Page 57 of A Lady of Means
But when he went to reach for the pendant that she wore, it was different.It looked similar, only this time, when he turned over the pendant instead of an M, there was a D carved there.When he saw it, he pulled back, and she caught him by one of his thick wrists.He took her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“As good and honorable as you are, you need to know.And if you still want me?—”
He crushed her to him, his lips overtaking hers, showing her without telling her just how much he wanted her.As the carriage wheels rolled, they were pushed even closer together.She slid her tongue into his mouth, slipping it around his and drinking in the little sounds of pleasure she drew out of him.It was sweeter and headier than any wine.
He pulled back, then granted her one more chaste kiss at the tip of her nose that made her feel cared for, both sturdy and a little wobbly at the same time.
“You and your body and your words have my undivided attention, my lady,” Devyn said, making a show of crossing his arms and sitting up straighter on the carriage seat.
Moria wasn’t sure where to begin this tale, so she started at the beginning.“Marcus lured me with false declarations and promises and a hundred other things, but I didn’t realize until afterward how false it all was.The only thing that was real was that I meant and I believed everything I said, and I gave him my full heart.”
She swallowed, then nodded.“Marcus took, that’s all he knew how to do.He took everything that I willingly gave, without proposing to me.There was always some test of my love for him, some reason keeping him from offering for my hand.I didn’t see it for what it was,” she let out a long exhale and leaned more of her weight into Devyn.
“Or maybe, I also didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want them to tell me what I already knew: it wasn’t love.Love doesn’t…” She shook her head as a tear escaped.“Love doesn’t inflict words harsher than any slap ever could.Love isn’t lies and coercion.But in the end, Marcus was shot in a duel over some gambling debts.He was planning to marry me only if his scheme to make money fell through, and he made sure that I was thoroughly ruined so I would have no other choice and wouldn’t know until it was too late.”
“I’d rip the man to shreds if I wasn’t already too late.Why did you wear his initial around your neck?”
Moria paused, her hand on the window curtain, familiar hills rolling into view.Soon, they’d be at her family home, and the realization made it possible for Moria to take in a bracing breath.
“It wasn’t the loss of Marcus I mourned as much as the loss of what we had, the loss of our child.She’d have been turning three tomorrow.Had she lived.”
When she turned shadowed eyes upon him, she didn’t know what reaction she’d expected her words to garner from this gentle brute of a man, but his mouth fell agape.Belatedly, he closed it.Tears swam in his eyes, he reached for her like he wanted to hold her.He wiped at his eyes with the back of a hand, and then linked his fingers with hers.The tactile comfort was more than comfort, it suffused her with bravery, warm fingers covering the cold places inside of her enough to keep talking.
“This is what you were dreaming about?”
“It’s a dream, a memory I live over and over.Even when I start to hate him for what he did, I picture the end.The night I stitched him back together after my brother removed the bullet lodged in his side, and he never came to.I was so young and naïve that I laid in bed for over a day thinking I’d caused it myself.And then, at the funeral, no one knew I was mourning a man I’d….I’d loved in secret.At least, I thought that’s what it was.”
She couldn’t look him and her foolishness in the eye so she avoided both and looked away, shaking her head at her past folly.
“And then my mother found out my courses hadn’t come, so she whisked me away to a seaside cottage for “my health,” but it turned out that she was the one who was unwell.There she was with her wasting disease while I puked up my guts and whined constantly,” she dabbed at her eyes with the back of her wrist.His capable hand held her other one in his as she continued.
“One night I woke up and my sheets were soaked with blood.I thought I’d never stop crying.I was in so much pain.And I thought she was going to say, “maybe it’s for the best.”But she didn’t.She held me, and I held my little girl who never took her first breath in my arms.I wanted her, I wanted to be her mother, to show her such fierce love she’d never know the loss of a father, especially not a cold, hurtful man like Marcus.”
She watched the way a tear tracked down his cheek, not of sadness, but the pride in his eyes as he looked at her cracked her open even more.
“And she’s at Brookevale now?”he asked, his voice gentle.
“We buried her by the sea.And then my mother made me promise that I’d…” she choked on the words.“That I’d make the match of the century, that I’d spurn everyone who’d hurt me or talked behind my back.‘The only way forward…is through.’That’s what she told me, and I hear her voice, telling me that, all the time.”
* * *
Devyn satup straighter as the carriage wheels hit a particularly rocky jut in the road.She’d been- what?Nineteen?Twenty?- grieving in secret and carrying the child of a man who’d hurt her and tried to trap her before dying a grisly death.
He reached for her, and she let him hold her against his chest.The sound of her long, slow inhale against his chest unbalanced him.Nearly as much as seeing that pendant she wore replaced with aDinstead of anM.
“Your daughter…her birthday.That’s what had you so distraught.”
He could feel Moria’s throat bob against his collarbone, and then she nodded.
He wrapped his arms tighter around her.“I think you are very brave, Moria.”
She pulled back to study him.The setting sun through the window lit her golden hair and golden face, but there was wonder in her eyes directed up at him.“I don’t know that anyone has ever called me that before.”
She was so strong, had been so strong for so long, had no one ever held her and told her she didn’t have to be strong anymore?
“You are,” he wrapped a hand around her jaw, slipped it into her hair.“You are the strongest, bravest woman I know that you could take so many losses and build a life for yourself amongst the ruins.My strong, beautiful girl.”
“Your girl,” she repeated the words like she wanted to savor the taste of them on her own tongue.“Does that mean that you still want me?”
