My Darling Caroline

by Adele Ashworth

  He stopped pacing and looked down in contemplation, pulling a petal off one of the pale yellow roses at his fingertips.

  “She bred these.”

  “I know, they’re lovely. They should be dormant now, but I suppose it’s been a rather warm winter.”

  “It’s her gift, Charlotte, not the weather,” he countered firmly, proudly. “Caroline can make anything grow.”

  She waited a moment to see if he would add anything.

  When he didn’t, she decided to gather her courage and be direct. “You didn’t tell her about Mother, did you?”

  “No,” he answered in a whisper.

  She leaned forward, intrigued, as she was nearly certain this was at the heart of the troubles in his mind. “Can you tell me why?”

  He pivoted back to face her, actually looking into her eyes for the first time since approaching her in the garden. “You can’t guess?”

  She shrugged. “No. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.”

  He raised his arm and forcefully threw the rose petal into the wind as if skipping stones on a lake.

  “Carl is a decent man, Charlotte,” he quietly stated after a moment of strained silence. “He’s intelligent, hardworking, honorable from what I know of him, and he seems to care for you a great deal. He’s made you a good husband.”

  She couldn’t for the life of her decide where that came from, so she simply continued to look at him, puzzled and admittedly a bit dubious.

  His expression turned to one of embittered amazement. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  He strode back to the bench and sat beside her again, looking once more to the roses. “All this time you thought I wanted nothing to do with you because you ran off and married an American, a man you assumed I despised on principle.” After a quiet, hesitant moment, he said gravely, “But the truth, Charlotte, is that for six-and-a-half years I’ve wanted nothing to do with you, have treated you as if you never existed, not because you left me and married an American, but because you left me period.”

  Her mouth went dry as she gaped at the side of his face in stunned silence.

  “It never occurred to you that by leaving impulsively you would be handing me to the Lady Maude on a platter. I had to bear the brunt of her criticism and enmity because you were her precious jewel, and she believed to her soul that your departure was my doing, my fault.” He sat forward, elbows on knees as he gazed blankly ahead. “I could never do anything right in her eyes—you know that already—but when you left, she turned on me in the most vicious way of all by refusing to look at me or speak to me civilly from that moment on. When you left, I had nobody.”

  Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t know,” she mumbled.

  “Well, now you know,” he retorted sharply.

  He paused uncomfortably, then turned to her, his gaze impassioned, voice oddly subdued.

  “You were all I had, Charlotte, and when you walked out of my life, I felt as if someone had ripped my heart from my chest. You were the only person who’d ever loved me for who I was, and suddenly you were gone to the other side of the world. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to imagine how I felt the morning I realized you had run away.”

  Those words cut her to the core, forcing her to come to terms with honesty as she stared into his pained hazel eyes. Through all the years apart, not once had she considered herself the sole reason for his bitterness, his resentment. She’d always assumed it stemmed from Carl and his parentage, his family untitled, born and raised in the colonies. But maybe, as the light of understanding embraced her now, that was simply an excuse. It had been much easier during the last six years to believe she was dead to Brent because of her husband rather than because she’d wounded him deeply just by leaving.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last, shakily, hoarsely, finally failing to hold her tears in check as they fell onto her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry about it now,” he urged through a sigh, sitting fully erect and wiping her tears aside without thought to the contrary. “I’ve had years to come to terms with everything, and I realize now that the man I chose for you to marry wasn’t exactly appropriate for your emotional needs.” He smiled and softened his voice. “I just wanted you to be happy, Charlotte, and if you think about it, you found happiness and escaped the Lady Maude in one irrational action. It took me years to do both of those things.”

  He was trying to be delicate with her, to keep her from feeling guilty, and that was so like him. She’d never known anyone more filled with a sense of duty than her brother, and of course she should have considered that over the years as well. Brent had always, from the day she was born, felt honor-bound to protect her from their mother, from the outside world, asking only for appreciation and love in return, and she had practically shoved that in his face one stormy night nearly seven years ago when she packed her bags and left Miramont.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands as understanding and then compassion gradually filled her. “This is really the problem, isn’t it? You’re afraid of losing Caroline.”

  The whispered words were barely audible in the cool winter wind, but she knew he heard them because his features softened and he dropped his gaze.

  “You’re afraid she’ll leave you, and that’s why you never told her about Mother, why you kept the greenhouse from her. I’ll bet you never…” She hesitated, eyes widening with growing awareness. “I cannot believe you never told her—”

  “I’m going to tell you something, Charlotte,” he interjected calmly, “something I’ve never admitted or discussed with anyone.”

  He drew a long, steady breath, his gaze never straying from the cold, dark ground.

  “I have lived nearly thirty-four years, and most of those years have been filled with bitterness, self-doubts, disappointments, and periods of extreme loneliness. But through it all there has been one thing in front of me out-shining the ugliness and filling the void, and it hasn’t been my advanced education, or the intensity of my work, or the strength and beauty of my prized horses, as any one of those things would be for most men.”

  He turned to peer into her eyes, his voice suddenly deep and passionate with his disclosure. “The greatest joy, satisfaction, pride, and—this is the absurd part—the greatest peace I’ve ever known in my life, have come from three truly beautiful females—you, Rosalyn, and Caroline. You now have a life in another land, and one day Rosalyn might leave Miramont, even England as well. It’s her life and it’s ahead of her.”

  He dropped his voice to a harsh, fierce whisper. “But Caroline is mine, Charlotte. She is the one beautiful woman I intend to have by my side to adore for the remainder of my life. I’m so completely adamant about this I refuse to have you or anyone divulge things that could plant seeds of anxiousness and regret—”

  “You’re being selfish,” she cut in directly.

  He stiffened and looked back to the roses. “Maybe. But losing my wife is unthinkable to me. I will never take the chance.”

  Charlotte stared at him, love and sympathy melting her heart, knowing his fear was probably irrational but understanding it nonetheless. With a very deep breath for strength, she placed her hand on his arm.

  “Caroline isn’t planning to leave you, and she wouldn’t dream of doing so even if you told her about Mother’s past.” She leaned toward him to add decisively, “You are the most important thing in her life, Brent, not her flowers or her green house—”

  “I’m sure she never told you this.”

  “I know this,” she stated without pause. “She’s not twenty-one years old and running to America to escape a shrew of a mother, she is your wife. She may have married you for convenience, but when she took the vows she became yours unequivocally.”

  She relaxed and smiled. “Go and tell your wife you love her. And after she tells you she loves you in return, you can feel comfortable divulging all your little secrets without fearing botany is more imp
ortant to her than you are.”

  He sat silently for a moment, brows furrowed in thought, then slowly shook his head. “It’s just not that simple.”

  “Maybe it’s not simple that first time—”

  “Two days ago I told her I didn’t.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t love her,” he answered in whisper.

  After a moment of utter bafflement at the stupidity of the entire male sex, she shook her head in disgust. “Was it an accident on your part?”

  He turned to stare at her. “What kind of question is that?”

  Shrugging, she lightly expounded. “Did the words spill out of your mouth in a moment of insanity? Were you drinking heavily, or taking revenge in a fit of jealous anger?”

  His eyes darkened in annoyance. “She asked me directly if I loved her, and I said no.”

  “Why?”

  That seemed to stump him. “What do you mean, ‘why?’”

  “Why did you say no when it would have been just as simple to say yes?”

  He exhaled loudly and sat back hard against the stone wall. Uncomfortably he mumbled, “I refuse to say it first.”

  She simply gawked at him, absolutely knowing that if she lived a hundred years she would never learn to understand men. “Well,” she declared sarcastically, “that certainly makes perfect sense—”

  “It’s a game, Charlotte,” he cut in forcefully. “It’s a game Caroline and I are playing with each other because I told her right after we married that I didn’t believe in love and she would never hear me say the words. She said she’d never speak the words to me either, and I’m positive she said that because she thought my belief was foolish.”

  “It is foolish.”

  “Love is foolish, Charlotte. It’s difficult to define, irrational, complicated…”

  “Love most certainly is all of those things,” she tenderly affirmed, taking his hand in hers, “but that doesn’t mean it does not exist. If nothing else, love is real, Brent, and through all of the rough edges, loving my husband has been the greatest experience of my life, only made more glorious because I know he loves me in return. It can be the same for you and Caroline if you will just give it a chance.”

  He reached to his side with his free hand and abruptly pulled a leaf from a plant, spinning it in his fingers, staring at it in contemplation.

  Charlotte watched him, fairly certain he was just having trouble coming to terms with complications that might arise from such a frank and open admission. With all his intelligence, rationality, and devotion to family, Brent had never been so close to losing this part of himself to anyone. He loved Caroline and had probably loved her for months, but for the majority of men, accepting and then confessing love was something akin to being stripped naked and forced at knifepoint to read Dryden or Pope to thirty old, fat ladies who sipped tea and nibbled on sweetmeats as they stared at you with feigned interest at the biannual meeting of the Ladies Society for Readers of Great English Poets. For many men, accepting and then confessing love was exposure at its most embarrassing and very worst.

  He continued to stare at the leaf, saying nothing, and Charlotte decided to take action, as it was obvious the time had come for honesty on her part as well. Since the afternoon had grown increasingly warm in the brightness of sunshine, and because she needed time to adjust her thoughts and compile her next carefully spoken words, with grim determination she released his hand, reached up to unbutton her pelisse, and slowly removed it, laying it gently behind her on the stone bench.

  She wiped the back of her hand across her brow, glancing back to view him closely. “I had a child, Brent,” she quietly disclosed.

  At that moment she was certain no statement had ever shocked him more. He turned his head as the words seeped in, looking at her through wide, stunned eyes.

  She smiled and held his gaze. “About three years ago I realized I was carrying. I suffered through months of sickness, weight loss and then gain, despondency, elation, crying for no reason, everything a woman goes through when she’s with child—”

  “Charlotte—”

  She grasped his arm to silence him. “Let me finish.”

  Trying to keep her nerves calm, she looked to her lap, moved both hands together, clutching them between the folds of her peach day gown, and continued.

  “As far as the horrors of pregnancy are concerned, I was spared nothing except serious complications, and through all of the misery, Carl was wonderful. He massaged my aching back and feet, he held my head more than once as I unexpectedly started retching. He was chivalrous and adoring, and I in agony more often than not, but from beginning to end, I was also ecstatic because it had taken me years to conceive and I was finally going to be able to give my husband a child.”

  The remembrance caused her to waver, but with control she kept her emotions in check.

  “During the two months before the birth, I decorated the nursery, made lace window coverings, a lace quilt, sewed tiny baby gowns. Carl is an expert woodcarver, and he crafted a beautiful cradle.”

  She raised her head to stare at the dark pink roses in front of her, holding tightly to her hands, now starting to shake involuntarily from a memory still so sharply vivid in her mind.

  “On October second, eighteen thirteen, after two days of intense, exhausting labor, we had a daughter. A beautiful, healthy, six-pound baby with her father’s hair and chin and her uncle’s eyes.” She looked back to him. “Your eyes, Brent. She had a loud wail and a strong grip, and everyone, especially her father, adored her from the moment she entered this world. We named her Margaret after Carl’s mother and called her Meggie…”

  Her voice trailed off as tears she could no longer contain began to trickle down her cheeks. But she held his gaze courageously, and he didn’t move, didn’t utter a sound.

  “On December sixth, exactly nine weeks, two days, and eleven hours from the moment she was first swaddled and placed in my arms, I put her down for a nap in her beautiful cradle, and she never woke up. My baby was so healthy, Brent, so strong, and nobody will ever know the feelings that overtook and crushed me the moment I walked into her room and found my beautiful baby girl lying dead in her cradle. All I did was feed her and put her to sleep.”

  She paused, watching the stricken look cross her brother’s face as her words penetrated his mind and heart, as he slowly began comprehending deeply the very same feelings of pain and loss she’d felt and was feeling once more, as she felt every single day without fail and would feel for the rest of her life. Brent understood them because he was a father.

  Shaking her head for clarity and poise, she wiped her cheeks to proceed.

  “Nobody took her death harder than Carl,” she continued in a whisper. “The following year was horrible for us emotionally because we didn’t and still don’t understand how a healthy baby with no injury or illness could just…suddenly die. And because it had been so difficult for me to conceive the first time, compounding our feelings of outrage and anguish was the unspoken knowledge that Meggie might be our only child.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he murmured.

  She stood abruptly, suddenly chilled. Hugging herself for comfort and warmth, she walked across the dirt path to the roses, staring down at them, carefully considering her next words.

  “I know what your feelings were for me, Brent, from the moment I left, and in many ways I believe they were justified.” She turned to face him fully. “But never in my life had I felt rejection, anger, and hurt as I did when you didn’t acknowledge me, when I wrote and you returned every letter unopened. I became pregnant, went through a miserable nine months of carrying, a painful birth, then experienced the death of my baby, and you didn’t know. I wrote you once a month and told you everything as I experienced it, and you never knew because you didn’t even bother to read my letters.”

  Charlotte watched him closely as he slowly began to ascertain all she was saying.

  “You
had a niece, Brent, as beautiful as your own daughter, and had I not insisted on coming here and staying at Miramont even when I felt completely unwelcome, you never would have known.”

  He slowly dropped his gaze from hers. He was certainly suffering inside, and she didn’t want that. Forcing him to experience a rush of guilt or pain wasn’t her reason in recounting such a horrible piece of her life.

  Charlotte gracefully walked to stand in front of him, looking down at the top of his head as she spoke in a soft, clear voice. “I’m not trying to make you hurt, Brent. I simply wanted you to see your life in a different light.”

  He glanced up, and quickly she sat beside him once more, bravely taking both of his hands in hers.

  “My point in telling you this is not to open old wounds but to open your eyes,” she quietly maintained, peering intently into hazel orbs so plainly overflowing with sympathy and remorse. “Don’t waste time dwelling on past failures or things that could have been. The last thing I want is for you to feel guilty about never knowing my daughter, or about me and the six-and-a-half years you and I have lost that can never be returned to us. There’s so much more life ahead, it gives us no reason to look back. Meggie’s death took a part of me that will never be replaced, but it also taught me that life is precious and short, and the people we love can be taken from us instantly.”

  Charlotte reached up to touch his face with her fingertips, smiling tenderly as her eyes grazed over every feature.

  “Seize the moment, Brent. Live for your future. I’m here with my wonderful husband whom I want you to know, you have a beautiful, healthy daughter who is learning as she never has before, and you are married to an intelligent, charming woman who isn’t at all sure how much you care for her.”

  She lowered her voice to a fervid plea. “Go find Caroline and tell her, Brent, before there are any regrets. Swallow your pride, look into her eyes, and tell her without any reservation how much you love her. I think she’ll take it from there.”