Bound To You: Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
John
Maybe, if you’re lucky, on that same day, I’ll look up at the stars and see only you.
I tear through envelopes and stacks of paper on the desk that’s tucked away into the corner of Henry’s London flat, but no matter how I try to concentrate on the task at hand, I can’t stop my gaze from wandering back to her.
Blanche sits cross-legged on the floor, a separate pile of envelopes scattered around her. Blowing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes, she rips out a leaflet from an already opened envelope and rakes her gaze over the printed words. A beat passes, a shallow puff of aggravated air flits past her lips, and then she tosses the envelope to the side and reaches for another.
I can’t look away.
I haven’t been able to look away from her in days.
It’s been years since I’ve felt this way. No, it’s been a lifetime since that fateful day when the king steered me into the Red Morning Room at St. James’s Palace, his hand firm on my shoulder, and I spotted the towering figure standing by one of the many windows that lined the hall. With jewel-toned colors splashed across his features from the stained-glass, Henry Godwin stormed into my life like an avenging angel.
A rifle was slung across his back.
On his fingers, he wore brass knuckles.
One glance at me, and his dark brows crowded together.
When Henry’s attention had shifted to the older bloke, who looked oddly just like him, and said, “He looks bigger on television,” I’d felt a quiver in my gut. And I would continue to feel that quiver whenever he stood too close or offered praise or did anything at all, really, that put me in the center of his universe. Anticipation. Nerves. Awe. There has never been a day where I haven’t wanted to impress him.
Right now, as I watch my wife quietly sort through Henry’s things, I feel that same quiver in my gut all over again. I want to hold out my hand and know that she won’t hesitate to press her palm to mine. I want to bury my nose in the crook of her shoulder and share the weight of my fear for what will happen to Henry if we’re unable to find him in time.
As if sensing my stare, her chin jerks up and she pins me with a hopeful expression. “Did you find something?” She shoves to her feet, clearly too eager to wait for an answer. In the dim, overhead lighting, her amber eyes appear dark and warm like whisky.
Fucking hell, she’s beautiful.
“John?” Her elbow grazes mine as she steps in close.
Gut tightening at her nearness, I clear my throat. Then drop my gaze back down to the endless papers that Henry has hoarded over the years, everything from mortgage receipts to hastily scrawled notes about random constellations. I touch the sheet on top then run my fingers down the frayed edge of where the page was clearly torn from a notebook.
I turn it over.
“Is there—”
Blanche cuts off in the same moment that I spy the partial sketch of stars in the upper righthand corner, the penciled shading drifting right off the page. And then she breathes, “I’ve seen this.”
I jerk my gaze to her. “What?”
“This.” Yanking the page out from beneath my touch, she jabs a finger at the sketch. “I’ve seen this—”
“He draws,” I tell her, my hand reflexively moving to her lower spine. “Hares. Foxes. The view of Skiddaw from the cottage.” And me. Sometimes, when he steps out of a room, I can’t stop the rush of adrenaline that shoots through my veins nor the crackling energy propelling me forward to tip his sketchbook open and peer into the inner-workings of his mind. Romanticism guides his hand, adding softness to the lines of my face and mercy to my gaze, which reality stamped out a long, long time ago.
Henry Godwin is a creative shoved into a world of armor and steel.
“It’s nothing.” I drop my hand from her back. “Probably just his attention wandering when he was—”
Blanche lurches away, the paper crinkling in her hand.
“Little wolf,” I start, taking one step toward her. “We need to focus.”
“I saw this,” she says, her tone fierce as she drops to her haunches in the center of her pile of envelopes. Immediately, she begins shuffling through the chaos, her hold on Henry’s sketch never leaving her left hand. Her knees collide with the rug and her blond hair falls forward to shield her expression. But I can hear the little sounds she makes—a harsh curse beneath her breath, a frustrated sigh that she can’t swallow back in time—and there’s something about her frantic energy that tells me to move.
I close the distance between us.
My knees hit the ground, desperation tumbling from my lips. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”
“There are . . .” Slipping Henry’s drawing under her right foot, she sweeps both hands over the envelopes, tearing through them. “I know it’ll make me sound like I’ve lost my mind, but I . . .” She turns a sheaf of paper over, then tosses it aside. “We’ve spent hours going through Henry’s things and I’ve seen this drawing, John. Always off to the corner of a page, never the full constellation. It makes me wonder—”
“Makes you wonder what?” I demand sharply when her breath audibly hitches.
“If he’s drawn a map,” she finishes softly, holding up another page with a frayed edge down the right side. From this angle, I see nothing but Henry’s poor penmanship, but then Blanche reaches beneath her foot and sets down the two pieces of paper together amongst the mess.
There, side by side, are shaded lines of a single, continued constellation.
Air pumps hard into my chest as I drag my attention back to my wife’s eyes, which gleam with victory. “It’s the Swan,” she says.
“I have no idea what that—”
“He’s marked down Albireo, see?” Her forefinger taps a shaded circle on the original page, only to slide over to the right to trace the jagged vertical line from top to bottom. “Then Fawaris, Sadr, and Gienah. He’s drawing Cygnus. The Swan, I mean. It doesn’t matter. We need to find the missing page, and then maybe we can—”
I circle her wrists to stop her flurry of movement. She tugs against me, silently demanding that I let her go—but I can’t.
I won’t.
Refusing to rise to the hope stampeding through my blood, I drag my little wolf back into grim reality with a shake of my head. “It’s a sketch.” My thumbs find her rioting pulse beneath the satin skin of her inner wrists. “A constellation,” I utter, my voice pitched low, “that can be seen all over the world. This won’t point in a direction. This won’t point us anywhere but up at the sky.”
“But—”
I tug her closer. “Can it be seen, Blanche?”
Her gaze falls to her bound wrists. She doesn’t answer.
Circling her pulse, to show that I’m not angry, I lift her hands and press a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “Yes? Or no?”
Silence dredges a muddied existence between us, and all I hear is the gentle tap-tap-tap of a leaky faucet somewhere in the flat. Not wanting to push her—or upset the delicate friendship we’ve cemented in place ever since that night at Holyrood Abbey—I give her another soft kiss to her knuckles before freeing her. I stand, prepared to renew my search, when her husky voice stops me dead in my tracks.
“The earl taught me that happiness isn’t real.”
I turn, slightly, and peer down at the woman I married.
“Or maybe,” she continues, her hands loose and flat on her bent knees, “I should say that he gave me a reason to believe that it’s all a sham.” Amber eyes lift to collide with my own. “He bought a pair of binoculars the first time my mum tried to leave him. I was only seven.”
Her name leaves me on a ragged breath, but she doesn’t give any indication that she’s heard me.
“He wanted to know who it was that put such a contagious smile on her face because it sure as hell wasn’t him. And sometimes,” she says, her relaxed fingers curling into tight fists that dig into her thighs, “when he felt bitter about all the ways she smiled at the butler or the solicitor or even the earl’s younger brother, he would make me sit with him as he did his spying. I held those binoculars, and I watched my mum thrive outside the walls of our home. I watched her walk Hyde Park with her friends and kiss other men. I watched, month after month, as she lived the life that she could have had if she hadn’t married my father. If she hadn’t had the burden of raising me.”
Unable to stop myself, I take a single, staggering step toward Blanche. “Don’t talk like that, do you hear me? You aren’t a burden. You’re the furthest thing from—”
“He stopped spying on her around the time I turned ten.”
Jesus.
Three years. Three years the bastard forced his own daughter to watch her mother be happier away from their home, away from her. I have no doubt that Essex did it on purpose, a way to manipulate Blanche into picking sides between a set of parents who never should have entered a church, let alone walked down an aisle to exchange vows.
The quiver in my gut burns with righteous fury.
“I don’t blame her for leaving,” my wife says, her gaze clear. “I don’t even blame her for snatching happiness with both hands when she finally could.”
“She left you,” I growl, advancing toward her on silent feet, “with a man who didn’t give two fucks about you.” Blanche doesn’t dismiss my claim—doesn’t so much as offer a single compliment to the parent she was forced to share a prison with until I crashed into her world two months ago and put my ring on her finger. My temper spikes, and I breathe hard through my nose. “Don’t pretend with me, wife. Don’t give me that look like you don’t care that she abandoned you when I know you—”
“When the world is crumbling around you, find something that gives you hope. Wrong or right, she taught me that lesson.” Clutching the two pieces of paper to her chest, Blanche pushes to her feet and holds them up, forcing me to look at Henry’s sketch. “Find the Swan flying through the Milky Way, and Aquila will be waiting nearby.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Antinous,” she answers softly, “now belongs to the constellation Aquila.”
Antinous—Henry’s favorite constellation. I researched it once, years ago when he first told me that of all the stars in the sky, they were the ones that stood out most to him. I remember a story of tragedy, of a lover’s death and a survivor’s heartache. I remember thinking, as I stood in this very flat, that Henry would never know such pain because I never—not once—knew him to spend time with anyone romantically.
He spent his time with me instead and I would never break him.
Guilt takes a sledgehammer to my chest.
One glance at Blanche’s face and I know she’s intimately aware of the legend behind Antinous. And I know, without needing to voice the thought, that she now understands how it might relate to me, to Henry, to the life he plans to forfeit so that he won’t be chained to Holyrood until he’s old and gray.
I move without uttering a word.
Stepping over the scattered envelopes, I enter his bedroom and immediately head for the bedside table. I’m dimly aware of Blanche trailing after me, her lighter footfalls swallowed by the roar of my racing pulse. Snatching open the single drawer, I stare down at the empty space where a book ought to be.
“Goddammit!” I snarl, slamming the drawer shut so hard that the entire nightstand wobbles on its four legs. “Goddammit, Henry. Where would—”
The safe.
He must have placed it in the safe before he left the flat, unwilling to risk fate when he wasn’t sure who would come to search for him.
“John?” Blanche’s voice hits me as I drop to the floor beside the bed. “John, what in the world are you—”
The rest of her question is masked by the screech of metal against hardwood as I pull the black safe out from under the bed. Without hesitation, I prop it on top of the mattress, ignoring the way the metal springs whine at the heavy weight. A twist of my fingers on the lock and the black door of the safe springs open to bare its contents within.
Spare identification cards listed with different false names.
A thin stack of black and white photographs, the oldest one dating back to the very first day he came to report for duty at the palace—I would recognize those brass knuckles, and that unsmiling mouth, anywhere.
Beneath it all rests a thin leather book with gold-leafed pages.
I feel Blanche’s breath on the back of my left arm a second before she asks, “What is it?”
A gift.
Heart thudding recklessly, I flip open the front cover and force a tight swallow past the sudden lump in my throat as I skim the words slanted across the page:
To the man with
hope in his heart
and kindness in his soul,
Never let anyone tell you
that you can’t reach for the stars.
Delicate fingers touch the words I wrote for Henry when he turned twenty-five. “You loved him even then.”
I want to deny it for Henry’s sake.
At nineteen, I was no closer to understanding the way of the world, let alone the way of myself. I fucked random women. Worse, I fucked them within earshot of Henry, never once stopping to think about how doing so might hurt him. I’d bought this book on astronomy for my best mate, never thinking twice about the heartfelt words that poured out of me and onto the page.
But pour they did.
Staring down at the script I once so painstakingly worked to perfect as a child—knowing that one day, generations from now, a future king or queen would be forced to make sense of my writings—I realize that I’ve lived a lie for almost my entire life.
I loved Henry then.
I love Henry now.
And he has no bloody idea that I do.
I’m the worst sort of bastard.
“Yes,” I tell Blanche gruffly. “I did.”
Then I flip through the pages, the flutter of thick paper loud in the otherwise silent room. I ignore my pounding heart. I ignore my sweaty palms. But then I can’t ignore anything at all because there, half-way through the antique book, in a chapter labeled under the Constellation Antinous, a torn sheaf of paper sticks out like a white flag waving its surrender.
I turn it over.
“It’s the rest of Cygnus,” Blanche says, holding the other two pages beside the newest, so that the formation of the Swan comes together as one. “And here”—she drags her finger along the right half of the page—“is Antinous, see? Or Aquila, I mean. They’re one and the same now.”
I grin because it feels like I should.
My wife is the cleverest person I’ve ever met. It never would have occurred to me that a random sketch would add up to anything at all. But knowing that still doesn’t change a thing.
We’ve reached a dead end.
Craving her softness, I drop my head and press my lips to Blanche’s forehead. Against her skin, I rasp, “Thank you.”
Her hand finds my chest. “We’ll find him.”
“I love your confidence.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Sarcasm is the last thing on my mind right now.” Shifting Henry’s book into my left hand, I touch the fingers of my right to her chin and meet her hesitant gaze. Her skin is soft beneath my touch, and I feel the fragility of her breath over my knuckles. “A man like me doesn’t deserve you—not your loyalty and definitely not your friendship.”
When she tries to protest, I press my fingers to her lips, sealing them shut so that I can get out the words that need to be said. Her amber eyes promise retribution even as she gives me a short nod of acquiesce.
“Our world treats marriage like a bargaining chip,” I tell her. “It’s a trade of self-entitlement, of who owns what and how much money might be brought to the table. I chose you because if I had to marry, I preferred to bind myself to someone who I knew would sit beside me at that table—not, as the world expects, beneath my shoe where no one might see her.”
A sharp breath hits my fingers as Blanche’s eyes widen.
“I followed my gut choosing you, even if I didn’t necessarily follow my heart.”
She circles my wrist with her fingers, dragging my hand away to gasp, “John, you don’t need to explain yourself.”
“We’ve never lied to each other.”
“We aren’t right now.”
“I’ll be lying by omission if I don’t tell you this.”
Visibly swallowing, she offers a small dip of her chin.
“It’s taken me seventeen years to accept that I’m in love with Henry Godwin. By that track record, we’ll be closing in on fifty by the time I realize that I can’t live without you.” At my words, smooth, feminine nails threaten to tear open my wrist as Blanche’s grip tightens, her eyes luminous as she peers up at me. I swallow, hard, and push onward. “I need you to know that I would choose to walk down that aisle to you every single day.”
Blinking furiously, she tears her gaze away to stare at the book in my hand. “Please don’t lie. It’s not necessary. I know where I stand with you.”
“Look at me.”
“John—”
“Look at me.”
Amber eyes flit back to my face, the sheen there telling me that this moment—these days that we’ve trekked all over the country—mean as much to her as they have for me. I cup her face with my free hand. Step into her space, crowding her against the bed so that there’s no chance of retreat before I’m ready to let her go.
“Henry is my soul, the other half of my conscience. The mercy in my veins. But you, Blanche . . .” I shake my head, wishing I had a pen in hand to write down the words that beat chaotically inside my blood. “You’re beginning to feel a lot like my heart, the hope when I have none and the one place that I can fly free. No judgment, no gilded cage. Just you. Just me. And I—”
Something flutters down to land on top of my foot.
I wouldn’t have noticed it at all but I’m acutely aware of Blanche’s gaze sinking down with the flurry of movement, and then she’s lowering to her heels to pick up the loose piece of paper. Her cheeks flush with color when she turns it over, her hands visibly trembling.
“Little wolf?” Concerns slashes through me and I move closer, my hand falling to the slope of her neck. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s in Wales.”
“What?”
She shoves the paper toward me, and, with my heart in my throat, I read Henry’s sloppy script:
Broad Haven South Beach, Wales.
51°36’30.60” N -4°55’15.24” W
Antinous.
“We’ll find him for you,” Blanche hastens to say.
She’s out of my grasp before I can hook my arms around her and haul her up against my chest. A chill settles like mist over my skin as I stand there, book in hand, Henry’s directions glaring up at me. “Blanche—”
“We’ll leave right now and find him for you.” She throws her purse strap over her shoulder, making a quick, lackluster attempt to straighten the mess she made on the floor before giving up completely. “It’ll be a long drive. We’ll need to make a few stops for petrol, I imagine.” She stops moving toward the door, her chin jerking toward me. “Unless you prefer to take the train?”
What I want is to finish our discussion.
What I want is to hold out my hand for her to take, and to draw her in close so that I can feel the hammer of her heart beating against my chest.
What I want doesn’t matter.
She’s running, a wolf no longer as fear and panic sets in. I can see it in the tight lines around her mouth, in the even tighter way she holds onto the chain of her purse. Her amber eyes never settle on me for long, flicking past like she can’t bear the thought of meeting my gaze.
My courageous, bold wife has turned into a mouse—and I have no bloody idea why.
“John?”
“The car.” My voice is gruff, my tone frustrated. “We’ll drive.”
With a nod, she turns away—only to pause in place when I say her name. Tension pours into the space between us, a cloying, clinging breath that feels lodged in my throat when she finally glances back and allows her gaze to land on mine. “Yes?”
I step toward her.
Take her chin between my fingers.
And then, soft and hoarse, I breathe a warning against her lips: “You can’t run from me forever. I won’t let you.”
_______
GAH. They have found Henry (or at least where Henry will be) and this chapter is giving me ALL of the feelings! I so hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you’re ready for more Henry Godwin because we’ll be seeing a LOT of him in the next chapter *insert all the winking here*
Feel free to share all your feelings down below so I can give you virtual hugs! Or pop it into BBA with a spoiler alert tag at the top!