Page 161 of Between Despair and Hope

“Dagger at my father.” I glared at him, but kept my mouth shut as his lips kicked up in a crooked smile. “Elora does it too. She threw her practice sword at Dewalt last week. She claimed it was an accident, but I could tell it wasn’t.”

“I wish I could say that didn’t sound like her.”

“I can’t believe how much Highclere she has in her. But when she makes the same faces I make? Gods, it stops me in my tracks every time. It’s more often than I’d like to admit that I wish she looked like me. Just so we’d have known sooner, but also because half the time I don’t believe she’s mine.”

“Why don’t you believe she’s yours?” My stomach tightened.

“Relax, Em,” he said, brushing his knuckles against mine. “I have not a single doubt in my mind that she’s mine. I just can’t believe I’m this lucky. It’s all so new, I have to remind myself every day. Don’t you worry that pretty head of yours.”

“I’m sorry. Your mother—”

“Speaking of my mother,” he interrupted. “I know thinking about it is going to send you into a tailspin of stress and anxiety. Can I redirect you to something else regarding her? It’s about Crown Cottage.”

“Oh?” He was right. I didn’t want to talk about how horrid she’d been during his absence.

“When I went back to Ravemont and found out you were gone…” I winced as he continued, nonplussed. “She was staying at Crown Cottage. We only slept there one night after I found out about you. She stayed up that entire night and did something for me to make me feel better.”

“You told her about us?”

“She knew I brought your ring with me that day.”

“This ring?” He nodded. “You’ve had it this whole time? What were you planning on—Rain,what?”

“I told you I came to my senses, dear heart. After you wouldn’t see me that fall, I went and tried to get my head straight for a while. But when I realized what I should have known all along, that I’d been a fool, well, I wasted no more time. I suppose it would have been the summer after Elora was born. I was going to make you my bride—whether you liked it or not. But you were already gone.”

“You held onto it?” I whispered.

“Obviously.”

“For over a decade?”

“Well, what else was I going to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Give it to someone else? Sell it?”

He laughed, brows pitched up incredulously. “‘Here, Ven. A ring for the woman who has ruined me for all others. But you can wear it if you want.’”

“Alright, fine. But you still could have sold it or given it to the treasury, or, I don’t know—”

“I wore it around my neck for a time. Does that count?”

“Gods, Rain.”

I stopped myself. In that moment, I felt horrible for how much he’d been affected and the lengths he’d gone to while I was throwing myself into raising Elora to avoid thoughts of him. He was performing grand gestures, and I was evading. I had my fair share of lonely nights, the profound ache of my broken heart, but I tried to hold myself together and raise an ornery little girl. Shame and guilt took root, and my gaze settled on my lap. How could I deserve him when I’d tried so hard not to think of him?

“What’s this about?” he asked, tilting my chin up with a fingertip. Gods, that cursed bond.

“Nothing.”

“Em,” he growled in warning.

“Nothing. I just—” He used his fingertip to turn my head toward him, and I sighed. “I just feel ashamed. You were getting rings made, going to Ravemont to make these dramatic declarations, and I was just in Brambleton changing nappies and teaching her letters and trying not to think of you. I feel bad about it, that’s all.”

“I hurt you, Em. I said things I can’t take back. I’d all but sent you away. Of course, you tried not to think of me. What’s important,” he grinned, face lighting up as he continued, “is that you failed at it. I know you thought of me despite your best efforts.”

“That’s true,” I relented. “Still.”

“Our past has framed us and made us better. It was hell, but now we’re here.” He pulled me into him, and I rested my head on his shoulder. “You got us off topic, my wife.”

---