold, limp hand. He held it tightly, as though he could urge some of his warmth and vitality into her, simply by willing it enough. Searching her unmoving, pale face, he brought that delicate hand to his lips and kissed it over and over.

“Wake up, love,” he whispered, kissing her cold skin again. “You have to wake up. If you do, I promise I shall not scold you for wanting to learn to ride without me.”

She remained perfectly still, her plump lips slightly parted, prompting him to lean forward so that he might hear the breath escaping her mouth. The tickle of it caressed his cheek, offering him a modicum of relief.

It does not mean she is safe. He had seen enough head injuries during his years as a soldier to know that they were the most treacherous kind of wound. One moment, a man might seem perfectly well, wandering around, joking and jesting as always, only to be gone a few hours later.

“Amelia,” he urged. “Please, wake up.”

But as that ferocious winter sun burned in through the windows, bathing her in a molten light, she did not move or respond to his pleas.