Part 22

She wept, like a lovely golden angel, and he could not be moved. Daniel Humphrey set his jaw and looked down at the woman he had long vied for, loved for years, and he could not be moved by her tears. It was the first sign he took that it needed to be over, and soon.

"Marry him," he urged her.

"You know that I cannot," she cried. "I love you."

He shook his head, then glanced towards the rickety chair where he had left his crutches. Daniel pulled himself up, with his arms straining, and reached for the crutches. As if someone had twisted a key in a crafty little toy, she sprung to her feet and handed him the wooden equipment. "No!" he said firmly, then with one hand held her away. His other arm, his only support now, trembled, but he managed to limp towards the crutches.

"Do not push me away," she said softly.

"I do not need you now."

"I can help you, Daniel."

He bared his teeth. "And I cannot help you. I cannot give you what you need." Half a year ago, he had been so full of hope. The new job as Lady Blair's solicitor would have set him for life, brought him that much closer to supporting Serena van der Woodsen—not nearly to the life she was accustomed to, but nearly enough that he would not be shamed by the knowledge that she would be forced to live far below her standards. Now, six months to the day he was left bleeding on the side of the road, he was nothing.

"What I need is you," she said firmly, as she had said a million times over.

He blamed Aaron Rose, for his fall into obsession so great he was willing to shoot a defenseless man.

He blamed Lord Charles, for sinking into a depression so deep that he had forgotten about the man he had trusted more than anyone else.

He blamed Lady Blair, because she died.

He blamed himself, for not mending enough to lose the pain and return to work, not mending enough to fix the guilt that burdened him still.

"I am willing to love you, but not if you will continue like this."

Most of all, he blamed the detestable Serena van der Woodsen for staying, for pleading, for loving. No one should love him now. She was making it harder to do right.

"When you go to bed tonight, you will regret this, Daniel. And then you know where to find me," she sobbed. In a flurry of expensive material he would never afford, she fled away from the table, through the pub, amidst hollers and hoots from the silly patrons. He did not even have the strength to call out the men who reached out with grubby fingers to catch a brush of her hair.

"Keep your dirty hands to yourself!" snapped the waitress. She glared at the leering men, then nodded at Serena. She watched until she made her way out the door, and then she turned back towards Daniel. Outside the pub, she was on her own. Vanessa could not protect her there. Her own choice for coming to a place like this.

She made her way to Daniel with a piece of bread, then tossed it in front of him, making the metal plate clatter against the table. With Serena gone, there was no need to stand and leave. He fell heavily back onto the wooden stool.

"Let that soak the beer. You haven't eaten since you sat there four hours ago."

Daniel did not answer. Instead, he picked up the piece of bread and bit into it.

"This is no place for a lady like that," she lectured him. "You should not let her come back."

"Tell her that," Daniel said quietly. "Told her over and over but she is too stubborn."

Vanessa shook her head. "Maybe she should marry Nathaniel. Then you will come here every night and grieve. That would be just what you deserve."

Daniel bit into the bread and chomped on it. "And what of you?" he demanded. "Are you so willing to give up your fine lord?"

"There is nothing to give up," Vanessa pointed out. "I am a nonentity. Unlike Miss Serena, who lays it all out for you this way, Lord Nathaniel has done nothing to tell me anything apart from that he appreciates my bosom," she told Daniel. She seemed amused when he flushed. "You are not an innocent, Daniel. Neither is Lord Nathaniel."

~o~o~o~o~o~

Chuck watched her take a sip of water, watched as her throat worked to swallow. Nathaniel's gaze was intent on him, he knew. Still, he could not take his eyes away from her. A half a year, and God, how she changed. Her cheeks were full, and he knew at that she was cared for. She seemed to glow in health on this last month that she carried the child. For that, he would be grateful to the earl.

"Do not hope," Nathaniel had told him as they made their way to the dining hall. "I have heard of this before, and they recover nothing of their old lives."

"I can make her remember."

"And if you force it, the more you will trouble her."

And Chuck had agreed with him then. Yet the more he thought of it, of the strange incident that brought him here, the more he could wonder, why not hope? And it was hope that flared in his chest when he entered the dining hall to find her sitting there, right beside Emma. Lord Marcus and his ward smiled at him in welcome, and Beatrice—his Blair—seemed as puzzled as she had been before she made her way to her rooms that afternoon.

They had arrived and happened upon that statement from the earl, in which he said, "I remember reading of her in the university. It was a sad tale, and I wonder why he thought of it. Perhaps because it was such a popular read."

"My lord," greeted Emma, with that sweet face that Chuck knew would break the hearts of the men of the ton, in time. "We were speaking of the Beatrice you mentioned."

He nodded, and sat in his seat. Nathaniel followed suit. Chuck nodded, "Of course." And then he made to look at Blair and recited, "Ciò che m'incontra ne la mente, more, quand'i' vegno a veder voi, bella gioia; e quand'io vi son presso, i' sento Amore."

She shuddered, but met his eyes. "My lord—"

"You speak no Italian," he finished for her.

He started to translate it for her. Instead, it was Marcus he next heard when the earl said, "All I encounter in my mind dies when I come to gaze on you, sweet joy: and when I am near you, I feel Love."

But it was not to Marcus that she looked now. She had kept her sight on the marquis. Her lips curved. "How sublime," she whispered.

"Do not think it romantic," Marcus cautioned her. "La Vita Nuova is a tragic tale."

"Why so, uncle?" Emma asked.

"She was Dante Alighieri's ideal love, who died at age twenty-four. He wrote of her there and then immortalized her afterwards, as Dante's guide to heaven."

Nathaniel seemed displeased when he shook his head at his best friend. "Enough of such fiction," Nathaniel interrupted. He would speak to his friend of that later. He then turned to Lord Marcus and asked, "How is it that you have named her?"

And it was Blair who answered first, "Lord Marcus is my guardian angel."

Marcus smiled, then reached for her hand. "You are too kind." He turned to his companions. "It was naught but good fortune that I happened upon her and a vicious man who I had seen dragging her through the woods outside these very lands."

Emma nodded, wide-eyed. "He killed the bloody bastard!"

"Emma," Blair admonished.

"Sorry. But he did. Did you not, uncle?"

With a somber look, he nodded, "It had to be done, else Beatrice would have been—" he cut himself off, out of respect to his companion.

But Chuck had been there firsthand in Eleanor Rose's ball, had seen what Aaron was capable of. He ached to ask for the bastard's gravesite himself if only to unearth his rotting flesh and rip out his drying guts.

"And you remember all of this?" Chuck rasped, unable to bear the thought that she still remembered the horror, and knew only Marcus Beaton.

"Thankfully, my lord, I do not," was her answer, rife with finality.

"Nothing at all of your previous life?" Nathaniel pressed.

"Je suis Francais," she shared with a smile. "I remember Paris. I know this because I spoke the language more comfortably, before I settled into Anglais to converse with Lord Marcus, and Lady Emma."

Emma threw a look of admiration. "Is she not so good to switch so swiftly and so well?"

"Wonderful," Chuck murmured.

The first course was served, and Blair dipped her spoon into the soup. And then she said with a sigh. "And I have fond memories of Florence."

And with that, Chuck's gaze snapped back to her. Nathaniel cleared his throat.

"And so I find it odd that for an Englishman, you so easily latch onto the idea of an Italian Beatrice," she confessed.

"Is this all you remember then?"

"She has dreams," Emma intimated. "Nightmares. Or sometimes she plays something on the piano, and she remembers what song it is."

"The doctor speaks of a forgetfulness borne when something so horrific happens, and it wipes clean spaces of your mind," Lord Marcus shared. "We are hopeful she will remember more." Chuck looked at Blair, and his gut clenched at how she seemed to listen to Lord Marcus' every word now, as if they were gold. "And so I had sworn to her, after her child is born, I shall take her to Paris."

"With me," Emma added.

"Of course," Marcus agreed. "And it is a promise."

Chuck took a large drink of his wine.

Her voice was soft, and he almost did not hear. But it was she, and so his ears were trained to pick up the slightest sound. He still heard her breathing in his mind. "I do not like the word," she said.

"Which one?" Emma asked curiously.

"Promise," Chuck answered. When Blair looked at him in surprise, he amended, "I despise it too."

Blair nodded. "The doctor tells us it may help when I see Paris again. After all, when I played that song, it was as if I never forgot the notes, merely the name, and that once, a long time ago, a man had sung the words to me." She laid her hands on her large belly. "Perhaps—I hope—by the father of my child."

"I just pray it was not he that I had shot," Marcus muttered.

"No!" Chuck exclaimed. He sighed. "The father of your child could not possibly hurt you."

She held his gaze, and for a moment, he feared she would ask him to explain what he, a stranger from London, could possibly know of the father of her child. And he was prepared to respond, to tell her everything. It riled him that Lord Marcus Beaton, earl of Pembroke, savior that he was, could possibly think that he could take Charles Bass' wife to Paris.

"That is wonderful of you to say, my lord," she said.

He could not take his eyes off of her afterwards. Throughout the course of the dinner, he wanted to speak with her. But he felt his friend's watchful eyes and knew that Nathaniel was sincere in his words of caution. Despite all that had passed between them, he and Nathaniel had always emerged better bonded.

"I had only just dragged you out of your hell," Nathaniel muttered quietly. "Dive deep, thoughtlessly, and you will merely plunge yourself into the same disaster."

"What is it you expect?" Chuck whispered back. "She is in front of me, alive."

"For now, your wife is dead. Look at her eyes if you do not believe me."

Slowly, Chuck turned to watch her as she laughed, pleased at Emma's discourse. "I see my wife," he said thoughtfully.

Nathaniel shook his head, then returned to dinner.

It was after dinner that he received his request. He had lain awake that night, his head against the wall, pondering on the best way to approach her.

And then he heard so very softest of sounds, and again, he knew without pause that it was her. He sat up on the bed and padded out of the room. He registered idly that he was wearing a silk robe, and as he made her way to the next room and knocked, he thought of how it was the same way they had met in that hotel room long ago, a lifetime ago it seemed, when she had asked for his help to light her fireplace. Butterflies fluttered in his belly for the first time that night.

God, he wished she had the same memories that were teasing him now.

She was crying he realized when he listened. He swung the door open and peered inside, and saw her sleeping on her side, weeping in her sleep.

Chuck slipped inside the room and sat beside her on the bed. Gently, he shook her awake. Her eyes flew open and she sat up. At the sight of him, she clutched at his shoulders. And the sensation was so overwhelming that he closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair. For a brief moment, he wrapped his arms around her and lulled himself into believing that she dreamed of him, and of their life together, and she remembered now.

"My lord," she gasped.

"Hush. You are fine," he assured her.

"It is the same nightmare over and over," she sniffled. As if she realized who it was and where they were, she flushed and pulled away. "I apologize."

"Nonsense," he said softly. "Tell me what it was," Chuck urged. "Speaking of it will help you remember. Let me help you remember."

She looked at him uncertainly, but he had such kind eyes. She took a deep breath. "I loved her so," she began. "I do not remember names, or faces, but I remember feelings. I loved her so."

"Who?" he prodded, puzzled, until he remembered who had gone with her.

"She stayed with me, because she loved me," she confessed. "And loving me had killed her."

"What do you mean?" he asked, his heart sinking to finally learn of what had happened to her loyal maid.

The tears flowed freely now, and his thumbs caressed her cheeks to dry them. She held her hand up to her chin, her fingers idly played where her ring had been. "I pressed my diamond into her palm," she remembered. "He was going to take me away. And so I gave my ring to her and begged her—" She closed her eyes tightly. "Tell him I love him, I pleaded. I feared death, and I wanted him to know." Her eyes opened, and she stared straight into his eyes. "If it were my dying day, I would that he knew."

His throat tightened. "He knew."

"And then he pulled me away, and I prayed he would let her go." She choked out a cry. "And then he shot at the horses' feet, and sent them over the edge." When she melted against him, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows. She buried her face in his robe, and burrowed at his side, in a place so familiar he almost wept. For the first time, he felt his child pressed against his body, and he could swear the baby knew him as it responded with a kick.

"Do you wish to sleep?" he asked, reluctant to leave, but keeping his head because if he did not leave, he would stay beside them forever.

"No," she whispered. "Keep me awake," she asked. "If I sleep, the nightmares will return."

Chuck glanced at the bedside table, and saw the book that now lay there facedown. He smiled. "I have intrigued you."

She raised her head, then saw the book he now held. "I know your secret," she confessed. And then she sat up and looked down at him. He held his breath. "My lord, I know why you are so kind, why you say those lines so beautifully."

"You do?" he breathed.

She took the book from him, and turned to an earmarked page. "E qual soffrisse di starla a vedere diverria nobil cosa, or si morria," she read to him.

He smiled. "You know Italian now?"

"There is translation," she informed him. "Any man who suffers to stay and see her becomes a noble soul, or else he dies." She paused, then said, "I know, my lord, how recently it was that you lost your wife. Forgive me. Lord Marcus spoke of it before you came to the table."

And it was thoroughly unexpected, so oddly it sat with him that she spoke of his dead wife, that he shut his eyes tightly. Only to feel her barest touch on his chest.

"You remember her when you read this?" she asked, yawning. "Did you turn into a noble soul?"

"And then when she was gone, I died," he admitted. He took the book from her. "Lie down. Let me read to you." He skipped the Italian, and went directly to the passage that he knew she had to hear, even as Beatrice, because he needed to tell her even as it fell on uncomprehending ears. "I came to a place not knowing where I was and it seemed to me I saw women, weeping, with disheveled hair, going through the street, in extreme sadness: and the sun seemed to me to be darkened, so that the stars showed themselves of a color such that I judged they were weeping: and it seemed to me that birds flying in the air fell dead, and there were massive tremors."

He glanced at her, and saw that she was half asleep. "And marveling in this fantasy," he continued, "and very fearful, I imagined that a friend came to me saying: 'Do you not know? Your miraculous lady has departed this world.'"

And then he sighed, and looked at her. She lay down, with her cloud of dark hair framing her face against the pristine pillows, like his own fallen angel. It reminded him so clearly that she was alive, even if at times, it seemed she was not.

For the longest moment, he could fool himself into believing that they were in their bed, back in London, and there was no time apart. Happily, they waited for their child, and she had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Yet even the longest moments ended. He padded across the floor softly so he would not wake her. Almost as if she felt him leave, she stirred in her sleep. And then, he heard her suck in a deep breath. She sat up, her eyes frantic. He rushed back beside her. "What is it?"

And now, she was weeping silently, unlike the sobbing she had done earlier. "Six months I had been fine, living with the horrid memories that visit me in my sleep. But now—"

"Was it a nightmare?" he asked, wishing once more that he could strangle Aaron Rose with his bare hands. "Did anyone hurt you?"

"It was the most awful nightmare, my lord. I was so happy."

His heart skipped a beat. "How can they be so awful then?"

She bent her head, and now her hair fell on either side of her face to cover her tears. "Because I cannot remember names or faces. They are so beautiful, but they leave me so empty."

He stood, needing to place a distance between them as much as possible, if only for this particular nightmare. "Tell me about it."

And with each statement, she killed him.

"The scent of candle wax was pungent, not unpleasant. It was familiar," she relayed. "It was cool, not cold. It was like sun trapped under marble and stone. But it streamed through magnificent windows, stain glass." She closed her eyes. "There were icons of the stations of the cross." And then she smiled tearfully. "And I married him," she recollected with her eyes closed. "Most of all, I remember giving up everything I was, all for another person. I remember how it felt."

"You remember all that?"

And then she opened her eyes and gave him a sad smile. "I wish I could forget," she told him softly. "If I cannot live that life, I wish I could forget it all."

tbc