Chapter 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

S eated in the reading chairs where they had shared—and Lionel had spilled—a pot of tea what felt like a lifetime ago, Amelia finally did what he would not and pulled her hand very slowly out of his. He did not resist, allowing her to withdraw it, his expression suddenly very solemn.

“Are you ready to explain now?” she asked, rather frustrated with the fact that so many hours had passed, and she still did not know why he had asked her to come back with him. “Might you tell me why I am here instead of on a ship? I assume something has changed, or you would have given me the papers and let me go.”

I hope something has changed, she willed silently. If not, he would undoubtedly witness the full breadth of her temper—something she had never revealed to anyone, in all her life, though she had often wished she could.

He gazed at her, his green eyes glittering with something like sadness. “I did not know until I saw you again that I did not want to give you those papers. It is easier to detach oneself from the reality of something when the person it pertains to is not nearby.”

“ What has changed, Lionel?” she repeated coldly, as a prickle of anxiety began to creep across her chest. Surely, she had not given up her chance of true freedom with her aunt for nothing?

Lionel sighed. “I am getting to that.” He paused, drawing in a slow breath. “For you to understand, I must take you back many years—many generations. You see, Amelia, there is a… curse upon the men of the Barnet line.”

She squinted at him, her tone a little withering as she replied, “A curse? Are you quite serious?”

“It is not an actual curse,” he said with a faint smile, “but that is the easiest way to describe it. It is, in truth, an inherited sickness that has plagued generation after generation of Barnet men. Many physicians have been consulted and none of them have been able to explain why it occurs, but it is… fatal.”

She gasped involuntarily, her hand flying to her chest. “What?”

“It killed my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and so on and so forth, so far back that I cannot count the ‘greats’ the must go before the title. And it killed them all before they were forty years of age,” he explained ruefully. “There is a volume in the library that details each loss, and since the sickness began, there have been very few exceptions.”

Amelia’s throat tightened as the enormity of what he was saying began to sink in. Her breaths quickened, while she rubbed her chest with the heel of her palm, struggling to loosen the clenched sensation that squeezed there.

“That is the reason I sought a marriage of convenience, with a woman who did not desire love,” he continued, his voice strained. “That is why I did not wish to have children. I could not bear the thought of falling in love and being loved in return, only to make the woman that I love grieve the loss of me at such a relatively young age, leaving her all alone in the world. Moreover, I could not stand the idea of that same woman having to fret over the longevity of our sons, if we were to have any.

“Do you remember that I told you that my mother and father were so in love that they were like newlyweds, right until the very end?”

Amelia nodded. “I do.”

“I shall never quite believe that the loss of my father did not cause a heartbreak in my mother that eventually killed her. She hung on for as long as she could without him, but she was never the same. It was like the light had sputtered out in her eyes, and though she loved Rebecca and me, there was always something missing afterward.” He gestured to the door. “And though my grandmother is as merry a woman as you could meet, there are times when she remembers, and the light dims in her too.”

Sitting forward in her chair, Amelia concentrated on her breathing, fighting to overwhelm the awful dread that slithered up her spine. In the carriage, she had wondered what on earth Lionel could say that would convince her enough to forgive him, and to stay permanently. Now, she had her answer.

It all makes sense…

Of course, he would want to distance himself, resisting any feelings that might have formed. It was human to want to spare others from pain. Yet, at the same time, she felt a bristle of anger that he had not told her sooner.

“Why did you not say anything?” she whispered, meeting his gaze. “Why did you not say anything before or after we were married? I would have understood. I would have been shocked, yes, but… I would have understood.”

“Because, to my shame, I thought I knew what was best for you. I thought it was up to me to decide that for you,” he replied, licking his dry lips. “And because, at first, I did not think it mattered or that it was important, because I did not mean to fall in love with you.”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

“I have fallen in love with you, Amelia. I suspect I began falling in love with you from the moment I removed your top hat,” he replied in earnest, a note of humor in his voice. “When I heard that you were leaving on the evening tide, I knew that I could not let you go for even a minute. I knew that I had been an idiot. Then, seeing John and his family—it confirmed that thought. Life, however short, is for living, and I want to live mine with you at my side.”

Her heart soared and fell in waves, her mind a tangle of contradictions, her soul yearning for him yet already pained at the thought of losing him. In many ways, she wished he had not told her, though she doubted that not-knowing would soften the blow any.

“But, of course, that is not my decision to make,” Lionel continued with a sad smile. “I promise to love and cherish you for as long as I am alive, but if what I have told you is something you cannot bear, then I will let you go without protest, leaving you free to find your happiness with someone who does not have a curse like mine. It is the choice I should have given you from the start but, as I said, I did not know that I was going to fall completely in love with you. I did not know that you were the one who already had my heart.”

Amelia looked at him. Really looked at him. She pushed aside everything he had told her, aside from one thing—that he loved her, and had been trying to protect her by pushing her away so unkindly. She gazed deeply into his eyes, letting the pendulum of her heart decide which way she should go.

But that pendulum had been fixed upon loving him since the beginning, and it refused to budge, even now.

“Would you still think me delusional if I said that I could never love another man the way that I love you, or that I would rather have one year of bliss with you than one-hundred years with any other man?” she asked, a playful smirk lifting one corner of her lips.

He groaned. “You are going to make me regret saying those things, I can tell.”

“Not for too long,” she told him, rising from her chair. “After all, we do not know how long we have, and I should hate to spend it all on teasing you.”

He smiled at her as she moved toward him. “You really would not be happier with another man?”

“Not in the slightest,” she told him, sitting down sideways on his lap as his arms slipped around her waist. “I would be thoroughly miserable. Indeed, I was thoroughly miserable for the past few days, but at least you had a very good excuse for making me feel that way.”

A line appeared between his eyebrows, regret in his eyes. “I am so very sorry for lying to you, my love. When you confessed to me, I wanted more than anything to tell you that I loved you in return. Loved you fiercely, beyond everything.”

“I forgive you,” she murmured, holding his face in her hands. “I forgive you and I love you, with all of my heart.”

“I love you more,” he replied. “I love you. But… I must ask again—are you sure you can bear this?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “For all the time that fate allows us, I can, and if we are blessed with sons, I will savor every moment I have with them, not wasting a moment on worry. It does not help, but it hinders.” She gently stroked his cheeks with her thumbs. “And I will consider myself fortunate indeed to have loved and been so loved, no matter what may come.”

“I worship the night you knocked on my door,” he whispered, raising his head up to meet her lips in a soft, searing kiss. “That is the only fate I care about—that the love of my life was sent to me when I needed her most.”

She smiled against his lips. “And that the love of my life was sent to me when I needed him most.”

She kissed him deeply, running her hands through his silky hair, curling into him as he held her close. He draped one arm over her legs, his hand curving around her to rest against the small of her back, while his other hand cradled her cheek, caressing her skin as he kissed her in return.

She did not know if he had done it deliberately, but it was rather perfect that he had told his story and confessed his love in the library, surrounded by all of the books she adored. All of the romantic tales and soaring epics, the adventures and perils, and, of course, the happy endings that never failed to make her heart leap.

Ours will be the happiest, she told herself, believing it with every fiber of her being. If John could be an exception, it stood to reason that Lionel could be, too.

As Lionel kissed her slowly and fiercely, time itself seemed to slow around them. She sank deeper into his embrace, losing herself in his kiss and his hold upon her, certain that if she just kept kissing him, as often as possible, then they could make the clock stop altogether. For theirs, she was sure, was a love that time itself would stand still for.

“I love you,” she murmured, warm and safe and happy in his arms.

“As I love you,” he whispered, kissing her again.