Page 76 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
But the world had begun to fade for Eleanor, the tunnel of light darkening as she read the words, scrawled in his upright hand with black ink on white paper.
I am sorry. I can’t. Forgive me.
It was happening again, only this time he was doing it himself, without excuse.
She tried to grab at the chair beside her but the world had shrunk and with only the barest of sighs she sank down into the oblivion that was claiming her.
She came awake with both Jacob and Rose kneeling around her, their faces full of shock and disbelief.
‘If this means what I think it does, I am going to damned well knock Bartlett’s head right off his shoulders.’ Her brother’s voice was harsh and Rose was trying to calm him, but her other hand was shaking as she sought Eleanor’s.
‘There must be a mistake.’
‘No mistake. I know Nick’s writing and it is his hand.’ Jacob roared this out.
‘Did you have an argument?’ Her sister-in-law’s words were whispered, almost unhearable.
‘An argument?’ Eleanor could not understand what she meant.
‘For Viscount Bromley to break it off like this and after you returned in the early hours this morning?’
Shaking her head, Eleanor swallowed, a retch of sickness threatening at the back of her throat.
She could not believe it. She had let herself trust Nicholas Bartlett only to be abandoned summarily and completely and left to deal with the consequences all over again.
My God, how foolish could she be? How gullible? How very duped?
And yet even now, lying here with the smelling salts under her nose and sweat upon her brow, she could not understand how it was all a lie. And that was the worst of it. Her belief in him. Her never-ending absolution, the mercy of the damned.
She felt both broken and repaired even as she thought it, her own heart hardening around the softness she had admitted to him, relegating it to a lesser place, resolve filling in around the cracks.
It was over this time. She would never trust him again and she was only glad he had not become better acquainted with Lucy and that the secret between them would not now impact on the very happiness of their daughter.
‘Don’t hurt him, Jacob.’ She took his hand and held it close. ‘You have to promise me you will not hurt him.’
* * *
Much later she crept into the room of her sleeping child and sat on the chair beside the bed, simply watching her breathe. They had been on their own for years and survived, just the two of them. They had not needed another to make their lives whole and good and they most certainly did not need Nicholas’s interference confusing matters.
They would survive.
As she pulled the blankets back into place over the sleeping form, Lucy’s eyes opened, looking straight at her in that particular place that lies between sleep and wakefulness.
‘I love you, Mama, for ever and ever.’
‘Till a million years,’ Eleanor said back in the way they had done ever since she could recall.
‘And then one more,’ Lucy returned, the smile on her face fading as her eyes closed.
Always one more, Eleanor thought. Eternity and one more. One more chance. One more night in his bed. One more betrayal. The tears that she had been holding on to all evening fell then in wet runnels down her cheeks and she simply sat in the light of the banked fire and did nothing at all to stop them.
