Page 71 of Gone with the Rake

“I meant the…” she glanced down, “blanket on the floor. I’ve had far worse places to sleep than a luxurious woolen blanket by the roaring fire.” Her cheeks reddened, and her gaze remained below his waist.

“Oh.” His emotions settled, and he felt embarrassed once more by his outburst. He slowly covered himself back up with the sheet. His embarrassment was quickly replaced by anger again. And then guilt.

She’d had worse than an old, creaky floor in a cold room?

What had she gone through, his Lily, where she had to sleep in worse conditions?

He closed his eyes and shook his head to dispel the image. “Lydia…” He cleared his throat. “That night when I said I wanted to postpone our engagement, I… You were right. In my heart, I was having doubts about everything. Not about you,” he hastened to add. “I have never had any doubts about you and my love for you. But I was truly doubting whether love was enough to sustain us. I thought that maybe if we waited, that in a few years, I would know what to do.”

“You were right to have doubts,” she answered. “You were right to say the things you said. And as much as it hurt, I understood.”

“You did?” His brows knitted in a frown. “Because I was under the impression you were angry with me.”

“I am… I was, but not about that.” She moved to face him fully. “My hurt from that conversation subsided a few days after you left for Cambridge. And I waited for you to write to me again. But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t!” He sat up, his voice rising with frustration. “I didn’t know whether you were going to check Father’s letters again or not. If I sent you letters and you failed to collect them, we would have gotten caught, and you would have been thrown out.”

“I was anyway!” She clutched the sheet to her chest, as if to protect herself from her feelings—or perhaps from him.

His fingers curled into fists by his side, and he was ready to burst, but he had nothing to say because that was the truth, and he could do nothing about it.

“The bastard promised me he wouldn’t do that. When I came back home and you weren’t there, I was devastated. Then I found this”—he covered the ruby ring she still wore on her finger with his hand—“sitting on my bedside table.”

“I left it on my bed,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to their joined hands.

“It felt like I died. Or at least, my soul did.” He cleared his throat, fighting against the emotion threatening to overwhelm him. “My father said it was your choice to leave. That he offered you money to leave me alone, and you took it.”

“And you believed him?” She snatched her hand away, a bitter twist to her lips.

“Of course not! I scoured the earth for you!”

“How? How did you scour the earth? I went to the only relatives we had. And I wrote you letters! I walked for miles to send them through the post.”

“I never received a thing.”

“I wrote every week. I sent them to your dormitory and the house, disguising them under different names. And then when my mother got sick”—her voice broke, and she had to clear her throat—“I sent notes begging Mrs. Ludlow to pass on a missive to you.”

“Mrs.…” He paused. Mrs. Ludlow used to be a housekeeper at Wakefield Manor, a kind and gentle soul who had also been let go some time after he returned from Cambridge. “She probably tried,” he said, defeated. “And I did find your relatives in Penrith. Perhaps it took me too long to do so, but I did. And they sent me to the town where you were supposed to work, but you weren’t there anymore. Then I combed through village after village after village…” He paused and swallowed. “Until a pastor in one told me that you had died.”

Lydia bit her lip and looked away, anguish in her eyes, her hand trembling slightly where it rested on her knee.

Pain pierced through his heart as well. Even now, seeing her alive and well, sitting beside him, the memory hurt.

His voice hoarse, he continued, “I didn’t believe him at first, but he showed me the burial stone in the cemetery.” A long pause followed, the only sound their uneven breathing and the crackling fire. “What happened?” he finally whispered. “Why is there a stone with your name on it?”

Lydia still didn’t meet his gaze, tracing invisible patterns on the white sheet with her finger. “My mother got sick about a year after we moved. I wrote to you for help, of course, but I got no answer. I couldn’t work, as I needed to look after her, so I started stealing. I got caught by a wealthy family in the next town over. I escaped, but they knew what I looked like—they knew my name. So, when my mother died soon after, I…” Her voice faltered, a single tear appearing in the corner of her eye. “I buried her under my name. A friend I met during this ordeal, a blacksmith, forged a nameplate onto the stone and told everyone that I was gone.”

Thorn’s heart squeezed for a young girl in an impossible situation. He knew the pain of losing a mother, but he couldn’t imagine feeling that pain and having no one to offer comfort. She was not only hurting but alone, without money or a roof over her head. At least she had a friend. He wished he could find that blacksmith and thank him.

He reached for her, but she moved away and shook her head, a sad smile playing on her lips. She was so strong—his Lydia. He only wished she would let herself lean on him. Let herself trust him.

“What did you do next?” he asked softly, resisting the urge to pull her into his arms.

She shrugged. “Continued stealing. I joined a band of boys and young men who lived together up north. They took me in and taught me much of what I know today.” She licked her lips nervously. “Until I met Honoria—my friend who helped me forge the letters from your fiancée.”

“Ah, so you did have help.” Thorn smiled. “I know I would have recognized your penmanship otherwise.”

“Honoria has been a great friend to me, considering I met her under the worst circumstances… for her.”