His Saving Grace

by Sharon Cullen

  She climbed to the step above him and turned to face him. He schooled his features not to reveal his emotions.

  “I just want you to know that no matter what happens, we will be fine.”

  “Will we?” He pushed past her to the top of the stairs and entered his room to shut the door behind him, entombing himself in the quiet he so desperately craved.

  He needed time to himself, time to digest the information Dr. Ridley had imparted. Time to accept that this was the way he would always be. Searching for the right word, forgetting words, struggling with the ever present anger inside him, constantly losing things because he couldn’t remember what he’d done with them. Carrying his bloody cane everywhere because he couldn’t walk in a bloody straight line if his bloody life depended on it.

  He launched his cane across the room. It hit the upright mirror and shattered it. The explosion of glass was loud and utterly satisfying. He looked at the broken pieces scattered across the floor, reflecting the sunlight as it shone through the window and bounced off the walls. He stared at the shards and couldn’t help but think how ironic it was. He could pick up those pieces and attempt to glue them back together. He might even succeed in matching the pieces that were once the mirror, and fitting all of them back in the frame. But the mirror would never be the same. It would still show the cracks. It wouldn’t reflect his image the way it used to. It would look like a mirror and, in some ways, perform like a mirror. But it wasn’t a mirror anymore. Not really.

  Just like he wasn’t Michael John Ashworth anymore. Not really.

  He held the name. He held the Blackbourne title, but inside he was broken. Beyond fixing. A splintered image of himself.

  Tarik burst through the door and stopped short when he spied the broken glass.

  “It broke,” Michael said.

  “I can see that. I will send a footman to clean it up.”

  “Leave it.”

  “But you’ll cut yourself, my lord.”

  “Do you not think I’m intelligent enough to walk around it, Tarik?”

  Tarik stared at him. “Very well.” He left, closing the door.

  Michael untied his cravat and picked his way through the glass to look out the window into the smog of London. The door opened behind him. “Leave me be, Tarik.” When Tarik didn’t answer, Michael looked over his shoulder. Grace was standing at the connecting door that led to her suite of rooms, staring at the shards of glass.

  Michael turned back to the window. “I suppose you’re here to reassure me that everything will be fine.” Erasing the bitterness from his voice was beyond him at the moment.

  “It depends on what you mean by fine.”

  “I’m not in the mood to play word games. I have a hard enough time coming up with my own words.”

  “I came to apologize. I should have honored your wish and not made the appointment with Dr. Ridley. I’m sorry, Michael.”

  “Now do you understand why I don’t want to see any more doctors?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  Hurt silence followed. He was shutting her out. Shutting her down. It was for the best. Now maybe she would understand that he was half a man, and it wasn’t even a good half. For some reason, his mind flashed back to Sir Clayton Timmons. Now, there was a whole man.

  “Michael—”

  “You heard him, Grace. My healing is finished. What you see is what you get. I am what I am. You can word it any other way, but the outcome is the same.”

  “And what outcome would that be?”

  “I am damaged.”

  “Can we please have this discussion face-to-face? I find it difficult to speak to your back.”

  He locked his jaw and turned to lean against the windowsill. She pointedly looked around the room.

  “The glass broke.”

  “You mean you broke the glass.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll clean it up myself, if that makes you feel better.”

  “No, Michael, that doesn’t make me feel better. What would make me feel better is if you told me what you’re thinking instead of closing doors in my face.”

  Ah, so she wanted to talk. Bloody women. All they wanted to do was talk. How was one to think when one was forced to talk?

  “So you want to know what I’m thinking. For one, I’m wondering why I came back in the first place. I should have stayed away and made everyone’s life easier. You wouldn’t have to follow me around with your nervous twitters, watching me constantly while I blunder around, using the wrong words and forgetting people. I’m thinking you would have been far better off marrying Timmons instead of being burdened with half a husband.”

  “I am not—”

  “You wanted to know what I was thinking, so you will bloody well stay quiet and listen to what I’m thinking.”

  She clamped her lips closed, her eyes flashing fire at him.

  “You were about to say that I am not half a man. Well, I disagree, my lady. I can barely follow the thread of a conversation. I have to make notes on things I could have easily remembered years ago. I put things down, turn around, and can’t remember where I put them. I’m broken. Just like that mirror on the ground. I’m broken, Grace. And I will never be fixed. I’ll never be the man I was.”

  “Who says I want the man you were before?”

  “What if I want the man I was before? What if I don’t like living in this body I can’t seem to control?”

  “But what if you find something better about yourself?”

  “Better? About this?” He swiped his hand in the air, indicating his body.

  “You can’t see it right now because you’re still reeling from what the doctor—”

  “Dr. Ridley didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already suspect. This isn’t going away. This is me. This is what I am.”

  “I love you just the same.”

  Her words softened his anger. He loved her so much. Part of his anger stemmed from that love, from the fact that he could no longer be the man she married, and never would be.

  He ran his hand through his hair and looked down at the floor, ashamed at himself for behaving so abysmally. “Why do you put up with me, Gracie?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “No matter what I say or do, you still love me.” He sounded bewildered. He was bewildered.

  “You love me no matter what,” she said. “I’ve yet to give you the son or daughter you want, and yet you still love me. We’re both broken, Michael.”

  They rarely broached the subject of their lack of children. He knew it was one of her greatest sorrows, and she knew it was one of his greatest regrets, but he didn’t love her less because of it.

  “For all we know, it could be because of me that we have no children,” he said.

  She shook her head and stepped forward. When her foot encountered the glass, she stopped. It was like a physical barrier keeping them apart, she on one side of the glass, he on the other.

  “I should have died,” he said softly.

  “Oh, Michael. No. Please don’t say that.”

  “Why? It’s the truth. You would have married Timmons and been happy. Nigel certainly would have been happier.”

  “No.” Her eyes shimmered with tears that built until they ran down her cheeks. She took another step toward him, more glass crunching. “For the entire time I thought you were dead, I wasn’t happy. I was devastated.”

  “Devastated enough that you were ready to wed Timmons.”

  “I didn’t love him. I agreed to marry him because…” She looked away. The tears continued to fall. Each one was like a hammer blow to his anger, chiseling away at it. He was hurting her and he couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe if he pushed her away, she would understand that she was much better off without him.

  She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “I agreed to marry him because I was lonely. It was a selfish reason, and I will always regret that I hurt Clayton like that. I didn’t love him, but I was so weary of being alone that I was willing
to use a good man to keep me company, even though I knew I could never love him. Not the way I love you.”

  The thought of Grace so lonely that she was willing to marry Timmons just to be able to talk to someone touched the one decent part left of Michael. “I love you, Gracie, but I hate me.”

  “You hate what happened to you.”

  “Is there a difference? I am what happened to me.”

  “We can work through this.” He didn’t miss the desperation in her voice, the plea. She crossed over the glass, heedless of the sharp edges, to stand before him and take his hand in hers. “We’ve already survived so much, Michael.”

  He hung his head and squeezed her hand. “I wish I thought you were right, Grace, but I just don’t know anymore.”

  —

  Grace entered her room and stared at the new gowns strewn across her bed in an explosion of bright colors. Such a difference compared to the darkness inside her. It almost hurt her eyes to look at it all.

  Jenny was there, hanging the gowns up. “Oh, my lady, they’re so beautiful.” She picked up a soft pink gown with green rosettes sewn along the top of the bodice and the hem. “This one is simply gorgeous. I can’t wait to see you in it.”

  “Please leave me, Jenny.”

  Jenny hesitated, glancing at her. There must have been something in Grace’s expression, for her maid quickly put the gown back on the bed and left the room.

  Grace finally gave in to her shaking legs. She sank to her knees in the middle of the room, covered her face with her hands, and wept.

  The devastation, the desolation, the utter lack of a will to live that she’d witnessed in Michael’s eyes terrified her. She was so convinced that the two of them could conquer his disabilities. They may never go away, but she and Michael could work with them. She could fight that, but she couldn’t fight his lack of will. She couldn’t fight his own thoughts.

  She leaned forward and trembled so harshly that her teeth chattered. She’d felt alone before, but it was nothing compared to this. She had no idea what to do, where to turn, how to help her husband, or how to fight for him when he wasn’t willing to fight for himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They traveled back to Hadley Springs the next day. According to Michael, there was no reason to stay in London. The solicitors had things well in hand, and there would be no more appointments with Dr. Ridley, even though the doctor wished to see Michael again.

  One thing Grace did accomplish on their trip to town was hiring a secretary for Michael. A bookish young man who seemed a bit nervous to be riding in the servants’ coach with Tarik.

  As soon as the train left the station, Michael opened a book and pretended to read. Grace knew he was pretending because he didn’t turn pages. Instead, he stared at the page expressionlessly. Who knew what was going on in his mind. She didn’t, for he’d stopped talking to her hours ago.

  Her mind was a twisted mess of thoughts and feelings, terror and anger and determination all mixed into one. She was so angry she wanted to yell at him right there in the train car. In front of everyone. She didn’t care. Whatever it took to get some sort of emotional reaction out of him. But she had no idea how he would react. Indifference would surely kill her. She wanted him to yell back, because if he did, she would know that he at least felt something. She wanted him to tell her that he would fight for them. That he would do anything in his power to learn how to live with his deficiencies. Instead, he had more or less given up on himself and, she feared, their marriage. It scared her to death, this indifference, this acceptance, this resignation.

  When they arrived at the manor house, they went their separate ways, Grace to her conservatory and Michael to his rooms. Normally, Grace would have made certain that Mr. Henderson, the new secretary, was settled, but she left that to Ida. She didn’t necessarily want to be left alone with her thoughts, since she’d been left with her thoughts too long already, but she had nowhere else to go. Michael didn’t want to speak to her, and she couldn’t bear to be in her rooms knowing he had locked her out of his.

  Tarik found her a few hours later, elbow-deep in dirt and seeds and exposed roots, the scent of fresh dirt a comforting balm to her battered soul.

  “He’s being an ass. Pardon my language, my lady.”

  “You shouldn’t have to pardon the truth, Tarik.”

  “He’s done this each time he discovered something different about himself or a doctor told him something he didn’t want to hear.”

  “That doesn’t excuse his behavior.”

  “No. But it explains it.”

  She slammed her trowel down and looked at Tarik. “So you’re saying I should accept his behavior? That I should allow it?”

  “I never said that.”

  She rubbed her aching head with her dirty hands. “He told me he wished he had died.” Her voice quivered with the effort to keep her emotion in check. But it was so perilously close to the surface that it was difficult to control.

  Tarik looked away and sighed.

  “Does he not love me enough?”

  “It has nothing to do with love, my lady. His brain, it is broken.”

  “But we can live with that.”

  “You can, but what about his lordship?”

  She looked away, terrified that she was going to lose him for the second time—and that this time he would not come back to her.

  “I can’t lose him,” she whispered. “I can’t lose him, Tarik.”

  “Then fight for him.”

  She looked up at him through her tears. “How?”

  “You will find a way.”

  —

  Michael was waiting for Tarik when his manservant entered the room. “Stay away from her,” he warned.

  Tarik stopped short and lifted a brow. “Her ladyship?”

  “You know what I mean. I saw you go to her in the conservatory.”

  Tarik narrowed his eyes, widened his stance, and crossed his arms. In their time together, Michael had tried to teach Tarik how to be a good servant, but the submissive part seemed to escape him. He spoke his mind when he wanted and refused to be cowed by Michael’s anger.

  “I seem to be drawn to people in pain,” Tarik said.

  Michael didn’t need to be told he was hurting Grace. He knew it and hated himself for it, but the anger had a stronghold on him. He seethed with it, railed at the injustice of this silent injury that was slowly killing the last part of the man he used to be. He lashed out at anyone near. The reasons didn’t make his actions right; his behavior merely made him a despicable person, and it confirmed what he already knew. He wasn’t nearly good enough for Grace. “Just stay away from her. She doesn’t need your sage advice.”

  Tarik stared at him for the longest time, expressionless except for a slight smile that said he saw through Michael and knew what he was doing. Michael turned away, because far too often Tarik was too astute for his own good.

  —

  “My lady?”

  Grace looked up from cleaning her hands to find Alfred hovering at the entrance to the kitchen. “Yes, Alfred?”

  “If I may, there was an incident while you and his lordship were in town.”

  She paused. “An incident?”

  “Lord Nigel arrived unannounced.”

  Her stomach twisted. Oh, Lord. This was not good. She had a feeling that she knew what Alfred was going to say next. “Nigel? That was unexpected.”

  “Unfortunately, I let him in the house. He said he had left something when he packed and he needed it.” He looked pained, as if expecting to be disciplined.

  “What was it he left?” Grace guessed that the story had been a ruse to get in the house. The vile snake.

  “He said it was some important papers in his lordship’s desk. I left him in the drawing room for a moment, but when I returned, he was not there. I discovered that he had cornered two footmen and was questioning them.”

  Grace felt weak with fear. “Questioning them?”

  “Abo
ut his lordship. I immediately told Lord Nigel that he had to leave and could return when you and his lordship were in residence. Then I asked the footmen what Lord Nigel had asked. They told me he was asking about his lordship’s behavior.”

  “Did they…” She licked her lips. “Did they tell him anything?”

  “One told him that his lordship tends to lose things frequently, but I believe that was all.”

  “Very good.” She spoke with conviction even though she was feeling anything but. “Thank you for coming to me with this, Alfred. If I may ask that you not tell his lordship. I will do so when the time is right.”

  Alfred bowed out of the kitchen, and Grace finally gave in to the shaking that she’d been holding back. So was Nigel here before visiting them in London or after? What did it matter? Nigel was on the scent of something, and it was up to Grace to put a stop to it.

  She may not be able to fix Michael, but she could certainly fix this.

  —

  The next day Grace entered the drawing room in a swirl of skirts. Michael knew she’d been in her glass house all day because he’d watched her from his bedroom window. He imagined she would smell like springtime—fresh plants and fresh dirt. Her fingernails would be scrubbed clean, though she always missed a few bits of dirt here and there. He didn’t look up from his book to confirm his thoughts; he attempted to appear enthralled with his reading material.

  At one time Michael had been an avid reader. A perfect night would have been to sit in front of the fire reading. But along with a host of other things, that was a thing of the past. He couldn’t seem to sit still long enough to read more than a few pages, and when he did, he found himself rereading the same pages because his mind wandered midsentence.

  Grace was having none of his pretense. “Cook has prepared a lovely dinner.” Her tone was clipped and no-nonsense.

  He looked up quickly. Her face was set, and there was something different about her. She seemed to be on a mission.

  “I’m not hungry.” Which was true. He hadn’t experienced hunger pains since awakening after the battle. He ate because others were eating or because he’d discovered that when he didn’t, his thoughts were more scattered.