The Scottish Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 6)

But she didn’t find him. He was doing a fine job of avoiding her.

He didn’t return to the vicarage until very late that night. When he came into his bedchamber, he cradled the single candle. He didn’t want to disturb Meggie. But Meggie wasn’t there. Mary Rose was, and she was sleeping right in the middle of his bed.

He made no noise, he was sure of it, but she sat up in bed, looking toward him. “Hello, Tysen.”

“Mary Rose. What are you doing here?”

“We are husband and wife. This is also my bedchamber. I will not be sent like an outcast to Melinda Beatrice’s room.”

“Nonetheless, I would prefer it if you slept in the other room.”

“No, I won’t

be banished to that dreadful room. If you cannot bear to have me near you, then you will just have to move in there yourself.”

Tysen set the candle down on the bedside table. He began automatically to take off his clothes, realized what he was doing, and stopped cold. He stood there, his hands at his sides, looking blankly at the bed that had his wife sitting in the middle of it.

“It is enough, Tysen,” Mary Rose said. She hugged her knees to her chest. “I’m glad you came back. No, I won’t ask you where you have been hiding. I was praying you would come back, and finally you have. Your brothers tried very hard to make things appear normal, but of course, nothing was normal. Even the children were quiet. They don’t know what’s happening, but they know something is very wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Tysen said. “Everything is as it should be again.”

She digested that, then said slowly, “I spoke to Samuel Pritchert this afternoon, when I gave up trying to find you. He agrees with you. He said to me that everything is as it should be again. He told me how all your flock would just as soon see the back of me, that they wanted you to become again the way you were before you came to Scotland, before you met and married me.”

He said nothing at all, just stood there, his hands at his sides. He looked very tired. No, he looked beyond tired. He looked deadened.

She didn’t know whose pain was greater in that moment, hers or his. “Do you want me to leave, Tysen?”

“You can’t leave. You’re my wife.”

“Do you really want to be that man I saw in church this morning who spoke of sin and corruption and moral laxity? The man who stood aloof from everyone, the man who looked so cold, so withdrawn that he could have been forged from stone?”

“That man is the man I was, the man I must be again. It is God’s will.”

“I don’t know that God,” she said slowly. “My God is loving, forgiving. My God wants us to laugh, to see the beauty of the world He created.” She shook herself. It didn’t matter. She said then, “I should have told you this before, Tysen. Perhaps now isn’t a good time, but I think I owe it to myself that you know the truth.”

Still, he said nothing.

“I love you.”

He flinched as if she’d struck him, hard. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “No, Mary Rose. Please, don’t.”

“You cannot even bear to hear me say that to you?”

“No.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, that does make a difference.” Without another word, Mary Rose left the bed. She grabbed her dressing gown, pulled two blankets off the top of the bed, and without another word, without another look at her husband, she left the bedchamber. Meggie was sleeping in the small sewing room at the end of the corridor. Mary Rose curled up next to her and finally, after a very long time, she fell asleep.

“It’s all over,” Max said the next morning. He was sitting against the wall, his arms dangling between his bent knees, two books open on the floor beside him. He looked defeated.

Leo said, “Papa is as he used to be again.” Leo wasn’t turning cartwheels or even standing on his head. He was stretched out on his stomach, his chin on his fists, and he looked ready to burst into tears.

“No,” Meggie said, from her perch on Max’s bed, “Papa is now even more than he used to be. Before, he wasn’t so distant, so set apart from us. He loved us and we knew it. Now he is so far away he can’t even see us.”

“That’s right,” Leo said. “Before, he would laugh, every once in a while. He hugged us once in a while. He even frowned when we irritated him. But now there’s nothing. It’s like he’s afraid to say or do anything that could be seen as not utterly serious.”

Mary Rose couldn’t bear it. She’d come in a few minutes before and listened to them. Now, she said, “Where are all your cousins?”

“They’re in the graveyard,” Max said. “Grayson likes the graveyard. He makes up stories about all the dead people. Even though it’s cold out there today, no one wants to miss one of Grayson’s stories.”