Chapter Eleven
Colin stared out the window of his study, watching as the lithe form of his wife moved across the estate grounds, toward the pathways that twisted to the sea. He couldn’t help but smile, even though his chest felt tight when she walked away. She was going to walk on the beach. How he’d loved to do the same as a boy. It was the place where he often thought on his more pressing problems, allowing the sharp air to clear his mind.
He swept up the spyglass on his desk and glanced through it. Now he had a clearer view of Jane. She wore a pretty green gown, and a lighter green shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. He caught his breath and leaned closer to the window.
She was holding his letters in her hands. Well, letters of some kind—he had to assume they were the ones he’d written. She was reading as she walked.
He set the spyglass aside and went to his desk. Papers were strewn across it. Not the normal day to day accountings of his fortune or his political aspirations. No, they were notes for his letters to her. He still had so many to write.
He picked up the next in the series that Jane had written and smiled. It was the sixth missive she’d sent. This one was about the lighthouse along the shore. How she sat in the window seat in the middle of the night and watched the flickering light that kept the sailors safe from the rocks.
He’d done the same so many times. He hoped they’d have a chance to do these things together. To celebrate this beautiful estate, to explore London together, to just spend time making up for all the days he’d wasted on irrational anger.
He sat at his desk, writing for the next hour, then got up. He’d leave this letter here, add it to his pile of responses up in his chamber in a while. For now, he wanted to take his own walk. He would avoid the seaside path, let Jane have her privacy, no matter how much he wished to intrude, press, push.
He smiled and acknowledged the servants as he passed through the halls, then walked out the front door and around the path that led to the woods. Away from the sea. He drew in long breaths of fresh air, trying to clear his mind, though it was an impossible endeavor. He’d been out close to half an hour when he made a turn and came to a halt.
There, sitting on the tree stump, was Jane. She looked up at the same moment he noticed her and jumped to her feet.
“My lord,” she said, her hands shaking as she shoved his letters behind her back, like she didn’t trust that he wouldn’t comment on them, force her to do the same despite his promises. He had earned that, of course. Now he had to show her she was wrong through his actions.
“I’m sorry, Jane. I did not mean to intrude upon your privacy. I meant to allow you that as long as you needed it.”
She worried her lip for a moment, and he couldn’t help but look at her mouth. Remember how it tasted. How it felt on his.
“You knew I was out walking?” she asked.
“I did. Your maid told me this morning and I saw you from my study window not long ago. I thought you had headed to the beach, though, so I believed I would not disturb you if I took my exercise in the woods.”
She nodded. “I intended a walk along the beach, yes. But when I started down the dune path, the wind was too high.”
“Ah,” he said. “Say no more. The breezes can be fierce on the water this time of year, even when it feels still above. I shall leave you to your place here.”
He turned to go, though he ached at the idea of leaving her, but her soft voice kept him from walking away. “I am not ready to discuss our…situation,” she said.
He forced himself to turn slowly. “I would not dream of asking you to advance whatever timetable you need, Jane. That is why I will not trouble you.”
“We could walk back up together,” she suggested. “If the topic of your letters, of our separation, will not be one that requires pressing.”
He stared at her, with her wide blue eyes and her soft lips. The woman he loved. Truly, deeply. She was offering him a connection, despite her misgivings. He would be a fool not to take it. To take anything she was willing to give and hold on to it with both hands.
“I would be very happy to walk with you,” he said softly, and stepped forward to offer her a hand.
She blushed as she placed his letters into her pocket and then took the hand he held out. He tucked it into the crook of his elbow, and together they turned back toward the house. For the first few moments, he let the silence hang between them. It was not entirely uncomfortable, to walk with her and not chatter on, though she glanced at him from the corner of her eye more than once.
At last she said, “You have a fine property, Colin.”
He nodded as they crested the hill and the castle rose up before them, gray and craggy and mysterious. “I loved it here as a boy. I imagined a thousand ghosts running through the halls, found a dozen hidden places to explore.”
She smiled. “It is hard to picture you as a child, my lord. You are such a…a man.”
He laughed. “When you say it like that, it does not sound like a compliment.”
Her smile broadened. “I only mean you are so very serious.”
“I am that,” he said with a sigh. “I took on a great deal of responsibility at a young age. I had to behave in a way that was seen as ‘right’ or feel the consequences. I put away the ghost stories and hidden passages a long time ago.” He glanced at her. “I admit, I…miss that. Miss being carefree.”
She turned toward him as they entered the garden maze with the house looming up above them. “You could always be carefree when you chose to be. No one has to be serious at all times.”
He could not help himself. Slowly, he reached out a hand and traced her cheek with his fingertips. She tensed, but didn’t pull away and he saw her pupils dilate with pleasure, with desire, with even more. It gave him hope.
“Perhaps one day you can help me better remember that.”
She swallowed hard. “Perhaps,” she said.
That one word, said so softly, almost so that it didn’t carry on the breeze, had so much power. Enough to nearly knock him off his feet because it held in it all the promise that there could be a future. That there could be forgiveness.
That there could be a marriage to this remarkable woman.
“I will take that,” he said, stepping back. “Thank you for the walk, Jane. If you…if you need me, I will be here. Waiting.”
She nodded slowly and then turned toward the house, leaving him to watch her as she stepped up the stairs and onto the veranda. Just before she disappeared from view, she stopped and looked back at him. Her blue gaze held his, and then she slipped away.
Leaving him to hope, to pray, that the future was closer than ever.
Jane nodded at Laura as the maid gathered up the gown she had been wearing that day and folded it over her arm. “Will that be all, my lady?”
Jane nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Laura bobbed out a curtsey, then stepped from the room, leaving Jane alone. Alone as she had been most of the day. Her walk with Colin aside, she had not seen him otherwise. She had eaten alone, read in the parlor alone, walked the halls alone. Like her husband wasn’t haunting these halls like the ghosts he had described imagining as a child.
She smiled at the thought of a young Colin, playing here. Wished she had known him then, before whatever harshness and responsibility that had been laid upon his shoulders had changed him.
Laura had drawn her covers back, and Jane threw herself onto the bed without pulling them up. She flopped an arm over her face, trying to calm her wild mind before she allowed sleep to come.
“Ha,” she muttered. “As if sleep will come easily before this situation with Colin is fully resolved.”
She had no idea how long she lay there, her spinning mind reminding her of every word he’d written, of every kindness he had insured for her while they were under this roof together. Thinking of London and the way he had touched her there, physically and emotionally.
She knew she loved him. That had been true for a long time, and the depth of her feelings meant she couldn’t just forget it. Or him. But was she a fool for love if she let him in after what had passed between them?
“Is love enough?” she whispered, the words hanging in the air like a crack of a whip.
There was a sound at the door that connected their chambers, and she sat up. A letter now rested on the floor close to her door, which meant Colin had slipped it under. Was he still standing there?
She stood and walked over, crouching down to take the letter and peeking at the space beneath the door. The light from the other room looked unimpeded. It seemed he had walked away after delivering the missive. Aside from their chance meeting in the woods today, he was serious about not forcing his presence on her physically.
Just his words.
She broke the seal and drew a deep breath before she read over her letter to him from so long ago. Her hand had shaken less as she wrote this one. And yes, it contained continued pleas for him to respond, but this was where she had shifted her approach. It had been so very lonely in Applegate. She was liked by the tenants and the staff, she knew that. But they all saw her as lady of the manor. None could be counted as friends.
In her quiet, in her loneliness, she had decided she would write to Colin and tell him about her life. Partly she had hoped it would soften him to her. Partly it was to share something with someone other than her sister, who wrote back regularly, but mostly to protest her being sent away.
So she had written this letter and told him about the state of his estate, the kindness of those who served him, and one funny story about their minister, who had not noticed that he was wearing two different shoes when he got up to the pulpit the Sunday before she wrote.
Dearest Jane,
You don’t know how this glimpse into the life you led while we were apart made me smile. I would not have been able to keep myself from doing the same had I read it when it was meant to be delivered to me months ago. After all, Reverend Lancaster has been serving the Applegate community since I was in short pants, and I recall his forgetfulness. I hope to one day tell you stories of pranks we played on the poor man and what a good sport he was.
I would have written to you by this point, Jane. I would have begun to open my heart and questioned whether or not the lies I believed were true. I must hope I wouldn’t have been so cruel in the face of your sweetness, your light. God, I hope I would not have been.
That you love Applegate means the world to me, you know. I adored coming here as a child. I have a hundred stories to tell you and a dozen hidden gems to show you if I ever earn the privilege. I cannot wait to read more about your time here, despite all my regrets.
All my love,
Colin
Jane felt a tear slide down her cheek and wiped it away with the back of her hand. It was funny that this was the letter he had written to her, considering their encounter earlier that day. Those moments in his company had shown her how they could explore this place they both loved together. To merge their experiences, share them while they laughed. Perhaps create some new ones together. That future felt so real, so powerful that she could almost grasp it in her hands.
She crossed to her bed and climbed up, setting the third letter beside the first two. She stared at them, lined up in order, then picked up the first and read it, followed by the second, followed by the third. With every word, with every swirl of his hand, with every moment that passed, her resolve against him weakened.
“Could you not grasp your future in your hands?” she asked out loud, letting the words hang around her. “Could you not find a way to face this, not alone in this room, but with him at your side?”
She closed her eyes and rested back against the headboard of her bed. Colin had always been such a formal presence. He was proper except for those moments when he was overcome by desire. And yet in his letters, he allowed himself to be open. To reveal parts of a painful past to her. To reveal himself as he offered his apologies to her, his explanations, his heart.
Allowing her eyes to open, she looked at the door that separated her from Colin’s chamber. All of her wanted to open it. To open to him. And yet a tiny, niggling doubt remained. A fear that kept her from going to him.
“Sleep on it,” she advised herself, knowing it is what her sister would say if Alicia were here to talk to. “Sleep on it one more night and let tomorrow come. And with it all the risks that could come from letting him in.”
With a sigh, she leaned over and blew her candle out, burrowing into her covers as her fingers clutched Colin’s letters, her mind ran over Colin’s words and her heart throbbed in time to all the hopes she had for what every tomorrow could bring.