Gentle from the Night
She didn’t like him, but as one doesn’t always like oneself, she could carry both her dislike and her love within her heart. - Meagan McKinney, “Gentle From The Night”
I reached into the box full of romance novels, the many volumes hidden beneath piles of yarn in my front room. In my head I swore, “Whatever book I pull out, I will read and finish!” I have picked up many of the old romance novels I used to devour and cherish in my younger days but for the last five years I have hardly finished any that I started and even rereading favorites holds little comfort.
I grabbed a rather obscure book—“Gentle From The Night” by Meagan McKinney—only because I hadn’t reread it and I remembered her novels being more on the serious side. Moreso a widow’s weeds and tragedy than love and roses.
When I first read it many years ago I had never been involved with anyone, least of all someone who could even come close to having a tortured soul, a difficult past. So I thought it so romantic for this tragic hero to be enamored with the pure, innocent, virginal heroine.
Upon reading it a second time, and with real life experience of unrequited love and heartache, it is almost too much. Because at least I know Damien and Alexandra find love in the end. My story does not have a happy ending. It brings burning tears to my eyes to read of the same treacherous lies, the same gut-wrenching emotion that I have felt but for Alexandra it paid off. I am left empty-handed.
More quotes from the book, chosen because I have felt, said, or thought the same way…
“It would be foolish of me to—”
“To what? Love him? To love him is imperative. To love him is to save him.”There was probably nothing more to the man than a deluded, self-absorbed lord who fancied himself in a pact with the devil.
“Don’t bid me goodnight.”
“Will you make me fall in love with you only to pass me by afterward?”She walked in the light; he, in darkness. She was born of the permanence of the Old Testament, he was born of the violence of the new.
“…what is life but pain and fear and agony? What will you do? Will you go to the light, perhaps to find a lonely freedom from these catacombs, or will you follow at my side, perhaps to die with me, lost forever in this maze?”
“But none of this, none of this,” she repeated, knowing there was nothing left but honesty, “is as terrible a fear as that you may never love me…”
And did she want marriage to this man? This man she loved, but couldn’t really like?
But now there was no going back… She would never be a virgin again, and she would never be able to forget him, even if she did what she thought would be the best for her and left Cairncross. He would haunt her forever.
Whatever reasons drove her to commit so foolish an act as she had done last night now abandoned her. He didn’t care for her; her love was wasted on him. He didn’t have a heart, and he’d told her so a thousand times. She’d been a fool.
I must admit that the feelings and emotions have dimmed. Absence, time, distance. They equal a lessening of love and I am grateful for it. Would that I never had to see him again…I could live with that. I can live without a word, a call, a letter, nothing. I could live with that.
But I cannot live with the threat of answering the phone and hearing his voice. I cannot live with him in my life but out of my reach. Better to be alone and okay than tangled in ghostly traces of him entwined around me like thorny vines, miserable and always left wanting.
Leave me alone.
For the love of God, LET ME LET GO.
