Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (31 page)

“Feeling better now?” he asked, looking concerned, touching my
elbow lightly.

“Yes, thank you.”  He moved his hand away from my
elbow.  I tried not to show my disappointment.

“You know, I feel a little better with more people living here
with you and Jonas now,” Ethan said while putting Lillie in her carriage
seat.  “I’m not sure I completely trust William yet, but I still worry
about Jeff coming after you.”

“I do, too, sometimes, but I feel safe here.  I’m happy your
aunt and cousin are here with me now.  I’m no longer the only lady,
besides Lillie, of course,” I said, looking at our little girl in the
carriage.  His eyes looked at her, as well.  “Ethan,” I said,
touching his arm to get his attention back again.  He turned around, and I
withdrew my hand, not trusting myself with the feeling I got when we
touched.  Instead I touched my necklace, the Celtic cross, and looked down
at the ground.  “I…I still wear the Wellington necklace.  Would you
like it back?” 
For Elizabeth
, I thought, though dared not speak
aloud.

“No,” he said, touching my chin, bidding me to look at him. 
“It belongs with you.”  He withdrew his hand.  “You will always be
considered a Wellington, part of the family.  And perhaps someday if
Lillie Rose gets married, you may give it to her if you wish.”

He was so wonderful.  Why couldn’t I have him?

“Do I need to chaperone you two?”  Jonas startled us
both.  He walked up to us, grinning.  “Sorry, I don’t mean to
interrupt.  Ethan, Catherine wanted me to give this to you to take to your
mother.”  He handed Ethan a thick worn Bible.  “She said she found some
information in it on previous births and deaths and wanted Clarissa to look at
it.  She left a letter just inside.”

“All right, I’ll take it to her,” Ethan said, putting the Bible
inside the carriage and checking on Lillie.

Jonas left us, and I struggled to find words.  His last words
had been that I could keep his family necklace and give it to Lillie when she
herself married.  I touched the necklace again.  “I’ll take good care
of this, I promise.  I won’t let anyone else have it except for Lillie when
she’s ready.  I won’t lose it.”

“Oh, Madeline.  I don’t blame you for the loss of the
ring.  You couldn’t help it.  Since Jeff has it, that means he must
have stolen it from you.  It must have been the day of your
accident.  Do you remember anything else about that day?”

“Unfortunately, no.”  I still hadn’t been able to remember
anything about my accident that caused the memory loss.

“Please, don’t blame yourself.  If anything, it’s my
fault…for not taking better care of you.  I shouldn’t have let you go into
town without a male chaperone.  I could have prevented this whole
thing.”  He looked away, seemingly disgusted with himself.

I had at one time blamed him for the same thing, but I had
recently come to realize that it wasn’t his fault, and I had forgiven myself
for thinking that it was.  “Ethan,” I said softly, touching his arm again
and keeping it there.  “Don’t blame yourself for that.  You couldn’t
know what the future held.  You couldn’t keep me locked in the house all
day every day in order to protect me, no more than I could have locked you away
and prevented you from going to war.  It’s not possible to avoid all
pain.  I certainly don’t blame you.  Once I regain my memory about
the accident, or we ever find Jefferson again, we’ll figure out what happened,
and we’ll get the Wellington ring back.”

“How did you get to be so smart and so caring?”  He smiled,
but his smile faded and turned to desire.  He looked like he wanted to
kiss me, and I wanted to kiss him back, but we abstained.  Instead, he took
my hand off of his arm and held it. 

I cleared my throat and blinked.  “I learned an awful lot
from my former husband.” 

I continued to have occasional vomiting in the mornings.  I
began to wonder if I had an ongoing illness or if something I ate every morning
made me sick.  By the time I finished my gardening chores, I always felt
better, so I didn’t mention it to anyone.  I didn’t want Ethan to keep
Lillie from me, so I especially didn’t want to mention it to him.

I began to develop a close friendship with Catherine.  She
wasn’t too much older than I was, about 8 years.  She’d had Ginny when she
was 17.  She was a lot younger than Clarissa, by about 15 years.  We
had a lot in common, in that we endured a lot of hardship.  She told me
all about her struggles since the war, with her husband George dying in the
war, trying to raise a child on her own, and trying to keep the plantation
running in Bellwood.  Her husband’s brother Charles had also died during
the war.  He’d been much older, and his son, George’s nephew, Charles II,
or Charlie, was the one who came to live there with his wife and their baby
boy.  She’d hated to leave her home, for all the memories she’d shared
with George, and yet that was the very reason she needed to get away from
it.  She couldn’t stop grieving about George because every room she walked
into reminded her of something to do with him, something he said or did, places
they had been intimate.

Catherine confided that she liked this plantation very much and
was so thankful for us letting her and Ginny come to live on it. 
“Clarissa had wanted me to come live with her, which I did consider, but when
you asked me to come here, I took you up on your offer instead.  I felt
obligated to you because I had not acted upon my suspicions of seeing you at
that party and of not telling anyone, if indeed it had been you.  There’s
also a lot going on over there at Wellington with Ethan being married to
Elizabeth and expecting a child now, and I felt Ginny and I would be an added
burden to my sister.  Besides, I didn’t want to be too close to my sister,
for fear we’d get on each other’s nerves after a while, if you know what I
mean.”  We both laughed.  “I think it’s different for sisters. 
How is it for you, living with your brother?”

“Oh, it’s been fine.  We get along great.  I’d always
followed him around when we were children, and while it got on his nerves back
then, he’s learned to live with my adoration of him,” I said, laughing
again.  “I’ve been really thankful for him allowing me to stay here, as
well, after I had to leave Wellington.”  I re-told her my whole story in
more detail about the accident and losing my memory.  She did say that
Clarissa had told her about it briefly on the day she found me in Chester. 

“We all thought you were dead, Madeline.  I’m so glad you’re
not.  It could’ve been a whole lot worse.” 

I had to agree with her there.  The worst, besides death,
would have been if I had never gotten my memory back, had never remembered
Ethan, and had married Jefferson.  I told her how much I enjoyed getting
my memory back and falling in love with Ethan all over again, that we had
planned to be re-married, and how it all came crumbling down when Elizabeth was
found to be with child.  “And so I came to live with my brother. 
It’s been so hard, being apart from Ethan.  I love him so.”

She hugged me and let me cry it out.  I hadn’t cried since I
first arrived here at my childhood home, since the first week when I’d cried
myself to sleep every night.  “Seeing him every day is both wonderful and
tortuous at the same time.  I don’t know how much longer I can take
this.  I don’t think it will ever get easier,” I said between sobs.

 “It will get easier, in time,” Catherine reassured.  “I
know when George was in the war and away from me and Ginny, I felt a great
loss, as well, and wondered if he’d make it back home.  You don’t know how
I grieved when he didn’t come back.”  It was her turn to weep.  I
pulled out my handkerchief and handed it to her.  “And yet time has made
the pain lessen.  That’s all you need is time,” she said, wiping her tears
away with the handkerchief.  “I realize Ethan is not dead, but it’s still
a great loss for you.  I can see how difficult it would be, seeing the
person you loved every day but not be able to be with him.”

I nodded.  “You and Jonas have the same misfortune of having
lost someone you loved during the war.  He fell in love with a nurse
during the war, only to find out she was killed when he went back for her after
the war was over.”

“Oh, how terrible,” she commiserated.

We talked about Ginny and how she was coping with the loss of her
father.  She was becoming a big help to me by playing with Lillie while I
was gardening, since Lillie was becoming more mobile.  They would play hide-and-seek
behind the bushes, look at ladybugs, try to catch butterflies, and have tea
parties.  The two of them got along very well.  I enjoyed hearing
Lillie laugh.  Some afternoons, when Jonas had some spare time, he began
teaching Ginny how to ride a horse.  She was thrilled with that. 

I continued working on my grape vines, training them to trail up
and over the poles, the way it used to be.  The lilies and roses I planted
were beside the grapes, and I found some old bricks to place around them to keep
out the weeds.  At the herb garden, on the back side of the laundry house,
I placed the lavender and sage from Clarissa around the new plantings I had
obtained in town.  The basil was already getting big and could be smelled
long before you reached it, its heady smell wafting in the breeze. 
 The path leading to the grape arbor was lined with short shrubs.

I asked Jonas and William to make a bench for us to have under the
grape arbor so we could have a place to relax in the shade of the grapes, once they
got full enough.  They made one out of an old broken bench found in the
stables.  I wanted to recreate what was there before the war changed it
all.  There had been a bench there before…

Back when Ethan and I were adolescents, Ethan and I shared our first
kiss at this very spot.  This was before Hannah’s water escapade that day
at his plantation.  We were 14 and 17 – Ethan had not yet turned 18 but
would soon.  He and I had always been close friends, but one sweltering
summer day, that all changed.  Ethan came over by boat, and since Jonas
had gone somewhere with our father, it was just me and Ethan.  He wanted
to take a swim and started pulling his clothes off, but he was turning into a
man – something I had begun to notice a lot at the time – and I was embarrassed
to look at his manly body without clothing on.  When he was down to his
underwear, he tried to coax me to undress and join him by cooling off in the
water, but I refused.  I was becoming a woman, as well, and I didn’t want
him to see me close to naked.  We weren’t children anymore. 

“Ethan, I’m 14 now.  I’m not allowed to do unladylike things
such as that,” I’d said, forcing myself to turn my face away from gazing upon
his body.

“Aw, come on.  Since when did you turn into a lady?” he
teased.  He jumped in the water and got completely wet, head to toe. 
He disappeared for a moment under the water and then reappeared on the surface
and started swimming.

I watched him swim from where I stood on the rocky shore under the
trees, fanning myself like I’d seen my mother and the other ladies do.  I
held my head high like I was better than him, more mature than him, but still
stole glances his way as he floated on his back and gazed up at the blue sky.
 I envied his carefree amusement.

“Are you coming?  The water is very fine,” he asked in a deep
voice.  His voice had been progressively deepening for a while, and he
sounded like a man as well as looked like one. 

“No,” I said.  “I’m going up to sit under the grape
arbor.  You’re welcome to join me when you’ve concluded your follies.”

I walked up the hill and around to sit on the bench in the grape
arbor.  It was lush and full and felt nice under all the shade, with an
abundance of leaves and the beginnings of grapes hanging down like a canopy
over the edges.  Ethan came walking around the tall bushes a few minutes
later with wet, slicked-back hair and damp clothes.  He quietly sat beside
me on the bench.  He sat so close that I could feel the coolness off his
damp skin.  He smelled of brine and masculinity.  My throat tightened
and my breathing became arduous, for no reason at all.  It didn’t make
sense.  This was Ethan, Wellsy, my playmate, my constant companion. 
Why did I suddenly feel nervous and uncomfortable around him?

I sensed that he was nervous, as well, for he fidgeted with his
shirt and rubbed his hands together and blew on them like he was cold.  I
knew he couldn’t be cold.

“Did you enjoy your little swim?” I asked, trying to compose
myself.

“Yes, it was quite refreshing,” he bragged, putting an arm behind
me lazily on the bench.  “You wouldn’t believe how cooled off I am
now.”  We were silent for a moment.  Then he asked quietly, “Why
didn’t you join me, Maddie?”

“I told you, a lady doesn’t do such foolish things like take our
clothes off in front of a gentleman.” 

“You think I’m a gentleman?” 

He was indeed becoming a gentleman.  My eyes went
involuntarily to his neck and his chest, where he had not completely fastened
all of his buttons.  I swallowed hard and felt my heart beat faster. 
“Yes,” I answered shyly.

 “Is that why you stopped calling me Wellsy?” he asked.
 I looked over at him, and he was serious, not teasing anymore.  He
had noticed that I’d called him Ethan.