Or maybe it was because I already missed him so much, after only one day without him, that writing a letter felt like a painfully hollow exercise. It was no substitute for what I wanted, what I needed.
How funny that we’d spent so much of our time this last year apart, but now that everything with my aborted marriage was settled, I couldn’t bear to spend another moment without him. Even though I’d told him I wasn’t ready for an engagement.
What is wrong with me? I sounded like an insane person with my inconsistent and plaintive wailings, a disconsolate child that refused to be placated by any alternative.
So after a long, lonely night, my dreams full of Silas, I had made up my mind. I would follow him to his brother’s villa. If nothing else, it would show him that I did love him and I did need him. I went to my solicitor’s to inform him of the termination of my engagement with Hugh, which he’d already heard about. And he’d delivered some good news, at least.
“Not all of the board members are walking away,” he’d said with a smile. “A few of Cunningham’s closest are. But several of them are much more hesitant to resort to something so extreme, especially since Cunningham’s scandal has weakened whatever loyalty they may have had for him. And,” my solicitor had added with a smile, “Martjin van der Sant sent over a business contract late last night.”
“What?” I’d asked. Van der Sant had been so far out of my thoughts in the past twenty-four hours that it took me a moment to process what my solicitor was saying. “He’s still going to partner with my company?”
“There was a short note attached…apparently he was quite impressed by the personal fortitude you exhibited in protecting his daughter, even knowing that it would threaten your prospects.”
Birgit. While I didn’t doubt that he would have come to this conclusion on his own, I also suspected that his daughter had something to do with this.
So I’d signed the papers, sending a silent thank you to Birgit, feeling a fledgling hope about O’Flaherty Shipping, which would have a difficult winter, perhaps, but it would survive.
It would survive.
But hope had long since given way to fretful misery as I made my way down to Provence. What did it matter if my company survived if Silas didn’t want to be with me? What if the personal matter was just a convenient excuse he’d directed his butler to give me, and this was actually him trying to run away?
What if I got to the villa and he shut the door in my face?
It took three days for me to make it from Paris to Vaison-La-Romaine. Three agonizing days. And when I reached the hotel I’d planned on staying in, I went straight to the clerk while my things were unloaded.
“Could you tell me if there is a villa nearby rented by an English family?” I inquired in French. “Cecil-Coke would be the last name.”
The clerk responded in a French that was heavy with the southern accent of the Languedoc, and I struggled to parse out his words. “There is an English family nearby,” he affirmed, “though the gentleman there just died, I’m afraid. Cholera.”
My heart plummeted down to my feet even as my head raced to catch up. “A gentleman died? When?”
“It’s been over a week now.” The clerk thought for a moment, oblivious to my quiet panic, oblivious to the cacophony inside my head.
No. It couldn’t be Silas, he was so healthy when you saw him last.
But the timing’s right. And cholera works fast.
No. It can’t be him.
“And the gentleman’s wife died too,” the clerk finally said. “Before him. Fortunately, the children are all safe.”
God be praised! It’s not Silas!
I hated myself for the sigh of relief I heaved, because the moment I realized that it was Thomas and Charlotte who had died and that my Silas was safe, I also realized how crushed Silas would be by his brother’s death.
A personal matter.
That must have been why he rushed off without a word. Not because he was angry or hurt—though he may have also been those things—but because his world was ending hundreds of miles away. His world and the world of—how many nieces and nephews did he have? Four? Five?
Guilt crashed into me. This entire time, I’d perceived this as either an act of emotional self-preservation or, worse, an act designed to deliberately hurt me. And all along, he’d been wrapped in grief, wrapped in the grief of those small orphaned children, and Jesus, this made every sleepless night and lonely morning feel so fucking trivial. What were a few stray tears in comparison to this kind of loss? What was the pain of a shattered romance in comparison to the pain of a dead brother?
As easy as it was to pretend when we were together, the world didn’t revolve around us. The world was cruel and harsh and full of unexpected pain, and it had yanked Silas away without a care for my needs or even his. And I had been so petty and shallow and selfish to have never even considered that Silas’s trip had nothing to do with me.
I suddenly felt very small. And very stupid.
I arranged for a carriage up to the villa, my mind churning the entire time. It was as if I were King Lear, only too late realizing my destructive self-absorption and narrowness of my vision, and like Lear, I was close to madness and weeping. I’d been so focused on my company and on me, and how could I not see that Silas was the only thing that made me happy? The only person who completed me?
Why had I run away from my own happiness?
