might be more likely to give it based on how you act. If you’d never shown a bit of remorse, I might have been far angrier. But you were a child doing your best. It was an accident. You never meant to cause harm.”
More likely to give it based on how you act. He had acted as if he wanted to be forgiven; he knew that. It had always been the deepest, most impossible desire of his heart.
Until recently, when his familiar guilt became mixed with desire. Hope. Longing for something sweet and true, not merely for the lifting of pain. He’d wanted Rowena, a life with her. Had he acted as if he wanted it? She’d all but said she loved him, then wavered as he tossed her feelings aside.
Howard seemed to take Simon’s silence for doubt. “You need to hear the words, then?” His familiar features, now rugged with the addition of thirteen years, creased with an expression that was not quite a smile. “I forgive you, Thorn.”
He put his hands on Simon’s shoulders—one unmarred, then, deliberately, the twisted and scarred hand—and looked him in the eye. “I forgive you. I forgave you long ago.”
Simon had expected to feel forgiveness in a wash, like a baptism. Or like a weight lifted, like floating with glee. But instead, it was relief. It was the easing of an old knot. It was a slow, bubbling lift in his spirits.
It was remembering who he’d always intended to be. Maybe who he’d already become without even realizing it.
It was gratitude. It was grace.
Howard clapped Simon on both shoulders, then withdrew and looked at him knowingly. “Bodies heal more easily than hearts, don’t they? I expect you’ve suffered more than I since the first months after the accident.”
Simon nodded, the movement halting. He thought he’d fled to freedom, but he had never truly been free. He’d shaped his life around leaving, fleeing, guilt, atonement.
Rowena was the only one who knew the truth about Simon and still thought he was worthy, he thought. But it seemed Howard had extended him the same grace. And those two—both with their challenges, their determination, their unwillingness to give up—gave Simon courage. He wanted to be better for them.
And he wanted to be better for himself. He didn’t want the sort of life where he was always on the run. He wanted to plant roots, to grow the sort of life he’d never dared imagine for himself. One where he belonged in a place.
To a person. In a family. Doing meaningful work.
“Father McCrone mentioned,” Howard drawled out, “you’re a musician.”
“I—yes, sometimes.” Simon blinked at the turn of subject. “I played the horn for a while. I worked in a luthier’s shop, too.”
“I’ve a daughter. Amelia. She’s twelve years old and loves music.” Howard eyed Simon speculatively. “If she stays in this village, she’ll do no more than offer lessons on the pianoforte for a pittance.”
“Would she like doing that?”
“She might.” Howard looked away, across the main street. He squinted into the afternoon sun. “But I don’t know if I like that for her. She should try…more.”
“As you never had the chance to?”
“As I never had the inclination to,” Howard corrected. “If I’d never had the accident, I’d still have finished my apprenticeship and stayed here. I just would have finished it sooner. And you’d have left. You simply would have left later.”
“I wouldn’t—yes, I would have,” Simon agreed. He’d always wanted something different.
Howard smiled. “You were always going to leave and wander, but maybe you’d have felt you could come home when you wanted to.”
“You saw all that?”
Howard waved his hand. “All of it. I’m a homebody. You’re not. At least, not for village life.”
“I just needed to find the right place. And I think…I think I have. I think it could be home.”
“In London?” Howard turned sharp eyes upon Simon. “Then why are you still here?”
“Because I wanted forgiveness.”
“I told you. From me, you have it.” So readily, the words came from the older man. “Now, how about from yourself?”
It had taken this: chastisement, a smile, the tale of a home and wife and daughter. Out of guilt, Simon had paused his own life and set himself to wandering. But Howard had not allowed the accident to do the same to him. He had everything he’d ever wanted.
If anyone’s life had been ruined that day in Lines’s forge, it hadn’t been Howard’s. How selfish Simon had been, to send money and not give anything real. What a