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The door leading to Demelza’s garden closed, drawing Ross’s attention from his papers. He rose to his feet and walked to the window, taking a few moments to observe her amidst the plants she loved so much. Loved so much more than him, to be honest. He’d nobody else to blame for that but himself.
It had been a fortnight since he’d ridden to Trenwith, full of rage and betrayal, to accost Elizabeth about her decision to marry George Warleggan. What followed continued to fill him with a mixture of emotions so profound it was difficult to put into words. In hindsight, it seemed as if the events of that night had been inevitable, as if the situation had reached a boiling point that had to be exorcised in order for life to move on. He’d not lie to himself – or anyone, for that matter – about what had transpired between he and Elizabeth. What had started as anger and the bitterest of disappointment and flared into a mixture of compulsive desire and lust, pleasurable and punishing at the same time. And when he’d awoken the next morning, awash with guilt and confusion, the need to flee had almost been nauseating with its intensity. Flee from what he’d done. And flee from what awaited him at home.
He’d come up with a myriad of reasons and excuses to tell his wife on the trip to Nampara. They’d evaporated into vapour the instant he’d locked eyes with her. In that moment, he knew she knew what had happened. HAD known it would happen the night before, when she’d stood in his way imploring him to wait until morning. His wife, who’d spent the first thirteen years of her life in a home, filled with drunken, brutish rage and violence… who would have had every reason to flinch from the threatening fury that had spewed from his gut, had instead placed herself between him and the door, her hand pressed on his chest in an attempt to shield the night from his wrath. Until he’d spoken to her as he never had before, at which point she’d ceded the floor to let him meet his fate.
And when he’d returned, he’d gone to her, not with supplication and regret, but with defensiveness and hubris. He’d deserved to wind up in the dirt, pain radiating from the blow she’d unleashed from out of nowhere, the insane thought that Tom Carne would have been proud of her, resonating in his ringing ears.
He paced the room, shaking the memories from his head. It was hard to do with the camp bed he’d set up in his library the morning he’d returned. He’d required no prompting to do so for every line of Demelza’s body had screamed it loud enough to be heard. He returned to his desk, to pack up his documents and maps for the shareholder’s meeting in Truro he had to leave for in a few hours. As he collected a clean shirt to put in his saddle bag he realized he’d left his good coat upstairs in the wardrobe. He stole a quick glance out the window and quit the room.
He’d resolved to be as quick as he could, for the bedchamber now felt like a forbidden land, to be trespassed upon by only those his wife admitted. Prudie was a frequent visitor above stairs. Below stairs, the contempt he’d received from both of the Paynters once would have been enough for him to throw them off the property. Once. Before. Not now.
The squeak of the stairs underfoot was loud, louder than he’d remembered it being. Moving quickly, he took the stairs two at a time, wishing to go in, retrieve what he’d left and return to the library, unseen or noticed by anyone. But when he opened the door he discovered it was not to be.
Jeremy slept in the center of the canopied bed. The bed where the boy been created, during a time of such grief and sorrow, where his father and mother had turned to one another to ease the sadness that had become their omnipresent companion. Where his mother had felt the need to hide the first flutterings of his existence from the man who’d stupidly, flippantly stated he didn’t wish for more children, only to make love to his wife over and over again, as if he failed to realize how life was created in the first place.
It was a room where memories of a love so profound had imbued even the stone walls of the space Ross once inhabited with her; a space where he was decidedly no longer welcomed.
His throat was tight with anger and profound sadness as he stepped down into the room. He turned abruptly towards the wardrobe, to get the accursed coat and be on his way. He had just closed the wardrobe when a small sigh reached him from across the room. “Papa?” He froze, suddenly uncertain of what to do. He could choose to do the cowardly thing: to pretend he hadn’t heard the lad, to be the distant father he now admitted he’d been since the moment of his birth. The safe thing. Or he could do what his beaten and bruised conscious demanded.
He turned. “Jeremy,” Ross whispered, crossing the room to the bed where sleepy hazel eyes stared up at him. He knelt and reached for the small hand, its thumb slightly moist from sucking. “You should go back to sleep, son.” Jeremy shifted closer, the movement stirring up the scent of roses and thyme, of his mother and it gripped Ross hard in the chest. Smelling her hair in the morning, still breathless from their morning lovemaking. The salt-sweet taste of the nape of her neck. The warmth of her breast in his hand.
The sob came from nowhere. Ross pressed his forehead against the mattress, his shoulders shaking with his tears. He remembered the words he’d flung at Elizabeth, on the night he wished never had happened: “Oh you’ve never been able to help anything, its all beyond your control, full of good intentions leaving a trail of havoc in your wake.” He could very well be screaming those words to himself, for havoc was what he’d brought down upon his home, his wife and child, as well as the woman on the other side of the valley.
“Papa?”
Jeremy spoke once again, his voice confused and afraid. Ross stood, swiping his hand across his face. “It’s alright, son,” he rasped, plastering as tender a smile he was capable of managing. “I must away. Your mama will be up to see to you soon. Go back to sleep.” He leaned forward, brushing the curls away from Jeremy’s forehead and pressed a kiss to his warm skin. The boy nodded somberly and obediently lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes.
Havoc, he thought to himself as he walked to the bedroom door. Destruction and havoc is what I am.