“I have put myself out there, Granny. Sometimes nothing comes of it.”
“Failure shouldn’t stop you from trying again.”
“No, common sense does that.”
* * *
Brontë pushed away from the table and went upstairs to her room. An unzippered, wool tweed and leather duffle lay open at the foot of her bed. A reminder of what she needed to do.
Her grandmother’s advice rang through her mind.
Failure shouldn’t stop you from trying again.
Failure to keep Henry from harm hadn’t stop her from trying again. Why should having another go at Tris be any different?
Aila was right, though Brontë would’ve thought she’d buried the truth deep enough to avoid detection. She was lonely and had been for quite some time. She’d thought to alleviate that loneliness with Tris, if only for one night. Alas, there was one emotion more powerful than loneliness.
Fear. Of rejection. Of failure. Of not being enough. Her grandmother was right, as well. It had made a runner of her. Acknowledging the truth didn’t make it any easier to confront.
If she failed to save Henry, she would grieve. If she failed with Tris, on the other hand, she’d be heartbroken.
She shook the thought away. Heartbroken? No. Humiliated, yes. A blow to her self-esteem, definitely. It wasn’t as if she cared for him. She’d known him for a single day. Beyond his sexist attitude and polite tendencies, she knew nothing about him.
Other than he cared for Henry like a brother, ready to protect him against any threat. Even her. He had a sense of humor that the deepest suspicion couldn’t extinguish. He possessed a strong sense of duty and family. Most profoundly, he wallowed in sympathy for those who lost their lives aboard the Titanic and was spiritual enough to believe Death and Fate would someday balance the scales.
Her mind slowed at the memory and replayed it. He’d said he believed he’d cheated Fate and it would balance the scales one day. Was that all this was? Fate balancing the scales with Henry?
Taking him over and over to reclaim the life it was owed?
Did she have no hope for success?
No. How ridiculous. If that were the case, Tris’s life would have been threatened again and it hadn’t been. She’d read all the way through the journals again. Hazel mentioned him a few times more without great detail. In the days immediately following Henry’s demise and then after she’d returned to New York and he visited her there on his annual trips. She’d written that she asked him not to come again as each time he called upon her harkened back to the days of her youth when she’d anticipate Henry surprising her by coming along and the disappointment that always followed when he didn’t.
He’d never have the chance to do so again and that reality had been too much for Hazel to bear.
With a heartfelt sigh, Brontë retrieved some clothes from one drawer of her dresser then pushed it shut to search the one below.
“Going on a trip?”
Violet stood at the door and clucked her tongue. Brontë dropped the clothes and hurried to her side. “You shouldn’t be climbing the stairs yet, mobile or not.”
“Couldn’t let you run away from an argument,” her grandmother retorted as she guided her into the room. “Looks like you’re running anyway.”
“I’m not running away from you,” Brontë assured her in all honesty, hating the lie that followed. “Aila wants me to go to some club after the show tonight and I thought I spend the night since I’d be out so late.”
Violet looked skeptical. Rightly so. “Really? Where are you going to go?”
“Why? Do you want to come along?” Asking questions in order to evade others was becoming a way of life with her.
“Maybe.” Granny’s eyes twinkled at the idea. She perched on the foot of her bed while Brontë shoved a few basic pieces of underwear and pajamas into the duffle. “Might be fun.”
A huff of laughter escaped her. “I’m going to regret asking, aren’t I?”
“Bah! Regrets are for fools.”
Pausing in her packing, she looked up at her grandmother. “Don’t you have regrets, Granny? About Granddad?”
“Not a one. I would do it all again.” She grinned mischievously then added, “Though perhaps with less restraint and more vigor.”
Resisting the urge to cover her ears, Brontë persisted. “If you could, wouldn’t you want to go back and change anything? Something to prevent him from dying so young?”
“What could I have done?” Violet asked. “We didn’t find the cancer until it was too late. The medicine of the time was insufficient to save him. I mourned him. Grieved for him, yes, but I have no regrets about the life I lived with him.”
With a sigh, Brontë reflected on her failed relationship with Jake. There’d been happy times she wouldn’t want to give up, hadn’t there? She couldn’t pinpoint a single one. All she’d been left in the residue of their blow up had been fear of failing at love again. What would her life be like if she’d skipped all of it?
“Sometimes I think I’d like to go back and arrange things so I never met Jake.”
“What you want in life is not always what you need.”
A wry chuckle caught in Brontë’s throat. Shades of old Donell. The universe was having a great laugh at her expense.
Pondering the cosmic synchronism, she went to the bathroom to gather up her toiletries — toothbrush, toothpaste, moisturizer, makeup — and tucking them into a cosmetic bag. If she were going back, she’d be more prepared this time than the last. When she emerged, Violet had dumped out the bag and was refolding the clothes, repacking them more neatly.
God, she loved the old woman despite her pestering. If she could ever fix Henry and Hazel’s future satisfactorily, she’d move on to her grandmother’s love life next. Granted, she didn’t want to hear about the details, but she longed to fix it even if her granny couldn’t envision the possibility. Surely there was a way to do that.
“You’re wrong in dwelling on what life would be like if you could change the past, dear,” Violet said as she tucked the cosmetic bag into the duffle. “My mother spent years lamenting how my sisters and I grew up without a father. Imagining what our lives would have been like if she could have stopped him from going to war, instead of living the life before her with a whole heart.”
“Maybe she could have stopped him.”
Her granny scoffed at the idea. “As much as I would have liked to know him, how would she have done that? How would anyone? He was drafted. His command put him on that beach. There is nothing anyone could have done.”
Brontë pulled a disbelieving face. “You don’t think so?”
“By all accounts, my father loved his country. Considered it his duty and honor to defend it.” She hesitated, her eyes reflecting a hint of sorrow before she continued. “His greatest regret would have been not taking a stand against evil. What you don’t understand, dear…perhaps what most in your generation don’t understand is that regrets, and mistakes are what makes us human. Hopefully better, more appreciative humans. I would be lying if I said I had no regrets in life. Every day I see you walking in my footsteps and it breaks my heart. If I give you nothing else in this life, it’s teaching you what I should have learned for myself.”
Sadness and apprehension constricted her throat. “What is the moral of the story?”
Pulling Brontë to sit next to her, Violet took her hand and clasped it between hers. “I’m serious, dear girl. I regret not moving on after your grandfather died. Instead I used my mother’s loneliness to justify hiding away from the world after your grandfather died instead of living and loving again while I had the chance. You’re doing the same here with me. Don’t, my dear. Don’t fear risking your heart again. Don’t run away from love. Take chances. Run toward it,” she urged. “When you find it again, grasp it with both hands. Embrace it with a whole, learned heart for however long it lasts. Cherish it all the more for having known loss. If you’d led a fairy tale life where not
hing ever went awry, you’d never appreciate the gift you’d been given.”
There was probably some truth in that. Her relationship with Jake had taught her many lessons, mostly negative. Or more optimistically a list of what not-to-dos in the future? Could she put such a positive spin on it for her next go-round at a long-term relationship?
“I can practically see your mind spinning and I’m not sure I like where it’s taking you,” Violet chided. “Don’t wait for perfection, dear girl. It may keep you waiting forever. Embrace the moments as they come for what they are.”
“And what are they, oh sage one?”
“Opportunities.”
Opportunities to…? Heal, maybe? To feel confident? Attractive? Worthy once more?
“I’m still not going out with Del again.” She hugged the older woman tight. “I will think about what you said though. Thank you, Granny.”
“I hope you will.” Violet held her close. “I’d hate to see you end up alone and bitter.”
Wow. Really?
There was a rather dodgy level of collusion transpiring in the cosmos.
Chapter 14
Moray Place
Edinburgh, Scotland
August 28, 1914
“We missed you at breakfast this morning.”
Tris glanced up from the morning paper to find Henry, not lingering at the door of his breakfast room, but making his way to the sideboard. “I do occasionally take a meal in my own residence.”
“True, but I’d thought you’d stop to tender your farewells to our guest.”
She was gone then.
“I said my goodbyes last evening.”
And spent a long, lonely night imagining the ways it could have ended otherwise.
Not that it had begun that way. No. Miss Hughes had taken an open dislike to him right from the start. Never would he have imagined a different outcome.
Perhaps imagined wasn’t the right word. He had. Hadn’t been able to help himself when he’d seen her decked out and bonny enough to take his breath away. Foreseen might be a better word.
Somewhere over the course of the night, her resistance to his courteous mannerisms had fled. Perhaps she sincerely meant her vow to be more accommodating. Nevertheless, he hadn’t expected her to reverse course so readily. On the way to the theater, Brontë hadn’t seemed able to get far enough away from him to suit her needs. Afterward, it appeared she couldn’t be close enough.
Her transformation from staunch independent to beguiling femininity would have left him dizzy if the brush of her warm and supple body along his as they walked along the street after dinner hadn’t already. It made him regret his gallant manners for the first time. Her fierce independence notwithstanding, she’d enticed him despite a few bursts of aggravation. He liked strong-minded females.
She hadn’t a clue what she did to a man. The way she leaned into him with a smile…an enticing, all-too tempting smile. Even the way she petted that bloody mink stole, as if she might provide succor to the living creature it had once been, had set him on edge picturing her stroking his chest as tenderly. She invited a man to hope for more. Given her outward disdain of him earlier in the day, he’d considered such a scenario inconceivable.
When Henry left them alone and he’d kissed her hand with the standard pleasantry, she’d questioned his abrupt departure. She’d caught his arm before he could leave. Her bonny violet eyes clouded with what might have been regret.
‘I get that I’m all stubborn — what was it? — incivility to your polished charm, but aren’t you at least going to say goodbye?’
‘As I said, it’s been a pleasure. A true pleasure, Miss Hughes.’
It had been. And more.
‘I’m leaving in the morning.’
Regret of his own stalled him. That he wouldn’t know her longer. To have a chance to figure out what made her so unusual. Or be able to drown himself in her kiss.
‘Your cousins will be sad to see you go.’
‘And you?’
He’d turned at the question to find her tugging off her glove. She peeled it away exposing inch after inch of silky ivory flesh. His heart raced and he berated himself for experiencing such rampant desire at the sight of an arm. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen one before.
‘And me?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to…?’ The question trailed off with a tilt of her head and again she waited. Her luminous gaze caught and held his and Tris drew in a ragged breath. Her gaze was filled with such intensity he would have thought she was trying to read his thoughts or speak to him through hers. If she were truly a clairvoyant perhaps that was the case. None of it reached his passion fogged mind, however.
All he could think of were the many things he’d like to do, none of which would have been proper in that moment. All of which complied with the invitation he imagined he’d heard in her voice. Strong-minded female, indeed. The beast inside him would have liked to believe that turn of her head indicated the stairs behind her and her bedchamber above. There could be no assumptions on his part. He’d needed her to say it. ‘To what?’
The question had felt raw with the lust in his throat.
She paused, her expression…expectant? He wasn’t certain as her face fell and she sighed. With a little smile, she shook her head and muttered something under her breath he couldn’t quite make out before adding more vocally, ‘Alrighty then.’
Another sigh. This time wistful before she stretched up on her toes and kissed him. The merest whisper of her lips across his, yet it shot straight through him like an electric jolt.
Such a temptress. He’d come across a thousand in his life, yet none so rigorously enticed him to shed his civility. His blood surged hot through his veins, demanding he ravish her for teasing him so. He fought back the urge though he couldn’t bring himself to break the kiss, savoring the light pressure until at last, she pulled away.
Another smile graced her lips before she backed away and walked slowly to the foot of the stairs. One foot on the bottom tread, Brontë looked back over her shoulder as if daring him to follow.
‘Goodbye, Tris.’
She was vexation.
She was temptation.
She was gone.
All for the best. Miss Hughes was a mind-boggling, obstinate enigma he’d had no hope of solving even with time on his side. A trial to his graciousness at best. A solid blow to his equilibrium at worst. The world was at war and he had work to do. No time to puzzle her out, though he would have liked to have tried to wean the truth from her.
About how she’d known Henry’s life was in peril. Not once, but twice.
“No regrets for the evening then?” His friend’s question recalled his attention.
“Not a one.”
Henry studied him for a long moment before nodding. “Good. I’d thought I might have to warn you off of her.”
Tris laughed aloud at that, leaning back in his chair. “You and Hazy have been after me forever and a day to court a lady. Don’t think I don’t know why we always have a young, unmarried woman in our company.”
“If I thought courting Brontë was all you had in mind, I would have left you to it,” Henry retorted as he poured himself a cup of coffee and added far too much sugar and cream to it. He stirred it slowly, arching a brow at Tris. “Don’t think I don’t know how to read you by now, my friend. It was clear as day you wanted to bed her.”
His friend raised the cup to his lips and took a sip. Tris grimaced for more than one reason. “I can see why Hazy refuses to let you keep coffee in the house. You abuse the beauty of the brew.”
“I would say I only enhance it,” Henry countered and took another sip before setting the cup aside. “What I can see is that you’re avoiding the topic at hand.”
Folding his newspaper and setting it aside, Tris rocked back further in the chair until the front legs lifted off the ground. Forward and back again he rocked as he considered his friend’s solemn countenance. He wasn’t an unspeakable rogue gi
ven to seducing innocents as Henry was well aware. “It’s not like you to feel compelled to warn me off a lady. Not since we were both after that barmaid at Cambridge, at any rate. What makes Miss Hughes the exception?”
“She is my wife’s cousin.” Henry lifted a shoulder to meet the tilt of his head as if he didn’t entirely understand it either. “Beyond that, I have an affinity for the lass. I can’t explain it. However, I mean to keep her safe.”
As she meant to keep you, Tris thought. And succeeded.
“Very well.” He swayed forward until the chair was on all four legs once again and pushed away from the table. “Not that it matters as the lass in question has departed, but I give you my word I’ll not attempt to lure her to my bed.”
What looked to be a sly grin lifted the corner of Henry’s lips, though he lifted his cup once more to guzzle the remaining contents and hide the smile. Returning the cup to the sideboard, he clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Thank you. Are we ready to be off to the train station then?”
Tris frowned, suspicious of his friend’s suddenly buoyant demeanor. “Aye. My trunk has already been taken out. Why?”
“My motorcar is full with Hazy, the wee lasses and their nannies. If you’d be so good as to assist, I’ll need you to take our guest up with you.”
“What guest?” he asked, though he feared he already knew the answer.
“Why Miss Hughes, of course. She’s decided to accompany us after all.”
And the bloody devil had locked him into an intolerable promise.
* * *
The sight of Tris MacKintosh after a full week away took Brontë’s breath away. Buttoned up three layers deep, from jacket to waistcoat to shirt, and knotted up to his starched collar, he was more handsome than she remembered, and she’d been certain that her memory exaggerated his appeal. If anything, it had failed her.
He strode toward her where she awaited him in the mews, not far from where he’d dropped her in the mud not long ago (for her, at least). His light grey suit so impeccably tailored to his powerful body, she swore she could define each muscle of his thighs. See each breath lift his chest. When he swept off his felt bowler, she could certainly discern the astonishment lingering in the mossy depths though Henry had assured her Tris knew of her ‘decision’ to stay on for the house party.
A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1) Page 13
