Still, she could see Nicholas—exactly where Louve had said he’d be. No statue or grave marker, no matter how grand, was as dark or forbidding as the man towering amongst them.
Two hands gripped a statue’s base, and his head was bowed between his arms. To anyone else he’d look to be praying next to his father’s grave. However, his father was buried inside, under the chapel’s great stones, not outside, battered by the elements.
It could be freezing here at night, with nothing to buffer against the wind. Nicholas, bent against his father’s memorial, looked like a man braving harsh weather. To her, he looked like a man shoving a broken plough through rocky ground.
‘You shouldn’t have come here.’ Nicholas’s resonating voice, tinged with pain, reverberated across the cold stones.
Refusing to feel pity, she ignored his grief. Still... ‘We sent you a message.’
He raised his head, but did not stop gripping the statue’s base. As if he held it up...or maybe it supported him. Whatever the reason, the tightness of his hands was visible to her, but not his expression. It took a moment longer for her eyes to adjust and then she realised it wasn’t only the darkness making his gaze unreadable...it was something of himself that was unknown to her as well.
‘I don’t want to talk of Roger,’ he said.
Conflicting emotions seemed to be battering him. There was pain there, and anger, confusion and something else. She ignored all that at his words. There was only one reason he didn’t want to talk about Roger. Because he didn’t care.
‘Of course you don’t.’
‘Your meaning...?’
‘You don’t deserve to know my meaning.’
He pushed himself off the statue and rose to his full height. His will seemed to reach out to her and she brushed it aside.
Turning away, she said, ‘It seems colder here than anywhere else.’
She only made a few steps before he said, ‘How many more are there?’
Ignoring him, she took a few more steps. Her reason for coming out here was to talk of Roger, but Nicholas had made it clear that wasn’t what he wanted.
His standing next to his father’s memorial and not the new headstone of his friend should have been an indication of how futile her coming here was. He obviously still worshiped his father’s desires above anyone else’s...even his own.
Or maybe she had never really known what Nicholas’s desires were. She’d always argued that he followed his father’s desires and never his own. Maybe his desires were his father’s, and it was she who was blind.
It was an old argument, and one that she’d thought was put to rest after she’d married Roger. It should have been put to rest—and yet here she was walking through the night to face him again. It hadn’t yet been a full day into his return.
Another step away, and still Nicholas’s gaze collided against her. She ignored him, but couldn’t ignore her own curiosity. What did he mean by how many? How many deaths?
Biting back a sound of frustration, she pivoted to face him. ‘How many what?’
Nicholas was only a few steps away. She hadn’t heard him following her and wasn’t prepared for him to be so close.
It didn’t matter that it was only moonlight illuminating them because he was no longer in the monument’s shadows. So when she turned she surprised him, and glimpsed his expression before he shuttered it.
‘How many other children, Matilda?’ he asked.
There was a whirling darkness in his gaze, a furrow between his brow. His shoulders hunched as if he’d taken a fist to his guts. She’d thought the emotion gone before he’d uttered his question, but it wasn’t. He was in agony.
His pain had to be feigned. For the last three years his correspondence had been only perfunctory and infrequent. He had never enquired about his tenants or his friends.
He had never answered her letter to him.
Trying to gain distance, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and watched his lids flutter closed for a moment, as if her action affected him. She wouldn’t let him affect her.
‘You want to talk of my baby?’ She wanted to shout. ‘Are you concerned that a widow with children will deplete Mei Solis resources? Or, more precisely, that I won’t be able to do my duties as bailiff? That your linens won’t be clean enough or I won’t be able to settle disputes for you?’
The wind buffeted them, but his words pounded against her. ‘Isn’t it you who is concerned with linens and the depletion of precious Mei Solis resources?’
Like some spoiled, selfish shrew? Not her. She wasn’t his stepmother, Helena. She’d begged him to stay, to tear down Mei Solis and live a simpler life. Instead he’d left to bring more riches, making it very clear to her what he deemed important. So she had married another.
And yet he accused her of this?
‘After all these years...’ She only just held back the urge to kick him. ‘This is what you want to say to me?’
Nicholas opened his mouth. Closed it. And she felt the satisfaction in that.
Until he said, ‘Does it feel like I’ve been gone years?’
His voice was low, contemplative. She knew immediately how to respond to the judgemental, accusing Nicholas, but not to this man. Rubbing her arms against the wind, ignoring his steady gaze, she gave his answer some thought.
How long did it feel? Like centuries and like just yesterday. Especially since he’d brought up everything from the past simply by returning. It didn’t matter how much time, it mattered what was felt.
And she shouldn’t be feeling anything for him. No matter what his presence here meant. She’d married another. Loved and grieved for another and was now carrying his child.
‘Your absence has no bearing on what I feel. You were gone six years and that’s the truth. What we care for or feel matters not.’
‘I care very much.’
Judgement, accusation, and now lies. ‘For what? In three years I have heard nothing from you, and you’re here now—’
‘I’m here now because this is my home.’
More lies. ‘Don’t give me sentiment. This property is your income.’
There was a curve to his lips, but his fingers flexed as if to release tension. ‘It is my home.’
Which didn’t give him the right simply to return and order them around. She bent and scraped some of the almost solid soil into her palm. When she stood again, she tossed it at him. ‘This is yours—the rest of us are not.’
He suddenly became as dark as the soil still clinging to her fingers. ‘You made sure of that.’
‘I?’ She brushed the soil off, desperate to remove all traces of his property from her body. She wanted no part of any of this. ‘I had nothing to do with your leaving or your staying away.’
‘You had everything to do with it.’ He took a step forward, leaning towards her as if he meant to plough her down. His queue was loose, his hair whipping in the wind. ‘Everything! You who—’
He didn’t say any more, but she’d heard enough.
A mere day since he’d returned, their first conversation, and it was nothing but barbs and jabs and not anything she could possibly understand, even though she had been a part of it all.
Except... She’d made promises that weren’t part of what had been between Nicholas and her.
She’d