Chapter Thirty-One

Oliver returned to Ellen and Philip. Ellen was still in that dreamland of sleep and healing.

“She hasn’t moved,” Philip said. “I watch her to make sure she’s still breathing.”

“She just needs to heal.” Oliver settled into a chair and trained his gaze on Ellen. The restlessness was gone. He felt surprisingly calm and confident in Ellen’s recovery, now that Needham was taken care of.

“Where did you go?” Philip asked. He appeared a little less sullen, a little less frightened and more awake.

Oliver could see that the housekeeper had tried feeding him. A nearly full tray of food sat to the side.

“You’re not hungry?” Oliver tipped his head to the tray.

“No. Where’d you go?”

Oliver had hoped to change the subject, but Philip was having none of it.

“I had business to attend to.”

“Did the business involve scraping your knuckles?”

Oliver looked down at his hand. He’d not even noticed that his knuckles were raw and bleeding. He flexed his fingers, wincing at the slight sting. But the satisfaction of taking Needham to the ground far outweighed roughed-up knuckles.

“Is he dead?”

Oliver glanced at Philip. “No.”

Philip turned his head to look at his mother. “Too bad.”

“Killing him would have caused more problems.”

“But you thought about it?”

“Of course I did.”

“I thought about it, too,” Philip whispered. “Killing him. I wanted to.”

“But you realized it was not the right choice. We’re not like him, Philip. We don’t resort to violence. And we certainly don’t hit women.” Oliver folded his fingers over his knuckles.

“No,” Philip said softly, still looking at his mother.

Oliver leaned forward. “Remember this. Remember what happened to your mother and never, ever touch a woman in anger. If I hear that you did, I will hunt you down.”

“I would never do that,” Philip said. “On my word.”

Oliver nodded. “A man’s word means everything. If you don’t have your word, you have nothing.”

“I understand.”

They descended into silence, comforted by Ellen’s steady breathing.

“We’ll figure this out,” Oliver said into the silence, not knowing if he was speaking to Philip, Ellen, or both of them. “We’ll sort all of this out.”

“Will we?” Philip asked.

…

She pictured the pain as an ocean. She’d gone to the ocean once. In France. With her family. It had been beautiful and magical and it had called to a primitive part of her and she’d never felt that type of connection again. She’d always thought that if she could, she would live on the ocean and listen to the waves for the rest of her life, and every day she would walk with bare toes sinking into the wet sand and the small waves lapping at her ankles, and life would be good.

The pain came in waves like that, and if she rode the wave and pictured the endless water and the horizon in the distance, it made it better. Tolerable, at least.

But certain things would pull her back. Like the driftwood that would gather at the edge of the water. Voices. People touching her. She didn’t like the touching, but they were gentle hands and at times she recognized her housekeeper and a kindly gentleman who came and went.

A doctor maybe.

And then there was Oliver, always talking to her, trying to convince her to open her eyes and leave the ocean. Well, not really leave the ocean. He didn’t know she was at the ocean, but that was the effect of his voice, making her leave the one place she felt safe and happy.

She listened for Philip. Occasionally she would hear his voice talking in the background, mainly to Oliver, never to her. But she knew he was there. She could feel his touch on her arm, and she knew her son was by her side.

In the back of her mind she knew why she was in this strange nowhere land, a place in her brain that she had escaped to. She knew about William and what he’d done to her, however, when the memories tried to surface she pictured herself floating on the endless waves and everything went away.

Eventually the water became more and more distant. She could hear the roar of it but could no longer see herself on the waves or feel its warmth cocooning her.

The insistent voices prodding her to wake up overtook the sound of the ocean and her eyelids would flutter and she would look around her bedchamber. Not the sea, not the small cottage that she had conjured in her mind, but her bedchamber in London. And she would close her eyes again.

…

Oliver made his way down the hall and to the terrace where Ellen sat in a pillowed chair, wrapped in a blanket, staring at her gardens.

It had been two weeks since the attack. She’d been asleep for four of those days, and he had despaired that she would never wake up. But gradually she’d come back to them. Not the same. She liked to sit in silence more than she liked to talk.

Her bruises were healing. The swelling had gone down. She still winced when she moved, because her ribs pained her, and her hand was still wrapped in a splint.

She spoke. It wasn’t as if she were completely mute. But she talked only about superficial things and never about Needham or that night. Oliver hadn’t even dared to bring up their own relationship.

They were in a sort of limbo.

Philip was due back at school soon, and Oliver wanted to discuss things with her. Difficult things.

He sat in a chair next to her. She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile, bereft of her once sparkling personality.

“I want to go to the ocean someday.” It was the first time she’d initiated a conversation, and the fact that she was declaring something she wanted to do was unexpected.

“Very well. We will go to the ocean.”

She turned her head back to the gardens. “When I was asleep,” she said. “I dreamed of the ocean. Floating on the ocean, walking in the ocean, dipping my toes in the ocean.”

“Did you?” He treaded carefully, not knowing how he was supposed to react.

“I guess I wasn’t really dreaming. It was a strange alternate place. But I loved it there. I didn’t want to come back.”

It hurt to hear that she did not want to return to him, but at the same time he understood.

“I’d like to go there. To the ocean…” Her voice trailed off. Oliver was becoming accustomed to this. She would suddenly stop talking and lapse into silence.

If the ocean would bring back the old Ellen, then he would take her there. If the old Ellen was gone for good, then he would learn to love this Ellen.

“We need to discuss things,” he said, hating to bring it up but knowing it needed to be done.

She looked at him out of the side of her eye but didn’t say anything.

“You’ve never asked what happened to Needham.”

“You said he wasn’t coming back. That’s all I need to know.”

“He’s not. I can promise you that. But don’t you want to know what happened to him?”

She turned to look at him. “Do I have to marry him?”

“No.”

“Do I need to worry that he will return?”

“No.”

“Do I need to worry that he will…hurt Philip in any way?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t want to know. Maybe in the future I will ask, and you will tell me, but for now this is enough.”

In the future? His heart soared that she was thinking of them in the future.

“Very well,” he said. “Speaking of the future…”

She turned her head away, but he thought he saw a slight smile curve her lips.

“Or rather the past and the future,” he said. “We need to discuss Philip.”

She burrowed farther into her blanket. Even though it wasn’t that cold it seemed she’d not been able to get warm since awakening from her sleep.

“Is he my son?”

Long moments passed, and Oliver realized that he was holding his breath, waiting for final confirmation. In his head Philip was his son. In his heart Philip was his son. He just needed confirmation.

Ellen looked out over the garden, her chin tucked into the folds of her blanket. “I regret so many things,” she said softly. “It about killed me that I didn’t meet you that night we were to run away.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“All of my life I was raised with the knowledge that I was to make a good match and, while you would someday be an earl, it still wasn’t good enough for them. And the thought of… The thought of disobeying them terrified me. More than walking away from you. I thought of the wedding my mother had planned, the wedding breakfast that they had paid for, and the gown that we had picked out. But mostly I thought of their expressions when they realized that I had run away and what their friends would say about them. And I couldn’t do it.” A lone tear leaked out of her eye, and she rubbed it on the blanket.

“Knowing you were waiting for me, knowing that I was breaking your heart, was nearly unbearable.”

His throat had grown thick with emotion, and he found he couldn’t say anything. Finally, after all these years he was getting the answers that he had longed for.

“And so I married Arthur, and eventually the pain of forsaking you lessened, and I convinced myself that I had done the right thing. Arthur was kind and gentle, if a little inattentive. And then I found out I was with child and I had convinced myself the baby was Arthur’s. I simply told myself that there was no other option but for the child to be his.”

She paused, wiped another tear. This was the most she’d spoken since awakening, and he could tell it was taking a toll on her. And still she had not answered his question.

“When did you know for sure?” he asked.

She drew in a deep breath as if she needed courage. “Philip loved to play in Arthur’s study while he was working. When he was about a year and a half I walked in on the two of them. Arthur was at his desk, Philip was playing on the floor. The sun hit his blond curls and highlighted his profile, and all I could see was a younger version of you. It was then that I knew I was the keeper of a terrible secret no one could ever know.”

Oliver covered her hand with his. She was so frail right now that she was nearly skin and bones.

“I-if I told,” she said. “Philip would lose the title. Arthur would be crushed, because he so loved his son. And you… I didn’t know what would happen to you or how you would react. I loved all of you too much to tell.”

Oliver absorbed the information, taking himself back to that time in his life, putting himself in Ellen’s shoes.

“Are you angry?” she asked softly, finally looking at him.

“No.” Curiously, he wasn’t angry. “You did what you thought best at the time.”

“I want you to know that Philip was very much loved by Fieldhurst. His father held him when he was just minutes old. Arthur walked the floor with him at night when no one else could get him to stop crying. He loved Philip like his own son, because he believed him to be his son.”

Oliver felt an intense jealousy of Fieldhurst that he had been there for that, and he felt an intense sadness that he had missed it all.

“You could have told me,” he said.

“What would you have done, knowing that Philip was your son, being raised by another man? Would you have been able to move on with your life? Marry? Have other children?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But that was my choice to make. And it’s not like I ever did move on and marry and have children.”

“Because of me?”

“No one ever measured up to you, Ellen. I was always comparing them to you.”

“Oh, Oliver.” She sighed. “What a mess we’ve made.”

“Not really a mess. A detour, maybe.”

“Will you ever forgive me?” she asked softly.

“There is nothing to forgive. I’m disappointed I missed out on so much of Philip’s life, but you are right. There was only one path you could take that would save everyone’s reputation.”

She turned her hand so it was palm up and squeezed his hand. “And where do we go from here? Does Philip lose his title?”

Oliver shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to him or Fieldhurst. In the eyes of the world, he is the Earl of Fieldhurst. Always.”

Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked them away. “You’re a good man,” she whispered.

“Not really. I should have taken you away the night we made love in the gazebo and kept you to myself. Then none of this would have happened, and we would have had a passel of children by now.”

She looked at him and for the first time he saw light and laughter in her dancing eyes.

“So we got started a bit late,” she said.

“Will you still have me, Ellen, after all this time?”

“I’ve always wanted you. I just couldn’t have you until now.”

He kissed her knuckles and grinned, for the first time thinking that there really was a future for them.

“Why, Lady Fieldhurst, was that a marriage proposal?”

She considered him gravely for a few moments. “I believe it was, Lord Armbruster. If you’ll have me.”

“I think I can cope.”

“And one other thing.”

He paused, his stomach churning, thinking he’d been so close to happiness to have it snatched away again. “What is that?”

“We move to the ocean.”

He laughed and pressed the back of her hand to his cheek. “I can arrange that.”