Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,108
lips parted soundlessly. She tried to form his name. She couldn’t.
“You once asked me why I wanted you. And what I told you were, in fact, the reasons I love you. The point of you, Delilah, is like the point of . . . the sun. Or a breeze on a spring day. Or a hawthorn, even complete with its thorns. You are funny. And passionate. And clever. You are perfect as you are, and you make the world better simply by being. You are so beautiful that my heart has never quite beat the same way since I saw you. There is no one else like you, of that I am certain, and you know that I am always right.”
Her fingers dashed at her eyes, which were inconveniently blurring and obscuring her view of Captain Hardy. She gave a short laugh.
“It takes enormous courage to be kind in the face of so many reasons not to be,” he said. “I think that the reason the world contains people like you and people like me is so that I can keep you safe should your kindness land on people who do not deserve it.
“But all of those things do not quite add up to reasons why I love you. So . . . I wrote a poem.”
Her mouth dropped open.
It was very likely the last thing on earth she expected to hear. She saw the faintest hint of a smile at her raw shock.
“Somewhere, in the annals of time, these things—poems and that rot—had their purpose. You can buffer a good deal of anguish of feeling with words. It makes them easier to deliver and digest, perhaps. And so I tried. But every word was like a drop of blood squeezed from a wound. I failed. It is a terrible poem. Eleven words was the best I could do. But it is yours. I ask that you read this after I’m gone.”
Astonishingly, he laid a sheet of folded foolscap on the table before her.
She stared at it, wordlessly.
Words seemed superfluous in the face of miracles.
And then he stood up slowly, and looked down at her, his eyes burning as if he were branding the image of her onto his soul.
“I will bear the loss of you, Delilah, as I have borne other things. I will bear the fact that you don’t love me. But just as we are only born once and only die once, I know I will only love once. And if life is ever unkind to you, I want you to remember that you are loved, and maybe take some comfort from that, even if we are oceans apart. I know that you never again want to be at the mercy of any man. Know that I am at your mercy, now and forever.”
He reached into his coat.
And, very gently, laid on the table before her a little paper-wrapped bouquet of daisies.
And while her own eyes were awash in tears, she heard his footsteps across the foyer and the door shutting behind him on its well-oiled hinges.
She couldn’t move for what felt like a full minute. What need of words does the sun have?
She gathered the daisies to her and buried her face in them. They received a veritable shower of tears. And then she sniffed and tossed her head and rubbed her eyes, because she wanted to read that poem.
And with shaking hands she unfolded the sheet of foolscap and read, in writing tall and bold as ships’ spires, as tall as a man who could easily reach the sconces:
Your eyes
your lips
Your heart
my heart
I am undone
“Oh.” The sound escaped her. Pure wonder and pain.
She was, suffice it to say, undone. The foolscap rattled in her fingers and she laid it gently down lest her tears blur the words.
She gave a start when Dot tiptoed in and plucked up the daisies to put in a vase filled with water.
She didn’t spill a drop.
Then Delilah looked up and discovered she was surrounded. Everyone had heard him leave and had crept in.
“He loves you, Lady Derring,” Dot breathed.
“He’s a good eater,” Helga said.
“I miss him,” Delacorte said. “He’s funny.”
“He can reach all the sconces and open the door at night if you go and get him,” said Angelique, not succumbing to romanticism.
Apart from her damp eyes.
Delilah rose. “Dot . . . come upstairs with me. I will need my pelisse. And I need your help with something else I want to do first.”