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And the Heart is Brave

Chapter 5

Nathan Grant crossed the street after leaving the library and entered the Mountie office. He slammed the door shut behind him, something dark in his countenance. His tossed his hat across the room, his fingers jerkily working the button at the neck of his red surge coat. He expelled a breath of relief when it finally released open. He knew he should sit, try to calm down, but he couldn't and he began to pace around the small room, the room almost too small to contain the combination of his height and stature and motion, his boots scuffing heavily across the wooden floors as he moved from one place to another.

It was the sight of Elizabeth Thornton that had done it. Caused this sudden explosive turmoil. But when she'd looked at him like that on the steps of the library it had been his undoing. That simple look. So pleased simply because he was coming on Saturday. That one look had torn through him and seared his very innards with white hot pain.

The jealousy he was used to. But not this. This was some new insidious torture heaped onto his already strained shoulders. Nathan rubbed his jaw, prickly with regrowth from his morning's shave. He let out a long low sigh and felt himself calming, his pulse slowing. Finally, he moved behind his desk and sat down. He leaned forward on his elbows and began to rub his face, his eyes, suddenly weary. Weary of it all, tired of everything, especially the secrets.

But he would just have to continue on, as he always had, and always would. With the pain and jealousy because there was no other answer for it. And it's not that he was jealous of Lucas per se, if Lucas truly did have Elizabeth's heart. It wasn't just that. He was jealous of what Lucas could give her. Give Elizabeth. The things that he couldn't. Even if he weren't already denied the chance because of duty and honour. Even if he were free of those, he still could not give her what Lucas did. That lightness, that laughter back there. It's what Elizabeth deserved, after the hell she'd been through.

But nothing about him was light. His was darkness. All of it. What had happened to his sister, the situation with his father, his childhood, even his job. It was dark, all of it. The only lightness was Allie and even that was tainted. He knew his circumstances weren't ideal, a single Mountie raising a child, and he did the best he could for her but there was always the fear it wasn't enough.

It did not occur to Nathan that the lack of lightness about him was due almost entirely to circumstance, not nature. That if he was reserved and stoic it was because he'd had little opportunity to be or do otherwise.

But that didn't really matter now. All he knew was that Elizabeth deserved all the happiness out there to be found. All the laughter and lightness. He thought back to that day, more than two years ago now, when she was the picture of anything but lightness. She, in her widow's weeds, was the most tortured embodiment of grief he had ever seen. It was a scene seared into his mind and heart. That day. One he would never forget.

Jack's funeral.