Author's note: Thanks again for your patience, reviews, likes and follows! I'm sorry it's taken so very long to get this posted. Only one more chapter to go!

Would love to get your thoughts/feedback so, hit that review button!

Thanks,

M

Previously…

"With Francis gone, if I were not a factor, would you be with her right now?"

Ross instantly rejected the implication of her words. "The question is moot for you are a factor."

"Why? Because I'm your wife?"

"No." Ross reached out and touched her then. It was the first time since that night. Words alone were not reaching her. "Because of my love for you."

Demelza pulled her hand from his. "Ross, please, just answer the question."

"No, Demelza." He was reaching her, he could sense it. "Because you're asking me to imagine my life without you. And that is something I cannot, I will not do."

"Perhaps you will think differently when I tell you Elizabeth's news." She smiled then. A tight, sad smile that permeated every ounce of her being. "And perhaps even more so…when I tell you mine."

Chapter 4

She turned back to face the open waves and the sea gulls flying low in the sky. The wind blew her copper curls around her face and Ross wanted nothing more than to bury his face in the errant strands, to gather her in his arms and hold her until she had no choice but to melt into him.

"She's postponed her wedding to George, awaitin' your decision."

It took a moment for the words to sink in. And another for him to realize Deamelza expected from him what he was no longer able to give.

Uncertainty.

"Demelza, I don't…"

"I've been waitin' too." Demelza cut Ross off and calmly continued. "Because I can't keep on like this."

"Like what?" Ross' eyes filmed with tears of his own, and he furiously blinked them back.

"Waitin' and wonderin' and havin' my heart broke bit by bit each time you walk out the door, not knowin' if you'll come back to me."

Another punch in the gut. Another sharp stab to his heart.

"I've always come back to you."

"Yes, but has your heart been with you when you do?" Shaking her head, she answered her own question. "It has not. Else you would have never gone to her…"

He had no answer to that. None to contradict her. He knew, as well as she, that his heart had been divided since the day he wed her. And that division had created a distance between them at times that seemed impossible to bridge.

"The decision now, as always, is in your hands. If it be Elizabeth you want, then she needs to know. She needs to break it off with George, change her plans, make room for you at Trenwith."

"And if she isn't the one I want?" Ross whispered, the tremor in his voice more pronounced by the sudden stilling of the wind.

"Then she needs to know that too." Demelza stated without blinking an eye. "Tis only right."

Ross had an irrational urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Here Demelza, the most injured party of them all, was advocating for Elizabeth. Elizabeth. The woman that had been a ghost between them for so long.

What kind of saint had he married?

All other thoughts banished, Ross had only one thing he wanted to know. One question he wanted to ask.

"And what about you, Demelza? What do you need?"

Silence enveloped them as she pondered his question.

It wasn't the first time since that night that she'd considered the same. She just never supposed Ross would care enough to ask. When she answered, it was, surprisingly, with words he had uttered on a night that, like a gift she never tired of opening, she'd cherished a million times in the years since.

"When I married you, Ross, I had few expectations. I knew you had loved her, still loved her…even as we stood before God together taking our vows. I didn't dare hope that you would ever share a part of your heart with me. And then you did. Without me askin'. Without me thinkin' t'was possible."

A strangled chuckle escaped her as she remembered the night he told her that she'd redeemed him. That he loved her. How happy they had been that night. How full of hope for the future. How much in love.

But things had changed. And in the changing, Demelza began to question even the things she'd known to be true.

"I gladly accepted it then, content to share your heart, even with her, as long as you were by my side. It seemed to me that with a man like you…so kind, so unlike other men…I had more than I thought I ever would, more than a simple maid could ever deserve."

"There's something…powerful in that, Ross. Something freeing. Knowing you're loved and wanted like no one else by the only person who's ever owned your heart." She paused, a sardonic smile twisting her lips. "But that was never really the case with us, now was it?" She didn't wait for a reply, knowing the answer long before she'd asked the question. "Perhaps it was my fault for accepting all of it as if you were doing me a favor, when the truth is I deserve to be loved that way."

Stirred by her words, Ross jumped at the opportunity to prove himself. "Yes, Demelza, you do. And I…"

Demelza cut him off. "The way you've always loved her."

"Demelza, please…"

Whatever Ross had wanted to say, Demelza clearly didn't want to hear it. Having been given an audience, she intended to make her case plain.

"For too long, I have let you treat me as second best when I deserve to be first…only…in my husband's heart and mind. I deserve to know that when he touches me, that I stir him to such passion, nothing else matters until he's possessed me. I deserve to be needed and cherished and…wanted. Me. Not as a substitute, not as a distraction or obligation. But because who I am makes him who he is. That is what I deserve."

"And you think I am not the man to give you what you deserve?" Ross' voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears as the full weight of Demelza's indirect accusations pressed down on his heart, making it hard for him to breathe.

"Did you not prove that night that you aren't? Haven't you proven it every day you spent at Trenwith tending to Elizabeth's needs while you ignored my own? Or when you gave her the money that your very own family desperately needed?" Each question asked implied an answer already concluded. "Somehow I went from being your love back to you maid, Ross. Do you know how that feels?"

"My maid? How can you say such a thing?" Finally. Something in which he could mount a defense. "Demelza, you are my wife, and I stopped treating you as a servant the day we wed."

"Did you? Well, then, Ross, I'm confused." The lilt in her tone evidenced the sarcasm of her words. "I thought a wife was to be the person you confide in the most, the one you consult before taking decisions. Someone whose opinions and feelings have value. Whose needs and desires come even above your own."

She scoffed at the notion, the subtle shake of her head further indication of how entrenched she was in her belief. "The time has come and passed since I was all of those things to you. Now I just cook your meals, clean your house and launder your clothes. And if that isn't a maid…"

"You've had my children. You share my bed." Ross corrected, desperate to change the obvious set of Demelza's mind.

"So does Elizabeth." Demelza shot back.

"Demelza…" The warning in his voice sparked a fresh wave of anger.

She forcibly swallowed it, a greater goal at stake.

Demelza's clear, unwavering gaze met his. "This had to end, Ross. For all of us. Whether Elizabeth or me, you have to decide once and for all. That's the only way any of us can move on, free of lingering doubts or…or obligation."

There was that word again.

"Obligation?" The breath in Ross' lungs seemed to evaporate. "Is that how you think I see you?"

"T'was the reason you married me, wasn't it? Not out of love, but because of a moment of weakness. Because it was the right thing to do."

She was throwing his own words back at him. And then she added some of her own.

"And as Elizabeth confirmed it, I supposed she had it on your authority."

"I have said no such thing. Not to her, not to anyone. And why do you suppose that is, Demelza?" Becoming exercised over such accusations, Ross' tone sharpened. "Because I do not see you as such."

"Tis a pity then that, given your actions of late, I had no proof with which to refute her words."

"Demelza…" Ross tried to reach for her hand, hoping beyond hope that even that small gesture would bridge the unbearable gap between them.

But Demelza shrank from his touch, firmly shaking her head. "No."

She was tired. So, very tired of his insistent efforts to touch her, to refute her, to think it all be washed away with a few pretty, but empty, words. And she was incensed at his bullheaded refusal to let her words sink in. To feel the weight of them. To understand the depths of his betrayal before reacting, defending himself.

She had delivered Elizabeth's message. She had even shared those dark, haunting thoughts that had plagued her through the years.

Now, she was just done.

"End this, Ross. For all of our sakes."

Pushing herself from the ground, Demelza turned and charged up the hill, leaving Ross in a desperate state of shock. It took a moment to move, but once he did, he moved quickly. Racing to catch her, Ross grabbed her by the elbow and spun her around to face him.

"Dammit, Demelza, you need to tell me what she said to you!"

Fire flashed in her eyes. She jerked her arm out of his grasp. "Does what your lover have to say of such great importance to you that you will force me to repeat it?"

Her biting words slapped Ross in the face, and he instantly knew he'd erred and hastened to correct the perception. He grabbed hold of her once more as she turned to go, this time the plea in his eyes reached his voice. "Only because of the state you're in. Demelza, please. I cannot correct the record if I know not the accusations."

"Accusations? Have you truly not heard a word I've said?" Demelza spat out, disbelief morphing her features. "Well, then, Ross, since you need them spelled out for you…"

Demelza stubbornly stood there, her arms crossed, glaring at him. With her copper curls blowing away from her face, she'd never looked more fierce. More beautiful. More devastatingly lost to him.

"You stand accused of neglect. Of adultery. Of loving another more than your own wife."

Huffing out a breath of frustration, Ross struggled to control his chaotic emotions, knowing that now, more than ever before, he needed to keep his wits about him. To fight for what Demelza no longer did.

"You think I don't know this is all my fault? You think I don't know what I've put you through?"

"No, Ross. I don't." Demelza declared firmly. "Because you've never turned your life inside out for another only to have them give so little in return. You've never doubted that the one you love loves you back. Or wondered if the he's dreamin' of another even as he touches you. And you never will." Something in her expression solidified with that pronouncement. Something that gave Ross an uneasy sense of impending doom. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe, the decision does not rest in your hands alone."

"What do you mean?" The wariness in his eyes matched the hesitancy in his voice.

"Do you remember when you asked me to marry you? How you said that I gave to you what you needed before you even asked?"

Ross simply nodded, unwilling to trust his own voice.

"Then consider this me knowin' you so well."

And just like that, Ross was back in that courtroom, his life hanging in the balance, a judgement ready to be declared. He didn't want to hear another word. He didn't want to know his fate, his future. And yet, Demelza was right. They could not go on as they were.

Ross steeled himself to hear the verdict.

"If you've taken a decision, Demelza, I'd like to know what it is."

Demelza's shoulder squared as her chin rose in regal defiance, graceful independence. "I'm grantin' you the freedom you cannot bring yourself to ask of me."

"What?" Ross blinked rapidly, as he tried to grasp the meaning of her words. "I don't…I don't under…"

"I will be gone before the week is out."

"Gone."

"You need not worry about supportin' me. I'm strong and a hard worker. I can find a job somewhere."

"But…"

"Of course, I'll let you know where I land. You'll be wantin' to know how Jeremy is…"

"Jeremy?"

For the first time since their encounter began, Demelza softened, the heart of a mother pleading her case. "I pray you do not fight me on this, Ross. Tis I who wanted him from the beginnin'. And when I leave, he will be all I have of…" She stopped short, the rest of her thought on the tip of her tongue, rerouting its end quickly. "…this life."

Shocked. Enraged. Horrified.

"You can't be serious! Demelza, you are my wife!"

"Yes. But I will stop usin' the Poldark name once I've gone, so you may do as you please without contest."

"Stop using…" Ross recoiled from the thought as if he'd been physically assaulted. "Are you so utterly done with me that you want nothing of me? Not even my name?"

A hint of confusion flashed through Demela's eyes. "I know not all the laws that bind us and only thought to spare you whatever ill may come of carryin' it with me."

Her words punched him in the gut so hard, an explosion erupted.

He grabbed hold of her once more as if the very act alone would stop his world from ending. "My god, Demelza, if you leave, there is no point in sparing me anything at all! You will utterly destroy me!"

If the force of his words, the strength of his conviction moved her, she didn't show it. Instead, she stood stiff, refusing to meet his gaze. Another sign of just how deeply the connection between them had been severed. "Whatever pain my leavin' may cause, Elizabeth will be there to console you."

"I don't want Elizabeth to console me. I want my wife."

"I'm sure that will pass."

Her icy gaze rose to meet his as she extracted herself from the grip of his hands on her arms. She turned to go and only made it three steps before the ragged, heartbroken question flew to her on the wind.

"How can you hate me so?"

She pulled up short as a silence so loud with heartbreak and despair thickened the air, making it hard to breathe.

"Hate you?" Choked laughter followed. A voice wavering with unshed tears. "I only wish I could. It seems though I have the will, I have not the power."

And a hopeless Ross Poldark suddenly found hope.

"Demelza, please. If there's a part of your heart, even a small part that still feels something good for me, there is hope."

"No, Ross…"

"No, you feel nothing?"

"No, there is no hope. How can there be when you will always and forever love Elizabeth?" Head turned, her beautiful profile outlined by the setting sun, Demelza uttered words that would forever echo in his heart. "I refuse to be second best, Ross. Not anymore. I deserve better than that."

Tbc…

p.s. I tried to do some research on marriage/divorce for this time period, and it seemed kinda vague and all very male-sided. So, please take what's written here at face value and not a claim of accuracy as to what was legally or religiously allowed at the time. Thanks!