Chapter Eight
They didn’t bother to collect the carriage or the driver from the inn.
Instead, they walked the half mile to Madelene’s farm, Oliver’s sister tucked against his side, the little girl skipping ahead of them. Diana followed at a discreet distance, her cheeks aching from smiling and her heart full to bursting. When she’d returned to the church, she hadn’t expected to find another woman in Oliver’s arms. She hadn’t expected to be drawn into the embrace amidst laughter and happy tears. She hadn’t expected to look into the beautiful eyes of a beautiful little girl and be introduced to her namesake. Which had brought her to tears all over again.
They beat the storm, closing the door of the small cottage just as the rain came down in sheets. Within minutes, the door crashed open again, and a man and a young boy tumbled in, both laughing and drenched to the skin. And Diana and Oliver were introduced to Madelene’s husband, Jack, and her son, Miles.
Diana hadn’t been sure how their sudden appearance would be met. Years had passed since Diana had embraced a tearful but determined Madelene in the yards of a coaching inn, a single trunk at Madelene’s feet and a small fortune sewn into her skirts.
It had been even longer since Oliver had seen her, and the girl he would remember was nothing like the woman he had found. She and Oliver had barged into her life uninvited and with no warning. But now, watching Madelene and Oliver tease each other, hearing the buoyant flow of conversation and the laughter that echoed throughout the cottage, Diana wondered why she had ever been worried.
The day seemed to pass in a heartbeat. The time wasn’t enough to make up for the years that they had been away from each other, but it was a start. The promise of more days like this one made it easier to face the lengthening shadows and the knowledge that Diana’s time with Madelene’s family was almost at an end tonight.
“How did you find us?” Madelene asked as she and Diana cleaned up after dinner.
Diana stacked a plate on the sideboard and came back to the table. “The castle church you mentioned. As it turns out, more than a few young imaginations have been captured by those ramparts.”
Madelene smiled.
“You didn’t, however, mention in any of your letters that you had married,” Diana said, wiping the crumbs from the table.
Madelene ducked her head. “I meant to. It seemed an awkward thing to blurt out in a letter.”
“Like the birth of your daughter?” Diana teased.
“That too.” Madelene’s cheeks were pink. “Perhaps I knew deep down that you would find me.” She folded and refolded the cloth in her hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was. Seems rather foolish now.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I understand that you were protecting yourself. Your family.” Diana picked up a bowl from the table. “I was worried that you might be angry.”
“Angry?”
“That we inserted ourselves into your peaceful existence. I told myself that I would always respect your privacy and your choices,” Diana said. “But then Oliver came home, and all he wanted was to find you. He would have done it with me or without me.”
“I could never be angry,” Madelene said vehemently. “In fact, it is you who should be angry with me. You were my guardian angel. You deserved my faith. You deserved better.” She shook her head, her gaze settling on her brother on the far side of the cottage. “Oliver too.”
Oliver was crouched on a stool, his hands waving in the air, the children utterly transfixed by whatever tale he was telling them. A vision of what it might be like to belong to this man as his wife crowded into her mind. An impossible, unattainable vision.
Madelene was looking at her expectantly, and Diana fumbled for a response. “You only did what you thought was best.” She congratulated herself on how normal her voice had sounded.
“Not just for me.” Madelene’s gaze went from Diana to Oliver and back. “But for Oliver too.” She set the cloth on the table and then picked it up again, her fingers playing with the edges. “He had just started his position in India. I did not want gossip of a scandal to reach him there.”
“Because he would have come back.”
“Yes. He would have abandoned everything he ever worked for without a second thought.” Madelene looked beseechingly at Diana. “I don’t want him to do something reckless on my behalf. I didn’t want that then, and I don’t want that now. Do you understand? He can’t know everything.”
Diana bit her lip. “I understand. His belief that honor is the measure of a man hasn’t changed.”
“And I’m afraid that it will blind him to reason.” Her forehead creased. “Miles’s father was not a good man. But I was young and gullible, and he possessed the ability to be charming and dashing when he needed to. He made me feel, for a while, like I was the only woman in the world. Until, of course, he got what he wanted from me. I carried around a fair bit of humiliation at my naïveté for a long time. But no longer. Because everything that happened was supposed to happen. I regret nothing, because it all brought me to where I am now.”
“You need to tell Oliver that,” Diana warned. “Before he starts polishing his armor and lance.”
“Tell me what?” Oliver asked, wandering into the kitchen and leaning against the edge of a heavy sideboard.
“Tell you that you’ll keep my children up all night with stories about creatures like that,” Madelene replied smoothly. “And when my daughter starts asking for a tiger instead of a kitten, I’m going to send her to you.”
“I hope you do.” Oliver grinned, and Diana’s knees went a little weak. He looked so devastatingly handsome. So perfectly… happy.
“Thank you for a wonderful meal,” she said to Madelene. “For a wonderful day. I’d like to come again.”
“You’re always welcome,” she replied, giving her a hug. “Eternity lacks enough meals or days that would adequately repay you for everything that you’ve done for me.”
“You’re not leaving, are you, Dee?” Oliver pushed himself away from the sideboard. “You’re staying tonight.” It was more of an order than a question.
“I’m going back to Brighton. You have a lot of time to make up as a family.”
“You’re family,” Oliver said with a frown.
“No. I’m not.” She was a friend. A good friend to both of them. But she wasn’t family, and she didn’t belong here right now.
“You have to stay.”
Diana shook her head. “Jack has already gone to the inn to ask our driver to come and fetch me. I imagine they will be back shortly.” As if on cue, she heard the steady thump of hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels outside. “Stay, Oliver,” she said gently. “Enjoy every minute. And help your sister clean up the dishes.” She tried to make that last part light, because inside, she felt that by leaving here, she was leaving her entire heart behind. But she did not belong to Oliver, and she did not belong to his family.
She squeezed Madelene’s hand and went to say good-bye to the children. From there, she went directly outside, unwilling and unable to look at Oliver anymore.
Jack had finished putting his own gelding away and met her outside the door. The carriage and its driver were waiting at the end of the short, narrow lane that led up to the house. She glanced at the sky, the sun peeking over the edges of the clearing clouds as it started its descent to the horizon. If she left now, she would be back in Brighton before night fell.
“Thank you,” she said to Jack. “For fetching the driver. And for today. And for being… a good man.”
“I am a lucky man,” he said, “who owes you his thanks. Without your kindness, I would never have found Madelene.” He kissed her on the cheek. “You are always welcome here.”
Diana started down the lane. She hadn’t made more than a dozen steps when a hand caught her arm and spun her around.
“Dee.” Oliver was standing in front of her, slightly out of breath, his brow furrowed. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Oliver,” she said, starting toward the carriage again. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t listen to him ask her for impossible things.
He moved and was standing in front of her again. “Stay. Just one night.”
Diana closed her eyes briefly, those words making it difficult to draw a full breath. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t belong here. I don’t belong to you.” There. She had said it out loud.
She heard him catch his breath. His eyes searched hers, and he reached for her hand, tightening his fingers when she made to pull away. He stared down at their joined hands, his hair falling over his forehead, his brows knit.
“But what if I belong to you?” The question was barely audible.
Diana’s heart broke. Piece by piece, it fell, until nothing was left but a horrible, aching void. “Don’t do this, Oliver. This can’t happen, and we both know why.”
“Jesus.” He let go of her hand, walking away three steps. He ran his fingers through his hair in agitation before spinning. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to—I don’t—I just—” He stopped. “I’m so sorry, Dee.”
“So you’ve said.”
His eyes clashed with hers across the distance, his miserable. “I’m trying to be an honorable man. I am trying to do the right thing.”
“And marrying Hannah is the right thing,” Diana said dully. She already knew what his answer would be.
“Yes.”
“And what if the honorable thing isn’t the right thing?” The familiar furious frustration was rising again, and Diana welcomed it, because it was keeping every other emotion at bay. It was keeping her from falling apart.
“That makes no sense.”
She supposed that, to Oliver, it wouldn’t. “What if Hannah doesn’t wish to marry you? What if her heart lies elsewhere?”
“She’s never given me any indication that she doesn’t want to marry me. And she would have done so by now if that was the case. Because I know Miss Burton to be an honorable woman. She’ll marry me because we are both bound by promises. By our word. If you don’t have that, you have nothing.”
Diana gazed back at him, suddenly feeling tired beyond words. It was likely that Oliver was not wrong.
I thought I’d have more time, Hannah had whispered miserably in a pretty morning room. More time with the man she loved before circumstance and honor would ensure that she did exactly as Oliver had said. Keep her promise to her family and to his. Just as Oliver would.
“So you’d sacrifice love for honor. Hers and yours.”
“You’re twisting this.”
“I’m not twisting anything, Oliver.” She took a shaky breath. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
He took a step toward her, but she backed away. “Dee.”
“Tell me that you don’t love me, Oliver. And then I’ll tell you that I don’t love you, and you can go on your way knowing that you’ve sacrificed nothing for your precious honor.”
He held her gaze, his face a portrait of anguish. “I can’t.”
Diana closed her eyes briefly, not sure if she was going to survive this. “But you’ll marry Hannah anyway.”
He flinched. “Yes.”
She stepped farther away from him, and he let her. “Then you can’t ask me to stay. You have to let me go, Oliver,” Diana said, knowing that she wasn’t talking about tonight.
She was talking about forever.
* * *
Oliver stepped out into the night, breathing deeply and thinking how the fates amused themselves at mortals’ expense.
Tonight, with his sister and her beautiful family, he had found joy and peace. He had been given an invaluable gift that he would always hold dear to his heart. Yet, at that same moment, when he believed he truly had everything, he had let the person who owned his heart slip away. He had lost Diana, not just for tonight, but forever. Because he couldn’t make her stay. That knowledge pressed down on him mercilessly, an acute ache settling into his chest.
“Had enough of storytelling?”
Madelene sat on the other side of the small kitchen garden, perched on the edge of the low stone fence that enclosed the pasture. The full moon cast a pale ghostly light over the yard and was reflected in the puddles on the ground. The wind blew cool and fresh, bringing with it the scent of everything washed clean after a hard rain. Somewhere in the darkness, a cow lowed over a chorus of crickets.
“I have a lot of years to make up,” he said, picking his way across the wet yard. “I think they’ll have enough of me long before I have enough of them.” He lowered himself next to Madelene.
His sister smiled. “Be careful what you wish for.”
“What I wish is that you had told me all those years ago.”
Madelene was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. But you were a world away.”
“I would have come back. In a heartbeat.”
“I know that. And I did not want my foolishness to cost you everything.”
“Nothing you did would have cost me anything.”
“Perhaps.”
Oliver swept leaves scattered by the storm from the top of the fence. Droplets of water clung to his fingertips, and he wiped them on his breeches. “You’re not a fool. You made a mistake.”
“You sound like Diana,” Madelene said. “That’s exactly what she said. Right after that awful day that I showed up at her door with nothing but the clothes on my back and the certainty that my world was coming to an end.”
“You should never have been put in that position.”
“I put myself in that position, Oliver,” she scoffed. “I wasn’t forced to do anything. I made choices that had consequences.”
“Who was he?” Oliver asked, trying to keep his voice even.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Oliver made a rude noise. He had tried not to think about that, tried not to let it color the happiness of the day, but it was always there in the back of his mind. Someone had hurt his sister. Someone had used her and then turned his back on her when she’d needed him the most.
Regardless of what she told him or didn’t tell him, someone would answer for that. He would find the man who’d behaved in such an ignoble manner, of that he was certain.
“Promise me that you’ll let this go, Oliver.”
“He deserves to pay for what he did,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It’s done, Oliver. The past is the past. Nothing you do now will change anything. I don’t want to change anything. I’ve found my happiness. I have a husband I adore who loves me for me. Two beautiful children and a warm, safe home. A generous and compassionate friend who had the wisdom to know that I had to find those things for myself.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “And, of course, a bloodthirsty brother whom I love anyway.”
“I will find out, Madelene,” he warned. “You should just tell me.”
“No,” she snapped. “You will honor my wishes and leave this be. For your sake and mine. For my son and my entire family. Promise me.”
Oliver pressed his lips together. Madelene might have made peace with the past, but he certainly hadn’t. He wasn’t going to make promises he had no intention of keeping.
His sister sighed. “Life is too short to dwell on things that cannot be changed. I want you to find the same happiness I have, Oliver. To be loved completely and unconditionally is the greatest gift anyone can ever have.”
“I’m glad you’re happy, Madelene, I am. But—”
“When I met Jack, he believed that I was a widow living with my son,” Madelene interrupted. “That was what I told everyone. When he asked me to marry him, I confessed the truth. And I was afraid he would be angry.”
“Was he?”
“Only that I would ever think that that would matter to him.” Madelene straightened. “Love isn’t pretty or perfect. But when it finds you, you hold on with all your might. You defy everything to keep it.”
Oliver dropped his head, loss hollowing out his insides. He hadn’t done that. He had watched that sort of love disappear down a country road back to Brighton.
“You haven’t told her, have you?” Madelene asked.
“Told who what?”
“Told Diana that you love her.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
Madelene snorted. “Now who’s the fool? The two of you were inseparable when we were young. The best of friends as you got older. And tonight, you looked at her the way that every woman wants to be looked at at least once in her life.”
“I kissed her,” Oliver mumbled.
“It’s about time. But you didn’t tell her how you feel, did you?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Oliver dug his fingers into the stone hard enough to send sparks of pain shooting through his hands. “Have you forgotten that I’ve promised to marry Hannah Burton?”
“You never promised anything. When you were eight, our parents instructed you to marry Hannah Burton.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s really not.”
“No matter how the arrangement came about, it’s binding, and I still have my honor. A man is nothing without it.”
“And marrying a woman you cannot possibly love because you’re in love with another is honorable?”
Oliver cursed under his breath. “I will not do to Miss Burton what was done to you. I will not abandon her.”
“And what does Miss Burton think?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t talked to her since I’ve been back.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“She’s in Brighton. Miss Burton, I mean. But I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Has it crossed your mind that she doesn’t want to see you?”
Oliver dug the toe of his boot into the soft earth.
“If I have learned anything in these last years, Oliver, it’s that life is a little like love. Messy and random and scary, and most of the time you must make it up as you go along. But to live a life without happiness, without love, is no life at all.”
“How poetic. And trite.”
“It might sound poetic and trite, but it’s also the truth, Oliver. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I would do nothing differently. Nothing.” She stopped. “I won’t pretend it wasn’t hard. Those first months were awful. To be shunned by your family is not something I think anyone can prepare themselves for. I struggled with the thought that I disappointed them by not following the directives and ideals that were neatly laid out for me by others. That I failed them, somehow.”
“Madelene, that’s not—”
“Let me finish.”
Oliver fell silent.
“As time went on, I realized that in fact, it was they who disappointed me. My life is my own, to live as imperfectly as I wish.”
“This is all wrong.”
“What is?”
“I’m your big brother. I’m supposed to be giving you advice.”
She laughed softly. “If you truly believe yourself to be an honorable man, then you will be honest with Miss Burton. You will be honest with Diana.” She stood and put a hand on his shoulder. “You will find the courage to be honest with yourself. And choose the right thing.”
What if the honorable thing isn’t the right thing? Diana had asked.
He had never believed one to be independent of the other. He had never believed that he would ever choose between them. But now there was something gathering within him, something that crackled like an impending storm. A feeling of hope that made his heart pound and his skin prickle, and it made him believe that perhaps the fates weren’t as cruel as he had thought.
They had brought him here, after all. And presented him with a choice.
Madelene withdrew her hand and started toward the cottage. She stopped by the edge of the garden. “Are you coming in?”
Oliver remained frozen where he was. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m not.”
Madelene smiled. “I didn’t think so.” She came back and bent to kiss Oliver’s cheek. “Bring our gelding back before Saturday.”