The Bluestocking’s Absolutely Brilliant Betrothal (The Notorious Briarwoods #6)

Chapter 18

S he’d done the right thing. She’d done the right thing. She kept saying it over and over again to herself, as if somehow the repetition of it could soothe the agony now ripping her apart.

She had not been selfish. She could have married him. She could have held onto him and taken their partnership, their marriage, and continued to do all the work that she wanted, denying him fatherhood.

But she would’ve been taking advantage of him, wouldn’t she? Using him most terribly. He said he didn’t care and wanted her anyway, but how could she take the opportunity to have children away from him?

Any child of his would be so fortunate.

She folded her hands into fists on her lips, wishing the road was rougher back to London. She wished to feel the discomfort of a jolting vehicle. Anything to take her mind to some other place than this cyclical thought that she had made her life into a mess of proportions worthy of the stalls that Hercules had needed to clean.

She’d made the right choice. She’d always known she shouldn’t marry.

No, she needed to be alone. Perdita had been quite right. She was a creature who wanted to be alone. But it wasn’t like how he’d said, was it?

Good lord. Those words. She did not know if she would ever get his kind condemnation out of her head. She’d dream of it until she died.

Her coach rumbled up to her town house.

It was still early enough that not many people were out and about. It was mostly only servants and those peddling their wares and products.

The footman opened the door and she darted into the foyer, eager for escape. She needed a moment. She needed to collect herself.

Nausea whipped through her as she thought of her mother and father.

She had to tell her family now. There would be no getting around it. It was terrible. She’d made such a horrible muck of things.

Why? Why in God’s name had she ever gone to Heron House that first morning? It was the greatest mistake of her life to think that she could lie to her parents, that she could make another plan.

The truth was always the best. She’d simply needed to tell her mother and father. She’d thought she was going to spare them, but good God, this would hurt them so much worse.

And just as she was about to bolt up the stairs, there was a cacophony behind her. She turned, her heart in her mouth, hoping most perversely that it was Achilles, but the sight that met her was not her handsome Briarwood.

It was a young woman, her cloak wild and muddy about her, a babe at her breast. Her dark hair was a riot about her elfin face as she called, “Is it you, mon ami?”

Aurelia blinked. “Anais?” she whispered, hardly daring to believe it.

Aurelia froze. Was it possible? She gazed at the young woman who was gaunt with blue eyes that were haunted. Her clothes were most certainly French, of the latest fashion, but they were torn and stained, and the babe wrapped in blankets at her breast was letting out sounds of distress.

The butler looked most alarmed. “My lady, are we expecting a visitor?”

“Yes,” she blurted. Except they hadn’t been expecting her. Not really. “No, but I am over the moon that she is here! Do let her in immediately.”

The butler stepped back and Anais all but tumbled in, clutching her baby.

“Let us go into the salon,” Aurelia urged before she turned to the butler and instructed, “Please have tea and food and milk and every appealing thing brought up and immediately prepare a room.”

The butler blinked quickly. “Of course, my lady,” he said.

She dashed down the stairs, took Anais by the shoulder, and said, “Come. Come with me now. Let us warm you by the fire.”

Anais seemed too overwhelmed to speak.

Aurelia whisked her into the small salon that overlooked the street and helped her friend to sit on the pale blue silk settee near the fire. “You are here,” she exclaimed as she lowered herself beside her friend.

“You sent for me,” Anais said, her face full of emotion. It was a war of disbelief, relief, and awe. “Mon ami, I never thought that you would do such a thing. I knew you received my letters and understood the danger that I was in, but how did you manage it?”

Her heart? Her heart again. Oh, dear God, how it twisted and ached. “Achilles Briarwood managed it. He has friends there, you see, and he…”

“Mon Dieu,” Anais whispered, her voice surprisingly gentle, almost certainly so as not to alarm her baby. “I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to have me stolen out of the jail and then whisked across the country with my infant. He must have paid a hefty price to free me. Most people cannot escape,” she rasped as she bared her breast and began to feed her child.

Aurelia blinked. “I did not know you’d had a baby.”

Anais blinked back tears. “It was not planned.”

“Did you… Were you married?”

“No,” Anais said, a tear slipping down her cheek. “The man that I was in love with… We did not have time. And then he was taken and executed. They let me keep my baby in the prison after I’d been tried, but it was terrible, so very terrible. I did not know what was going to happen to him. But you have saved us both. Thank you, Aurelia. Thank you.”

Aurelia watched her friend feed her child with a sense of wonder and gratitude so intense she could scarce warrant it.

Thousands had been lost.

But Anais and her child had been saved.

They had been exchanging letters for years, but she’d never once thought of Anais as a mother. But now, as she watched the young woman caress the baby’s head, she felt her own heart swell. “You must have been terrified for him.”

“I was,” Anais said. “The conditions were very bad. He is my life now, my reason for living, and I will fight on for him, and he will fight on too. It is the only reason to be alive,” she said.

“To fight?” Aurelia asked, surprised and also feeling her own reasoning being tugged at. Had she not just made her own argument against having a child? Against the fears that came with it.

And here was her brave friend who had bested the revolution, the bloodbath of Paris.

“Non,” Anais replied, studying her child with so much love that she shone with it, “not to fight, though fighting can be necessary.”

“Then what? I don’t understand.”

Anais swung her gaze back to her. “The only reason to be alive is love. Real love. The kind of love that is terrifying and magnificent. The love a mother bears for her child. And family and friendship. Those are the only reasons to live. You see, we are not meant to be alone without love unshared, unsung, ungiven.” Anais stretched out her hand and took Aurelia’s and squeezed. “I am so happy to hear that you are going to be married. It is true, no? That is what I was told.”

She gasped. “How did you hear?”

“I asked about you on the journey back, and they told me you are doing much here in London with your fiancé to help the refugees. Is it true?”

“It was true,” she whispered.

Anais’s brows rose. “Was?”

“He is not my fiancé now.”

“Why ever not?”

“I let him go.” The words felt almost absurd now. And they caused her vision to swim.

“You do not love him,” Anais said.

Her heart once again did that dratted thing; it let out the worst wail inside her.

And Anais breathed, “You do love him, but you have set him free.”

She straightened. “I will do far better work if I am not troubled by love or connections.”

“You will do terrible work,” snorted Anais.

“What?”

Anais rolled her eyes with surprising impatience, but then she softened. “Why do you think that you sent for me?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I wanted to help you escape.”

Anais shook her head. “You sent for me because of your love for me, non? You could have sent for any one of the people imprisoned there, but you wanted to free moi, your friend who you love. Love is powerful, and it makes you act. If you did not have such a great friendship with me across the water, perhaps you would not feel so strongly about saving so many in France, non?”

Her mouth dried. “I did not think about it like that.”

“Love is what makes this whole life have a point,” Anais said with unshakable conviction. “It is what makes us take the risks, not cringe from them.”

She gaped at her friend. Perhaps her friend was merely muddled from so much travel. “I don’t want to have children,” she said softly, “so I cannot marry him.”

“Why not?” Anais said. “My son gives me more joy than I ever—”

“But what if something happened to him?”

“What if the moon fell from the sky?” Anais teased, but then she saw how serious Aurelia was. “I would be heartbroken,” Anais said, “but I cannot imagine not having him. Are you asking if I would trade the love that I have felt for him so that I did not suffer? What kind of thinking is that, mon ami? Non.”

And with that, a voice called from the doorway. “Your French friend is very wise.”

She lifted her gaze quickly to her mother. “Mama, this is Anais. Achilles has rescued her out of France.”

“How wonderful,” her mother said gently, but there was an intensity to her gaze. “I am so glad that she is here, and she and her child must stay with us as long as possible. But, my dear, I must speak with you now, I think.”

“Yes, Mama,” she said. “Anais, food will soon be here. Take your ease.”

Anais smiled, easing back onto the settee as if, for the first time in months, she knew she was safe.

With that, Aurelia stood and bustled out of the room, following her mother. They went into her mother’s lavender-hued parlor.

Quietly, her mother crossed to the windows. She leaned her hands on the sill as if she was bracing herself. “I am so very sorry.”

“Why?” Aurelia asked, nearly jerking back.

“I have been most unthinking.”

“No, Mama,” Aurelia protested. “You are very thoughtful. You are wonderful.”

“I have not always been wonderful,” her mother said, glancing back over her shoulder.

Aurelia stilled. This was not a conversation that she longed to have. “Mama, you must not recriminate yourself or think…”

Suddenly, her mother’s face grew taut with emotion. “We must haul this into the light, my dear. We must haul that which we have hidden for far too long into the light because if we do not, your life will be ruined.”

She wanted to run. Her feet itched to skip back. And that small voice, the voice which always protected her, whispered for her not to listen. “What do you mean? I don’t…”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it,” her mother said with shocking force. “You said that you don’t want to have children, and I think I know why.” Her mother looked away for a moment. “I couldn’t be there for you as I should have been during that dark and awful time, and I’m very sorry for it.”

Aurelia bit her lower lip. There was no need to explain what time her mother was speaking of. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t wish to go back. No, she only wished to go forward.

“It’s all right, Mama,” she bit out.

“No. It wasn’t,” her mother countered, a muscle tightening in her cheek as she seemed to face her own past. “No one knew how to help me then. They could not pull me out of the mire. It was, dare I say, tragic. I did not think I was going to survive the loss of your little sister. I did not think I was going to survive that hell. I’m not sure your father thought so either, but you never gave up, and I remember you standing by the door, waiting for me to come back to you. You never gave up, did you?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, the memory haunting her. It had haunted her for so long. She tried to shove it away lest it take hold again.

“You didn’t, Aurelia,” her mother declared passionately. “You never give up. That’s why you are the way you are. You never stop fighting. But something inside you now thinks that it can protect you from your future. You cannot be protected from pain, from suffering, from life. And if you try, it will only be worse. You will deny yourself everything that makes this life worthwhile. You will be alone, and it’ll be a terrible existence for you. And I cannot bear to see you live that way.”

She drew herself up, refusing to let her mother blame herself. Refusing to give in to her mother’s warnings, even as a small part of her ached to finally yield. “Mama, that is not true. I can be alone. I can help so many people.”

Though now, Anais’s words haunted her.

“And you?” her mother pointed out without any seeming fear. “What will happen when you break because you are all alone?”

She sucked in a breath. “I will not break because I am all alone.”

“Yes, you will,” her mother returned, her gaze full of worry and the determination to stop her child from descending into a place that no one could follow. “It is being alone which makes our minds ripe for breaking. It is the isolation, my dear, of thinking that we need to be alone that hurts us. It is love, it is our families, it is our friends, and it is our communities which save us. Those who go it entirely alone, yes, they might have novel concepts and ideas, but far too often they end up laughing at the walls, unable to bear the pain of existence.”

Her mother crossed to her and took Aurelia’s hands in hers as if she could will the power of her words to travel through her touch. “You owe the world so much more than that, my darling girl. Please, please understand that as awful as it was when I lost your little sister, when I lost my baby girl, that I would not trade all the suffering and pain away. I would not because I was able to see her face. I was able to hold her. To watch her laugh and even take her first steps. And I would say the same for all of my children. Do you understand?”

Tears filled Aurelia’s eyes and her body began to shake as if she was releasing years of tension and fears. Did she understand? Did she dare?

“I have gotten to love your father,” her mother continued, unwavering. “And one day, he will go away from me and I will wail and I will howl, and it will be bitter and terrible. But, oh, my dear, I will have lived.”

She had to run from all this, didn’t she? She had to protect herself. She always had. But perhaps…she had been mistaken. Had the little girl in her gotten it terribly, terribly wrong?

“Are you planning on digging your own grave, Aurelia? Are you planning on climbing in it? To be living but, for all intents and purposes, lost to everyone around you? Because if you do, I will not be there to pretend you have not done so. I shall shout it out every time I see you. Instead, I beg of you, walk away from that.”

Her mother squeezed her hands, pulling her closer and locking gazes with her. “I don’t care if you don’t wish to have children. I don’t care if you wish to be single for the rest of your life, but I care why you are choosing that. And if it is because you are afraid, my darling, then you are choosing your suffering all on your own.”

With that, her mother pulled Aurelia into her arms and held her close. And the tears came from both of them, tears that had needed to spill for almost fifteen years. And those tears were a beginning, the most important beginning that anyone could ever have, because they were the path to healing and love.