Before she could properly grapple with that insight, he leaned on the piano and, still holding her gaze, stated, “In a nutshell, I’m not your father. I’m more akin to Ryder, and you know how successful your mother was with him.”
Not at all. She knew that was true.
But Frederick wasn’t finished. “Even more importantly, my one and only love, you are not your mother.”
She opened her mouth to protest the obvious, but he raised a staying hand.
“No—hear me out.” The gaze he leveled on her held a degree of understanding she’d never encountered in anyone else. “I understand your fear has been there since you were a child, steadily growing through all you saw of your mother’s machinations and the effect those had on your father. I know that fear has been constantly fed by all those who incessantly tell you how like your mother you are.”
He paused, then more gently said, “You are like her on the outside, but inside…?” He shook his head. “No. Your fear has blinded you to that critical truth. Your mother never loved anyone in her entire life. Not her husband, not her children—not even her closest, oldest friends. And yes, I’ve checked with her oldest erstwhile friend and with Ryder. Lavinia loved only one person in the entire world—herself. That was why she was as she was—no one else ever mattered to her.
“But that’s not how you are. Not at all. You love others—you care about others.” He paused, his eyes searching hers as if gauging the impact of his words, then stated, “The strongest and most inviolable bulwark against you ever harming me is the simple fact you love me.”
She would have sworn her heart gave a little leap, and a tiny kernel of hope kindled.
As if sensing it, he tilted his head and, his eyes on hers, asked, “You do love me, don’t you?”
She’d wanted to hold that secret close, her cross to bear once they parted, as she’d assumed they soon would, yet…there was a shadow of vulnerability in his eyes that tugged at her and made it impossible not to respond, “Yes.” She frowned anew. “But—”
“But nothing. I’ve learned a lot about love over recent weeks, and one thing I now know is that the poets had it right: Love conquers all—everything else.” He held her gaze, and she could feel his confidence—the confidence he was trying to instill in her.
“It truly does,” he averred. “Always.”
He rose, and she watched him round the piano and come to her. She straightened and faced him, and he took her hands, one in each of his.
His gaze trapped hers, and softly, he said, “Place your trust in love—yours for me and mine for you. Love, that combined love, will hold us safe, even from ourselves. Because of that love, I won’t ever attempt to manipulate you other than for your own good, and you, my love, won’t e
ver harm me—in your heart, you know you never will.”
He was utterly, unswervingly certain; she read that in his eyes. Lost in the promise carried in his gaze, she drew in a breath and told herself she might be able to…
She exhaled. “I…still don’t know.” She clutched his fingers. “I can’t see—can’t be sure—that our lives and our marriage will continue as they have to date, that the path ahead will remain one of sunshine and roses.”
His expression was the epitome of understanding and support. “Sunshine and roses every day will probably grow boring.” Without releasing her from his gaze, he raised one of her hands to his lips and kissed. “Better, I think, that we take our future one day at a time. We’ll wake up in each other’s arms, live side by side through our day, and come together again at night. Life is like a symphony—it has its various movements, all with different cadence and rhythm, yet in reality, it’s played one note, one chord, one beat at a time.”
Something inside her shifted, and she felt the hovering darkness thin, then wisp away, and her heart—her hopes—started to rise. “And what of love?” she felt compelled to ask. “What part does love play in life’s symphony?”
Frederick smiled; he knew he’d won—this round, at least. There might be more battles in the future, but this had been the first and most difficult. “Love is the emotion each player brings to the performance—the feelings with which you imbue each note, the touch you infuse into each chord. In life, love provides the most powerful joy that buoys and fills and lifts our hearts.”
He let his smile deepen and, once again, raised her hand and brushed his lips to her fingers. “We’ve already started our symphony, you and I—all we have to do to see it through to a glorious end is to devote ourselves to it and keep playing.”
Stacie stood on the cusp of her personal paradise, with the dark cloud of her fear receding—dissipated by him, by his confidence in her, by his love for her and hers for him—and with her most treasured dream blossoming before her. “I want you.” She clutched his fingers and heard the words fall from her lips. “I want us—our marriage, our children, our home, our shared life.” She gripped tighter. “I’ll try.” A lingering tendril of doubt intruded. “But if we strike a sour note—”
“We won’t.” His certainty was absolute. “Trust me, my love. Sour notes are not in our repertoire.”
She couldn’t hold back any longer, not against the plea in his eyes, not against the emotion he’d evoked that now charged the air between them. She stepped forward into his embrace and, as his arms closed around her, murmured, “I’ll place my trust in love and in you. You might outclass me as a manipulator, yet from the first, I trusted you, and I always will.”
Although triumph shone in his smile, there was a serious light in his eyes as he said, “I swear to you, here and now, that I will never let you—let us—down.”
Frederick started to lower his head.
A flicker of movement outside the window had him glancing that way.
He dived to the floor, taking Stacie, already in his arms, with him.
BANG!
The glass in the window shattered, and a bullet plowed into the parquet floor at the far end of the room.