Beautiful friendship, p.97
Beautiful Friendship, page 97
It could batter her until she cried, but she would get up from this floor.
Eventually.
Eyes fluttered open, fixing on a peg hanging on the door. Or rather, what was on the peg, the same spot where her nightgown had hung earlier in the day.
He'd started unpacking but there were few signs of him here in the bathroom
yet. Perhaps it was all of his time bunking with Fred, or perhaps it was
something intrinsic to Will, but he was as clean as a well trained midshipman.
Not the least bit like living with her brothers. Five siblings and one bathroom, they used to elbow and jostle until signs of their collective presence were
scattered across every surface.
Though she'd cleared out space for him, the signs of Will in this bathroom were subtle and few. Seen from the view of the floor, she could only name the
bathrobe and a toothbrush as his. And one other object, she realized as she raked back sweaty hair. A razor, which he would use tomorrow morning to
graze soap and stubble from his cheeks. She could picture him doing it, too, hunched over her tiny little sink, squinting to get a good angle with an even tinier little mirror.
He deserved better than this. He deserved to be back in his luxury suite, with an unparalleled beauty to romance. Some vibrant woman who was the picture
of health. Not a girl who felt as if life were slipping from her, curled on the bathroom floor because she wasn't strong enough to stand.
And there went her phone. She always tried to keep it near during her recovery just in case of emergency, but it had tumbled from her grasp during the
violence of the evening. It buzzed for the fifth--or was it the sixth?--time that night. The vibration rattled the floor. She winced and groped for it. That quiet little buzz drilled in her skull like a cymbal clang. It was her mother. Which meant if she didn't pick up by the sixth attempt, Finola would probably be one dial away from fetching the National Guard.
"Mum?" she croaked.
"Eilis, love. It's ten o'clock. This is the seventh time I've called you today. Why haven't you picked up?"
"Mum...I've been busy."
"Busy?! I've been worrying something awful."
"I'm sorry," she said, that headache drilling through her temple again. "I would have answered. I'm not feeling well tonight..."
"They put you back on those drugs, didn't they? I knew it. I just knew it. Eilis, I want you home where I can tend to you myself. Liam could fly in, and--"
"Liam's halfway around the world, Mum. I know you worry after me..."
"Of course I worry. You're my daughter. I love you, Elizabeth."
"I love you, too," she whispered. It wasn't a phrase she took lightly; she'd never uttered it to anyone outside her own family. "But I'm alright here. You know how it is, a few weeks and I just have to wait this out. I'd be doing the same thing in Ireland that I'm doing in London."
"Which is?"
Laying on the bathroom floor, trying to remind myself that my head truly can't splinter into pieces.
"I---I'm," her voice caught as another wave of pain shook her. "Resting."
"Lizzie, you're only twenty-three. You shouldn't have to spend your days resting. It isn't fair. When I think on how this illness robs you of your youth, how it torments you---it breaks my heart. It isn't what I want for you, dearest---
you should be around someone who loves you and will care for you. That's
what I want for you, Elizabeth. A nice man like....like Dougal McKenna! He'll be coming to the wedding, you know, and it's not too late for me to tell him you're needing a date. Or if you were truly desperate, there's Brogan Connelly.
I can't say I love the lad, but he's been asking after you lately..."
"Brogan Connelly?" Elizabeth croaked. "Mum, I wouldn't date Brogan if the fate of the world depended on us."
"You and your brothers never did tell me why Magnus broke Brogan's nose when you were thirteen..."
"It was a long time ago, Mum..."
"Well I still remember Killian and Liam came home looking like they wanted to spit fire. Magnus's mood was as black as a storm cloud. And you were a
right mess, bloodied and dirty. Connelly tried to hurt you, Eilis, if he--"
She scrunched her eyes shut, wincing as a sudden wave of nausea and pain
coalesced, crashing over her. Apart from her mother's chatter, a mounting
pressure in her head was making it hard to discern one thread of noise from
another. Like her mother's speech. Or her dodgy neighbor turning up his music on a Saturday night. Or someone's footsteps down the hall. "We'll talk about it later, yeah, mum?"
Capable hands reached for her mobile, switching it off until the display screen grew dim.
"Elizabeth," Will murmured, crouching down next to the girl curled up on the floor. His cool hands touched her cheek, her hair. "Let me help you back to your room..."
"No---Will...." She gritted her teeth, forcing an exhale. Most hideous of all, another wave of nausea hit. She struggled away from him, and lurched to the
toilet, stomach rebelling once again. Though there was nothing left in her to lose, save for her dignity.
No panic, no alarm. He shook off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and walked to the sink. After a few minutes of searching around the bathroom, a wash cloth was retrieved and soaked with cool water. The next thing she knew, he was
dabbing her forehead with cool water.
Will's eyes, dark with silent compassion, studied the pallor of her lips and the pain etched in her brow. "How long have you been in here?"
Her body too tired to fight anymore, tension drained from her limbs. "Plus or minus...these last two hours?"
She caught the faint musk of his cologne, felt the crisp starch of his dress shirt.
She, meanwhile, felt slick with sweat, feeling vile and wretched. If she hadn't been so pale to begin with, her cheeks would have burned with shame. It was a remarkably humbling experience to be held in the embrace of a man who
looked like Will while she felt so vile. And besides, if she was less than
tolerable on their first New Year's Eve encounter, she would be downright monstrous to him now.
"Please, leave," she begged. "Please....Will. You shouldn't see me like this."
"Why not?" he whispered.
"Because...." she shut her eyes. "I don't even let my family see me like this.
Please. I must look-"
"Brave," he corrected. "Elizabeth, let me help you. I want to do this."
"I know you do, but I don't want-I don't---" that was as far as she got before she lurched to the toilet again. What did he need this for? A flatmate who couldn't hold down toast at the moment, a woman who felt too wretched to feel disgust in herself. But not too wretched for shame.
He did leave, though only for a moment. When he returned to her, it was with a cool glass of water.
"Drink," he coached her, holding the glass up to her lips. She took a careful sip.
Cool water, as still and calm as water from a miracle well, touched her lips and slid down her throat. As much as she rebelled against his presence, her stomach thanked him for it. "Does that help?"
"A little..." Her throat was hoarse from the evening's trauma. "....you should go to bed."
"It embarrasses you, having me here to see you like this."
"Yes."
"Don't be."
In this cubicle of a bathroom, there was barely an arm's length between the
toilet and the bath tub. It was the bathtub that he leaned his back against, drawing her into a quiet embrace. "I raised Georgie, remember? Try handling a three year old on a crowded plane. At that age she'd never met a stomach bug she didn't like."
"It was bad?" she asked, feeling cool fingers run through her hair.
"When we got on the plane, the upholstery was blue. When we got off it, it was green." In an effort to relax her, distract her, sooth her, he questioned, "Who's Brogan Connelly?"
For the first time all evening, Elizabeth's groan had nothing to do with pain.
"Brogan's a lad back home."
"What happened?"
"It was so long ago," she sighed, relaxing against him.
"He liked you?"
"No." She exhaled. "Or if he did, he had an odd way of showing it....my brothers and I always walked home together. Liam and Killian...they had gone
ahead of us. Liam was trying to sweet talk the lasses, and Killian was trying to fight them off." She took another slow, careful sip of the water. "Brogan and his crew tagged behind us. Magnus is tall now as sky scraper, but he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet. He was wee then...the smallest of my brothers. So when Killian and Liam weren't around..."
"They picked on him," Will deduced quietly.
"Yes...and Brogan was always the worst of them."
They'd been as quiet as choir boys until two of her older r brothers---silent, strapping Killian, and rangy Liam with his fiery temper---wandered out of sight. And then the boys had gone on the attack, catcalling, baiting, shouting insults they knew deaf Magnus would never be able to hear from behind. But she'd heard. Memorized every word, trembled at every insult. She'd stuck by her brother's side, silently fighting to control her own fierce temper until Brogan Connelly shouted out the worst one of all:
"Everyone knows Magnus Bennet is a coward. A deaf boy can't hear fighting words, can he? And Eilis Bennet pities him so, that's why she runs after him.
You already had three brothers, Elizabeth, if she'd any sense, your ma should have left the fourth one to---"
The completion of that sentence was the most hateful, hideous thing she'd ever heard spoken. And it had made her lose it, in a way that she'd never lost it before. Whirling around on that country road, she balled up her fists and, like a little banshee, barreled straight at him with fists flying.
"The devil himself take your black heart, Brogan Connelly! I'll tear your evil tongue out, you-you---" she'd screamed through her tears, ripping, tearing, punching and wrestling, "wretched, pathetic, weakling of a---"
"Eilis!"
Hearing their sister scream, Liam and Killian had raced to her. The only sister, the youngest Bennet had knuckles stained with blood, and eyes welled with tears. She'd crawled on top of Brogan, punching and scratching until her fingers were as bloody red as her vision. It was brooding Killian who pulled her off him. Liam- with his kind heart and his hot temper---who dragged
Brogan Connelly off the ground and shoved him against a tree, ready and
eager to do his worst. But it was Magnus Bennet, her other heart, unaware of the insult and thinking himself a righteous avenger for his sister, who landed the punch that broke Brogan's nose.
"My only schoolyard fight," she whispered in the darkness of the bathroom.
"Brogan Connelly."
"He deserved worse than you gave him." Though he'd said it in a whisper, there was a vicious strain to his voice that indicated he meant it.
"My brothers thought so, too..." As Elizabeth's tense muscles began to unwind, slowly the pain in her stomach lessened.
"You talk to them about your illness?"
"No, not really..." she exhaled.
"I think they'd want to be there for you," Will said quietly. "Like I do."
"They do care, but...it's not the same, Will. The way you react to me...and the way they do, it's very different."
"I sure hope so," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her clammy forehead, only to be rewarded with quiet laughter. With his free hand, he ran a quiet, comforting hand down her back, slowly massaging the muscles. The effect was nearly
immediate. Slowly, her eyes began to droop.
"When people mention my lupus," she continued quietly, struggling to stay awake, "Killian's face gets hard. Very still. He doesn't ask a single question about it...when I was little, I thought that meant he didn't care. Eventually, I realized it was the opposite. He cares very much. He just..."
"He loves you. It's hard for him to hear about it because he worries."
"Yeah," she sighed. "As for Seamus, he's the oldest of us. When the subject comes up, he talks over me more than he talks to me. He still thinks of me as a child. And with Magnus, it's special..." she whispered. "He feels things so deeply...seeing me like this would hurt him. And so I try to shield him from it.
He does the same with me, I know he does."
"And Liam?"
"Oh, Liam...he thinks the only reason I should ever have my head in a toilet is after a night out...He thinks it's not fair. But some things aren't...One day you're a normal kid, just like the rest of them, and the next...you're the girl with the disease...or..."
"Or the orphan," he said quietly.
"Or the orphan," she repeated in a whisper as his strong hand slid down her back. Unlike her life filled with crowded brothers, there was no one in his life for him to push away. Since he was so much older than his sister, he was
always the one patching up the scraped knees and putting out the fires. There was no one to care for him, no one to let himself be vulnerable with.
Despite her fatigue, her eyes opened at that word, revealing eyes of a deep
green. He'd been alone for so long, she thought. So intensely alone, in a way that none of them could grasp. She had two loving parents and a gaggle of
older brothers. None of them could quite understand it, not even George.
Knightley had lost both parents, but he had Jack and Sandra growing up to
parent him, and Emma as his best friend, and sprawling Hartfield to make him feel like he still had a family, a safety net, an anchor. In the midnight darkness, in the echoing unreality of this cramped bathroom, it felt safe to talk about these things. Safe to share in a way that rational daytime with its suit and ties wouldn't allow.
"You've felt alone," she whispered. "Since your parents died, and for all these years since..."
"Yes," he acknowledged, his voice dropping to a low whisper. He'd stopped thinking that could change years ago, had stopped wondering if he was running towards something, or away from it.
"But it grows familiar....until one day," he let out a slow, quiet breath, "you have more memories living with that feeling than without it."
"Will," she whispered, curling against him. "You don't have to feel alone anymore."
Something in Will's heart constricted. Elizabeth was pale and sick and as weak as he'd ever seen her, but her soft declaration etched on his heart.
"I don't," Will rasped, brushing a soft lock of hair from her brow. "when I'm with you."
Chapter 35
"And Titus Bertram IV went here! The Titus Bertram IV," declared young Margaret Dashwood with a wide eyed sigh. Georgiana's roommate was
fourteen years old, a bold, bubbly would-be opera singer with tawny skin and dark eyes. From the sound of it, Margaret seemed destined for a career in the spotlight. Her oldest sister was Elin Dashwood, a principal dancer with the
British Opera Ballet. Her middle sister was runway model Marianne
Dashwood. Most of Margaret's heart belonged to her family. And, from the
sound of it, whatever was left over belonged to Titus Bertram IV. Not ten
minutes here, Dashwood recited half the young composer's life story.
"He was only nine when he was enrolled," Margaret gushed, "the youngest student they've enrolled in the school's three hundred year history! Of course, Bertram only went here until he was our age and became, like, really really
famous, and started playing for the Prime Minister and that sort of thing. But do you think we'll ever see him around here?"
"I'm not sure," Georgiana admitted with a shy smile, watching her new roommate twirl around the dormitory like a girl who'd drifted into Disneyland.
Inwardly, she was doing the same. Mostly, anyway. Bardwell Conservatory
was her greatest dream. But she'd actually met the dream boy that Margaret
was sighing over, and she could attest to the truth of the person himself. She couldn't claim to know him well, but what she did know made her realize he
probably didn't think of his time at Bardwell with very much fondness.
"He's a very brilliant composer," Georgiana acknowledged politely. "But apart from that, he's just a normal person isn't he?"
"Normal?" Margaret gaped. "I'd sooner call Mozart or Beethoven normal--"
"Georgiana?"
A knock at the door alerted both girls to Will's presence. Her calm, cool-eyed older brother wouldn't have been fazed if Mozart himself were the guest
lecturer striding down the halls. And as far as Georgiana was concerned, it was hard to meet a man more awe-inspiring than her own brother. He'd been the
one to allow her to come here in the first place, he'd helped her move in here, he'd taken the whole of his very busy lunch hour to cart boxes and luggage and fill out forms.
"I'd better get going," Will informed her. "Do you feel settled in?"
"Yes. Thank you, Will." A single well-bred, finishing school nod on her part, and she quietly ducked into the hallway with him, keen on a private goodbye.
"I've signed you in with the registrar," said Will. "Emergency contact information, physicians phone number, all of it. If you need anything---"
This was it. He was leaving her here. The thrill of independence fluttered. No longer a train ride away, Bardwell was in center city London. And yet, it was closer than she'd ever been at boarding school. She would probably see more of him. Lunches, weekends. And yet she would be living here, studying here,
sleeping here until she turned eighteen. With every step he took towards the door, the gulf between boarding school and this conservatory felt that much
wider.
And he worried for her. She could see it in his eyes. His sheltered little sister.
She was too young for this. Too fragile.
Or, like a parent dropping their child off at the start of a new school term, he simply wasn't used to the idea of letting her go. This wasn't a normal college, she wouldn't simply be passing notes during maths, or trading schoolyard
gossip during lunch. The students who came here were immersed in studying
