He took hold of her hand, but before they reached the door she looked around, but obviously couldn’t see what she was looking for.
“By the way, Sebastian, what poem were you reading?”
“One from a book of poetry. I can’t remember the name of the poet, but she wrote some pretty powerful words about love. If you’d pushed that book in properly, I’d have never have seen it.”
He kissed her, and she sighed. She stroked his cheek with her thumb and then gently shook her head. “What book was it?”
“The poetry book you’d been reading here in the library. You hadn’t pushed it far enough in.”
She gave a half-laugh. “I never go into your father’s library. I have my books upstairs in the old nursery.”
He frowned, baffled. “Did your mother read the books in the library, then?”
She laughed. “Mother never had time for reading.” She frowned now, sensing his disquiet. “Why?”
How could he explain? He shook his head and forced a smile. “No reason. It must have been my imagination. I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“I thought that maybe you’d used the library.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”
“No.” She screwed up her face. “I remember when we first came to Richmond, Charles told us not to enter the library. That it was his space. Years later, I remember asking my mother about his need to keep the place to himself and she’d said something about it having memories which he liked to keep separate from his new life.”
“Memories? What kind of memories?”
She narrowed her eyes and blinked as she tried to recall. Then she suddenly looked at the portrait. “Maybe it was connected with the portrait.” She withdrew her hands from his and walked over to the portrait of Charles which Sebastian had been looking at earlier. She reached up and he helped her take the portrait down from its pride of place. To his surprise there was another small portrait hanging beneath it. One of his mother. It wasn’t grand, but tender and softly drawn, revealing all his mother’s gentleness and all of her beauty, wrapped together as if they were inseparable. He swallowed down a lump in his throat.
“I didn’t know that was there.”
“It’s always been there. I asked for his portrait to be placed over it. I’m sorry. I didn’t have the heart to remove your mother’s, but I missed Charles and wanted him back in the library where he spent so much of his time. I guess he felt close to her here.”
“I guess,” he said, approaching the portrait and blinking quickly. He turned away abruptly, unable to deal with the wave of emotion which had engulfed him. He glanced across at the book, suddenly understanding. This place had been a shrine to his mother. It had beenherpoetry book. He looked around the room, seeing it differently now. The strange placement of the desk, opposite the chaise longue which was placed by the fire. The decorative shawl placed over the chaise. Maybe his mother had lain there during her many hours of sickness and read poetry while his father had worked, until his mother had died and his father had turned his bitterness and anger outward, hitting out at the world and his sons.
But his father had broken the cycle now. Charles Richmond had brought him and Indra together, knowing that they needed each other. It was his last gift, a gift of love to perpetuate love. After all, wasn’t that what life was all about?
Epilogue
As Indra looked around the wedding reception, she reflected on how very different, this time around, her wedding to Sebastian had been. She might be wearing the same dress as last time—although it was tighter around her five-month baby bump, might be in the same church and marrying the same person, but now they were surrounded by the people they cared for—the estate workers and her brothers-in-law, Alexander and Harrison. This time, everything was right, she thought as she looked up at Sebastian, who’d continued to hold her hand from the moment she’d walked up the aisle.
“I hope you’re going to let me go at some point,” she said, lifting their joined fists.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’ll let you go whenever you want me to. Say the word and you’re released, because I never want to see you hemmed in, controlled, kept out of the light, again. You’re too important to me to hide away.”
As if to emphasize his point, he released her hand but she didn’t move. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and tugged her to him.
“And you’re too important to me to be released from you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
Suddenly there was a shout, and they both turned to see Alexander prize the cork off another champagne bottle and the cork bounce off the ceiling, spraying champagne over the woman with whom he was flirting.
Sebastian shook his head.
“What’s wrong?”
“My brothers. They’re what’s wrong. I don’t think any woman is safe when Alexander is around.”
“Except me.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed possessively. “He wouldn’t dare make a pass at you.”