Chapter Twenty-Eight
Theo knew she was gone. As soon as he woke from one of his restless, tortured nights, the castle felt different—colder, darker. Empty as a shell. As empty as his heart. It didn’t take him long to find the letter she’d left for him, sitting at his place at the drawing room table, where not long before she’d challenged him to a game of knucklebones.
He stared at the folded foolscap, at the empty table, felt the silence all around him, and he wanted to weep.
Theo,
I have taken it upon myself to arrange for my own accommodations. We both know I’m the one you want gone. I have a small amount of money saved, so don’t trouble yourself on that account. I hope you shall continue to let Frances live at Llynmore Castle, as she’s been here longer than any of us, and this is her home more than anyone else’s.
That was all. She hadn’t signed it.
He felt a strange, soul-deep panic, like he’d lost something vital. Something he could never get back.
But she would be safer this way. Happier. She had to be. If he thought he’d pushed her away for nothing, he’d fall apart completely.
Theo saddled Robin and rode for a long time at too fast a pace. He rode to forget the way Annabel’s face had crumpled, but the way her spine had stayed stiff, her shoulders back, just like when she’d revealed her secrets to him, so strong and so vulnerable at the same time; he rode to forget what he’d said; he rode to forget everything.
But he knew, as he’d always known, that forgetting didn’t come easily.
If it did, he would be with her right now.
He pulled back on the reins suddenly, realizing he’d gone off the dirt trail Annabel had forged with her own frequent rides. He stopped, his chest heaving, as he stared at the ground ahead of him.
He could have steered them straight into a bog with his recklessness.
Shaken, he leaned down, pressing his head against Robin’s mane. It was a small comfort for his roiling emotions. The scar at his shoulder hurt. It pained him as it hadn’t pained him for weeks. It pained him, searing and ripping and hot, as though it were a fresh wound.
It felt like Annabel had torn down some kind of barrier with her words.
Wasn’t it enough that he relived these moments in dreams? Why did she want him bleeding in front of her? Why did she want him naked?
She wanted his memories, but she would only be disgusted by them. She’d regret ever asking.
Why had he told her she shouldn’t love him? Why had he said something he knew would hurt her?
But he knew why. It was a coward’s move. Cut her open before she cut him open. Before she saw what was inside him and turned away.
He’d caused her pain. He hated that he’d caused her pain.
But then, he’d caused people pain before. Too many and too much to count. He’d cut down men—and he’d failed to save men—with families and wives and parents and brothers and sisters and children. He didn’t know why he was the one left, out of all of them. He didn’t think he was worthy of their sacrifice, and he couldn’t bear the force of their weight.
The ghosts of the dead wouldn’t leave him no matter how hard he tried to turn them away.
And if anyone else was haunted, they didn’t talk about it. Either they didn’t care, and something was wrong with him that he cared too much, or they cared as much as he did but they were afraid to acknowledge it.
Either way, he was alone.
Just like Annabel was alone. She’d opened herself to him and he’d let her cut open her own heart and watched silently as she left. Not telling her how much he wanted her. How his love was this roiling, monstrous, inexorable thing. How much she mattered. He was as bad as all the others. All the people who had never deserved her.
He took a deep breath.
God, she must hate him.
His hands weren’t steady on the reins.
“Theo?”
He straightened, wiped the sweat off his face.
Robert had followed him on horseback. His brother was about ten feet away, watching him silently, his brow furrowed in a knot of worry.
“She’s gone,” was all Theo said.
“I know. So do George and Eleanor. We found the letter.” After a moment, when Theo didn’t speak, Robert said, “They’re not very happy with you. They think you did something.”
Theo almost laughed. No, he’d done nothing. And that was the one thing that would hurt Annabel the most.
“It’s better this way,” he said. “She’s better off without me.”
Robert snorted. “Do you even sound convincing to yourself, Theo?”
Theo glared at his brother.
Robert cocked his head. “I was always a little jealous of you,” he said.
This took Theo by surprise. He’d always been a little jealous of Robert—everything had come so easily to him, making friends, making people like him. He’d lacked whatever indescribable quality Robert contained that drew people to him.
“You were our anchor. You still are. Even when you joined the army, George and Eleanor didn’t blame you for it. They never resented you like I did. But even if I resented you, I always knew there was a piece missing, a piece that wouldn’t be put back until you returned. Even when you were gone, you were still the dependable one, the steady one. You never missed a letter, until your leg was injured. And even then, you wrote as soon as you were able.”
Theo didn’t speak.
“You are a good man,” Robert said with a sigh. “I don’t know why I’m the one who needs to tell you this, but you were a good man when you left and you are still a good man. And I’ll say it as often as it takes for you to believe it.”
His brother’s words gave him pause. Theo realized he hadn’t thought of himself as a good man in a long time.
“Do you remember how happy our parents were?” Robert continued. “How Mama never regretted marrying beneath her? Do you remember they used to laugh when they were together? You have the chance to have the same kind of marriage they did. Why would you waste that chance?”
Theo’s grip was tight on the reins. He didn’t want to waste it.
“Doesn’t Annabel deserve it? Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly, “if I can be with her without carving myself open.”
“Then carve yourself open,” Robert said simply.
He imagined a future where he met Annabel and she looked at him and looked right through him. He imagined those green eyes turning dark and distant. He imagined all of her love turning as bitter as ash.
He didn’t know if he could live through reliving his memories, one by one, but Annabel was right—pushing them away wasn’t working, either. And he couldn’t stay locked in this cage forever. Not when Annabel was on the other side. Because he knew, beyond any doubt, that he couldn’t live with her hate. He couldn’t live with himself, knowing he’d done the exact same thing all of her worthless relatives had done.
But he didn’t want to simply shove everything inside him onto Annabel—she was strong enough for it, but these were his demons, his responsibilities. He wanted to come to her…maybe not healed, because he didn’t know how long it would take him to heal, but at least with hope.
He just wanted to know he could heal, eventually—he wanted to know if he gave himself to her, it wouldn’t be a meaningless gesture, a fancily wrapped parcel with nothing in it. She deserved a life, a future, with someone who would never be frightened of loving her.
But he didn’t think he could do it alone.
Pride, he thought, was a weakness just as often as it was a strength.
“Will you help?” he asked Robert, his voice strained.
Robert nodded, “I’ll try.”
He pulled on the reins and together they turned back toward Llynmore Castle.