Wherefore Art Thou.

by Melanie Thurlow

  She thought he might come after her. Chase her down and try to explain. But alas, he did not. Which was a good thing, really. It would be entirely inappropriate if he had—even if he did clothe himself first. But she had been injured and he was her guardian; wasn’t it his duty to look after her?

  The nipping chill of the night air made the pressure of pain of her nose compound. Isabelle crawled back beneath her covers, drawing them up to her chin, hoping to draw some heat from the sheets and back into her bones and her heart which she was afraid was falling for a man who would only ever break it.

  Chapter 18

  Desmond wiped his brow on his sleeve. It had been a hard morning laboring in the fields, mending the seemingly endless fences, but it had to be done. And the soreness and stiffness in his joints and muscles was most refreshing. At least there was a reason for the buildup of sweat, for the pain. It made him feel useful. Like he had long ago felt during the war.

  The thought sent the air out of his chest, gripping his heart like a hand with the purpose to kill.

  He couldn’t entertain thoughts of the war or the time between.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Not even in sleep.

  He slammed shut his eyes as if they were doors and locked them in place. His feet moved beneath him, their way memorized. He didn’t need sight. All he needed was lonely darkness.

  He wanted more than ever to be back in the fields, to drive the plow through the ground and lose himself in the pain of exertion and forget about the pain that couldn’t be physically explained—the pain of his soul, fractured by memories he couldn’t change and a promise he didn’t keep.

  He slowly exhaled the breath he’d been holding.

  He was most at peace when he had a purpose. Work gave him an excuse to get lost and forget the world existed for a little while. Specifically, his portion of it. And yet, his painful memories always worked themselves back into his sights, tangled themselves around his heart.

  He trudged up the stairs, the familiar sound of creaky steps calling him home to his bedchamber. Not his bedchamber, he reminded himself as he turned a corner on the landing. He had moved himself to one of the few guest quarters, which was musty and the bed in need of replacing.

  He sighed. In all hopes, it wouldn’t be long now before he could finally just marry the girl, give propriety the boot, and move back into his own, comfortable bedchamber that buddied hers.

  As he turned to continue upwards to the floor above, something less familiar resounded in his ears. Not a creak or a crack, but the tickling of a beautiful melody. His heavy lids opened slowly and he found himself turning toward the open window on the landing. Looking out, he found the face that fit the voice below.

  “Of course,” he seethed when his eyes landed upon a brilliant shine of blonde hair below in the gardens at the front of the house. She was kneeling in the dirt, her hands working the earth, his earth.

  Of course it was her. She was everywhere. In his house. His room. His gardens. His thoughts. His unwanted future.

  A shudder ran up Desmond’s spine. He stiffened, chasing away the defiant army of hair threatening to stand at attention. Men like Desmond didn’t shiver. You didn’t see and cause death only to crumple into a helpless heap at every memory that resurrected. You didn’t survive imprisonment for the better half of two years, regularly beaten, to fall apart so easily. He needed to control himself, or face being taken down by a blonde woman he’d stumbled upon.

  Desmond’s scowl deepened.

  She was perfect. In every way. She had the vibrant hair all young misses fawned over. She had the perfect features, and the hazel eyes that refused to be just one color. She had poise and grace. And even with one side of her covered from head to foot in garish bruises of varying hues, her beauty was obvious. And still she was intelligent.

  She was perfect in every way that a lady ought to be. And in every way that Desmond did not deserve. But they were in this mess together, whether they liked it or not, and they’d be required to pay the consequences. She, marrying a man over a decade her senior and poor as a church mouse and, he, having to marry at all.

  Desmond stared down at her, his hard expression softening. She was bent over, her ungloved hands digging into the dark soil. Her movements were as melodic as her voice as she worked slow and deliberately, like she was crafting a piece of art.

  He thought of the eyes with which she was crafting her masterpiece. Always so thoughtful, always full of questions her mouth never gave voice to.

  He’d never wanted her here, but here she was, changing pieces of his life, ripping out overgrowth and chasing away death. She was a miracle. Though, she’d need to be a miracle worker to fix him. She’d tried last night, and look at how that turned out. She’d run face-first into a door.

  Desmond scoffed. Of course, there was no fixing him. Maybe at one point in time he would have desired to be, would have believed there was a chance. But he knew better now. He knew himself now. He’d spent six years traveling, trying to forget two. But there was no forgetting. This was who he was. And he didn’t want to be fixed, healed, saved. He just wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want to think about the years to come that she would spend prying into life, with every right to do so as his wife.

  He didn’t want her to make him her project. Because… what if he was right and he really couldn’t be fixed? What if she failed?

  As it was, he was amazed that she had any joy left in her to sing out. And yet she did. She, so lovely and intelligent, remained optimistic despite her circumstances.

  Desmond’s lids were pulled down by the weight of his thoughts, as though he sighed with his eyes alone, calmly grieving for her future.

  For how long her optimism would remain, he was not sure. That light inside her, the light that was her very essence, it would be crushed in time. He would crush it. He’d seen it last night in her downward stare. She’d looked like a beaten dog, cowering. With each eruption, he would destroy her soul and he couldn’t allow that to happen, but neither could he let her in.

  It was a vicious tug of war that he couldn’t make heads or tails of. It was impossible to hold the rope in the center and just be content. He would either fall in love with her and be ridden with eternal guilt, or he would destroy her.

  Someone so lovely did not belong in the midst of such a man, he thought heavily. She didn’t belong in a place such as this, in a house where even the mice were now afraid to skitter about for fear of their new master’s reaction.

  He didn’t want to be such a difficult man, but he couldn’t help but be just that.

  If he could let her go, he would. But they were trapped together for the duration of their lives now.

  A shuffle drew his attention inside to find the housekeeper approaching. “Mrs. Long,” said Desmond, barely sparing her a second’s glance before returning to the object of his current rumination.

  “My lord,” she said, curtsying beside him on the landing. “It’s a beautiful view,” she commented, leaning in toward the window slightly.

  Desmond did not miss the hint in her voice that spoke of a view other than trees and hillsides and vales. He turned to her with a sheepish smile. There were few he was close to, but Mrs. Long had been like a mother to him since his own mother had followed his father to the grave when he was eight and he had come to live at Hamilton Hall with his aunt and uncle, the childless Earl and his Countess. Even now, after years spent apart, it seemed as if she still knew him as much as he knew himself, if not more. She knew what he was thinking even when he denied to allow himself to think it at all.

  Beautiful. Yes, it was a beautiful view.

  “She is a sweet girl, bright lady. You were fortunate to find her, Master Desmond,” she said, returning to the use of his childhood title, “but do not forget that she is just as lucky to have found a man like you.”

  Desmond felt his face fall slightly as his spirit sagged. Lucky, was not a term he would use to describe the situation the lady f
ound herself in. And he doubted she would use that term for herself.

  A delicate hand came to rest on his shoulder, squeezing firmly with the gentle touch of caring. “You have grown into a fine man,” she said, forcing eye contact. “Your parents would be proud.”

  The mere mention of his parents, dead and buried years ago, their memories seldom erected for fear of the emotions they would produce, was nearly enough to bring tears to Desmond’s eyes. How different his life would have been if they hadn’t died so young, each stolen from life from separate cases of Influenza. Desmond refused to acknowledge the weakness, and instead turned to the view, the lady in the garden below.

  “A view is nothing but a painting if it is not explored,” Mrs. Long commented.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You should go to her. Tell her how you feel.”

  “How I feel?” Desmond asked, his curiosity expelling his words as his mind tried desperately to tug him backwards and away from what he could feel was a trap.

  What did he feel?

  “She deserves to know that you love her.”

  “Love?” The word was spat from his mouth like poison. “How could you possibly presume to believe that I love her? I barely know her! I don’t even know her name!”

  “As if any of that matters one-whit to your heart,” Mrs. Long scolded. Then, softening, she said, “Master Desmond, I know you. And I know how you will make a muck of this left to your own devices. Consider me your gentle nudge. Because whether you’ll admit it or not, you are in love with the girl. It will do no good denying it; doing so will only serve to hurt you both. So go to her. Tell her how you feel.”

  Desmond stared at Mrs. Long as though she had grown two heads. Had the woman who had attempted to raise him in his mother’s absence finally gone and lost all her marbles? Had she gone mad while he was away? Or was the one who was mad, he?

  Chapter 19

  Love.

  It was absurd.

  Desmond was very much not in love with her.

  How could he be? He barely knew her, didn’t even know who she was! Aside from the fact that she was a lady, he knew nothing beyond what he deduced by way of her manner and his own two eyes.

  He supposed that she was the type that would suit many a man, that many a man would trip over themselves to get in line to court, to fall in love with, to marry. But love did not grow on trees, or just magically appear in the middle of the road. Love took time and required two people to know each other before it could be realized.

  Love didn’t just all of a sudden happen into existence. One moment, two people were strangers. The next, lovers.

  That wasn’t love at all. That was a joke, a trick of the imagination, a fairytale dream.

  That was lust.

  Desmond swallowed down his pride—along with Mrs. Long’s assessment of him—and to the surface bubbled something unfamiliar.

  Love.

  Desmond gripped his bare chest.

  This didn’t feel like lust. But he supposed that was the point. Lust tricked many a person in their youth to being in love, to making mistakes in the name of it. But lust did not last forever, hardly even long enough to be given a second chance after the mistake in question.

  However, Desmond was far from being in his youth. At two and thirty, he had long since passed those younger days and entered into his prime, the time between youth and old age when a man was given the stability and maturity to achieve greatness but seldom used them wisely.

  He was no young pup, no longer a young officer dressed in regimentals, tearing up the country. He was a man, and men did not go and fall in love so foolishly.

  He threw back his sweat-soaked sheets, hauling his stiff body from the bed, his mind having been too wound to allow his body to unwind with a restful nap.

  Not that it would be a particularly bad thing to love his wife-to-be. It was merely that it provided for some rather unpleasant complications.

  Loving her would mean great difficulty. It would mean branding her on his soul and having to choose between her and himself. He would no longer be loyal to one, but two. And he didn’t know if that was something that he could do in entirety. There was still so much that he needed to make sure remained only his.

  And besides, if he was going to fall in love, shouldn’t it be done with a level head and all the information? He shouldn’t make a decision uninformed.

  He slapped the cold water—left in the basin from the morning—onto his face, shaking his head and sputtering, as though doing such would dislodge the thoughts that had lodged into his pores.

  As though falling in love was a decision that could be made.

  As though he had any control over his feelings towards her.

  Well, he’d have to. He’d have to make sure that he did.

  Loving the lady he was to marry was not the problem. She would make a splendid wife. She was clearly a very intelligent woman, and she would no doubt learn his ways quickly and adapt herself into his routine.

  The trouble was the guilt that he’d be forced to live with. She deserved so much more than the life he could offer.

  Desmond dragged his feet across the floor and sat down on the side of his bed, his eyes falling to a small rectangle of paper no bigger than his hand.

  The portrait was sitting on the stand beside his bed, three dark fingerprints smudged across its surface. The promise he’d never kept. The girl he’d never visited, never told the last words on her lover’s lips. For the six years since his release he’d ignored the promise he’d made.

  He picked the portrait up gingerly, trying not to wrinkle or rip the paper with his large hands, and drew it up near to his face. And just as before, he felt his heart shrink in his chest and fall through to his stomach.

  The small portrait was incredibly detailed. Exquisite, even. It was a work of art. Though it could not be difficult to paint such a beautiful woman. Blonde hair, blue eyes.

  Numbly, he turned over the paper, hoping there would be words scrawled across the back. A name. An address. Anything to help him find out who she was and how to find her.

  Blank.

  Maybe it was fate. It’d been nearly a decade since the boy she’d known died. She’d probably moved on with her life, married, was happy. What right did he have to walk in and disrupt that with a past that couldn’t be changed? What right did he have to darken her happiness for the sake of his conscience?

  He could find her, tell her, relieve his guilt, carry out his promise. But he had run another blonde down with his carriage and she needed his attention now.

  Desmond thought of the woman who was to become his wife. It was her, she was the reason for all of this, for his guilt surfacing, for his nightmares. It was all on her. It wasn’t that she looked remarkably like the woman in the portrait, but surely her features were what brought it all back. Blonde hair, blue eyes. How could she not be a constant reminder of a promise broken?

  It felt like fate. And fate felt like a cruel punishment, a torture meant to gnaw away at him for the rest of his life.

  And what was he supposed to do? Just pretend like the last eight years had never happened? Pretend as though the promise he’d made to a dying comrade didn’t matter? How was he supposed to overlook that, move beyond it? How was he supposed to love?

  He wanted to gag at the thought that he could love the woman he was going to marry.

  Mrs. Long was right; denying he was in love with her would only serve to hurt them both.

  He could love her. But it would quickly kill him.

  But what if it was already too late?

  *****

  Isabelle stood. She was covered in a layer of dark soil, the manifestation of her long day toiling in gardens that seemed endless. The bed was so overgrown that she couldn’t distinguish weeds from flowers. Not that she truly knew the difference anyways, but there certainly appeared to be no end to the weeds that surrounded the rose bushes she desperately attempted to prune.

  She wiped
the trail of sweat working its way down her forehead to her brow with the back of her arm and sighed heavily, staring at her accomplishment.

  How long had she been out here? She looked up to the sky, judging the sun’s location. Eight, possibly nine hours? It didn’t seem possible. It certainly didn’t feel that long.

  She probably should have been resting, or doing something ladylike, like needlework or reading. But she’d been drawn outdoors to the garden, to the rose bushes in particular, and she found she couldn’t pull herself away.

  Roses. They must be her favorite flower. Their scent certainly was intoxicating. And there was something familiar about them.

  Isabelle brushed her dirty hands off upon her equally soiled skirts and decided it was time to retire. She hadn’t eaten all day and, though she wasn’t hungry, she reckoned that she should probably eat something.

  A strange prickling sensation along her spine caused her to glance up towards the house in front of her, the sensation of being watched gnawing at her empty stomach. She searched the windows, finding nothing but shadows within them. If someone were watching her, she could not tell.

  She shook her head. It was probably nothing more than exhaustion. Her hip was aching from the torture she had inflicted on it, kneeling on the ground for hours on end, working the earth, and her shoulder was sore and tired. She could use a nap.

  Looking down at her nails that were hopelessly covered in dark soil, she sighed. She could use a bath.

  Inside, Isabelle was immediately met by Mrs. Long. “My lady,” the housekeeper said warmly.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Long,” Isabelle greeted in return.

  “Pardon me, my dear, you look exhausted.”

  “I am rather. I lost track of time, I’m afraid,” she said, not understanding her need to apologize. “I realize the imposition—” she started. And feeling another apology forming on her tongue, she forced it down and created a line in the sand, or dirt, or whatever. She was a lady, and this woman a servant. She hadn’t a need to apologize. Isabelle straightened her spine and, even though she remained a petite three inches shorter than the housekeeper, she felt higher. “—I require a bath to be drawn,” she finished.