Fate & Circumstance - A North & South Continuation

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - TO FORGIVE AND BE FORGIVEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – TO FORGIVE AND BE FORGIVEN

With a few, short steps he had closed the vacuity that separated them, yet never faster had his blood surged through his veins.  Never more resonant had his heartbeat echoed, every pulse vibrating as if thunder itself were booming through his body as the sharp thrill of finding himself alone with her in this way pierced him to the very core.  

All was stillness.

All was silence.

As she stood before him, unmoving, a veritable myriad of expressions met his eyes.  For an ephemeral moment he could hardly decipher them and yet, as he penetrated deeper into her blue-grey eyes, he found himself remembering, with a fierce pang of memory, that terrible time immediately after her rejection of his proposal when, reeling and dazed in the face of her harsh dismissal of his love, he had thought her a amalgam of so many contrary emotions: so brave, so timid, so tender, so haughty and regal proud.  In the passage of time between one moment and the next he saw each chase across her expression now as if she were not certain of what to make of him or of his intentions towards her.

Yet he saw no fear.

Even in doubt, he saw that she unequivocally trusted him.

His arms hung resolutely at his sides as he strove to quell the rash desire that urged him to draw her tight against his body and forget the reasons why he had brought her to this room in the first place, his chest dilating with the shallow ebb and flow of his breath as he sought to master the will of his capricious heart over his increasing need to talk to her. 

Yet she was beautiful, so utterly exquisite, her hair bound into a heavy coil at the back of her head, its severity of style softened as ever by those wispy curls that played about her face, delicately framing it. Like one enchanted, his gaze ran over her as if for the first time, drinking in the white lace blouse which she wore, the long, fitted, gossamer-thin sleeves revealing the shapely and elegant length of her arms beneath.  Out of the fragile lace-edged trim of the squared neckline, as inherently modest as it was breathtakingly alluring to his covetous gaze, rose the graceful length of her flexible throat; and from her tiny waist frothed the wide sweep of her skirt, its colour prompting him to recollect the lucid blue of the cloudless sky that had vaulted above him when he had travelled to Helstone.  He could not believe that he had never noticed it before, that he had failed to make the connection until this moment.   

Those choking chains of propriety had, he knew, left them the instant that they had walked through the door, for here, within the security of these walls it had no place at all.  With the turn of the key he had defied even himself, but he felt too a liberty that had never seemed more profound. His impulse to turn the lock had been rash to be sure and certainly impetuous; a response to the flash of memory of Dixon’s intrusion upon them in the mill the other day; and although he had no intention of leading Margaret into the same situation that had overwhelmed them both in the mill, he was desperate to speak to her, to confide in her those feelings that had been festering inside him since he had first noticed Henry Lennox’s tender regard of her. The very nature of the household itself, with the near constant comings and goings of the servants and of his mother’s ever-watchful presence, had denied them so little privacy and time together that he had been propelled into taking matters into his own hands to achieve the time with her to speak alone. 

“We will not be disturbed here, my darling.” His voice suffused the air in a low, silken murmur of reassurance as his eyes plundered hers, longing to discover within their watching depths the answers which he had sought and been denied but yesterday.  “Here at least we can speak without the fear of others interrupting.”