“Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped with a growl.
Sarah inhaled and then exhaled in an effort to keep her own temper in check. “Why do you fear his censure?”
“This horrible burden started the day he left me.” Finally, he lifted his head, and she gasped. In the fading light, his stormy eyes were clouded with so many emotions she couldn’t discern just one. “Yet he lingers like a specter, judging.”
It was worse than she could have imagined. Her gaze dropped to his throat. He didn’t wear a collar or cravat. His shirt’s placket gaped open. Tufts of dark hair peeked out. The strong column of his neck took all her attention, and she pressed her lips together to tamp the urge to sigh. She’d barely had a look at that same neck the other night, but he’d not bothered to unclothe himself before he’d bedded her. Shoving aside her wayward thoughts, she shook her head.
“You might as well dig deep and have it out. We are not leaving this maze until you make progress into being a better person.”
“I can’t.” Faint purple smudges beneath his eyes spoke of his inability to sleep.
“No, you don’t want to. This is no time to cling to your stubborn pride.” Daring much, Sarah briefly cupped his cheek. Since she’d left the house rather quickly, she’d neglected to bring gloves, and the prickles of his stubble tickled her palm, left her with a rising rush of awareness for him. “Haven’t you carried this weight for too long?”
“Yes, yet—”
“You’re naught but an arse if you continue to let the worries keep you prisoner.” Those words might prompt him into action.
Anger creased his features. He jerked away from her touch. “What do you know of it?”
“Enough that had you bothered to ask, I would have told you a week ago.” She wrapped a hand around her locket. “I went through some of the same emotions when my parents died. I felt hopeless, helpless, frightened. I was alone.”
He eyed her with suspicion. “How did you come out on the other side?” He clenched his fingers in the fabric of his shirt, his knuckles white.
“I didn’t let them control me. I decided that despite the gaping hole their loss left in my life, there was more living yet to do. That I had much to give.” She met his gaze. “I didn’t run away or stuff everything deep down inside me to fester like an infected wound.”
“But I don’t—”
“You do.” She sat back and stared at him. “Each time something new happens that shakes the foundations of your world, you bear the responsibility, and that anxiety is giving you these attacks. When that happens, you have no more room in your mind, your body, to hold on. Let some of it go, Andrew, else you’ll soon join your father, and I…” She sighed again and pushed her spectacles back into place. “I’d rather keep you in the land of the living for a while yet.”
“Why?” A terrible gasping sound followed. “You and I don’t get on well.”
She smiled, but it was small and tight. “Whose fault is that? Perhaps I’d like to see if any of that can change.”
Silence reigned for long moments, marked by the steady thud of her heartbeat. Then a wordless cry escaped him. He shifted his weight, buried his face in her lap, one hand twisting in the skirting, and he sobbed. Great gulping things that pulled at her heart and sent tears into her own eyes.
With nothing else to do, Sarah finger-combed his hair, stroked her hand through the tangled, dirty mass in the hopes of soothing him. “Tell me about your father. What is your best memory with him?”
“I was perhaps twelve. That summer we came out to Hadleigh Hall. Finn was nine and Brand was six, hardly more than a baby, but Father decided it was time we learned how to fish.” The words were muffled by her skirts and halting as he struggled to breathe properly. “There’s a pond to the north on the acreage. We all marched out there. Father had a line in the water. I was impatient back then.”
“You still are,” she murmured and continued to stroke his hair.
“I tried and tried to get a fish, but I never did.”
“What did your father do?”
“Chuckled and taught us how to skip rocks.”
“I’ll wager you weren’t pleased.”
“I didn’t want to do it if the fish weren’t going to cooperate, but Father said there was more to fishing than catching something on your hook.” Andrew turned his head and rested his cheek on her leg. “I always wondered what he meant. Now I suspect it was his way of escaping from the stresses of the title and trying to find calm.”
She caught her breath. This was an opportunity to go deeper with him. “What do you make of that, if it’s true?”
“I wonder if he struggled too,” he responded in a small voice.
“Of course he did.” Sarah continued to stroke his head. “Don’t you think all men who hold titles, who wish to make a go of it instead of being wastrels, constantly fight between duty and having time for themselves?” She brushed her fingertips along the side of his face. “Why do you think powerful men ride and hunt and fish when they come to their country homes? It’s to relieve some of that tension.”
He shrugged and wrapped his free arm around her lower legs. Tingles danced up her limbs from the point of contact. “I wish I could go back.”