Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson

Chapter 39

One Year Later

I hope you enjoy the little tokens I have sent you. I know they are not much—bird feathers and shells and the sketches I made on my journey. But each little token is sent to you with the hope that you will not forget the sister who has always loved you. Is Cook taking care of your atrocious nails? Are you still watching out for Cora?

I have not seen many cats here, but there are many other strange animals, like monkeys and tigers and birds of every color. Aunt Charlotte and I have moved to a hill station along with many other British subjects to try to find some relief from the summer heat. You have never known heat like this, Ollie. I feel it in my bones. Surprisingly, I find I do not mind it, although I sometimes do think longingly of the cool ocean breeze at Blackmoore.

Do you ever hear news of Sylvia? Or Henry? Do be good for Mama and Papa, and I will write to you again soon. Perhaps someone can help you write back to me. I do long to hear of home. I miss you.

Love,

Kate

It was my fifth letter to Oliver. I had not heard back from him yet. But that was not wholly surprising. With the time it took a letter to travel by ship to England and then for an answer to travel back, it was not a surprise that I had yet to receive a letter from England. It did not stop me from watching eagerly, though, every time a ship came to port and mail was delivered.

“Are you ready to go yet, Katherine?” Aunt Charlotte walked toward me, swinging her bonnet by its ribbon, a wide grin on her face. India had been good for her. She had always been an optimistic soul, but here she was utterly, lavishly happy.

“Yes. One moment.” I sealed the letter, addressed it, and grabbed my bonnet as I hurried out the door.

Aunt Charlotte leaned close to whisper, “There. In the branch of the third tree to the right.”

I focused on the tree she pointed out. We had become quite adept at our little pastime. Aunt Charlotte had keen eyes, but I had better ears for their songs.

“I don’t see it,” I said, after looking for several moments. “What color?”

“Black. Glossy, iridescent black, with almost a hint of blue. A forked tail. Oh, how lovely.”

My eyes caught on a movement—a stirring in the tree—and my heart suddenly leapt within me. It pounded furiously as I kept my gaze trained on the dark bird perched on the branch.

“I know this bird,” I whispered. “I saw it at—”

A call suddenly interrupted my words. Low, high high, low low. The bird’s tail twitched, and it sang again. Low and high and low again, sweet and clear. I closed my eyes and tried to think of what this bird sounded like, but all I could think of was the music room in Blackmoore and Henry reaching into the cage and watching the bird fly as high as it could. It sounded like freedom and flight, and at the same time it sounded like death—like broken feathers and a limp body at the bottom of a cage. It sounded like Blackmoore to me—low and high and high and low again. The bird sang again and again, and every time those high notes rang, I knew the song would end in a low note. It would always end in sorrow. It would always die. The fall would always come, no matter how beautiful the high notes of its song.

I brushed my hand across my eyes, then cleared my throat and said, “You know, the heat is a bit overwhelming. I think I’m finished with bird watching for the day.”

Aunt Charlotte glanced at me with a sharp look. Her keen eyes missed nothing. I was afraid she would ask me a question I did not want to answer, but today she did not. Today she simply smiled kindly and said, “It is unbearably hot. Let’s go find some cool refreshment, shall we?”

Our chilled lemonade was served to us in the shade of a large umbrella on the veranda, where many of our new friends were also enjoying some afternoon refreshment. I sipped on my lemonade and tried not to think of my dark bird or Blackmoore or Henry, but the more I tried not to think of it all, the more I did. This had been my great struggle over the past year. It had not been difficult to be relieved and happy to be free of Mama’s influence. It had not been difficult to enjoy my aunt’s company and to delight in the foreign land we were discovering. But it had proved immensely difficult to quiet the constant ache of loss.

So pervasively did thoughts of Blackmoore plague me this day that at first I thought I had imagined the mustached gentleman who was walking toward me.

“Miss Worthington. I thought that was you. So you did come to India after all.”

I stared at him, shocked beyond words, and found my voice only when Aunt Charlotte nudged me with her elbow.

“M-Mr. Pritchard! What a surprise!”

“Indeed. I didn’t think you would actually follow through with your scheme.” He looked no more happy than when I had last seen him. He certainly didn’t look excited to see me. At his pointed look I recalled my manners and introduced him to my aunt. He gave her a curt nod, then said, “I have something to give you. It’s in my quarters. I never thought I would actually see you here, but I promised him that if I did, I would deliver it. I will have a servant bring it to you. Good day,” he said abruptly, and walked away before I could collect my wits.

“Well. He is quite lacking in social graces,” Aunt Charlotte declared, sipping her lemonade as she watched him walk away.

But all I could think about was what he had to give me and who it might be from. I stood and paced the length of the veranda, in and out of shade, and felt every part of me tremble with nervousness. When a servant finally approached me holding a salver, I nearly tripped over my own feet in my eagerness to take the letter he carried.

I hurriedly thanked him, my heart leaping in my chest at the familiar handwriting declaring that this sealed letter was for Miss Kate Worthington. Aunt Charlotte stood with an indulgent air and said, “I suppose you will want to read your letter in private. Come. I will accompany you back to our rooms.”

I was too full of dread and hope and nervousness and fear and pained excitement to do more than nod and hurry ahead of her. Once inside my room with the door shut, I sat at my writing desk and examined the letter. My gaze traced the elegant slope of the letters composing my name. Henry had been the only person to call me by my chosen name. In this moment, holding a sealed letter, everything was possible. And nothing in the entire world looked more beautiful to me than that elegant K-a-t-e.

My hands shook as I broke the wax seal and carefully unfolded the paper. My heart fell with disappointment as my eyes skimmed over the page. It was a very short letter. But it was something. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my racing heart and finally I could bear the suspense no longer. I opened my eyes and read:

My dearest Kate,

How long did it take Icarus to fall to his death? I feel I am still falling, and I fear I always will. I will never reach the end of this grief, this longing for you, this suffering. Others may change, but I never shall. I have loved you for as long as I can remember, and I shall keep loving you and wanting you and missing you, forever.

Henry

My heart was lurching about in my chest like a crazed thing. I could hardly see the writing through the tears that welled up. Blinking hard, I looked frantically for a date. October 12, 1820. October! That was nine months ago! That meant he wrote this letter four months after I left. He had loved me for four months, at least. He had loved me even after I left him.

I read the letter over and over and let my tears splash onto my gown without bothering to try to wipe them. Nine months ago he had written this and sent this to me. Oh, to know what he thought and felt this instant!

“Is it good news? Or bad?” Aunt Charlotte stood in the doorway.

I wiped my cheeks. “I hardly know.”

I went through the rest of the day and evening in a distracted daze. I couldn’t stop repeating the words of Henry’s letter to me. I couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes. I couldn’t have a conversation with Aunt Charlotte. And when evening came, I lit two candles and placed them on the pianoforte and spread out the music that Herr Spohr had given me. I played it until darkness enveloped the room, and Aunt Charlotte bade me good night, and the moonlight splashed through the tall windows. Then I sat on a chair and looked at the moon, and I thought very hard about choices and freedom and exactly what I had given up to come here.

It had been the right decision for me to run away. I knew that with even greater surety than I had known it one year ago. But, oh, the sacrifice! It was a burden I carried with me always. India had not disappointed me—not in the way I had feared it would. It had granted me the freedom and the power of independence I had longed for so fiercely. Aunt Charlotte had granted me that. But life in this world disappointed me—the life that required giving up my heart for the sake of my soul.

Sleep eluded me all night, and at breakfast Aunt Charlotte peered at me over her cup of tea.

“You look terrible, my dear,” she stated.

I grimaced. “I didn’t sleep all night.”

She set her cup down carefully. “Hmm.” Resting her chin on her hand, she gazed at me over the table with a keen look that made me feel very transparent. “It might help to turn your attention to other men. Fill up your heart with someone else.”

I shook my head. There was no question of that. If I couldn’t have Henry, I didn’t want anyone. Besides, I had left my heart with him. It was not that my heart was empty and needed filling up—it was that my heart was absent. It had been thoroughly, irreversibly claimed.

“Well, then, let us think of something else to amuse us,” she said. “I have heard a ship has docked recently. I wonder if there will be letters from home. Perhaps Oliver will have written? Or perhaps we may make new friends of the passengers. Somebody might even arrive today!”

I offered a small smile for her sake. “I am not depressed, Aunt Charlotte. Simply ... contemplative.”

Her compassionate smile told me she did not believe me. But she was kind enough to let the subject drop. After breakfast I returned to the pianoforte and played more of Herr Spohr’s piece. It did something to the demon within me every time I played it. And this time the demon told me to write. So I abandoned the music for paper and ink. I sat at the writing table in the parlor and wrote a letter of my own.

Dear Henry,

I have played Herr Spohr’s music all night. My heart is as weak as it has ever been, or maybe it is stronger than it has ever been. I hardly know. I only know that my will has weakened with wanting you, my heart longs for you, and if I truly had wings at this moment, I would use them only to fly to wherever you are. I know that I doubted the persistence of love, but I am beginning to doubt my own wisdom. My love for you will not die. It will not falter. It will not leave me alone. If anything, my longing for you grows with each passing day. My emptiness without you grows. And I doubt my experience with love. I wonder if my parents ever knew what it was to love. I wonder if I was wrong about the possibility of becoming them. And for the first time in my life, I—

The sound of a blackbird’s whistle pierced my thoughts. I froze, waiting to hear it again. The whistle of homecoming. Had I just imagined it? A soft meow pulled my attention away from my letter. I dropped my pen. It rolled off the edge of the desk as a grey cat ran into the room, sliding across the tile floor to rub its head against my leg.

I reached down to stroke its head and saw a flash of white on its chest.

“Cora?” I asked, unbelieving.

A soft rap sounded at the door. I lifted my head and could not comprehend what I was seeing. It was Henry, looking more handsome than ever and more tanned than I had ever seen him, and surely his shoulders had gotten stronger too. He was not moving—just standing there and staring at me as if I were water in a desert. I stared at him, not really believing he was actually standing there. Surely this was a figment of my imagination—a product of too much Romantic music and too little sleep.

“I didn’t think it was possible,” he said in a quiet voice, as if talking to himself. His voice—good heavens, how had I gone an entire year without hearing his voice? “You’re more beautiful than I remembered.”

My heart stuttered, then began to race. My hand crept up to my throat. This could not be real. He could not be here, so far from England.

Then Henry stepped into the room. He walked toward me, moving slowly, carefully, as if I were a wild thing he was afraid would fly away if startled. “You said, at Blackmoore ... You said that you would make the same decision, every time, unless something changed. Well, Kate, I have traveled around the world to tell you that something has changed. I have rejected my mother’s plan for my life.”

Now I could see the details of his face—his clear grey eyes, the faint streak of freckles across his tanned cheeks. He looked as if he had spent months aboard a ship, in the sun. My gaze took in the rise and fall of his chest, the white of his shirt against the golden tan of his throat and hands, the way his hands clenched into fists. I finally believed he was real. I could not breathe.

“I have told Juliet I will not marry her. I couldn’t. Once I knew you loved me—once I had a hope of you, I couldn’t marry her. I couldn’t have been happy with her.” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. How many times had I watched him do that very thing? “She understood. She was quite generous, actually. She said she supposed that I had loved you all along, which was absolutely true.”

His mouth lifted into a crooked smile. I stared at that smile, remembering how it had felt to kiss those lips, to hold his face in my hands, to bury my fingers in his hair. His hair was much lighter, I realized. It was nearly the gold of his childhood.

He knelt in front of me. My face flushed, and my hands trembled, and my hope lifted again and again, like a million wings beating within me. “I left Blackmoore in the keeping of my brother, George, and I have taken a position with the East India Company. I have traveled halfway around the world to find you ... to show you that I will never resent you for robbing me of my home, because I have given it up freely. Now I have nothing left for you to rob me of, except my heart, but you have long been guilty of that already.” I saw in his grey eyes an ache of hope and dread and fear and love all mixed together with so much light that my heart cracked in two. I covered my face with my hands, overcome.

“Kate,” he said in a husky voice, “I am here to ask you one more time if you will spend your life with me. We can be adventurers together. I have followed you this far, my darling girl, and I will follow you wherever you choose to go next. I will love you no matter what happens in the future. You know me. You know I am capable of being just as stubborn as you. I have given up my home to be with you. And so I ask you to give up your fears to be with me, to believe me, to trust me, to ...” His voice broke. “... to love me, as I love you.”

My shoulders shook.

“Kate ... are you laughing? Kate, if you’re laughing again, I swear—”

I dropped my hands, showing him my tear-streaked face, and reached for him, and fell into his arms. It felt like home. It felt like the surest home I had ever, or would ever, know. We clung to each other as if we were drowning, and we were the only ones who could save each other. And then he kissed me, all over my tear-streaked face, my lips, my hair, and I hoped he would never, ever stop. And finally, when I had to pull away to catch my breath, I said, “I have to tell you something.

“You—” I started but had to pause to wipe my nose on my sleeve. “You are not The Giver of My Heart’s Desire, Henry Delafield.”

He threw his head back and laughed.

“No, listen.” I held his face in my hands. His eyes were soft and lit up, and his gaze roamed all over my face with such adoration that I felt caressed. He tipped his head toward me and brushed his lips against my cheek.

“I’m listening,” he murmured, his arms holding me impossibly close.

“You are not The Giver of My Heart’s Desire.” I took a deep breath and smiled. “You are my heart’s desire.”

“Oh, Kate,” he murmured, bending his head to mine. “You are a Romantic after all.”