Author note: Hi all, I know it's been forever, but I was going through files and realized the next few parts of this were nearly done. As I've mentioned before, this is my version of how I would have wanted things to go down, so Ross is a little more ashamed here than he was in the books/show.
Hope you enjoy. Would love to hear your feedback!
Chapter 3
He had been searching for the better part of an hour when he finally found her.
A former soldier used to life and death battles, Ross Poldark was a man accustomed to taking risks, living on life's edge. And yet, in his entire life, he had never been so overwhelmed with panic or gripped by fear as when his search led to her usual haunts, but revealed nothing. Nor had he ever been so immensely relieved as when he finally spied her on the very cliff where he'd taken her to say good-bye to their Julia.
How different – and so very much the same – things were now compared to back then.
Fresh from losing their beloved daughter, they had both been so broken, in so much pain they could scarce breathe. But that's where the similarities ended. For back then, they had each other. To cling to. To face their loss. To grieve.
Together, as one.
Now, they were two broken pieces of a larger whole, flung so far from each other, Ross wondered how they would ever be put back together again.
Not at all sure of his welcome, Ross approached Demelza with a cautious step as she sat amidst the tall grass and hearty flowers, facing the ocean, her knees pulled to her chest, arms locked around them as if by that very act she was keeping herself from falling apart and being scattered by the wind.
"Demelza?"
If she heard him, she made no effort to show it. Ross stood uncertainly behind her, not sure how to proceed. For the briefest of moments, he considered jumping back on his horse as certain rejection seemed to be his fate.
But he couldn't walk away.
He didn't want to walk away.
Through the trials of the past week, Ross Poldark had learned many truths and had been reminded of many others.
No matter his reception, whether the heat of anger and hate or the cold of her silence, anything with Demelza was infinitely better than anything without. And that was one truth he would never forget again.
Decision made, Ross quietly took his place beside her. Glancing over, he took in her profile, his heart twisting at the sight.
The week had taken its toll. Her pale skin was now ashen. The dark circles under her eyes evidenced her sleepless nights. Her usually healthy, blushing cheeks had slimmed somehow, and her lips were drawn into a tight, unwavering line.
But it was her eyes that cut him the deepest.
Usually clear and full of laughter, warmth, they were dull and void of emotion.
"Pray I'm not intruding…it is late. I was worried." Ross started then stopped. Having been so focused on finding her, he had given little thought to what he would say once he had. Turning to face the waves cresting against ragged boulders below, Ross took some small comfort in the fact she hadn't run from him, hadn't demanded he go away.
As the tense silence stretched from seconds into minutes, Ross swallowed hard, knowing he needed to do something – anything – to bridge the obvious gap between them. If not for his own sake, certainly for hers.
"Demelza, please. This silence between us cannot go on forever."
At the plea in his voice, Demelza stirred, showing signs of life for the first time. Yet, when she spoke, it was with the lackluster voice of one whose grand illusions had been stripped away.
"You've been many things through the years, Ross, but I never took you for a coward."
Ross felt as if he'd been slapped in the face.
"What?"
"All those years ago, if you'd…swallowed your pride, your anger, if you'd just claimed what you felt for her…do you know how many lives would have been different? How many hearts wouldn't have had to break?" And in case he didn't, she made sure he knew each by name. "Francis. Now George. Even Elizabeth."
"And you. Have I broken your heart?" It was a rhetorical question. One that he'd known the answer to the moment he saw her in the yard the morning he returned home from his fateful visit to Trenwith.
"Worse than my father's belt ever did."
Her words punched him in the gut with a force so great he found it hard to breathe.
Of all the new versions of Demelza that Ross had been introduced to since that night – the fierce spirit fueled with righteous anger, the wounded soul broken but too proud to bend – this was the Demelza he understood the least. Because this Demelza was…
Detached. Resigned. Measured.
Uttering words, not in the heat of anger, but deliberate words. Words that wounded more deeply than careless phrases flung at him with deep emotion. And he hated himself for it. He hated that his actions had prompted the destruction of such a spirited soul.
After a few strained moments of silence, Ross regained enough equilibrium to forge ahead.
"Demelza, I wish…" Ross struggled to put together the thoughts that had been roiling his heart and mind since that night. "I wish I could explain to you what happened to me that night, the blind rage I was in, but I can't. I scarce understand it myself. But you have to know, you have to believe, hurting you is the last thing in the world I have ever wanted to do."
"And yet you have. And now…" She was still so eerily indifferent, it was unnerving. "…as history appears to be repeating, you are proving once again to be less than the man I thought you to be."
As for Demelza, she had spent most of the past several days wallowing in so much hurt, so much anger, wishing to never see Ross' face again, relieved by his long absences, that she'd scarce thought of where he was spending his time. A part of her – a large part – assumed he was by Elizabeth's side, as he had always wished to be.
Though the grime of long hours in the mine and bone-weary sighs evidenced the opposite, it was safer for Demelza's heart to think such things. For a heart once crushed need not fear destruction.
Elizabeth's visit put everything into a whole new light. Erasing Demelza's assumptions. Making things messier than a simple choice to be made. For if he had not returned to Elizabeth after that fateful night, what did that mean?
What did she even want it to mean?
She turned to him then, her expression inscrutable, but her eyes full of accusations. "Why haven't you gone to her, Ross? Are you ashamed to face what you've done? Certain it'll happen again? Or are you still too much of a coward to claim what you've wanted all along?"
Ross' expression crumbled at the pointed questions, the answer his heart screamed already on his lips. "I haven't gone because my place is here, Demelza. With you."
"Because you're my husband..." Demelza began.
"Yes."
And then finished. "….your duty won't allow you."
"My duty?" Shaking his head, Ross couldn't for the life of him understand the origin of her assumptions. Especially from the one person in the world that knew him even better than he knew himself. It was as if his love for her no longer held any weight. "No, Demelza, it is my heart that keeps me by your side."
"Is that the same heart that carried you to her that night?" Demelza's cutting gaze shifted from his face as she swallowed the bitter truth before slashing him with words that wounded. "You might keep a watch on it. For it seems not to know its own mind."
His lips tightened into a thin line as anger boiled under his skin.
Elizabeth.
This was her doing.
Not the actual act of infidelity, nor the breaking of vows, or his lack of attention to Demelza over the past months that had put such doubt in her mind. No, that was all on him. But for approaching Demelza in the first place. For stirring up the anger and pain that was already settling in his wife's heart.
For being the physical manifestation – the tangible reminder – of his ultimate betrayal.
A moment's silence, then he broached the subject, his voice tight with barely controlled disdain.
"I know Elizabeth came to see you today. I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to…" He ran his fingers through his already untamed mess of curls, his gaze unseeing. "I don't know what in God's name was she thinking coming to you like that."
"I suppose she was looking for permission to undo the mistakes of the past." Demelza answered evenly.
Ross' brows furrowed, as he tried to grasp Demelza's meaning. "What mistakes?"
A slight shrug of Demelza's shoulders. "Her choice of Francis. Your marriage to me. Most recently, her engagement to George."
"Marrying you was not a mistake." Grasping onto the most glaring error in her explanation, Ross' conviction was deep and heartfelt, but one glance at Demelza, and he swallowed hard at the sudden thought that maybe she no longer felt the same. "But…perhaps I am alone in that belief."
A pause. A question. A gaze averted. "Am I?"
"I used to think it wasn't." Demelza whispered. "Back when I believed you loved me."
Ross' eyes drifted close against the accusation. It wasn't the first time he'd heard it. Before, he'd been able to banish the doubts by showing her proof of his love. But now? With what he'd done standing as a widening chasm between them, with their bond of trust shattered, his very word doubted, he knew not how to even begin.
"And you no longer believe I do." It was a statement of fact. An admission of the reality facing him.
"Have you given me reason to?"
"In the totality of our years together, yes, I believe I have…because I know that I do. All around you, Demelza, there is proof. Why won't you try to see it?" Turning to her then, his gaze was open and pleading, pained and haunted. "Demelza, I erred. Horribly, perhaps unforgivably. I will carry the shame and regret of what I've done for the rest of my life. But one bad act does not negate all of the love, or the good, all that we've shared."
Demelza paused a moment, turning his words over in her mind. There was a ring of truth to them, to his earnestness, his sincerity. And yet, he had done the one thing that could – should – wipe all of it away. For how could they ever go back to what they were before?
"Perhaps."
Demelza's non-committal response irked Ross more than her continued refusal to grant him even a proper hearing. His jaw worked as his thoughts turned back to the visit that had caused this new upheaval of emotions.
"So? What did she say to you then?"
"Nothing I didn't already know." Demelza's even, cryptic answer only fueled Ross' growing despair and frustration.
"Then…" Ross turned to her, more demanding than before. "…what did she want?"
"What she's always wanted. You." The bitterness of Demelza's tone belied her true feelings for her chief rival. "At least for now. Who knows what George will offer her tomorrow to trump your claim."
"Demelza…"
But Demelza cut him off, unwilling or unable, to hear Ross defend his precious Elizabeth. For she was sure that was what he was about to do, though, in truth, it was the farthest thing from Ross' mind.
"She also wants what I be wanting. A resolution to this thing ensnaring us all." Pulling a blade of grass from the ground, Demelza twirled it between her fingers, her gaze unfocused, unlike her thoughts as one over-ridding question formed. "May I ask you something?"
"Yes, of course." Though relieved Demelza was now conversing with him, he answered warily, still so completely, utterly unsure of the state of her thoughts.
"With Francis gone, if I were not a factor, would you be with her right now?"
Ross instantly rejected the implication of her words. "The question is moot for you are a factor."
"Why? Because I'm your wife?" The sudden bitterness in Demelza's tone took Ross aback.
"No." Ross reached out and touched her then. It was the first time since that night. Words alone were not reaching her. He could see that plainly. But his touch. Perhaps, his touch, like so many times before would soften her. Weaken her anger, make her more susceptible to what he had to say. "Because of my love for you."
With a shuddering breath, Demelza pulled her hand away from his. It took more effort than she wished. Why must he always have such an effect on her? The fire that had ignited in her the moment skin touched skin turned to ice at the lack of contact. Her eyes stung as the reality of her future sank in once more.
No Ross. No love. No more touches that threatened to burn her, melt her.
Demelza forced her thoughts in the direction they needed to go in order to do what she knew needed to be done.
"Ross, please, just answer the question."
"No, Demelza." He was reaching her, he could sense it. "Because you're asking me to imagine my life without you. And that is something I cannot, I will not do."
Her frank gaze met his. Assessing, analyzing, sifting through his words, determining which could be believed. Which could be discarded.
"Perhaps you will think differently when I tell you her news." She smiled then. A tight, sad smile that permeated every ounce of her being. "And perhaps even more so…when I tell you mine."
TBC…
