Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3) (27 page)

It surprised Varian when she did not return to their room after leaving the table. She went with her family to the drawing room and sat with Philip playing chess.

Varian was in a chair across the room staring into the swirl of his glass as he carefully studied Merry, trying to assess where her mood sat. Those doe eyes wouldn’t even look at him and her expression was unreadable. When her emotions were buried deep, it was bad.  He had only tried to love and protect her.

Fixing his gaze back to his wine, Varian cursed himself a fool. Only a fool would hurt and lose, over and over again, all the people he loved most.

He was startled when Merry’s voice came to him, very near. She had moved from her brother and was inches from him. His senses hadn’t told him she’d crossed the room. “You are not a fool, Varian,” she whispered, surprising him. Softly, she added, “You are a wonderful man, complicated and proud, but you are not a fool. I would not love a fool.  I love you.”

Merry slipped her arms over his shoulders and her hands ran his shoulders in comforting patterns. She kissed him lightly on the side his neck before her eyes settled lovingly on him. “I understand.  I am not angry any more. You think by protecting and controlling all the elements around you that you can spare those you love from harm. You treat me like I am made of glass, as though the slightest wrong touch and I will break. I am not glass, Varian. I never have been. Only to you. Only in your eyes. The only harm you can do to me is in this need you have always to be cautious, never to let anything touch me you fear will be too harsh for me. You want to protect me and spare me, but those are the times you hurt me. When you do these things, I know you are doing them, and it hurts me because it makes me feel I am not all I should be for you. Don’t do it again, because I can never love you how I wish to if you will not let me.”

Varian slipped his arms around her, easing her tiny body against him as his check came to rest on the swell of their child. “I am sorry, Little One. I would rather suffer anything than what I just went through with you.”

“Don’t be sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to love me. I am tired of being adored, Varian. I will always be glass as long as you adore me.  I know why you always say you adore me and too rarely say you love.  It took me a year to reason out the difference in the two words for you. As long as you adore me instead of love me I will always be glass and never be what I want to be for you.  I want you to love me.”

Varian nodded, not trusting his voice just yet.  He felt her sweet lips in his hair, tender and loving and wanting to soothe him, when he should be the one comforting her. He closed his eyes against the still shocking strength of his feelings for her.

“I did not realize I was hurting you. I was only trying to love you.”

“I know, you insufferable man, but how strongly you love is sometimes your greatest problem. You fail to realize you are loved in return. That I love you just as much and what that means to me and what it means to
you
.”

Varian had heard those words before, from his son and another girl long ago, but they hadn’t had quite as much meaning as they did being spoken quietly by his beautiful wife. She was so young and yet wiser than he had been in all this.

He did love at times too strongly, so fiercely it blinded him, and in ways that hurt though he did not want them to. It was the first time he had full understanding of it, experiencing it with Merry. She was able to make him understand himself better, to be a better man than he had ever been, to be a better man for her and his children.

Merry curled atop his lap, unconcerned that they were surrounded by family, and he sensed that in part she had chosen to end this quarrel here, since she had made it all too apparent at dinner that something serious had happened between them. She deliberately ended it in front of her father so he would not wonder where her loyalties were ever again, even slightly.

Varian’s arms slipped around her, holding her against him as his cheek rested on her dark curls. She had just stepped openly into his quiet and private war with her male relatives. He hated that she had to, and that his love had brought her to this point. 

Brilliantly subtle, her actions were a quiet gesture made to both men. Varian to remember what her love carried with it, and to her father to understand what her husband meant to her.

Her face fell against his chest. He could feel the soft vibrations of laughter in her. “I am sorry about the decanter. I am glad that I missed you. It was not generous or kind of me not to at least let you pour a drink before I started that. You should have seen Moffat’s face when he came into the room with the serving girls to remove the glass. I thought Moffat was beyond being shock by us, but I was wrong. As upset as I was, I almost laughed.”

Merry’s laughter came more strongly and Varian savored the sound. It was her way of giving comfort to the pain they’d just been through together. Laughing, he said, “I am going to be in serious trouble, Little One, if your aim ever gets better.”

She kissed him. “It won’t. So long as you stop treating me like glass and don’t forget all the things I want to be as your wife.”

“I won’t, Merry. I would be a fool not to savor all the gifts you share with me as my wife.”

She curled into him and closed her eyes. “I am so tired. Carry me to our room. Smashing up a bedroom is exhausting work.” Another soft, but weak laugh. “I can’t walk. I want to go to sleep and feel you next to me so I can rest. I do not sleep when you are gone. Not ever. I have forgotten how to.  Don’t leave me again. Let them do whatever they are going to do. I think our child is going to come any day and I don’t think I can go through that without you.”

He picked her up, his words a soft whisper in her hair as he crossed the room of Merricks. “I won’t leave you again, Little One. If I am forced to, I will wait until after the birth and I will tell you everything before I go so you will not worry or doubt me again.  I love you, Merry. Don’t ever scare me like that again. I am too old to go through that more than once.”

She smiled, sleepy and amused, and kissed him. “You are not too old, you insufferable man. I want you exactly how you are, in every way, Varian. Complicated and proud and at times
very
imperfect. And I don’t think I will have to scare you again. I love you and all is well.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lucien Merrick slammed his bedroom door. “Our daughter is a fool,” he announced.

Rhea sat up in their bed, facing the all too familiar and furious lines of her husband’s face since Varian Deverell had entered their lives.

“Our daughter is not a fool,” Rhea said softly, watching Lucien’s mad strides carry him to the bed. “And if you are angry because of those vile rumors in London, then you are the fool, Lucien.” Lucien’s face flashed with surprise at that. “Yes, I have heard the rumors. The Countess Lieven broke a quill writing to me with them.  If seeing them both downstairs was not enough to tell you they are untrue, then the fact that our daughter would not have forgiven him quickly in that should tell you. Merry is stubborn and proud and in love with him. It would have been a fight that would have lasted a century. Is this why you and Andrew are so obviously still displeased with Varian? You believe Varian unfaithful to our daughter?”

Lucien sighed. It was better that Rhea think this. He was nowhere near ready to discuss his concerns about Varian with her, because he was nowhere near certain what he would do with them. He didn’t want his wife worried, not if she didn’t have to be.

Lucien settled on the bed beside his wife. “I am sorry I slammed the door. Yes I’d heard the rumors as well. The man was gone a month and our daughter has been crying. It was obvious somehow she had heard them. I hate to see her unhappy.”

“Ah.” Rhea slipped her arms around her husband. “He adores her, in a way uncommon and beautiful way. You need to worry less, Lucien.”  She gave him a sweet smile. Her kiss was not sweet. It was magnificently passionate. “You need to worry more about me.”

“Have I been neglecting you, my dear? I haven’t meant to. I don’t know if I will ever be at peace with this. I am Merry’s father. I will always be concerned for her. ”

Rhea’s fingers began to work open the buttons on his shirt. “I am your wife. Right now, my love, I want you to be concerned with me.”

~~~

The child came a week later. It was a very long day at Bramble Hill and it would stretch into months that would be the worst of Rhea Merrick’s life. Worse than the night Merry had disappeared. Witnessing the tortured spasms of her daughter’s tiny body, it surpassed the agony she felt when she had buried with Lucien their third child. By midnight her worry had slipped into naked fear. Merry was not built well for childbirth, the child was very large, and the child would not come.

It was almost more than Rhea could bear watching as Varian supported her daughter’s back against him, willing Merry to continue through her exhaustion. Somehow he dragged her back each time her eyes slipped closed, unwilling to accept that the child seemed unable to pass from her.

She did not know which face she had come to dread more. Varian’s impassivity and seeming unwillingness to believe that Merry would most probably not survive this night, or when the fear managed to slipped through, revealing his agony and his alarm.

Hours ago Rhea had tried to make him leave the room, but it had been impossible. As difficult as it was for her having him here, knowing each moment would transform to an agonizing memory no man deserved, she could not escape the belief that he was all that was holding Merry with them. That reason alone had made her long stop trying to force him into the hallway with Lucien.

Another contraction hit Merry, the violence of it horrifying Rhea and yet her poor daughter had not even the strength left to make a scream during the pain she was consumed by. Her body could only stir weakly with faint whimpers to make futile efforts in Varian’s arms. He held her through this hell, until it passed and she settled with restlessness that was hardly more than stillness, just the movement of suffering with little awareness. It had been too many hours, too many violent spasms, and her daughter could not manage this much longer.

Varian reached into the bowl and removed a cloth, gently wiping Merry’s face and brushing the long hairs that had fallen forward from it. He spoke to her in soft tones Rhea feared her daughter no longer could hear. This last contraction had been even worse than the others, though it hadn’t seemed possible that they could get worse. Daring to meet the physician’s eyes, Rhea could not escape the truth she saw there.

“Varian...” Those black eyes made the words clogged in Rhea’s throat with the tears she’d willed down for many hours.  She could not speak the words to him. She could not, would not bring to this soul of such deep and many agonies yet another to come to rest. How anyone could have ever accused this man of any cruelty, even slight, was unfathomable.

It was the physician who spoke her fears, somehow meeting those great dark eyes and still managing to have voice. “Your Grace, she can’t pass the child and she will most probably not survive much more of this. We can give her something to ease the suffering until it’s through. There isn’t much time. I can save one of them, Your Grace. The child if you allow me, but I will have to take it from her body.”

Silence. Rhea stared at Varian, wondering if he had even heard. Rhea watched, his smoldering gaze fixed on Merry and she knew he had. “Oh, no, my girl,” he said softly to her, “pay them no mind. You are not going to die. Because I will not let you. Because you are stronger than they know.  Because it is not your time to leave me.”

“Your Grace, you must make a decision.”

Varian’s voice cut through the room with rage. “Send him away, Rhea, before I kill him.”

Staring at the top of his head, her cheeks now saturated with the grief she could no longer contain, Rhea sobbed, “Varian ....”

“Now,” Varian ordered. “Get him out of here and leave me with Netta. Merry is not going to die, Rhea, when it is so close to being over. I will not let him cut her before my eyes out of ignorance. How could you even considering letting him take his knife to your daughter’s body. Do you know so little of your daughter that you think she can’t battle her way through this?”

It was grief talking, but the words were cruel. So very cruel. Rhea followed the physician into the hallway where Lucien and Andrew waited grimly. She collapsed against her husband’s chest, the force of her tears making her tiny body shake as she clutched her husband for support. Varian had not known what he was saying. He had not meant to hurt her so badly in her mother’s own grief.

“Your Grace,” the physician began, but Rhea held up a hand to silence him.

“No, don’t say it. I can’t bear to hear it again and I must let the decision be his.” She buried her face against Lucien, the tears coming stronger. “Lucien, you must get him away from her. You must not let Varian watch Merry die. He will not survive that torture, Lucien. He will not. It is all that I can do for my daughter. And I will not make it through this horrid night if you let him.”

Lucien did not leave the hall. His place was with Rhea, and Varian’s was with Merry. Lucien would have killed any man who attempted to take him from his wife’s side from what it seemed would surely be a doubly tragic passing. He would suffer any kind of torture to himself rather than to watch Rhea die, but it would be where he would be, with her, if God allowed it. As he was now with his wife in the hall, in their fear for their daughter.

Another contraction. They were rolling one on top of each now, blurring spasms of pain with no beginning or end. More minutes that seemed to bring the birth too slowly closer. Varian was grateful Merry was only semi-alert; she could never have survived this with full awareness. He knew she would survive, he could feel the battle within her, and had seen it in her eyes when they had fluttered open during the torture of that last effort.

“Ah, yer grace, I can see the head now, sure as I see ye,” Netta said wiping her brow on the roll of her sleeve.  They had moved Merry to foot of the bed, holding her in a position so that gravity could give what little help it could, and Varian was on his knees, supporting her against him. The common sense of country midwife and Varian was grateful for it.  Everything Netta did seemed to improve the labor. It started again. “There, even more. I can feel another one. If she can struggle through a few more it will be done with.”