She wound her hands together as panic raced through her, even though he clearly wished to assure her. “I do not know how I came across it, but I did, and I hope you can forgive me. I was not…”
“Catherine,” he cut in gently. “I know you too well. You’re not the sort to skulk about. Now, come here.”
She was surprised by the command. She’d half expected him to tell her to hie off, but she did as he bid.
He held his broad, strong hand out to her.
He let out a sigh, the sigh of one who was exhausted by sorrow. “You know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “How could I not? I saw the portrait in your office the morning after my first night with you in London.”
He nodded, his dark hair falling over his hard face. “Then you know that the only comfort I have is knowing that they are happier where they are. That they are completely at peace and that they are in no pain.”
She nodded softly.
“It is I who am in pain,” he whispered. “The only one who suffers.”
She did not know how to reply to that, and so she listened instead.
“Catherine, the pain of it was so terrible I nearly lost my mind,” he confessed quietly. “Truly, I thought I would howl away and be locked in a mad house or that I might do the worst and take my own life. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I have been told since I was a small child that if I did such a thing, I would never see my loved ones again after death, and I could not bear that idea.”
She longed to wrap her arms around him and so crossed to him, her slippers crunching over the fallen leaves. She dared to embrace him, but he grabbed her arms and stopped her.
“Catherine, I am afraid,” he bit out, his eyes shining with that fear. “You see, the grief that I held back for so long? It threatens to come out.”
“Then you must let it,” she said. “If you do not, you will be sick.”
“You don’t understand,” he ground out. “The force of it was so intense that if I allow it out, what if I can never stop it? What if—”
“Cease, Your Grace,” she soothed firmly, and then she grabbed his hands. “Stop, my love.”
She looked at the figures, the angels. “They would not wish you to drown in your grief, but nor would they wish you to hold it inside. You do them honor if you grieve.Honorthem. I will grieve with you. Here, together we can grieve for them and remember them. Please tell me. Tell me whatever it is you wish to tell me, and I shall listen to you.”
He stared down at her with a sort of horrified shock. “Tell you,” he whispered.
She nodded. “Yes, I would like to know about them because you loved them so very well. You must have been a wonderful father and a wonderful husband.”
He looked away. Again, tears slipped down his hard cheeks, and he dashed them away with his giant hands. “I could carry both of them, you know, over the moors. I had a special sack made up so that I could carry one in front and one on the back. And they were both old enough that they would giggle and laugh in the wind like you did the other day. I’m not trying to compare you to a child. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” she said gently.
“And when you laughed at the wind, it made me remember them. The way they had loved it,” he rushed, his voice picking up power and speed at the intensity of his feelings. “They had been so in awe of anything beautiful and wild. I can remember the first time I picked a flower, brought it to their little nose, and taught them both to smell. To take in the scent of the sweet flowers. Wherever they went after that? They looked for more flowers and they pointed and cried,Papa, sweet, sweet. We went everywhere together. I had no desire to be in London. This was where I wanted to be with my wife and my children, and I thought here in this pristine place that they would always be safe. They were not safe,” he rasped.
“They gave me so much joy,” he whispered, his face a mask of unrelenting sorrow. “I would toss them into the air and tickle them, and they would laugh. They would hug me about the neck. They were never afraid of me. They never expected anything of me. They loved me and I them. The night they were taken… I could not face the world. I could not face anything. I screamed and shouted and roared. The force of it—I think the servants were afraid I had lost my mind.”
He swallowed, the muscles in his throat working. “I think Everson thought that I was going to run out of the house into the moors and throw myself off a cliff into the sea, and I was tempted. But someone had to keep their memories alive. Someone had to light the candles.”
She caught her breath. The candles in front of the portrait, the candles in his room, and she looked now at the crypt and spotted the long tapers lit near the folds of the angels’ cloaks.
“You hold their spirits, don’t you?” she asked.
He nodded.
She squeezed his hands and leaned towards them. “We shall hold them together.”
He met her gaze then, and what she saw shook her.
“I am afraid, Catherine.”