“Of course I don’t hate you,” he said impatiently.
“But…”
“Go, Charis, now.” His voice fractured.
She couldn’t mistake his desperation to be alone. Although selfishly she wanted only to stay with him. The tumbled, lonely bed in the next room loomed like a gallows.
“Good night,” she whispered, her shoulders drooping.
He didn’t answer. Slowly, reluctantly, as if her feet were blocks of stone, she turned toward the door she’d left ajar.
One step. Two.
She didn’t want to leave him. She never wanted to leave him.
She was almost at the door when she heard a muffled sound behind her. An unfamiliar sound although she immediately identified what it was.
Stifling a horrified cry, she turned. He pressed gloved hands to his eyes, and his broad, straight shoulders heaved as he struggled for air.
Hands that itched to comfort him curled into fists at her sides. She longed to succor the man she loved with the warmth of her body. But that was impossible. Touching her body had driven him to this extreme.
She darted across to him, and, as she had last night, she knelt on the floor beside him. Unfamiliar discomfort stabbed her as she curled her legs under her.
In painful suspense, she waited for him to send her away. He was a proud man. He’d hate to know she witnessed this.
But he didn’t speak.
Perhaps he wasn’t even aware of her presence. It was torture to listen to him struggle against his weeping. He hardly made a sound. Only the thick, uneven rasp of breath betrayed his agony.
The iron control that had sustained him through Rangapindhi and beyond disintegrated. How blind she’d been not to realize the universe of pain he contained. She should have known. She wasn’t stupid. She claimed to love him. He’d told her about India. She’d seen what his ordeal cost his gallant spirit.
But only now did she truly understand the devastation that haunted him. His inhuman strength had delayed this moment too long. So when he finally broke, it was like a mountain cracked before her eyes.
From the first, she’d cherished a childish, flawless image of him. In this shadowy room, that image crumbled to dust. Gideon Trevithick wasn’t Galahad or Lancelot or Percival. He wasn’t an invincible guardian angel who appeared from nowhere to rescue her. He wasn’t indestructible and powerful and immune from weakness.
Helpless, hurting, guilty, she listened to the sound of his heart breaking. This man who battled so hard to dam his tears was all too human. He could shatter and fall and fail. He was fragile flesh and blood, and he’d suffered more than any mortal should.
Wrapping her arms around her raised knees, she stared sightlessly at the fire, the only light in the dark room. This wordless vigil was all she could offer. She was guiltily aware that what they’d done had initiated this excruciating outpouring. Her penance was listening to him struggle to smother his sorrow as if it were shameful or unwarranted. She wanted to beg him to stop resisting, to give in, to let the horrors of his Indian years finally receive their due.
He’d fought so long and so hard, and still he fought. His valiant heart wouldn’t surrender.
Slowly, the worst of his grief passed. Or at least the outward signs. His breath emerged more normally and not in broken, choked gasps.
After a long time, he spoke in a constricted voice. “This isn’t fair on you.”
She didn’t look at him but continued to rest her cheek on her upraised knees. Weariness and sorrow weighed endlessly on her. “I can bear it.”
They didn’t speak again. She thought after a while he might have slept, exhausted by his travails. She didn’t. Instead, she gazed dry-eyed at the dying fire.
Charis had loved Gideon Trevithick from the moment she’d first seen him. She’d loved his strength, his honor, his intelligence, his beauty. She still did.
But he’d been right to decry that love as a dazzled girl’s emotion. It was a hothouse plant, green and lush but unable to withstand cold winds from the real world.
The last hour had changed that forever. The last hour had changed her forever.
The love she felt for Gideon now was more durable than stone.
Fifteen