Beauty in Spring (Beauty #1)(14)

Twisting my fingers in her hair, I bring her passion-spent gaze to mine. “Marry me, Cora.”

On a soft sigh, she wreathes her arms around my neck, burying her fingers in my hair—as if to make certain I can not look away. Her blue eyes slowly clear as she searches my face. “Do you mean, marry you and stay here forever in an empty house, with a husband who hides away all day?”

Her words are like fangs tearing open my throat. “I do not hide. With these paintings, I can hold on to everything that has gone. I can keep alive everyone that has gone.”

“And in the meantime, everything they left behind—and everything they built—falls to ruins, destroyed by your neglect.” She releases her grip on my hair and gently traces the line of my jaw. “Is this what you offer me, then? A husband who remains mired in the past instead of looking toward the future?”

I have not much of a future to look toward. But perhaps it is not my future that matters. With a burning lump lodged in my throat, I ask, “So if this estate were as it was before, would you marry me then?”

“Release me and perhaps you will find out.”

Never. The beast’s response remains trapped in my aching chest, but it is no different from mine. Because I never want to let her go.

But I have to.

Softly she asks, “Will you give me the key, Gideon?”

“No,” I tell her hoarsely, though it is a lie.

Because the only other choice is to see her hurt. Better that she runs from me. Better that I die.

If the price of her freedom is to give my own life, I will pay it.

But not yet.

“Well, then.” With tears pooling in her blue eyes, she lets her legs drop from around my waist and gently pushes away from me. “We have nothing else to say. And you have given me no reason to ever marry you.”

Except that I love her. And that I have always loved her.

I don’t think she would believe it, though. Not when I keep her here, chained to me. That is not love, she would say.

And the cost of proving my love is to die. But perhaps there is another way to show her.

In despair I watch her leave the tower, then listen to her retreating steps, to the slithering of that cursed chain. The beast rages at me to follow, but he is at his weakest now. The new moon rises tonight.

She has been at Blackwood Manor for two weeks. Two weeks remain until the moon is full.

So I have two weeks to give her reason to marry me. Two weeks to hope that everything I do will make her love me in return.

Or two weeks until I let her go…and watch her run away, taking my heart—and my life—with her.





3





Cora




I wake up the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday with sun streaming through my bedchamber’s sparkling windows and warming the gleaming floor. No more dust. No more cobwebs. Two weeks ago, Gideon threw open the manor’s gates—then hired nearly every handyman and housecleaning service within fifty miles to come and polish the interior of the house into a shining jewel. Gardeners and landscapers have transformed the grounds. Those have not been restored to their former glory—only time will do that—but the air of neglect is gone. Flowers provide bursts of color and perfume and new sod has been lain, the spring grass as green as Gideon’s eyes.

Only the south garden was left untouched because, as Gideon told me, that garden is mine.

All done to persuade me to marry him.

Every night, he asks me. Every night, I long to say yes.

But the chain still circles my neck, and if I accept his proposal just to buy my release, then I will be saying yes for the wrong reasons. A woman should be free to choose to marry. Not choosing to marry because that’s the only way to be free.

So I give Gideon the same answer—that I will tell him after he releases me. And each time I give that answer, the brilliant light in his eyes seems to fade. As if with every night that passes, he loses hope that I’ll ever accept him.

But he has also not touched me since the day in his tower, so perhaps it is not only his hope that fades. Perhaps his desire for me is waning, too.

A thought that claws at my heart, digging into my chest until it hurts to breathe. Miserably I curl up beneath the blankets, picturing the version of Cora in his painting who is already free and awaiting Gideon in his bedchamber, eager to love him with her body and soul.

The Cora who stayed.

I would stay. But staying means nothing if I don’t have the choice to go, and although the gates are open, the chain still would not allow me to pass through them. So he has to release me first.

But I’m beginning to think he never will.

A gentle tug at the back of my neck brings me out of my miserable cocoon. I poke my head out from beneath the blankets.

Wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, Gideon stands at the entrance to my bedchamber, his brooding gaze fixed on the chain wrapped around his fist. “You were not at breakfast, so I followed this to find you.” His eyes lift to meet mine, and concern warms his gaze as he studies my face. “Are you well, Cora?”

He doesn’t need to follow that chain to find me. Somehow he always knows where I am. It’s another part of the mystery of this new Gideon, who is at once the boy I loved and a stranger I’ve fallen for all over again. This new Gideon who can rip apart solid oak, and who somehow possesses the key to a magical golden collar with no lock.