Page 63 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
The trouble of it was that Felicity could no longer say with any certainty that those things which Nellie had thought were untrue. Hewaskind. Hehadbeen generous. Far more so than he had ever had to be. “I was so angry. I’ve been angry for years, really,” she said. And bitter. And so, so verycold. “I’m still angry to have been so manipulated. That he snatched the school away from you.”
But what remained wasn’t the sort of anger that it once had been. It wasn’t that long-nurtured grudge that had burnt her heart within her chest, the one she had mired herself in for so long that she had despaired of ever freeing herself of it. The shackles of the past had come loose at last. At some point they had rusted and cracked and weakened.
Until they could be snapped with only the quiet sincerity of an honest apology, so many years overdue. And it had soothed a part of her soul she’d long thought she’d locked away, unreachable. How different her life might have been had she been able to hear it earlier, had every critical lesson of her young life not taught her to guard her heart closely.
Only now…now there were the loose links of a new chain in her hands, built of fresh resentments. Ian’s Machiavellian scheming stood between them still. “The trouble of it is,” she said softly, almost to herself, “I think I would most like…notto be so bloody angry.” Did she truly wish, now, when it felt as though she might have a fresh start held in the palm of her hand, to cast it aside? Only to bind herself to a new grudge and drag the weight of it around with her for the remainder of her life?
“Oh, Felicity.” Nellie’s chin trembled in sympathy. “You don’t require my permission to forgive. You have just as much a right to your happiness as anyone else.”
“I don’t know that I know how to be,” Felicity said. “Happy, that is. I don’t suppose I know how to—to trustsomeone else implicitly. Can such a thing be learned?”
“Most anything can be learned, dear. But trust is the sort of thing that must grow.”
“Like a garden.” One carefully-tended year after year. It didn’t hurt now, to think of it. Instead of the instinctive lash of ire, there was only…curiosity. What might it look like when the winter frost had gone and spring arrived? Possibly it would look like that sketch he had kept all these years, and which she had burned in the fireplace. But she thought it might also look like love laid out in neatly-manicured rows and woven into wisteria vines.
“Yes. Exactly like a garden.” A soft sigh. “You never had occasion to meet my husband. He left me a young widow; far younger than I would have preferred.” Nellie gave a fragile smile. “But we had ten years together and I wouldn’t trade those years for anything in the whole of the world.”
It was hard not to feel just the tiniest bit jealous of it. “It must have beenwonderful.”
“Oh, it was—most of the time. We had some dreadful rows, the two of us. There were times when we hurt one another’s feelings, out of stubbornness, or fear, or grief. Times when we nursed petty grudges or were altogether too willing to quibble over things which, in retrospect, were not nearly so important as they seemed.”
“And you reconciled?”
“Every time,” Nellie said. “Every one. Because even when I was angriest—whenhewas angriest—we never doubted our love for one another. Even when I found my feelings bruised, I knew he would never have hurt me by design. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage, my dear. But perfect is the enemy of good, and had I insisted upon perfection, I might have foregone the best ten years of my life. What we had, he and I—it was more than good. It was glorious.”
And all it had taken to achieve it was the grace to forgive. To trust in that love they had shared to carry them through the difficult times.
“We all stumble from time to time,” Nellie said softly, gently. “I think the trick of it is to extend the grace you would hope to receive. To assume the best rather than the worst whenever possible. My husband never gave me a reason to regret it, God bless him. And I always knew—I always knew he did the same for me. Even when it was most difficult. Perhaps especially then.” A small smile wreathed her lips, as if she were recalling with fondness some private, treasured memory. “I could always trust in him,” she said, “to lift me up when I had fallen, even if only from his good graces. So you must ask yourself…can you trust your husband to do the same for you?”
Felicity stared down into her tea cup, and thought, with an odd little skirl of shame, of all the times just recently she had lashed out at Ian, hurt him…andmeantto do it. “Yes,” she said, in a hoarse little croak.
That hand which he had never stopped extending to her—it had always been extended along with forgiveness. Unasked for, unappreciated, and yet offered without hesitation every time. Yes. She could trust him to assume the best of her, even when she had not earned that privilege.
Perhaps he deserved the same of her. At least an opportunity to address these new grievances he’d given to her. It felt a significant realization, the extension of that trust to him. But trust was a commodity she had never had in much supply.
She hadn’t even extended it in full to Nellie. It shamed her, just now,given that Nellie had championed her at every opportunity. “I always expect people to leave me,” Felicity admitted in a whisper. “I always expect to be abandoned, to be left behind—even by those closest to me. I don’t think I’ve ever truly trusted anyone in the whole of my life.”
“Oh, my dear,” Nellie said. “That is such a lonely way to live, don’t you think?”
Yes, it was. She’d spent most of her life lonely, in one fashion or another. “I don’t know anything different,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “And I have got so many secrets,” she confessed. “I’m so afraid that you’ll leave me, too.”
“Sweet girl. That will never happen.” Nellie rose from her chair and rounded the low table set between them to perch lightly upon the couch beside her. “I wish I had told you so much earlier,” she said on a gusty sigh, “what a hash I’d made of my finances. I was so afraid you’d think poorly of me, so afraid to lose your good opinion, when all along…all along I ought to have known that my secrets would be safe with you.” She placed her hand gently over Felicity’s. “Just as yours will always be safe with me.”
“I never wanted to burden you with such things,” Felicity said. “But you deserve to know them, and I—” A choked sob shredded her throat. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“There, there.” Nellie’s thin arm slid around her shoulders. “You were never a burden. You have always only been a blessing. Whatever your secrets, dear girl, they cannot change the fact that I’ve known you half your life. I know you really are, and that is every bit as much a daughter to me as if I’d given birth to you myself.”
I know who you really are. Ian had said those very same words to her, and he—
He hadn’t flinched from it. From any of it. She had laid into his hands a weapon forged of her past, given him a perfect excuse to turn away, to leave her once again. And he’d stayed. Not reluctantly, not against his better judgment. But freely and without reservation.
She should have given Nellie that same chance ages ago. Now, at last, the reward seemed worth the risk. “It’s quite a long story,” she said. “Have you got the time?”
“For you?” Nellie gave a light laugh, pressed Felicity’s head to her shoulder. “For you, my dear girl, I have got all the time in the world.”
∞∞∞
“Felicity.” A warm hand curled over her shoulder beneath the rumpled fabric of the counterpane, squeezing gently. “Wake up, darling.”
