Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart (22 page)

His face had gone immobile, as if it were carved from stone.

“I’m sorry, James. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Claire—”

“I think I’d better go.” Maybe it was cowardice, but I’d undertaken all the honesty I could for one day. Dripping wet from head to toe, I sloshed back toward Christ Church and sought the sanctuary of my room. Tomorrow was Friday, the last day of the seminar. I would skip it, of course, and stay out of sight in my room. Or perhaps go see Harriet and tell her good-bye. A shame that I would never know how that first version of
Pride and Prejudice
ended, but maybe it was better not to know. Maybe it was better to bury my Mr. Darcy fantasy once and for all, here on its native soil.

I had definitely learned my lesson, and it had been at a very steep price.

That night I didn’t dream about a handsome, arrogant hero who swept me off my feet and saved me from a life of drudgery. No, I dreamed about cabinet facings and bathroom tiles. About patience and flat tires.

I dreamed about two familiar, strong arms that had helped me every bit as much as they had held me. Two arms that I now missed desperately. And the man attached to them who meant far more to me than I had ever allowed myself to admit.

T
he cows lowing in the meadow outside my window woke me early on Friday morning. Exhausted by the events of the week, I tried to fall back into the oblivion of sleep, but no matter how tired my body might be, my mind was a hive of activity.

Neil was gone, James knew me for the fraud I was, and my seminar leader was my mortal enemy. I had made as big a mess of my life on this side of the Atlantic as I had on the other. I burrowed my head deeper into the pillow and let waves of homesickness wash over me.

I just wanted to go back to Kansas City, back to the life I’d had before I lost my job, the life I’d taken for granted. I would have given anything for a Saturday night on Neil’s sofa watching a baseball game, or a Monday morning wiping the disgusting bits of food out of the microwave at work. I’d have been happy even to drive Phillip to the airport at the crack of
dawn or babysit for Missy when she needed a night out with her girlfriends.

After tossing and turning for another half hour, I gave up on the idea of sleep. Showered and dressed, I made my way not to the Hall for breakfast but to the sanctuary of the Master’s Garden. I took refuge on a wooden bench beneath the shelter of a tree, the magnificent green lawn spread out before me and still wet with morning dew.

I retrieved my cell phone from my purse and then entered Missy’s familiar number. More than anything, I needed to hear a friendly voice.

The phone rang once, twice, then several more times. Finally I heard popping and scratching noises and at length a bleary “Hello?”

“Missy? It’s me. Claire.”

“Claire?” Her voice was thick with sleep, and suddenly I realized why.

“Miss, I’m so sorry. I forgot about the time difference.” I did a quick mental calculation; it was somewhere around two in the morning back in Kansas City. “I’ll call you back later.”

I started to flip my phone closed, but then I heard her voice calling my name.

“Claire? Claire! No. Don’t hang up.”

She sounded a little more awake now. Awake and concerned. “What’s wrong?”

If ever I needed a listening ear, this was the moment, but now I couldn’t dump all my troubles on Missy. Even under the
best of circumstances, I had difficulty sharing my feelings with other people. “Look, go back to sleep. I’ll call you after lunch or something.”

“Don’t hang up!” I could hear her scrambling to sit up. Phillip mumbled sleepily in the background. “Talk to me, Claire.”

Those simple words set loose a torrent of tears on my end of the line. I snuffled and snorted and generally fell apart, while Missy made soothing noises from thousands of miles away.

“It’s okay, honey. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.” Missy crooned the words in my ear.

I’d never been on the receiving end of them before, and unfortunately they just made me cry harder. I indulged myself for about five dollars’ worth of transatlantic tear time before I set the phone down on the bench beside me and reached into my purse for some tissues. After blowing my nose several times, I picked the phone back up.

“Sorry.”

“Would you quit apologizing?” Missy’s irritation was obvious. “Look, tell me what’s going on.”

“I’ve ruined everything.” I pinched the bridge of my nose in hopes that it would stop any further tears.

“Claire—”

“It ’s true. I’ve been living my life for other people for so long, and what have I got to show for it? No job. No boyfriend. And cows for an alarm clock.”

“What? Wait.”

But I didn’t. I rambled on, unable to stop myself now that the dam had burst.

“Everything I do is for other people, and why? Where has it gotten me?”

“Would you please tell me what in the world you’re talking about?”

“I have to stop, Missy. I have to stop taking care of you.” My internal censor had apparently deserted me, because words started pouring out of my mouth that I might have thought for a long time but would never have dreamed of saying aloud.

“Well, finally,” Missy said.

“Finally?” I squeaked. I had to tighten my jaw so it wouldn’t drop too far. “Finally?” I swallowed back fresh tears. “After everything I’ve done for you and the kids and Phil, you’d say that?”

Images flashed in front of me. Sewing the kids’ Halloween costumes well into the early morning hours. Picking up Phillip from the airport at every hour of the day and night to save him the cost of a cab. Helping Missy set up her classroom every fall. “Are you saying the fact that you used me all these years is my fault?”

I could hear Missy’s sigh of exasperation as clearly as if she ’d been sitting next to me.

“Nobody gets used unless they want to, Claire,” she said. “We were just trying to fill the void for you.”

“The void?” Had I stepped into some sort of evil parallel universe where suddenly Missy was the competent sister and I was, in fact, the dependent one?

“You’ve never managed to build a life of your own,” she went on. “That’s why I was so happy you could go in my place to Oxford. I thought it might be a fresh start.”

Anger exploded in my chest, sharp and fierce with deadly claws. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Claire—”

I pushed the red button on my cell phone and snapped it shut. More tears burst forth, and I couldn’t control them. I didn’t want to control them. All those years. All that effort. For what? For ingratitude and blame?

“Here.”

A tissue appeared in front of me. A tissue attached to a masculine hand. Which was attached to the forearm I’d lately come to find so compelling.

My head jerked up, shock and disbelief warring with my grief. “What are you doing here?”

Neil slid onto the bench beside me. The warm sunshine, the beauty of the flowers, the soft whisper of the breeze—none of it mattered. Because my life had just been stripped of all its meaning. Everything I’d believed, everything I’d built my life on, had never really existed. At least, not outside my own head.

Missy felt sorry for me. That, more than anything, devastated me.

“I’m an idiot,” I mumbled in between sniffs. I wiped my nose with the tissue.

“No, you’re not.” He reached over and laid his hand on my knee. “Misguided, maybe, but definitely not an idiot.”

“Why are you here? What about your plane?” I kept my
gaze focused on the grass at my feet since I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.

His arm stiffened. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” I said, alarmed that he ’d misunderstood. “No, that’s not what I meant.” How could I even begin to explain to him what I did mean?

“It’s just as if everything I always thought…everything I counted on…none of it was real. It’s gone.”

“Just like your parents.”

My head snapped up, and now I did look him in the eye. He was watching me with kindness and compassion and all the things I’d taken for granted from him.

“It’s not like that.” But it was. I knew it. My body knew it, which was why I was shaking so hard. “It can’t be like that.”

“Why can’t it be?” He asked the question tenderly. Lovingly. His voice made me ache.

“Because I can’t survive it again, Neil. I can’t.”

I threw myself against his chest, no easy feat given that we were sitting side by side. I was too distraught to care about the complexities and nuances of our relationship. No, I was like a child all over again. It was what I had been, really, when my parents died. I’d only been eighteen years old. I might have been an adult legally, but I’d been so close to my mother and father. Had depended on them so much. Probably too much. And then they’d been taken away from me in an instant, and the only thing I’d known to do was to try and be my parents for Missy.

Or had it been for Missy?

Her words had lodged uncomfortably in the region of my heart. Had I really done it for my sister’s sake? Sacrificed my dreams and plans just so she could have a home? Or had I, in fact, only done it for me, just as she ’d said?

“It ’s okay,” he murmured against my hair, his arms wrapped around me. “It’ll be okay.”

In that moment, I wished so keenly that I had that engagement ring on my finger that it hurt. The enormity of what I’d done and of what I now understood about my feelings for Neil pressed against my chest.

I pulled back from his embrace, and he let me go. The tissue, now soaked beyond any usefulness, was still clutched in my hand.

“Sorry I didn’t bring more of those,” he said.

“I’m sure you didn’t expect me to fall apart again.” I paused to dab at my eyes. “It’s becoming a habit.”

He didn’t respond. He just sat quietly beside me as I turned away from him and faced the beautiful prospect of the Master’s Garden again.

Once upon a time, I’d thought if only my life had been different, if my parents hadn’t died, I would have had everything I ever wanted. Now I was ready to admit that no one ever got everything they wanted. If they did, it often turned out to be something that they didn’t really desire after all.

“Why didn’t you get on the plane?” I asked again, this time in slightly better shape to hear the answer.

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

He laughed, but not in a happy way. “I left my passport in the nightstand drawer in my hotel room.”

My heart sank so low I thought I might see it on the impeccably manicured lawn at my feet. “Did you find it?”

“They were holding it at the front desk. But by the time I took the bus back here, I was too late to get to the airport again and make the flight. So I stayed another night.”

“Have you rebooked already?” Even though I was so deeply glad he was sitting next to me, I desperately wanted him gone. Because that’s what he wanted. And because I was a complete and total idiot. I had gone and fallen in love with my own boyfriend, only now he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore.

“The airline ’s working on it,” he said, and I ignored the pain that gripped my midsection.

So he was still leaving. And my ring finger was still bare. And James wasn’t my Mr. Darcy at all. No, the man sitting beside me, the man who’d stood by me through thick and thin, who’d tolerated my codependence on my sister, who had confessed to taking me for granted, who had waited so patiently for me to see the light—he was the hero I’d been waiting for all my life. But I’d been too blind to see that what mattered at the end of the day, or at the end of a lifetime, was not how handsome a man was or how rich or powerful. Or even how smitten a man was with you. What
mattered was whether he was the kind of man who would stand by you, whatever happened. What mattered was whether he was the kind of man who would make sacrifices for you, and for whom you would gladly make your own sacrifices.

“Neil, I don’t know what—”

He pulled away from me. I bit back a small cry of protest.

“I just wanted to say good-bye the right way.” He reached out and tapped the end of my nose. A nose that I was sure must be red, swollen, and not the least bit attractive.

“We had a good run, Claire. No hard feelings, okay?”

A good run? No hard feelings?
What were we, a NASCAR race?

“No, of course not.”

He stood up and then looked down at me with sympathy. “I’m sure you and Missy will sort this out. It’s just a sister thing.”

I nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”

He was completely wrong. It wasn’t a sister thing at all. It was a
me
thing. Or, more to the point, a “What’s wrong with me?” thing.

He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’m going to have to go. My cab’s waiting. I just didn’t want to leave it like… Well, I just wanted to say good-bye the right way.”

How can there be a right way to say good-bye to someone you love?

That was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Instead, I gave him a watery smile.

“Mission accomplished.”

He frowned. “You’re sure? I can send the cab away.” I shook my head vigorously. “No, Neil. There’s no reason for you to stay.”