She nudged the papers on her desk. Now that the symphony was done, she wasn’t at all sure what to do with herself. Rising from her seat, she shoved the papers into the center of her desk and lifted the front lid to enclose her work inside. “I believe I’m done with composing for a while. Perhaps I’ll go for a stroll.”
She hesitated a moment, and then, before she could talk herself out of it, went to her vanity to retrieve the pocket watch Hunter had given her. A walk in the garden, she decided, might be just the thing to distract her from the heartache she no longer had a way to vent now that she’d finished the symphony.
After twenty minutes of meandering along the gravel paths without giving a single thought to the flowers, trees, and bushes around her, she was forced to admit that a walk in the garden was an entirely ineffectual means of distraction.
The pain was relentless. She feared it always would be. Though she knew time could heal a great many wounds, in that moment it seemed impossible that she should ever feel truly happy again. She needed Hunter too much. Loved him so deeply it made even the most poignant romances she’d read in her novels now seem hopelessly shallow. And she would, without doubt, always love him in the same way.
Not too many years ago, had she proclaimed to Evie and Mirabelle that such a love could exist, they would have teased her good-naturedly and informed her that she was being fanciful. And not too long ago, she would have laughed and admitted—if reluctantly—that they were right.
But she wasn’t being fanciful now. She wasn’t insisting she loved Hunter with every fiber of her being because she wished to love Hunter with every fiber of her being. At the moment, she’d have given nearly anything to feel less for him. How could she not, when he hadn’t a fiber of love to spare for her?
Battling back tears, she stopped to sit on a stone bench, and reach into her pocket to pull out the watch. She traced the gold inlay with her thumb and felt the watch ticking, steady and sure, beneath her finger. For the life of her, she couldn’t explain why she’d taken it out of her vanity. She wasn’t using it to keep a consistent tempo of any music. She’d simply wanted it with her. She wanted to feel the steadiness.
That’s what Hunter wanted too, she thought dully—steadiness, certainty, constancy. It was what he had gone without as a boy, and it was what he needed now.
She’d offered him a love that constant. She’d offered to beg, for pity’s sake. She closed her eyes as a wave of humiliation washed over her. Oh, what had she been thinking?
That I love him.
That I’d do anything for him.
That I wanted him never to doubt either.
Surely he couldn’t have doubted after that. Except…she had left. She’d walked away as he’d stood there, watching her from the steps. She’d gone even after he asked her—albeit in a very roundabout sort of way—not to go. She’d left him, just as his aunt had, and Lizzy.
It was different, of course. He didn’t love her as he’d loved his aunt and Lizzy. But it was the same, in that she was supposed to be someone who loved him, and she’d left.
“Oh, dear.”
But what else could she have done—remained at Pallton House, pretending to enjoy the house party as if nothing was wrong? As if he’d not broken her heart? Besides, she’d only gone to Haldon, not Australia. He must have understood she was only going away a little and only because he’d hurt her.
She rolled her eyes at the ridiculous qualifications. A little? What difference did a little make? What difference did it make that her reason for going away was valid? She had still claimed to love him in one minute and left in the next. How was he to understand and trust that the love she offered was constant from behavior such as that?
She should have waited a little longer, should have taken the time to make certain he understood that she would always love him.
Perhaps she should explain herself in a letter. No, that would never do. She wasn’t certain she could convey what she felt in a letter, and like as not, receiving a letter from her would only reiterate the fact that she was some distance away.