Free The Queen's Librarian by Carole Cummings Page A

ever coming back!”

Chapter 4

     
M Y DEAREST , darling Clara—
I know this will cause you distress, and it pains my heart like a thousand arrows. But I have looked desperately for another way, and I have failed. I am so very sorry. I must away for a time. Please believe that there is no other way right now, but if a way can be found, I shall brave fire and danger and all the portals of the Netherworld itself to find it.
Please, my darling, don’t cry. Remember that I worship you, I love you with everything in me, and you humble me with your presence and your laughter and your beauty and your love. Just knowing you exist gives me the strength to go on and do what I must do.
Don’t lose faith in me, my love. I will return. If you cannot forgive me, and if you will not wait for me, know that I will understand, though it breaks my wretched heart. I love you, my darling, and so I want you to be happy, even if it is not I who brings you that happiness. Though I desperately hope that it will be.
Yours forever,
Declan
     
     
    L UCAS scowled then turned to Clara, who was sobbing on Nan’s shoulder with Mother hovering behind them, distraught. “But….” Lucas waved the letter then let Alex take it from him to read for himself. “He specifically says that he’ll be back.” Lucas pointed at the letter. “‘I will return.’ It says it right there.”
    Clara only cried harder. Nan looked at Lucas like he imagined she’d look at Bramble for weeing on the carpet—a withering mix of annoyance, pity, disgust and disappointment.
    “Honestly, Lucas,” she said, “have you never received a letter like that from a man?”
    “The… um… well, no.” Lucas blinked. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? On the one hand, he’d never been jilted. On the other, it rather drove home the point that he’d never actually been in the position to have been jilted, which meant every one of his sisters—who were all wearing the same look as Nan—had apparently had more experience with men in general than Lucas had.
    …Clearly that was a line of thought that could lead nowhere Lucas wanted to go. Maybe he should go lie down for a moment.
    “They’re all the same,” Tress said, moving from the doorway where she’d been watching it all since she’d followed a shrieking Clara down the stairs. She came to join the rest of the women in a protective circle around a still weeping Clara. “They’ll tell you you’re lovely and perfect with their clumsy attempts to not hurt your feelings, and ‘truly, darling, if I had my way, we’d be together forever,’ and all while they’re running away because they just realized that ‘forever’ means ‘the rest of their miserable lives’ and perhaps you’re not lovely and perfect enough after all.”
    This from the woman who was accepting not-really-courting gifts from Anson bloody Booker.
    Clara wailed harder and louder, and Lucas scowled at Tress. “Did you miss the part where we’re trying to comfort her?”
    Tress merely put her arm around Clara’s shaking shoulders. “Best she hears it from someone who loves her. There now, dear heart.” She set a kiss to Clara’s cheek. “You’ll find someone new, you’ll see.”
    “I d-d-don’t want someone n-new!” Clara cried between sobs. “I w-w-want D-D-D-Declaaaan!”
    “But you have Declan!” Lucas insisted, waving at the letter that Alex had passed on to Laurie, and over which Laurie was now frowning. “He said quite specifically that—”
    “Um, Lucas,” Alex put in quietly, “I hate to say it, but Tress may have a point.” He shrugged when Lucas glowered at him. “The letter is rather standard, really.”
    Lucas stared. “Standard.”
    “Oh yes,” Laurie said, nodding sagely over the letter. “‘Pains my heart’ blah blah, ‘so very sorry,’ blah blah, ‘I understand if you can’t wait for me,’ blah.” He shook his head and looked at Lucas. “I’ve said all the same things myself many