Page 47 of It Happened in the Highlands
“I can’t. You must hear me out.” More than anything else, he wanted to move across and sit beside her. Take her in his arms and ask for her forgiveness. But he couldn’t. Not when there was more that needed to be said.
“My youth, my pride, my assumption that you wouldn’t be able to survive unless I was there to act as your protector led me to the selfish act of walking away. I decided for both of us that you’d be much better off without me, without our marriage. And I did it poorly. I allowed myself to be rushed by my parents’ cold arrogance and their opposition. But I can’t lay the blame at their door. I bear the blame. In the end I was really only thinking of my own well-being. I wanted to be done with it all, to walk away and lick my wounds in private. As if I were the one injured by all that happened. The way I left you, Jo, was wrong and hurtful. I know I caused you more heartache than you ever deserved.”
* * *
Since the day she’d arrived at the Abbey, Jo thought her heart would break if they spoke of their past. But she’d been wrong. Two hearts were at stake here.
As he spoke, raw emotion was laced into each word. His frustration over the situation they had been facing was still so alive to him. She saw it in the set of his shoulders, in the turn of his head, in the searching gaze that constantly returned to her face. He’d carried the blame for so many years, and she knew she could not allow that to continue.
“Two young people were involved, Wynne. Two,” she repeated, forcing the words past the knot in her throat. She paused, summoning her strength and willing herself to continue.
His hand reached for hers and their fingers entwined. He always knew when she needed him. Whether it was in a ballroom when malicious rumor was destroying her or in the ward of an asylum when she found herself faced with the Barton family’s hostility.
“Over the years,” she said, “I’ve looked carefully at my own actions and my own character. In the eyes of my family, I was the person injured, the one left behind, the victim. But as I’ve searched my soul, I’ve come to realize that I was greatly responsible for bringing an end to our engagement.”
Wynne started to deny her assertion, but this time Jo silenced him.
“I was timid, ashamed of my past. And I allowed the rumors and the innuendo and the slander to affect me. I withdrew rather than challenging the hateful people who spread the poison.” She met his troubled eyes. “My excuse was that I had no firm ground to stand on. I didn’t know what was true myself, so how could I fight the lies?”
Long after their breakup, Jo continued to avoid confrontation with the rumormongers. In her mind, she always found a way to diminish the insult, back away, and retreat into silence. It pained her now to know that she’d forced the men in her family to become that much more protective. To this day, no one dared whisper a word about her in the presence of Hugh or Gregory or her parents. But when they weren’t present, the behavior of many others of their acquaintance was quite different.
“I know that in my hesitation to fight the insidious backbiters so prevalent among the ton, I hindered you from defending my honor and speaking up for me. I wasn’t strong enough myself, and I rendered you helpless too.” She spoke the truth that had taken her years to see. “I know now you could never stand by and allow that. I asked you to be something you could not be. In doing so, I pushed you away.”
His hands were warm when they closed around her icy fingers.
“You can say all you like, but the blame still lies with me,” he said. “I was young and impatient. I was nearly mad with thoughts of war and dying, and I couldn’t think past tomorrow. When the orders came that I would soon be sailing, I panicked. My duties would not bring me back for some time, that I knew. What would happen if we married and you found after I left that you were with child? I certainly didn’t trust my parents to treat you as they should. And what would happen if I died at sea? I had more questions and insecurities than I could convey.”
“We were both so young.”
“But rather than giving you a voice in what our decision should be,Ichose for both of us.Idecided that our marriage would be a disaster.”
And yet, Jo thought, she would have made it work, even in his absence. She loved him and what she wasn’t willing to do for herself, she would have done for him. But there was no point in saying any of that now.
“I wanted everything to be ideal,” Wynne continued. “In the rashness of my youth, I thought if I couldn’t make things perfect, I couldn’t subject you to what I was certain would be a harsh reality. It took years for me to realize that the ideal is a goal, but falling short of it is not always disaster. To be honest, I still struggle with it when it comes to Cuffe and his life here in Scotland. I had to learn all over again who my son was. I needed to remember his mother and what she would have wanted for him.”
He sat back.
Jo kept her eyes on his face. Wynne’s apologies had been on behalf of a youth who’d proclaimed his love to her and then faltered. Since that time, another woman had helped him grow into someone better. What she saw now was a man firmly in control of his own destiny.
“Will you tell me about Fiba?”
He stirred in the seat. A moment of unease darkened his expression.
“Pray forgive me. I’m not asking to pry into your life. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You should know,” he told her, relaxing. “When we met, Fiba had been married to an English naval officer but was recently widowed. I was taking command of theCarnatic, which was being fitted out for duty at the time.”
Wynne’s gaze moved to the window, and Jo almost felt the groundswell of memories rushing back at him. Cuffe was an extremely handsome child, and she could only imagine how striking his mother must have been.
“She came from a Maroon family, and in spite of being part of English society during her marriage, she maintained her allegiance to her people.”
Jo knew that the number of those like Fiba in Jamaica was only a fraction of the multitudes enslaved there.
“Cuffe comes about his fighting nature honestly. After Fiba and I became involved, I realized she had another life from the one she lived openly. I closed my eyes to what I saw. She was relaying to the Maroons living in the Cockpit information about the traders and the plantation owners.”
“She was so brave,” she said admiringly. How different her life had been from Fiba’s. How meaningless her aspirations were to a champion like Cuffe’s mother. “I can understand why you would turn away from your family to marry such a special woman.”
His intense blue eyes found and held her gaze.
