Bound by Bliss (Bound and Determined #2)(79)

“Love does last. I know you have seen it. Do you really think Swanston and Louisa’s love will end?” His words rumbled around her.

“I hope it doesn’t, but I fear.”

“Why do you fear? One has only to see how your brother looks at her to know he would rather die than let any harm come to her, and she looks back at him with the same expression. I tend to be cynical, but nobody can deny their love or that it will last.”



She pushed the blindfold from her eyes, needing to see Stephan. If only she could be as sure as he about her brother and his wife, could know the future, maybe then she would have faith. “I wish I could be as sure. It is not that I doubt my brother, and I certainly do not doubt Louisa, but life is not smooth and easy. You say that Swanston would rather die than have anything happen to Louisa, well, what will happen if that does happen? Or if she does not survive childbirth? How will my brother go on without her? Love ends. I want no part of it.”

“But what if he does not die? What if she has many healthy, beautiful children?”

“Then they will be lucky. I have never been lucky.” That sounded so awful. Anybody looking at her, thinking about her, would think she was one of the luckiest women in the country. Rich. Titled. Beautiful. The world was hers. And yet she knew it was all a lie. As the words leaked from her lips they carved themselves into her heart.

“How can you say that?”

“How can you deny it? Everything I have in this life has cost me. Love has never brought me joy, only pain.” Her whole being ached with the truth of those words. Opening herself to them was like a mortal blow.

“I do not understand.” His voice rumbled around her.

She was quiet for a moment, feeling the words rise within her, but unwilling to give them air, to give them reality. She let the blindfold slip back over her eyes. It was easier when she was locked in her own private world. “I was hardly more than a baby when my mother died. I should probably have been too young to miss her, too young to remember her, but I was not. She had been my world up until that point. I loved her and she loved me. I sometimes think she was made up of love, love and fun. No matter how many of us children there were she always had time, always found a way to let each one of us know that we were the center of her world. There could be months after a pregnancy did not end happily that she would be removed from us, but even then if I snuck into her room she would greet me with a smile and kiss. I did not know the world could be different.



“I knew my father was an oddity even then. If he had not been a duke some might have questioned his sanity, but he was always fun. He had the best schemes and would play with us like he was one of us. I think he often believed that he was still a child. He certainly never had any need to act the adult. My mother loved to laugh with him. They could laugh with such joy that it would fill a room, if not the whole house.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

And it had been. She wanted to weep for how wonderful it had been. “It was. I know that Swanston will talk of how dinner was never at a set time and so often the roast was overcooked or still raw. He will remember dogs running through the halls and the year my father decided that it was too cold in the stable for his favorite racer. The house was as apt to smell of animals as lemon polish. Actually I am not sure that I remember it ever smelling of lemon while my mother still lived. Roses on occasion. She did love flowers, but most often it smelled of whatever creature my father was obsessed with at the moment. But I stray. My point is that for a brief slice of time it wasn’t just wonderful, it was perfect.”



“Then…”

Before he could say more she cut him off. “And then she died, then she left me. One moment I was turning cartwheels in the courtyard, dreaming of learning to tumble and spin all the way across the stones, and the next my mother was dead, lying flat on the pavement only feet away from me. Did you know that I was there? That I waved to her as she stood on the balcony eager to join our play? That I saw her face before she crashed down? I went from perfection to hell in less than a second.”

“I still do not understand why that should make you afraid of love. I would think it would make you treasure it more.” He rose up on an elbow and looked down at her.

Despite her lethargy she felt anger begin to simmer in her belly. Why did he need to understand? Why did he even want to? It was not his life. “Because she left me. She taught me how wonderful love was and then she took it away. And she took it away from my father too. Swanston thinks she killed herself. He doesn’t believe that she just fell from the balcony. He thinks she jumped. I heard him whisper it once. I’ve wondered for years, tried to remember every nuance of her face before she fell—or jumped. I remember seeing her, watching her smile as she tried to walk along the railing like a tightrope walker. We were all playing circus. She just wanted to join in, didn’t she? Could she really have jumped? Could she have left me deliberately? Could life have been so bad that I was not enough, that my father was not enough? Before her death some might have considered him odd, but it was a normal type of odd. He still kept the account books, took his seat in parliament, remembered to wash between playing in the stables and attending a ball. After her death he didn’t do anything. He went from being a father who cared to one who didn’t notice if I stood in front of him and screamed. He didn’t care about anything except that she was gone. She might have been the one who died, but I lost him too. And then Swanston went to school and he left me. He came back changed, cold and stern. I’ve never had a love that lasted. I am tired of the pain. I do not want any more. I want a good husband, whom I will care for and who will care for me. I do not want to love him and I do not want him to love me. Life is easier without love.”