The Perfect Arrangement (The Not So Saintly Sisters #4) - Annabelle Anders Page 0,47
to his feet, he felt much older than his five and twenty years. Was this what marriage did to a man? No, this was what having a headstrong younger sister did to him.
And a wife. God help him, and a wife.
“You will allow me inside?” Remorse swept through him when he noticed that her face was tear streaked. Bernadette was not a girl who cried often or easily.
In answer, she pulled the door wide, allowing both he and Horace to enter. Before Christian could sit down, or even ask, she flung herself at him, sobbing. Instinctively his arms wound around her and squeezed.
How had Lillian known that she needed him? He wasn’t even sure himself what he had done.
“You are going to die!” Bernadette muttered against the fabric of his cravat. “You are going to leave me alone, and you won’t even talk to me about it! How could you, Christian? You are all I have left!”
He stilled but then hugged her even more tightly against him.
This was what he’d done wrong.
He could not explain to her that he had no control over the future. There was nothing he could do to escape his fate. The fact that he was attempting to sire a son seemed even more ridiculous. What would he have said to Calvin, or to Abron, or his father or mother for that matter, if he’d known they would die soon?
He’d have begged them not to. He would have held onto them tightly and not allowed them to sail, or duel, or… do much of anything.
Wasn’t that exactly what he’d been doing to himself?
“You cannot leave me, Christian.” She sniffled as her sobs finally began to subside. “You cannot.”
“I won’t.” His voice caught as he made a promise he could not keep. “I’m sorry, Bernie.” He kissed her atop the head. “I didn’t realize you knew.”
“Of course, I knew! I heard the first night you brought it up, with Cornelius and Lord Middleton, the night of Calvin’s funeral.”
She had known for that long? “But how…?”
“I’m not a child,” she insisted. And then more ruefully, “I was hiding in the secret room, behind the bookshelf.”
Christian nodded. Of course, the two of them had hidden there together as children when Calvin and Abron told them to go away. He and Bernadette had spied on their older brothers on more than one occasion.
He’d greatly underestimated the ingenuity of his sister. In his own despair, he had left her in the care of her governess and to her own devices for too long.
“If you die, Christian, then I must die too! I don’t want either of us to die! I want to have a season next year. I want to marry one day. I want… so much more. Don’t you?”
Suddenly, his heart raced, and a thin sheen of perspiration broke out on his forehead and upper lip. The urge to tap his foot was strong but he abstained, knowing how much Bernadette hated it.
“You will not die if I die.” He struggled to form the words, almost as though cotton filled his mouth. “That’s preposterous.”
He could not imagine his beautiful sister meeting the same fate the rest of their family had. He would not imagine it. In fact, he’d never allow such a thing.
“But it is not! If you die, then I know that I shall too.”
Could love be stronger than the curse he’d been living under all his life? Because he knew, with every fiber of his being, that he would not allow his sister to die.
“I won’t let you die, Christian!”
Could her love do the same for him? Was love enough? He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, but for the first time since he’d identified his brother’s lifeless body, he began to see a glimmer of hope.
Was it possible that Lillian could come to love him? He’d not been alone in his feelings. She’d felt a similar magic, he’d wager…
…his life?
He wondered how powerful love would be… and for some reason, he remembered words from long ago, words from the bible? Words his mother had recited… Words about the power of love.
‘Love hoped in all things, it believed in all things, it never failed…’ He frowned. What had Lillian told him the day they’d met together with her mother?
“I am relieved to know that my husband did not lie to me. Even more importantly, I am greatly relieved to know that you are not suffering. Physically, at least. It broke my heart to think of you in pain.”