Page 73 of Bluebell’s Fate

This was all Bell’s fault. Ian had heard the death knell of the fairies right before she’d shot him. If only Bell had understood the implications of him hearing that bell, if only…no. She was trying not to think about what could have happened if she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

“I’m sorry, grandmother,” Nathaniel whispered into the elderly woman’s silver hair.

Bell was bereft of words. She was all too aware of her own heart thudding well and alive in her own chest.

For a few days now, she’d known that this was a possibility—but she’d hoped that Ian wouldn’t die. His wound had become infected. By the time his mother, Linda, had arrived at Cairnsby Hall, he was unable to string together two sentences that were coherent.

She felt the settee groan under someone else’s weight. Nathaniel had his arm around her shoulders.

“I promise, I didn’t try to kill him,” she whispered to the room. She couldn’t meet her godmother or her husband’s eyes. The blame that they were both too kind to deliver to her must be too difficult to hide in the wake of her decisions.

Godmother knelt before her, took her hand, and squeezed it tightly. “Listen to me, child,” she whispered fiercely. “None of this is your fault. You showed enough bravery to vanquish each and every dark fairy that day. You could not have done more to protect those you love.”

Tears filled Bell’s vision as Nathaniel crushed her to his chest. “Without your heroism, none of us would be here today.”

They were right. Ian had tried—or at least threatened—to kill all of them. But shooting left-handed, she’d hit a more deadly spot on his leg than she would have if she’d been able to use her right. If she could go back in time, what would she have done differently? How could she have written a different ending to the situation? Ian had heard the death knell; had Bell been fulfilling the price the fairies had required of him?

Bell barely registered her godmother kiss her forehead and the door closing. Her mind spun with different stories that could have been. She closed her eyes, and allowed her chin to fall onto her chest, defeated. She’d tried to be the heroine, but her fanciful dreams had cost another man’s life.

Nathaniel pulled her to sit on his lap. “Stop thinking.”

The tension inside Bell’s body was already drawn as taut as the string of a bow, a dam ready to burst. She buried her head into his strong shoulder. His breathing was ragged and short, but he held her as gently as if she were a fairy with a broken wing. “We cannot go back and change the past, as much as we’d like to,” his chest vibrated against her cheek as he whispered. “I’ve thought a thousand times about how I’d act differently on the day Edwin died. Ian always did blame me for not jumping in to save him when Edwin had fallen in. I was young enough to believe him. He was my brother, and I’d left to find help instead of jumping in after him.

“It has been only recently that I’ve realized the amount of blame I’ve put on myself for that accident. It haunted me for far too long and stole the joy from every good thing in my life.”

Bell couldn’t hold in the pressure any longer. Her body shuddered as she allowed the torrent of tears to run down her cheeks. After a few shaking breaths, she asked, “What changed?”

“I like to believe the fairies led me to you.”

Bell choked out a sound that was half sob, half laugh.

“You are vibrant, and humble, and astonishingly beautiful. But most importantly, your kindness and compassion spread to everyone around you. I’ve never experienced such devotion and love as I have from you. Because you chose to believe in me, Bell, I can now believe in myself. Not in the perfect man I wish I could be—but in the imperfection of the story, the knowledge that I can become more because of my struggles, and because I know you will be there at my side to show me how to believe in the good around me.”

Cracking her eyes open, Bell saw the strong arms of her husband holding her together, the dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the window, the splint on her right arm. If her stories could bring hope to a broken man like her husband, could she allow the same hope to infiltrate her own story? She sniffed, quite inelegantly, and Nathaniel offered her his handkerchief.

If they could come through this together, strong and united, she didn’t believe there was anything that could stand in the way of their happiness. He knew and understood her in ways she didn’t even have to say. He anticipated her thoughts, as wild as they might be, and he planned for her well-being. Somewhere in the midst of their hasty marriage, he’d come to know her: inside and out. If bluebell legend was to be believed, he’d won his true love’s heart. And Bluebell Gardner believed the legends—for her heart was his. After all, she’d found in Nathaniel the love she’d always dreamed of: a gentleman to love her for precisely who she was.

“I love you, Nathaniel.”

He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “I love you, Bell.” He lowered his head to brush his lips across hers.

She pulled at his cravat until their lips met in a glorious promise of a future filled with magic and love. Desire burned bone deep within her as she claimed his lips like they belonged to her, and she supposed they did.

With each successive kiss, her longing grew deeper and clearer. There were no doubts still harbored from their rocky beginnings that this was the man she’d been destined to love, to cherish, and to create a life with that was worthy of her best stories.

Stories were still a large part of her being, but no longer did Bell need them to find an escape from her reality. This was the best beginning to a story that she could invent. The fairies knew what they were doing when they’d led Nathaniel to her after all—for now she belonged to Nathaniel, her true love.

Epilogue

Four years later…

It wasn’t that Nathaniel disliked Gardner Manor. The house itself was magnificent. He’d even made his peace with the fact that although he could never provide Bell with something to compare to it, she was happy, nonetheless. Even so, Nathaniel brought Bell to her woods every spring. Frederick and Rose would join them for a couple weeks, and it was the only time—save Christmas—the entire Gardner family was together throughout the year.

He did, however, hate the way he felt like an errant child each time his mother-in-law looked at him. The Countess Gardner was as cold as the marble stone beneath his feet. It was no wonder his wife had loved escaping to the woods in her years growing up.

At home, Bell now had a conservatory she could escape to anytime she liked. Nathaniel and his father had decided to build it between the cottage and Cairnsby Hall so that when Nathaniel inherited, Bell would still be close enough to access it easily. His relationship with his father wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination, but it was better. They could work together on the estate at least; they both wanted it to succeed. In typical fashion, Bell had worked her magic over Nathaniel’s mother, and they were friends now. There were many afternoons the three of them passed in his small parlor in great contentment.

Nathaniel had found another father figure in Lord Gardner. It made time spent at Gardner Manor pass quickly when Bell was out exploring the woods without him.