This must be the first time I have wished these gardens were less elaborate…Rebecca could have made her way out the other side without detection, and Amelia would not have known. Still, she persevered, passing through a walled square of stark apple trees, a pretty square with a fountain and a bench, a square with sparse bushes that would bloom into roses in the summer, and the square where she had helped the gardener plant the crocuses.
Near to the center there was a larger square, where a small Oriental bridge arced over a koi pond. Amelia passed by the gate leading into it, having decided that she would search all around the edges before heading into the middle, when she spotted Rebecca.
The younger woman was sitting on the bridge with her legs dangling over the edge, her feet just above the water. She stared down at the still surface, unaware that she was being observed.
Taking a deep breath, Amelia pushed through the gate and made her cautious approach.
Rebecca’s head snapped up, but her green eyes—more hazel than her brother’s—were not as angry as Amelia had anticipated. Instead, they were rimmed with red, as if she had been crying.
“I am sorry to intrude,” Amelia said, pausing at the beginning of the bridge. “I realize I am probably the last person you want to see, but… I could not let you stay out here in the cold with nothing to warm you. Here, take this.”
She shrugged the blanket from her shoulders and offered it to Rebecca.
“I am not cold,” Rebecca replied stiffly, her tone marginally less dismissive than before.
Taking a chance, Amelia edged onto the bridge and walked to the middle, sitting down at Rebecca’s side. She left a polite enough distance between them, and when Rebecca did not immediately get up or tell her to go away, Amelia draped the blanket over the both of them.
For a while, they sat there in silence, gazing down at the fish that curved slowly through the water.
“May I ask what I have done to make you dislike me?” Amelia asked, at last.
Rebecca’s brow creased, her head giving the smallest shake. “It is not that I dislike you, Amelia.” She hesitated. “I do not know you.”
“And that is a problem?”
Rebecca shrugged.
“Did you not want your brother to get married?” Amelia pressed. “I realize that you must be accustomed to a certain way of existing, to certain people in your household, and I have disturbed that… peace, I suppose.”
Rebecca mustered a tight smile. “I am not as childish as my brother said I was. I understand how I must appear to you, but… it is hard to explain.”
“Might you try?” Amelia urged. “If I have done something wrong, I would like to remedy it. If I have a gap in my knowledge, I would like to fill it.”
The younger woman put her head between the slats of the bridge. “It is not you, Amelia.” She paused again, her frustration clear in the huff and puff of her breaths. “It is my brother. It is a matter of… what he deserves, and what he is unwilling to realize he deserves.”
Amelia could not deny the sting of the younger woman’s words, flinching slightly. Yet, it stood in stark contrast to Rebecca saying that it wasnotabout Amelia. Quite the contradiction, in truth, twisting Amelia’s already confused mind into tighter knots.
“He went away to war when he was barely one-and-twenty, just as soon as he graduated from Cambridge. He returned five years later, no doubt expecting things to be as he left them, only to find us all in disarray,” Rebecca said softly, as if she was telling the story to herself. “He fought for our country for all those years and had to fight again… for us when he should not have had to.”
Amelia kept staring downward. “What do you mean?”
I had forgotten that he went away to war. A war hero, if I am not mistaken,Her heart clenched at the thought, her mind conjuring up visions of him tossing and turning in the library, making those agonized sounds. She had read of soldiers who could not forget the horrific things they had seen on countless battlefields. Was that the root of Lionel’s nightmares?
“It is not important,” Rebecca muttered. “Just know that for the past two years—almost two years—he has given everything to ensuring that Grandmama and I are safe and secure and never have to want for anything. He has given his youth, his efforts, his health, his strength to everyone but himself.”
“And you fear I am seeking his fortune?” Amelia said, already preparing her answer.
But Rebecca shook her head. “Again, Amelia, it is not about you specifically. I am sure you are perfectly nice.” She puffed out a breath. “You see, my brother was a completely different person when he returned from war. He was not himself for… months, but his work distracted him, and… he began to recover in terms of his character, and… well, I thought we were just getting him—the old him—back, but then he informed us that he would be marrying for convenience and when I asked him why, he would not give me a true answer.”
Amelia did not interject, hoping that the silence would be enough to get Rebecca to continue.
“What is worse, Grandmama kept telling me that Lionel had his reasons, but she would not give me a true answer either, and I… feel as if I am missing some vital piece of information,” Rebecca went on, gripping the slats until her knuckles whitened. “Meanwhile, all I wanted was for him to be happy, for him to find love, and it… broke my heart to hear that he was choosing not to. That he was choosing to make himself unhappy and unfulfilled, when he deserves the entire world, and the greatest love that world can offer. It is still breaking my heart.”
With that, Amelia understood the younger woman’s outburst immediately. It wasnotabout Amelia, but what Amelia represented: an opportunity and a hope dashed. Rebecca’s dismissal of her was the reaction of someone in anguish, and perhaps some guilt, who could not remedy either.
“Did he speak of love before he went away to war?” Amelia asked quietly, deep in her own thoughts.
Rebecca sniffed, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of the blanket. “Honestly, no. He would dismiss it then, too, but I always thought it was because he was a young man who wanted to live his life before he considered such things.” She shook her head slowly. “But what young man wants toriskhis life? I have never understood that. He was already the Earl of Westyork; he did not have to fight, but he went anyway.”
