‘You’re not like him, Jacob,’ Mollie whispered. ‘Not one bit.’
‘Yes, I am,’ he returned flatly. ‘I am just like him. Sometimes I hide it better, and most of the time I keep it under control. But underneath? Where it matters? We’re the same.’
He spoke with such absolute conviction that Mollie wanted to cry, both for him and herself. It was hopeless. He’d never be convinced he was different, or that he was worth loving. ‘I don’t believe that,’ she told him in a choked voice. ‘I don’t believe that at all.’
‘You wanted to know the truth, Mollie, and now you have it.’
‘This is your terrible secret?’ she demanded. ‘This distorted, guilt-ridden version of the past?’
‘There’s more.’
‘Then tell me,’ Mollie said, folding her arms. ‘Because I want to hear it.’
‘What do you want?’ Jacob snarled. ‘Examples? A list of all the times—’
‘Yes,’ she retorted. ‘Yes, I would. Just when were you so like your father, Jacob? When you took care of your family? When you saved Annabelle—’
‘Saved her?’ Jacob repeated in scathing disbelief. ‘I raised my hand to her.’ Startled, Mollie’s mouth snapped shut, and Jacob nodded as he saw her response. ‘I raised my hand. I barely kept myself from hitting her, just as my father did. She saw it. She saw my hand, and she saw the rage in my eyes, and she cowered from me.’ He drew in a shuddering breath. ‘It was after … after everything. She’d come to find me with tears in her eyes, because she needed someone to talk to. She was so lonely, shut away in the house, and so young …’
‘So were you,’ Mollie whispered. ‘You were only eighteen, Jacob.’
‘I was old enough to know better,’ he returned savagely. ‘Old enough to control myself.’
‘You did control yourself.’
‘That time.’ He looked at her bleakly. ‘That one time. But I knew there would be others, and who knows if I could control myself then? I didn’t.’ There was a new, darker note in his voice now and Mollie felt a tremble of fear ripple through her. Jacob saw it and knew what it was. He nodded. ‘You’re right to be afraid of me.’
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Mollie returned hotly. ‘No matter what you tell me now.’
‘All right, then,’ Jacob said. His voice was like a terrible caress, a low, silky whisper. ‘Here’s the truth, Mollie. Here’s what you don’t know. What nobody knows.’ His eyes met hers, glinting blackly with challenge, and Mollie lifted her chin, ready for the worst.
‘The night my father died,’ Jacob told her, his voice still a soft whisper that coiled right around her heart and squeezed, ‘I was out at a party. I liked to go out to parties. Going out and getting drunk was about the only respite I had.’
‘That hardly shocks me, Jacob.’
‘That’s nothing,’ he dismissed. ‘It’s what happened when I came home.’
‘I know William was whipping Annabelle with a riding crop,’ Mollie told him. ‘She spoke of it once to me. And Nathaniel and Sebastian were trying to stop him.’
‘They couldn’t,’ Jacob confirmed. ‘They were too young. They were crying, although Annabelle was silent. She was curled up on the floor, covered in blood. I thought she was dead.’
Mollie closed her eyes. She could hardly bear to imagine the scene, and yet Jacob had lived it … and still lived with it, nearly twenty years later.
‘In that moment,’ Jacob told her in a cold, detached voice, ‘I felt anger like I’d never known before. It was a red mist before my eyes, in my heart. It covered me. It controlled me, and I raised my hand to my father.’
‘To save your sister,’ Mollie finished swiftly. ‘To save her. It was the right thing to do, Jacob. It was self-defence.’
‘Was it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Don’t you think there could have been another way? I could have grabbed the riding crop, or wrestled him to the ground, or taken Annabelle away from him.’
‘Perhaps, but you could hardly consider all your choices right then,’ Mollie argued. ‘It was the heat of the moment.’
‘Exactly. The heat of the moment. And in that heat, I wanted to hit him. So that’s what I did.’ He spoke with such self-loathing that Mollie felt helpless in the face of it. ‘I was so angry, as angry as he’d ever been with me.’
‘It’s different, Jacob,’ Mollie insisted. Tears crowded in her eyes and thickened her throat.
‘How is it different?’ His gaze suddenly swung back to her, pinning her mercilessly with its bleak truth. ‘How, Mollie? I saw myself just as I really am in that moment. Someone controlled by anger, who acted on the most base instinct—’
‘The instinct to protect your sister?’
‘I hit him as hard as I could, Mollie. As hard as I could. I punched him with all the anger I’d ever felt, all the abuse I’d ever taken, and—’ he drew in a shuddering breath ‘—in that moment, before he fell, it felt good.’
‘Of course it did,’ Mollie returned. ‘He’d been abusing you and your brothers and sister for years, and you never fought back.’ Her voice rose in an anger of her own. ‘Why are you defining yourself by that one moment, instead of all the other moments when you protected your family, when you did what was right and good?’
‘I have a dream,’ Jacob said in a low voice. ‘I dream of the moment when I hit my father—over and over again. I can’t escape it. And in the dream—you heard me, didn’t you? The night we were together. I laugh.’ His voice shook. ‘I laugh.’
‘It’s a dream, Jacob,’ Mollie said steadily. ‘Not the truth. Dreams distort reality, they make it worse.’
‘I scared you, didn’t I?’ Jacob said, gazing at her bleakly. ‘That night. I scare myself. I can’t let go of the anger—I feel it every night, when I have that dream. And that’s the truth of who I am.’
Mollie stared at him. He might laugh in a distorted dream, but now tears were running down his face, unchecked. Mollie didn’t think Jacob even realised he was weeping. And without considering what she was doing, simply needing to, she closed the space between them and reached up to put her hands on Jacob’s face, forcing him to look at her, her thumbs wiping away his tears. ‘Do you know what I see when I look at you, Jacob? I see a man who sacrificed everything—even his own happiness—to protect his sister. I see a man who, time and time again, showed how much he loved his family. I see a man who has so much compassion and concern inside of him that he would do anything—anything—to keep from hurting the people he loves.’ Jacob stared at her, unresisting, taking in every word. Mollie leaned forward, on her tiptoes, so her lips were a breath away from his. ‘I see the man I love.’ And then she kissed him; she could feel his shoulders shaking as she drew him towards her.
The kiss, which had started as a healing balm, turned into something hungry and urgent. Jacob’s hands cupped her face and desire leapt low in Mollie’s belly, scattering all the sorrow and regret.
Jacob softened his kiss, deepening it as his hands stripped away her clothes, buttons popping and scattering. Mollie fumbled with his tie, his blazer, his belt, kicking off shoes and socks and underwear until they were both naked, both breathless and desperate with longing.
Jacob drove into her in one deep stroke, filling her to completion as she pulled him even closer to her, wanting their bodies to be joined, fused from shoulder to ankle, the final healing.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, and he let out a choked sob. Mollie placed her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were still full of torment, an agony she longed to wipe clean away. ‘I love you,’ she said again, forcefully, and then there were no more words as the desire became too great, spiralling dizzily inside her, higher and higher, until with a cry she found her release, and Jacob collapsed against her, his face buried in her shoulder.
He rolled away from her almost instantly, his arm thrown over his face. Mollie’s heart hammered and her breath tore. She was naked and sweaty and sticky. She reached for him.
He shook his head. ‘No. Don’t.’ He took a few ragged breaths, his chest heaving. ‘You should leave me,’ he said at last.
‘No.’ She pulled at his arm. ‘I’m not leaving you, Jacob. Not now, not ever. I love you, and you love me. We’re working through this.’ Her voice shook and tears started in her eyes. ‘We are.’ He shook his head, a tiny movement, but Mollie felt it all the way through her. She pulled at his arm again. ‘Look at me, Jacob. Look at me.’ Finally he lowered his arm and gazed at her. In the darkness Mollie couldn’t see his expression. ‘I love you,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘I love you and I need you. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t think you’re doing me a favour, or the right or noble thing, by leaving, because you aren’t. Stay with me. Show me you love me by staying.’
Ever so gently Jacob brushed a tendril of damp hair away from her cheek. ‘I’m so afraid of hurting you,’ he whispered. ‘More afraid of that than of anything in my life.’
A tear slipped down Mollie’s cheek. ‘You’re a better man than you think you are, Jacob,’ she whispered. ‘So much better. You’re a good man.’
Jacob gave her the faintest of smiles, yet the sight of it made Mollie want to sing or perhaps weep with relief. ‘As long as you think so.’
‘I do,’ Mollie whispered. ‘I do. You’re worth saving, Jacob. Worth loving. And I love you.’
‘I love you,’ Jacob told her, his voice hoarse as he pulled her to him. They lay together for a long moment, neither speaking, a new peace settling over them. Yet even so, despite the relief flooding her heart that they had got this far, Mollie knew they hadn’t yet made it to the other side.
The memories were still there. The sorrow and heartache and bone-deep guilt.
As long as you think so.
Yet Jacob needed to think so too. He needed to believe—in himself.
As the darkness deepened around them, Jacob stirred and finally rose from the study floor. He scooped Mollie up in his arms, smiling as she curled into him, as contented as a cat.
‘I think we need a bed,’ he said, and she nodded against his shoulder.
The house was swathed in darkness as he strode down the hallways to the foyer, paused at the foot of the great staircase. He’d always hated this place, hated the mental image the stairs alone conjured. Annabelle bloody. His brothers weeping. His father dead. Yet now, as he stood there for a moment, the images didn’t rise up the way they usually did, and their absence gave Jacob a little flicker of hope. Perhaps the past could be forgiven. Perhaps Mollie was right.
Mollie looked up at him, her face open and so very trusting. ‘Jacob?’
He smiled down at her before mounting the stairs, and she curled into him once again.
Up in his bedroom he peeled back the duvet and laid her on the bed gently, as if she might break, though he already knew how strong she was. She looked up at him, still and waiting. Jacob slid in next to her and pulled her close.
The only time he’d spent the night with a woman in the past twenty years had been the night with Mollie in the London hotel. He didn’t let women close enough to see him vulnerable, to witness his sleep—or his dreams.
That night he’d been so buoyed with hope he’d risked it, with disastrous consequences. Yet now he knew there was no risk. Mollie had already seen him at his worst, at his most appalling and abject, and she loved him anyway.
She loved him. It felt like a miracle.
He rested his head on the softness of her hair and closed his eyes. He slept.
The dream came. Even as it attacked the fringes of his mind, Jacob felt resignation settle in his soul. He’d known this would happen. He was so agonisingly familiar with this dream; it had played in a relentless loop in his mind for too long.
Yet this time it was different. This time he wasn’t in the dream; he wasn’t even himself. He was a silent, invisible spectator, watching that terrible moment unfold like a scene in a play. He saw Annabelle huddled on the floor, his brothers begging their father to stop, tears in their eyes. He saw William, the riding crop raised over his head, and he saw himself.
It was strange, to look upon himself like another person, yet it also felt right. This was the truth, untainted by fear or uncertainty. He watched as his hands curled into fists; he waited, his own heart pounding, as he raised those fists. He saw his father raise the riding crop again. And then he watched himself hit his father. He heard that awful laughter.
Except it wasn’t a laugh, not the laugh of his dreams, that shout of manic glee that had tormented him for so long. This was halfway to a sob, a groan of despair and anguish over what he’d just done … what he’d had to do.
And in that moment he understood himself in a way he had never had before. He understood the anger and sorrow and even that brief second of satisfaction he’d felt when he’d hit his father, and he accepted it.
He let it go.
Jacob opened his eyes, coming awake with ease and peace. Mollie was still curled close to him, asleep. His own heart rate had slowed, and he wasn’t drenched in sweat as he usually was after the dream. He hadn’t laughed aloud. He hadn’t laughed at all.
He lay there, quietly, letting the feeling of calm acceptance spread through him. He felt different. He felt at peace. He drew Mollie close again and closed his eyes, and this time when he slept there were no dreams at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MOLLIE woke to sunlight and the heavy warmth of Jacob’s arm across her. She shifted, and his eyes flickered opened. ‘Good morning.’
She smiled, blinking the sleep from her own eyes. ‘Good morning.’ She gazed at him, his features softened into a smile, and she realised she’d never seen him look so relaxed before. So at peace. ‘You’re different,’ she said softly, and he smiled back at her.
‘I feel different.’ He captured her hand in his own and pressed it against her cheek. There could be no denying that this peaceful morning was a world apart from the shattered aftermath of last night’s revelations. Mollie chose not to ask Jacob why. Not yet. He would tell her when he was ready.
‘Come on,’ she said instead. She slipped from the bed, reaching for one of Jacob’s T-shirts, discarded on a nearby chair, and slipped it over her head. ‘I want to show you something.’
‘Show me?’
‘Outside.’
Once they were both properly dressed, fortified with a quick breakfast of coffee and toast, Mollie led Jacob through the gardens. The world was bathed in fresh, lemony light, the leaves of every tree a vivid green, glittering with dew.
‘You’ve done a marvellous job,’ Jacob told her as they walked along the neat, repointed paths, the flower beds well weeded, the soil freshly turned and black. ‘It’s like a completely new place.’
‘It is a new place,’ Mollie said firmly, for what had come to her through working in the gardens—and being with Jacob—was that Wolfe Manor didn’t have to suffer as a prisoner of the past, just as Jacob didn’t. Just as she didn’t.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘The Rose Garden,’ Mollie told him. ‘Although it doesn’t have roses any more.’ Funny, how difficult it had been to let go of the roses. It had felt, a little bit, like letting go of her father. That garden had been so much a part of him, so dear to his heart, and yet Mollie knew he would have approved of what she’d done. Henry Parker had always believed in gardening from the heart, with both passion and purity. He would have agreed the roses had to go, even though his heart would have broken just a little bit. And she hoped—believed—he would have liked the changes she’d made. She only hoped Jacob liked them.
‘Here.’ She stopped at the entrance to the old
Rose Garden, the hedges blocking what she’d done from Jacob’s view. She stood on her tiptoes to cover his eyes. ‘Don’t peek.’
She felt his smile against her hand. ‘Certainly not.’
Smiling back, her heart starting to beat just a bit faster, she led him to just inside the garden
. ‘Okay.’ She took her hand from his eyes. ‘Look.’
Silently Jacob surveyed the transformed space. Although the garden was still octagonal in shape, no remnant of what it had been remained. It was entirely new.
Mollie watched him take in the hand-crafted stream that marked the perimeter of the garden, and the little wooden bridge—painted red for joy—that spanned it. Slowly he walked forward, over the bridge, coming into the garden itself.
Nerves made Mollie speak, stumbling over the words. ‘I—I got the idea from you, you know.’
‘A Zen garden?’
‘Well, yes, but not just that. At the expo I read that one of the hallmarks of J Design is how each building reflects the spirit of the owner rather than the designer. And I wanted this garden to be like that—a reflection of you.’
Jacob turned to her, startled. ‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ Mollie said, smiling at Jacob’s surprise; he looked as if he could hardly credit anything being about him. ‘You’re the owner of Wolfe Manor,
Jacob. And you’re quite an amazing person, you know.’
He caught her hand, his fingers twining with hers, and drew her to his side. ‘Show me what you did.’
So Mollie did. She’d been nervous to over-explain all the choices she’d made in the garden, but with Jacob it was natural and easy to share her ideas: how she’d planted the plum trees as a symbol of resilience, since they flowered without leaf, and the pine tree as a symbol of strength. The wrought iron frog perched at a bend in the stream was a symbol of sudden enlightenment, and Jacob recognised it right away.
‘“Old pond, frog jumps in, splash.”’ He quoted the old Japanese haiku about sudden enlightenment softly, and Mollie grinned. ‘My epiphany came last night,’ he told her, drawing her close again, ‘thanks to you.’
He paused as they came to the main showpiece of the garden. Slightly off-centre, in a bed of raked sand, Mollie had placed eight stones. She’d chosen them carefully, from the one with glittering gold flecks that reminded her of Nathaniel’s acting talent, to the smooth, grey oval whose seamless surface made her think of Annabelle’s cool, collected persona. Yet the stone that drew the eye to the centre of the arrangement was the tall pillar of rough-hewn granite that presided over them all, a guardian, a gatekeeper, strong, silent, there. Always. She felt Jacob’s hand tighten around hers as he silently counted the stones, his gaze sweeping over them and taking in the significance of the arrangement.
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