They both, after all, apparently belonged to the Order of the Brokenhearted.
Did he love Amelia?Hadhe loved her? What did he feel now?
There was a moment last spring, outside the Woodleys’ home. They’d been walking in opposite directions along the path and had stopped to bid each other good day. He saw distinctly Amelia’s soft blue eyes looking up into his, one hand pushing her pale hair from her face. The breeze had tugged it loose from its ribbon, and she had laughed in delight. Her face was like the sun.
And he’d thought later: that is what love felt like. Simplicity. Peace. Beauty. Joy. The gift of just being, crystallized in a moment.
“I had reason to believe our regard was mutual,” was all he said, finally. Hesitantly.
He anticipated the next question. Still, it was a while in coming.
Lillias had the right to it. But he had no idea what to answer.
“Why?” She whispered this intently. “Why did you love her?”
He didn’t have a vocabulary for this sort of thing. He hadn’t been raised on poetry read in cozy parlors for entertainment. He would rather simplybe. What he felt and thought he hoped heembodied in actions. But how could he know for sure?
He didn’t know what to say. But his sense of fair play made him want to try.
“All I know... when I was near death in the hospital at Williamsville from a bullet wound... hers was the face I pictured. And I wanted to live.”
He felt her eyes on him, searching his face the way he’d searched hers.
She turned away again. Her hands went up to her face and she sighed at length. And then she brought them down again.
“I’ve gone and ruined your life, haven’t I, Mr. Cassidy?”
“Yes. I am the poor, innocent victim in this affair.”
She gave a wry, bleak little laugh.
He pictured the face of that man in the ballroom lighting up at the very sight of her and almost closed his eyes. If he did, he knew he could clearly see the days she described—the warmth, the river stones beneath bare feet, the friends, the family, the picnics, the laughter. Because he’d had those memories, too. He could have happily and forever lived out his days like that; he understood their pull.
But most of the people who’d populated those memories were gone now.
Sitting in the moonlit dark next to Lillias, he could not quite bring the things he felt into focus; they were like bright fish beneath the surface of dark water, moving too quickly to catch or inspect. They flickered through him, jealousy and possession, lust and awe, betrayal, mordant amusement. But the water, the thing that held all of these and sustained them, was deeper and less easy to name.
All he knew now was that he wanted to give Lillias what she wanted. And he thought he knew how.
“Well. I believe I can impart some wisdom.”
She gave a short laugh. “Perhaps Amelia fled because of your tendency for imparting wisdom.”
It was a risky joke, but he liked it. “It’s this. I don’t believe in giving up. And I don’t believe that life—even when it appears to lie in a smoking heap—is ever ruined. It’s all in what you do with the wreckage. I built an entire stage from scrap wood, the wreckage of something else. And do you know how long an American forest stays dead from a fire? It’s emerald and growing again nearly within weeks. New and sprouting green everywhere. It needs fire to renew itself.”
“And how does this wisdom relate to the subject at hand?”
“What if we could persuade Bankham—Gilly—to be... disobedient?”
She frowned. Then her face cleared as she caught on. “You meannotmarry Lady Harriette? But... how?”
“Exactly. Because . . . well, here’s what I noticed. When you introduced me as your fiancé, he blinked rapidly.” He demonstrated. “As though the news had been something dashed into his eyes. And only a man who’s been startled and badly knocked off his game blinks like that, or lets another man see him blink like that. We don’t showweakness to each other, especially in front of beautiful women.”
“How burdensome to be a man.”
“It’s not a picnic at Heatherfield, that’s for sure, being a man. In other words, it was clear to me he’d suffered a shock. He straightened up to his full height, which, I might add, is something a bear would do in order to frighten a man off. Or many animals would, to frighten off a predator. And then he stared at me for nearly the duration of our conversation and didn’t blink once. I daresay the thoughts he was thinking were not very... nice. At all. In fact he likely, for anotnice moment or two, wished me dead. Because most men, apart from perhaps Delacorte, arenotgenerally nice, regardless of what you might think. The epithet jar and the brown smoking room are the thin veneer between us and savagery.”
Lillias was quiet.