The Third Son (45 page)

“You do not love me,” he practically pleaded with her in hopes that would understand. “I do not love you. We have not been together in almost one year. It is time for you to move on.”

Morgana shook her head rapidly from side to side, clapping her hands over her ears as if to block out his words. “No!” she moaned. “No! Why are you saying this to me? I love you, Tristan! I have always loved you.”

Tristan sighed. He was getting nowhere. “Leave me in peace,” he said, turning his back on her to retrieve his guitar case. “I have a wife and I love her. Nothing you could ever do will change that.”

Tristan did not look back and so did not see Morgana rise to her feet. He did not see her unsheathe the curved dagger from the belt at her waist. He did not even hear her footsteps as she ran to catch up to him.

Her harsh, animalistic cry was the only warning that came before she plunged the knife deep between his shoulder blades. When he fell face-down onto the ground, she came over him and twisted the knife cruelly before pulling it from his back. Tristan’s cries were heard by no one as she drove the knife into his back over and over again, until they were both drenched in his blood.

His vision blurred and he could barely see her, but he could hear her sobs as she laid
his head in her lap and took him into her
arms. “I’m so sorry,” she crooned, stroking his blood soaked hair. “I’m so sorry I had to do this, but if I can’t have you for my own, then neither will she.”

She lifted the dagger one last time, turning it toward herself. She looked down into the eyes of the only man she had ever loved and smiled. “I love you,” she whispered before plunging the dagger into her own heart.

She collapsed beside him, blood rapidly soaking the front of her blouse. She turned her head to look into his eyes, which were slowly closing. With her last ounce of strength, she reached out to take his hand.
S
o, she thought with a little satisfied smile, now in death they would be together, as they had not been together in life.

****

Esmeralda was numb. There really was no other way to describe it. As she stood over her husband’s grave at the edge of the church burial ground, she found that she could no longer cry for him. Leila squirmed and wailed in her arms and she absently handed the child into Raina’s waiting arms.

When she had discovered her pregnancy almost one year earlier, she had thought then that she would die from the heartache. She never thought that she would feel so abandoned again. It turned out that she was wrong.

Morgana had been buried the day before, but Esmeralda had refused to attend the service. She did not think she would have the strength to maintain her composure at two funerals, and felt that she owed it to Tristan to attend his.

Feelings of guilt had been gnawing at her from the moment Desmond had burst into her little cottage, carrying Tristan’s bloodied body.
Esmeralda
knew that it was her fault. She should have left. She should have gone to America with Tatiana and the child she was carrying
and she should
never have accepted Tristan’s proposal. Maybe if she had, they would both be alive.

She ignored the pitying stares and murmured condolences of those gathered around the gravesite, as she made her way back toward the wagon that Desmond had driven them to the church in.

It was suddenly too much. She couldn’t stand all these people feeling sorry for her, when she knew that this had all been her fault. Finally, the tears she had been unable to shed welled up and she did not try to hold them back. Her reasons for marrying Tristan had been selfish
. S
he had wanted a father for her child, a companion so that she would not have to be alone. Now she would have neither.

Sobs wracked her body and nearly threatened to force her to the ground.
Esmeralda
gripped the side of the wagon tightly, giving herself over to the powerful force of her grief. She thought she would collapse, but found instead that she was being held up by a pair of strong arms. The feeling was familiar and she nestled closer to the warm body those arms belonged to without thinking. She buried her face against a solid chest and breathed the scent of sandalwood shaving soap and tobacco. 

The soothing hand that reached up to stroke her hair was one she had felt so many times before and the voice that softly crooned and whispered comforting words was so achingly sweet, that she immediately ceased sobbing. When she had finally composed herself enough to look up her eyes clashed with a pair of sympathetic green ones. Her heart was flooded with relief.

Once again, Damien had no idea why he had come. When he found himself sitting outside the same church where he had watched Esmeralda and Tristan’s wedding, he had been unable to make himself leave.

His heart was broken for Esmeralda. Even though he had not really known Tristan and from the limited experience he’d had with him found he did not much care for the man, he knew that he had been one of Esmeralda’s most trusted friends. For a year, the man had been her husband and based on the tiny bundle she held to her bosom, he would daresay the man had been the father of her child as well.

Seeing her holding that tiny bundle did nothing more than remind him of the future he had let slip away. Thinking of her growing round with another man’s babe filled him with an emotion he could not even name. Sadness, perhaps. Aguish. Despair. Some combination of the three.

He had not planned on stepping down from his carriage
. D
a
main
had stayed inside during the funeral, watching from behind the curtains.
W
hen he had seen her run toward the wagon and nearly collapse in her grief, he had been unable to stay away. Even an entire year apart had not dimmed the torch he carried for her.

He stood now, holding her against him as she cried, ignoring the stares and whispers of the people nearby. He did not care what anyone thought of the King of Cardenas attending the funeral of a Gypsy dancer and holding the widow in his arms. He only knew that he had to be there for her. How could he not, after all they had suffered, both together and apart.

“Would you allow me to see you home?” he asked when she had finally composed herself. She nodded slowly and then turned to search the small crowd still standing about near Tristan’s grave.

“I have to find my daughter,” she said, avoiding his gaze. He watched her walk over to where
Akira
was holding the child. They exchanged a few words and then Esmeralda turned back toward him empty-handed. “Mother will bring her along in the wagon,” she explained, allowing Damien to hand her up into his carriage after she had given the driver directions.

Once inside, she took the seat across from him and turned to stare out of the window. He was content for the moment to just sit and watch her.
Damien
realized that he had forgotten nothing
,
he traced the outline of her profile with his eyes, but he knew that he did not have to. Even with his eyes closed, he could clearly see every feature that had been ingrained into his memory. He longed to reach across the space that separated them and pull her into his lap, but he knew it would be highly inappropriate.

When they pulled to a stop before a small cottage, Damien linked her arm through his and walked her to the door. “Perhaps you’d like to come in for tea,” she offered as she fumbled with her keys.

“Yes,” he blurted, before she even had a chance to finish asking. If she noticed his eagerness to remain in her company, she did not allow it to show. He followed her into the house, his eyes wandering, taking in every detail of the home she had shared with another man. He felt like a stranger, an imposter, as he took the chair she offered him at the table.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he said, though he immediately regretted it. I’m sorry for your loss? Nothing about that statement carried even one ounce of the pain he felt at seeing her so utterly abandoned. “I know that Tristan meant a lot to you,” he added, watching her put a kettle over the stove she had just lit.

“I did not love him,” she said. Damien started, but was otherwise silent. He realized that her statement had not exactly been directed at him. She wasn’t even looking at him, but was staring at a point somewhere over his shoulder. “I did not love him,” she repeated. “But he loved me and he wanted me. I married him because I didn’t want to be alone.
N
ow he’s dead!”

She collapsed in a chair across from him, finally meeting his gaze. “This is all my fault,” she whispered, biting at her lower lip. Damien reached across the table and took her hands in his.

“Of course it isn’t. How could you even think it?”

“I was selfish. I knew that he had a history with my cousin and still I accepted his proposal. I took him away from her. She loved him in a way I never could have. She loved him so much, she could not bear the thought of life without him so she took her own life.”

Damien shook his head. “That is not love,” he said, squeezing her hands tightly between his. “Love is knowing what is best for the other person, even if it means not being with you.”

A long silence stretched between them, as they each comprehended how true his statement really was. “Besides,” Damien continued. “Your cousin did not just take her own life, she took his as well thinking to rob you of your happiness.”

“The way I robbed her of hers,” Esmeralda interjected.

“You did not mean to take anything from anyone. I know you too well for that.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was too heartbroken.”

Damien hung his head and sighed. “That would be my fault.” He laughed bitterly as she rose to take the screaming kettle off the stove. “So in reality this entire thing was my fault. I was trying to do the right thing, because I knew it was what you wanted me to do. Look what it has gained us.”

“Please,” Esmeralda urged as she placed a steaming cup in front of him. “Let’s not speak of the past. It is too painful.” Damien nodded. She was right. They sat in silence and sipped their tea. Damien could not help sneaking glances at her whenever he could.

Raina entered moments later, carrying Esmeralda’s child. Damien nodded his greeting as she walked silently through the sitting room and kitchen and into the open door he assumed was the bedroom. When she returned, she was without the child.

“Leila is sleeping,” Raina told Esmeralda. “I laid her down in her crib.”

Esmeralda nodded. “Thank you.”

Raina nodded and then disappeared back into the room with the baby.

“Leila.” Damien said with a smile. “A lovely name.”

Esmeralda returned his smile, causing his heart to accelerate maddeningly. “Yes,” she said. “Tristan actually named her. He was such a good father.”

They lapsed into silence once more. Damien did not know what to say. All he could think was that he would have been a good father too. “Perhaps I should be going,” he said. “I am sure you are wanting to rest after the day you’ve had.”

She stood and led him toward the front door where she smiled up at him again. “Thank you for being here today,” she said. “It was very comforting.”

He nodded. “I couldn’t not be here,” he murmured, edging closer to her against his will.
Damien
knew it was madness to want to kiss her on the day of her husband’s funeral, but it was all he could think about. He settled instead, on kissing her forehead gently. “Should you need anything, I am never too busy to assist you,” he said, hoping against all hope that she would call on him.

“Of course,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. He jerked beneath her touch, which seared through the sleeve of his jacket like a hot branding iron.
Damien
could have sworn he could still feel her hand there, as he climbed up into the carriage. He could almost detect the faint scent of jasmine that lingered there as well.

Esmeralda watched his carriage disappear down the road, her heart sinking lower and lower with every second. One year had changed nothing. Her heart still raced at his nearness
,
her stomach still fluttered. She still loved him, she realized, even though she had spent so much time trying to force him into a tiny corner of her mind.

Raina came out of the bedroom when she heard the front door close. She stood across the room for a moment and eyed Esmeralda knowingly. “That was nice of him to offer you an escort home,” she said slowly, still studying Esmeralda’s face. What she was looking for, Esmeralda did not know. Surely
,
her heart was not in her eyes. “Yes,” she agreed, moving about the table to clean up the empty cups and saucers. “It was lovely to see him again.”

“Did you tell him?”

The question froze the blood in her veins. She had been expecting the question, but was in no way prepared to answer it. “No,” she said simply, hoping that
Raina
would not expect her to elaborate.

“He should know,” Raina said simply, moving about the small sitting room, picking things up here and there.

“You did not think so when Tristan was my husband.”

Raina sighed and straightened, holding Tristan’s guitar case in one hand and a pair of his boots in the other. “The situation has changed completely since then. He was married to someone else then, someone we thought was also expecting a child. You did not want to burden him. If the expression on his face was any indication, he would be nothing but pleased if you were to tell him.”