Free Jayne Fresina by Once a Rogue

away from it all, living in a strange fantasy, as if she still dreamed and nothing would wake her.
    She imagined herself living on a farm with her lover. Her life was filled with work and she was never idle, but she was happy, as she’d never been before in her life, and she wanted to cry with gladness. She smelled lavender and honeysuckle. The sunlight was a warm kiss drifting across her brow and a tall iron gate cooed on its hinges before clanging shut, as if someone had just passed through it. She wore a loose gown, no crippling corset, and her hair was tied back with a simple, frayed, plunket ribbon. The image was all golden sunshine and the sweet song of birds, just as she thought heaven must be for those who deserved it, but she felt unworthy of her dream. Her heart, the organ she’d protected in a shell all her life, now ached. The barrier was breached. But she must have been happy before, at some point in her real life, surely?
    No. Never like it was in her dream.
    For as long as she remembered there’d been only fear, guilt and doubt crowding into her mind each day. Even as a child she’d had the worries of an adult pressing on her shoulders, no fancy for games and toys. There was no pleasure simply for the sake of it. There was trial, the constant struggle for her father’s forgiveness and approval. From her earliest years she was aware of dark things most children still were not. Knowing her mother had died, she lived in fear that death would take her father, too, and her brother. If it took one important person away from her, it could take anyone, could it not? Their father married again quickly and seemingly put it out of his mind, leaving his children to founder with a great gaping hole in their lives, unexplained, a matter never to be discussed. Lucy, for many of her childhood years, believed she was entirely responsible for her mother’s death. What else might account for her father’s cold distance, the way his eyes avoided her, the disappointment in his countenance?
    Yet in this strange daydream which began the night before her wedding day, she was fully content, blissful. And she knew then that she’d never been truly happy. Sorrow and self-pity, that most wasteful of all emotions, ripped through her, left her torn in a thousand ragged, bloody pieces.
    This was all his fault, she thought angrily. His fault for giving her something she’d never known existed until two nights ago, forcing her to feel, forcing her to know what it was to be alive for once. The little pastoral fantasy lived in her head now and wouldn’t come out. It was an infection, cruel and deadly.
    But perhaps, finally, today she would raise a smile from her father’s lips. By marrying Lord Winton she would surely please him. Surely.
    This morning, however, his expression was grim and dour. He avoided her gaze. He was more concerned about who would attend the wedding feast than about the bride’s welfare. There was no kiss upon her cheek, no whisper of pride, no tenderness. He looked over her gown briefly, ensuring she looked the part and wouldn’t embarrass him. Then he turned away.
    It didn’t matter, she told herself. This was the way it was meant to be and she would go on as if the interlude with the stranger never happened. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help. Thinking of her stranger wouldn’t help. He’d been for one night only. She knew that and had made the most of it. Now she must get on with her life, such as it was. This was the bargain she’d made with herself, so why was it so hard now to contemplate?
    The more she tried to salvage her unraveled nerves, the more her stitches fell slowly apart.
    “Are you all right?” Lance whispered in her ear, his breath gently moving the veil of her ornate headdress. “Luce?”
    Looking down at her hand on his arm, she tried her best to stop trembling. Somehow her brother’s anxious expression made it all much worse. Shameful, childish tears threatened. Taking