He sounded very soothing and it disarmed her. The tears began to overtake the fury and her flailing lessened. She wept loudly, still trying to claw away from him.
“Let me go,” she wept pitifully. “I order you to let me go, du Bois. I order you away from me. You must listen to me, do you hear? I am ordering you to leave me be.”
He sat up, taking her with him. She was on his lap, struggling weakly as he buried his face in the back of her head. When she realized that he was not going to release her, she simply sat there and cried.
Cascades of luscious golden-red hair covered his head and face. He inhaled her scent deeply, realizing how very much he had missed it. He’d done a good job at pretending he could recover from all of this. He’d convinced himself that he’d done an admirable job of it. When she’d walked away from Whitebrook, he followed her with the intention of simply watching out for her. But the moment he saw her running for the river, all of his strength fled. He knew she was shattered; he was shattered, too. But she had the added pressure of an entire kingdom bearing down on her. Perhaps it had just been too much to take. The thought of her floating in the river turned his heart, his mind, his body to ice. It would have killed him, too.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into the back of her head. “Please forgive me, Elizabeau. Please forgive me for causing you such anguish.”
She was weeping so loudly that she barely heard him. She felt his face against her head and in one last, desperate move to be free, she slammed her head back and butted him squarely in the nose. Momentarily startled from the shock and pain, he loosened his grip and she propelled herself forward. But he still had hold of her and he threw himself on top of her as she struggled to crawl away.
Pressed in to the soft green grass by the weight of his body, Elizabeau lay there and wept. Rhys was still seeing stars, dripping deep red blood onto the back of her hair. He wiped it away as quickly as it flowed, trying not to dirty her any more than he already was. But he couldn’t risk letting go of her at this point. He wrapped his big arms around her, trapping her with his massive body as she laid there and heaved.
“I lied to you,” his lips were next to her ear, blood from his nose running onto the grass. “I did not mean it when I said that we would recover from this momentary madness. I will never recover from it. But knowing that does not make it any easier for you. It does not erase what you must do.”
He wasn’t sure she had heard him; she just laid there, her face pressed into the grass as she cried more deeply than he had ever heard anyone cry. It tore his heart out.
He kissed her ear, getting blood on it. “Please do not despair,” he murmured, kissing her again. “I will love you until I die. But you must marry your prince. I thought if I made you hate me, it would make it easier for you to do your duty. I see that I was horribly wrong and I must beg your forgiveness.”
She still did not react, her soft weeping filling the air. After a moment, and very slowly, a hand came up from the grass and moved to Rhys’ wrist, moving down his hand until she found his fingers. Then her head lifted and she brought the fingers to her lips, kissing them with more tenderness than he had ever known to exist. It was painful, exhilarating, agonizing. He began to kiss the side of her head, her ear, her head, tasting her sweetness, all of his restraint leaving him.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured again, flipping her over on to her back as his enormous body smothered her. His lips were on her eyes, her forehead, her cheeks. “I did not mean to upset you so. I thought I was doing what was best for both of us.”
His bloody nose was smearing on her cheek but she hardly cared. Elizabeau’s weeping continued, but now for a different reason. Her arms went around his neck so tightly that she threatened to strangle him.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she sobbed. “I thought that you hated me. I wanted to hate you, too. But I could not. I… I just wanted to leave. I had to leave.”
He stopped kissing her long enough to take her face in his massive hands, swallowing up her skull. The brilliant blue eyes blazed at her.
“You and I will never be apart,” he whispered. “I’ve tried to tell myself that it must be so, that we must part ways now or forever condemn ourselves. But I know now that I will be at your side for the rest of your life, serving you with unwavering devotion. You may marry another, but I will always be sworn to you, my lady. You will never be rid of me, with God as my witness.”
She gazed up at him, his bloodied nose and stubbled face. It occurred to her that he looked exhausted. Perhaps he had been just as miserable as she had been; only he had been too stoic to show it. Her crying lessened as she stared at him, digesting his words and the turn of events. It was as if she had come out of a nightmare and suddenly, the world was starting to right itself again. But his words, comforting though they might be, brought up an entirely new set of issues. Her weary mind began to reach far into the future when she would be married to another, yet Rhys would always be with her, sworn to her… untouchable to her.