Work Text:
not magic or a promise, but evidence
of how want flints against itself to become visible.
MARTY MCCONNELL, COLLISION THEORY
I thought that you might help me get to Heaven in this road movie where
we don’t go anywhere.
So I have feelings. So I have them for you.
So I didn’t think you’d try to stop me.
RICHARD SIKEN, THE TORN-UP ROAD
“You need to know I’m not looking for a love match,” Anthony had said to her, mere hours before he proposed.
Kate had met his gaze straight on. “You need to know I’m not expecting a love match.”
“Good,” he said. “Then we are in accord.”
“Good,” she said.
In years to come, it will come to nag at him, what a fool he had been. He had already known, even then, that he had been lying to himself, even if no part of him would ever have admitted to it at the time. He will think: All that time wasted. All those years. But it will be too late; the past is intractable.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
I. A COURTSHIP
There are so many places this story could begin: take a boy, freshly eighteen, and his father, walking their gardens together. The father is picking flowers for his pregnant wife. Look, Anthony, he says, hyacinths. Take that same boy, still freshly eighteen, in mourning black, meeting with the family solicitors. Take a carriage ride in a thunderstorm and the girl who crawls out, from the wreckage, alone, desolate, bloodied. Take a girl, at her father’s sick bed, saying, Appa, don’t leave us. Take that same girl, patching a dress hem, desperately awaiting a letter from her stepmother’s parents. The dress hem is fraying; there is only so much mending a single hem can take. Take that girl, put her on a ship to England. The letter had returned with an abject no; they were running out of funds and running out of time. Take the boy, rocking his baby sister to sleep. His mother has not left her room in days. Take a boy, and a girl, or a man, and a woman, and it’s an old story, familiar refrain –
But we are at risk of treading old ground. Instead:
It’s a chilly morning in London. Kate is out for a ride, to clear her mind, having cajoled Lady Danbury’s groom into letting her borrow a horse.
The bare facts are: they have just enough funds to cobble together a single season, with Edwina just shy of eighteen, and still too young to debut. There is certainly nothing left for a dowry. The money will stretch no further. Their options have paled, year on year, and here they are: a final gasp, the last resort, a hail Mary.
So needs must and duty calls; Kate has known little else for the past eight years, in any event. At twenty-six, she knows she is a spinster, firmly on the shelf, but she does not need a title, nor a vast fortune – merely enough for a dowry for Edwina, and to support Mary. If she is lucky, perhaps a kind man, but in present circumstances, she’ll trade away kindness for security. Surely, she thinks, Lady Danbury knows at least one widower, in need of a steady presence for his children and an economical, sensible wife – just one is all they need.
(Mary had protested, at first. “Surely there are other means,” Mary had said, and Kate loved Mary, she really did, but she wanted scream, to shake her. What other means? Their coffers were nearly empty. Hope was no form of subsistence. Mary had had her love match; Kate did not have the luxury of love matches. Kate did not have the luxury of much at all.)
So they have come to London, the air entirely wrong, by equal measures too cold and too heavy; the acrid smell of coal ash and desperation. She’s galloping a shade too fast – she can’t outrun their problems, but for an hour, she’d like to pretend.
You know how the rest of this story goes.
(Later, at their engagement ball, Anthony will turn to her and say: “All things considered, it was not the worst first impression.”
Kate, dubious, will say: “You did not look best pleased.”
“Only because I lost to you.”
At this, she laughs.)
(Later still, he will say to her: “I have loved you since that moment in the woods,” desperate, pleading, and Kate will look at him, still dubious. She will not believe him. He will have only himself to blame.)
On the night of their second meeting, the stars are hidden by a pea souper of a night.
Anthony goes into dinner, not with great anticipation nor hope precisely, but expectations. High expectations, even. Kate Sharma comes earnestly recommended by his mother and Lady Danbury, and he has at this point met every other eligible woman in the Ton. “She does not have any great fortune or lineage,” his mother said, “but Lady Danbury has assured me she has all the character needed to be a Viscountess. You know, she has been responsible for her sister’s upbringing, and by all accounts, Edwina Sharma may well be the Diamond next year.”
Well, he had thought – he had thought of marrying the Diamond that year, but someone who could bring his sisters out as Diamonds – that was perhaps a better bargain, at that. She sounded sensible, and practical, and at this point, Anthony was at the end of his rope: he would settle for sensible, practical, and possessed of the knowledge of who Napoleon was.
And then he walks into the Danbury drawing room, and sees her.
If, that day in the woods, he had felt his pulse skip, or even felt the floor fall out from beneath him, if some errant part of him had hoped their paths would cross again – these were not things that Anthony acknowledged to himself. These were but flights of fancy, insubstantial ephemera.
If, in the drawing room, he feels the same one-two skip, an equal disorientation –
If, at dinner, he cannot take his eyes off the curve of her jaw, the stray curl that has escaped her chignon, her face in the candlelight –
Well. Anthony does not acknowledge any of this, either.
“Do you often make a habit of riding astride?” he asks her, when they have retired to the drawing room after dinner.
“You did not seem to mind, that morning,” Kate retorts, and immediately feels stricken. The viscount, she is sure, is looking for an agreeable wife. She has rapidly learnt that almost all the men of the Ton are looking for an agreeable wife. Pliable, really. Kate has never been pliable, but she’ll pretend if she must.
To her relief, Lord Bridgerton laughs. “I am merely curious. It isn’t common amongst the Ton.”
“Neither is racing strange women in parks, I imagine.”
“No, I suppose not. I would find it altogether more palatable had I won, I think.”
“My lord, at risk of being impertinent, but I would have had to see a much stronger show of horsemanship from you. I was at no risk of losing.”
He leans in closer. “Perhaps we need a rematch. You had a head start.”
He has leaned in close enough that she catches the faint scent of bergamot and oak. When he smiles at her, one dimple flashing briefly, she thinks: oh. Her breath catches for a moment. The feeling in her chest could almost be termed violence; something like vertigo, an earthquake.
This will not do, she thinks.
You need to remember: in this universe, there is no grand love affair. The stars do not cross. If the stars align, it is not in any way that a poet would recognise.
And yet –
“It would certainly be a coup,” Lady Danbury says, after the dinner, “but I do not believe an unattainable one.”
“What of the other prospects?” Kate says. Lady Danbury has already dismissed many of the options out of hand; either too poor, too indebted, or of poor moral character.
“Are you not pleased with the Viscount?” Lady Danbury asks. “There are few other men in the ton who are in no need of a dowry, and will have no regard as to your age or parentage, and even fewer who are titled, young, and handsome. You will not find better than him.”
“No,” Kate says, “I am unsure if he will agree to the match.”
Lady Danbury looks askance at her, but says anyway, “I think we can rule out Colonel Fitzwilliam. He has only nine hundred a year; it will not be sufficient. I have written to the Crofts, for their brother Captain Wentworth is lately returned to town. He has four thousand a year, and is accounted to be of good character. Mr Dorset is a doctor and only a third son, but his family is well-off, and he is a sensible, practical man. And there is Sir Reginald Thorpe, for he is looking for a mother to his children and I believe quite desperate to see matters settled soon, who comes recommended – though he is nearing fifty. But Kate, you would be remiss to write the Viscount off so abruptly.”
“I do not want to put my eggs in a basket too lofty to reach.”
“He seemed taken enough with you at dinner. Lady Bridgerton is a personal friend of mine, and I believe she too would encourage the match.”
Kate remains unconvinced, doesn’t say anything. She is under no illusions as to what a poor match she makes. To set her cap at Lord Bridgerton – it feels a bridge too far.
“Just consider it, Kate.”
Kate considers it. It would have been nearly impossible not to. When Lord Bridgerton looked at her, it had felt like nothing short of drowning, and there is only so much self-censorship she is capable of.
But there is no use, she thinks to herself. A penniless spinster marrying a viscount may as well be something from Edwina’s storybooks. And Kate knows the mathematics of her situation well – she is twenty-six, her dowry amounts to precisely zero, and her lineage is of no note at all. Added together, there is no polite way to say it: she is, quite simply, desperate. And desperation does not a storybook romance make.
So Kate considers it.
And Kate sets it aside.
And yet, at the the Trowbridge Ball, Lord Bridgerton sidles up to her nearly immediately.
“Miss Sharma,” he says, that dimple showing again. “If I may claim a dance?”
To Kate’s consternation, she feels, yet again, that violence beneath her ribcage, in her pulse, a breathless accounting. Not a flutter, but a storm. It feels like a trap. It feels like a warning. It feels a little like hope, and hope – hope is dangerous. And Kate cannot afford dangerous things.
Still, she takes his hand.
If Anthony were any less adept at self-delusion, he too might acknowledge this violent feeling, these perilous delights.
But Anthony is nothing if not a master of denial. And so he attributes any strong emotion to the relief, after so many failed interviews, to meet a woman eminently self-assured, with brains to boot, and clearly capable of heading a household, who his siblings will respect. Any remaining feeling he attributes to the fact that Miss Sharma is a beautiful woman.
For she is. He would have to be blind to not see it. And so, if he stares a beat too long, if the sight of her laughing with Dorset unsettles him, if every night that week, he dreams of her, curls wild and unbound –
Well. This is all to be expected. It does not signify.
(It does not signify; it will come to signify. And if Anthony, in months to come, confronted with the imminent wreckage of his house of delusion, if Anthony then turns tail and runs –
Well. That is also to be expected.)
Anthony, at ball after ball, claims exactly two dances; always the waltz, and often the supper set. He sends flowers religiously, and calls regularly. They go on promenades. Rinse, repeat.
As he tells himself: this is what one does in a courtship. Courtship is ritual, a one-two step to marriage – and rituals, as Anthony has learnt, require no examination of feeling.
So he sends bouquet after bouquet, and never questions why he spends thirty minutes lingering over each card; his secretary has never written even one. After Kate wrinkles her nose at tea one too many times, explaining that she misses the tea of her homeland, he does not question why he immediately asks the staff to source spices and a recipe for chai. Kate bests him at the races, and the next day, he shows up at their doorstep with Nectar.
He questions none of it.
Kate does not question the courtship, precisely. Indeed, at this point, she has long since conceded that Lady Danbury was right – Lord Bridgerton is incontrovertibly, undeniably courting her. Whistledown has already dedicated many an inch to the unlikely pair.
No – what Kate questions is her own reaction. To her dismay, the small violences of feeling do not diminish as the courtship progresses. Instead, she finds herself setting aside amusing anecdotes for their next meeting, looking for him in crowded ballrooms, smiling to herself in quiet moments. Her pulse kicks up a storm whenever he is too close.
She reminds herself: chai and a horse do not a romance make, and this is not a romance. This has never been a romance. She does not need Lord Bridgerton to tell her this; she can read between the lines. He has always talked unfailingly of duty, of practicality, of family. She understands. They are both in this for duty. To each their part, to everything a season.
The match is already beyond her wildest hopes. It will not do, at this stage, to develop any greater feeling. She fears if she were to dwell over much on her feelings, she would eventually sabotage the match. She does not have room for distraction. And the truth is, she has little desire to be lonely in love.
So Kate carefully, deliberately, shutters that part of herself away.
They depart for Aubrey Hall in a flurry of activity. Edwina is beside herself with excitement, insisting that Anthony is surely planning a proposal.
“Edwina, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“I know he dances with you at every ball! And at the last dinner, he could not stop looking at you. Even Whistledown says he is smitten! Oh, it’s so romantic, Didi, it’s like a fairy tale.”
Kate does not correct her. They are going to Aubrey Hall precisely so Edwina can retain her belief in fairy tales and love affairs.
Aubrey Hall is grander than Kate imagined; self-doubt creeps up on her.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
Lord Bridgerton looks rather satisfied with himself. “It may well be my biggest selling point.”
“You know as well as I do that the mamas would be chasing after you regardless.”
“But would you be?”
“Well,” she says, “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You haven’t answered my question,” he says, with a laugh.
“A lady must maintain some sense of mystery.”
She does not need to say: You know as well as I do that I am hardly in a position to be picky. It would be churlish, and in any event, untrue. If you were to sketch one of Edwina’s romance heroes, you might well end up with Lord Bridgerton, with his chestnut curls and roguish smile. She could hardly do worse.
She only wishes it were easier to keep her pulse steadier.
During Pall Mall, after she has stolen his mallet, after she has hit his ball into the mud, after they have fallen in – there is a moment, when she is laughing, mud-soaked, her face alight with joy, curls escaping –
He wants, desperately, to kiss her. He wants to swallow the sound of her laughter whole. He wants – he wants.
If he were a different man, in a different universe, he would say he wanted to etch this moment in amber, keep it with him for nights when the chill sets in.
This is not that universe; he is not that man. Instead, after Pall Mall, what he tells himself is: This is all confirmation of what an eminently sensible choice he has made. Clearly Miss Sharma is at home with the family, and has the spirit needed to corral his siblings. They all adore her; Gregory blushes whenever she talks to him, and after Kate’s sabotage of Anthony, Hyacinth had enthusiastically proclaimed Kate to be her favourite, after Newton, of course. Even Eloise clearly approves.
And so his mind is set. And if he should want to kiss the woman he is courting, well, it is certainly better that than the alternative, as they will need to beget heirs. It is only further proof of the rightness of his decision.
At dinner, he cannot keep his eyes off her.
Daphne notices it, Violet notices it; possibly Benedict would, if he were not completely soused on an unidentified substance.
Anthony notices nothing at all.
She is startled by the creak of the door, but before she even turns she knows who it will be.
“Lord Bridgerton.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you. Only, I saw a light and thought I might have left a candle lit. Could you not sleep? Are your lodgings not comfortable?”
“No, it is the storm. I find them unsettling,” she confesses. “My father used to read to me during the monsoons. Now the rain makes me think of him.”
“This is my father’s library. These books were some of his most treasured possessions.”
She recognises the look on his face, all too familiar. “Ah,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
There is silence. The lamp light flickers between them. The air feels fraught. His nightshirt is slightly loose. They are at the bounds of propriety, alone in a room at midnight, and he is entirely too close to her. She can count each individual eyelash, she thinks. His gaze is heavy on hers; she cannot help but meet it. Kate feels that surely Anthony must be able to hear her blood pounding. Does he feel it too? She thinks that he must.
A thunderclap, in the distance. She jumps back. The tension sputters, breaks.
“I should return to my rooms,” she says.
“Kate,” he says. “I–”
She waits.
“That is to say. I need to say something, about this courtship.” He is not usually so hesitant with his words, but he pauses yet again. “You need to know I’m not looking for a love match.”
She isn’t surprised by this; she has been counselling herself as much for days. Yet, to her dismay, she finds that something in her stomach swoops unpleasantly at his words.
Still. She did not come here for a love match, herself. And Kate – Kate is not a fool. If she feels sentiment, if her hands suddenly feel clammy and the yawning pit in her stomach grows, and grows – it is of little import. She has felt sentiment over many things, in her life; she has learnt that it counts for naught. She has handled worse disappointments in her life, has kept her family together by sheer force of will and a darning needle. She is not someone to turn down salvation for the sake of her pride, or for sentiment. She’s never budgeted for soaring violins, the crescendo, the ever after in her own story; that ending has always been reserved for Edwina.
And so Kate looks at Anthony, concentrates on keeping her voice and gaze steady, and matches him, blow for blow, “You need to know I’m not expecting a love match.”
Something in his gaze flickers, but instead he says, “Good. Then we are in accord.”
“Good,” she says. “That we are.”
She can barely sleep, that night.
In the morning, when Anthony, at the carriage, gets down on one knee and pulls out a ring, she says yes, of course. There has never been any other option. All around her, the Bridgertons and her family are the picture of exuberance, of joy. She too should feel joy – this is what they had come to England for, and she has succeeded beyond her wildest imaginings.
And yet Kate does not have a name for the way her heart roils.
It will be all fine, in the end, she tells herself instead. This feeling, too, will pass.
II. A MARRIAGE
Kate knows the Ton generally accounts them to be the example par excellence of a respectable marriage. When they attend balls together, they dance together precisely once. The servants are all in agreement that Lord and Lady Bridgerton very rarely have rows when they are in the same residence. If either party has ever had an affair, no one knows of it. They are neither vulgarly happy nor vulgarly unhappy.
And it is true: She is not vulgarly unhappy.
Indeed, she would describe herself as content. She had entered this marriage with no illusions. Anthony is a permissive husband; she has a great deal of freedom and autonomy. Edwina is happily married, and settled not too far from Kent. She loves her in-laws – she watches with joy as first Colin, then Francesca, fall in love. He trusts her to manage the estate when he is at Parliament; she finds that she rather enjoys balancing the books when there are vast coffers to draw upon. There is much in her life to recommend it.
It is also true: There had once been part of her that thought maybe, maybe. There had been times, in the early days of her marriage, when she had nearly forgotten herself. It comes back to her in flashes every now and then. There had been something about those days and weeks that even now remains lodged in her chest, ulcerating, a dull ache. She would say they had been halcyon, but could a memory be halcyon if it hurt too much to think about, now?
But the golden idyll of those days after the wedding, time unspooling like honey – what other word could she use? When Anthony had kissed her and it had felt like a benediction and exaltation both. The shape of her name on his lips as he thrust into her, when he murmured, “Kate, Kate”, into her hair, the heat of skin on skin.
It had been so easy to mistake desire for promise, then.
No matter. Those days have long since passed. There is no use in dwelling on them. She cannot even feel resentful; Anthony had never once pretended to her that this is anything other than what it is.
It had only ever been her own foolish, treacherous heart.
When Anthony is in town and she is in Aubrey Hall, she still writes to him, often. They are not on ill terms, and there are matters to update him on – the estate, Hyacinth and Gregory, the tenants. She writes each letter in a studied, courteous tone.
He replies in the same studied, courteous tone.
She has never written, I miss you.
Neither has he.
The truth of the matter is that he misses her desperately.
He misses her when he’s in town for Parliament, or estate business, or whichever excuse he is using to maintain his careful distance. He misses her even when they are both at Bridgerton House, in their separate bedchambers. There have been too many nights to count when he has lingered in the face of the closed doorway, hesitating to knock.
He never does knock.
He writes, once, in his cups, a letter expressing the depths of his regret.
He never sends it. Instead, in the cold light of morning, he burns it, watches the edges curl into ash.
He finds himself writing again, the next month, and the month after, and after. It becomes almost a ritual; a way to self-soothe, or to self-flagellate.
Kate, I think often of that day in the woods.
Kate, yesterday, it stormed in London. I wanted to check on you, but you were home, at Aubrey Hall. Too far for me to reach, though I recognise this is of my own making.
Kate, I should not have left that day.
He never does finish any of the letters. They are stashed at the bottom of a desk drawer, a shrine to his own folly.
Kate knows none of this, of course.
Their last kiss, all those years ago, lingers in the vestiges of Anthony’s memory, unwelcome companion, cruel ghost.
He remembers all of it, even now:
The wind in her hair. The slant of the morning light. There was birdsong, in the distance. It had been after a morning ride; it had been during the time when they still went on morning rides together.
He remembers, also, after:
He had been in the study, working through the accounts, thinking of Kate and the way she had looked at him that morning, pupils blown wide, the catch in her breath. He set his pen down.
He found himself thinking, unbidden, I could love her, and on the heels of that, perhaps I do, and after that, a rising panic.
It was not that Anthony had been entirely blind. He had known, for some time, that he had felt something for his wife. But the feelings had been easily explained away as passion, as desire, as warm affection. These were healthy feelings in a marriage. Love did not have to be part of the equation – it would not be part of the equation. He had already decided such.
Only he was realising, now, that his control over his heart was far less than absolute.
And so –
And so Anthony had run. He left for London that same afternoon. “Urgent business,” he told her.
Kate’s surprise had been evident. “Is everything all right, Anthony?”
“Perfectly fine. Just some matters that require my attention. I won’t be gone long.”
Kate hadn’t pressed. “Write when you’re there,” she said, and had kissed him on the cheek by way of farewell.
They had made each other no promises, he had told himself then.
Kate had felt the whiplash of it, deeply, when Anthony had left so abruptly two years ago. He had returned, but immediately she could see the tenor of their relationship had changed. He did not come to her bedchamber, that first night, nor the night after, or after that. She saw him only at meals. When she tried to make conversation, his answers were short, one-worded affairs. She had felt the shock of it, wondered – had she invented all of the sentiment of the previous few weeks, spun it wholesale out of naught but cloth and hope?
But –
– in the gardens, the bee, how she had held his hands; he had been shaking, hard –
– those languid mornings between the bedsheets –
– the night when it had stormed and she had confessed her fears, how close they had come to destitution, the Sheffields, all of it, and he had stroked her hair, told her in turn of his mother’s void of grief, how they had both been eighteen, both too young and too old, how she had felt the comfort of understanding, of a mutual accord –
– his lips on her shoulder, her spine, the shell of her ear; when he entered her it had felt like nothing short of an inferno –
– these were things she had not invented.
And so she had felt – not betrayed, precisely, for she had known the risks even at the altar – but at first, she had been angry at Anthony’s fairweather moods. She wanted to march into his study and demand an explanation for his behaviour – what had changed, so suddenly, for him?
But the anger had curdled quickly into self-recrimination and pride. She was the one who had forgotten the terms of their marriage. To ask him would have been admitting too much, to say that she had thrown their bargain to the winds, wanting something that had never been hers to ask for.
He had said, so clearly, that day: I am not looking for a love match. And she had agreed. And so it was. She had only herself to blame, for forgetting, in those few precious weeks, to shield herself and her heart.
She would not forget again.
Anthony thinks of this moment often, as penance and punishment both.
His anxieties had proved both founded and unfounded. When he had run, he had hoped then that distance would temper the feeling into something more manageable, altogether safer. He told himself he would not let passion rule him, for he knew all too well how that ended – every gaping wound of it. So he had put miles, a locked door, an absence of touch between them.
But it has been two years; there is little room left for self-deception, these days. Distance had not worked. It does not work. The heart aches, regardless.
The pain of it still leaves him reeling, some days. It is at its worst when they are in the same residence. They move through the same rooms in which she had once laughed at him, touched his face, kissed his brow, and she never touches him. She is everywhere, and yet nowhere; a palimpsest of memory and regret. She still smiles at him, asks him to pass the salt, but it feels as if he is talking to her through a pane of glass, distantly.
But she is neither spectre nor ghost, but unfailingly real. It cuts to the core when he hears her teasing Benedict, bright and unguarded, the warmth in her voice when she talks to Hyacinth and Gregory; her laughing at Newton.
It is only for him that she is absent, a cipher. The precision of her withdrawal hurts below the bone.
His regrets pile up behind him, too heavy to bear and too many to count.
He realises now, the futility of it – too late.
A truth: You can only run so far.
Another truth: The heart keeps its own accounts.
She drops by with the steward’s reports. “From Mr. Patterson, in the mail.”
“Have you perused them yet? Anything to turn my attention to?”
“One tenant’s lease renewal for you to review, but that is all.”
Kate is wearing orange, today. She always looks resplendent in orange. She always looks resplendent. They are so rarely alone together, and he suddenly feels overcome. The room smells of the clean, linen scent of lilies and soap. He could ask her to stay. There was a time he would have asked her to stay, maybe pulled her to him; there was a time he had. As she turns to leave, he finds himself saying, “Wait.”
“Yes?”
He has nothing to say; there are so many things he could say. He could tell her the truth – that he can think of little else but her. He could apologise for his sins. He could –
“No matter. I’ve forgotten,” he says, instead.
She nods. “If that’s all, my lord,” she says, and closes the study door with a soft click.
Was this what he was reduced to now, so starved for her presence that he would invent any excuse to delay her departure, even if for merely seconds? He had asked for this, had wished for this – a courteous marriage, after all, was a safe marriage. And yet here he is, nothing but a lonely fool; Midas, weeping in a room of gold, beautiful, still, untouchable.
In his imaginings, he runs after her, pulls her into his arms, I’m sorry, he says, I should never have left that day, and she says, Anthony, and so follows the happy denouement, gilded edges, ever afters. Or winding, even further back, he would have never left that day at all, never said to her I’m not looking for a love match, been less wilfully, obtusely blind –
None of this happens. None of it happened. That story belongs to different people. They are not those people; he has never been that man.
Benedict asks him about it, just the once.
Anthony snaps at him, tells him to keep out of it. He knows. He does not need his family to confirm the ways in which he has failed Kate.
At balls, they never dance the waltz together.
It had been a conscious choice on his part, at first. The waltz was too intimate; he feared his resolve to keep his distance would waver if he were able to touch her. And it would remind him too much of those earlier days of courtship, when he had been so convinced that his desire was tameable, routine.
But as time passes, he finds that it makes no difference at all. Even the brief, passing touch of his glove against her glove leaves him feeling altogether unmoored, leaves him thinking of their wedding night, their honeymoon, slowly peeling her glove off her hand, and then her stockings, the curve of her wrist, silk and then skin and breath on breath, her thumb against his mouth. Quadrille or cotillon, it changes nothing. Memory persists. Remembrance will always rear its head.
There are times when he almost asks her to waltz, because it is the only way she might let him close enough to hold her. He never does. If she were to reject him, which he fears she would, he would not recover. If she were to say yes –
He fears he would not recover from that, either.
Even now, he very rarely thinks the words. Love is still an albatross around his neck. What good would it do, to say love out loud, even to himself, when it would do nothing? He had left and cleaved them straight in two. There is no use pretending otherwise – it was precisely why he had run, after all, to abate this unsupportable feeling. It had not abated, but any sentiment she had for him has clearly dissipated. He had lit the bonfire himself.
On Thursday, at breakfast, Anthony says, “It looks like the weather will be fair today.”
“Yes, it seems pleasant,” Kate says.
“These eggs are quite well done.”
“Indeed, Cook has done well.”
An awkward, heavy lull ensues. Anthony cuts at his bacon, cursing himself for his inanity. Even silence would have been better than this. He should not have opened his mouth.
Then Hyacinth and Gregory arrive. Gregory is saying, “Hyacinth, don’t tell them,” but Hyacinth has never been one to listen to commands.
“Gregory has been lurking outside my lessons, and yesterday he asked me if Mademoiselle Laurent liked pink roses or red, and today I found out he has written her a sonnet, and it is so embarrassing! You need to make him stop!”
Gregory looks absolutely mortified, and then starts shouting, “Hyacinth!” while Hyacinth yells back, “Well it is embarrassing, Gregory!” He almost lunges for her. She takes off running, Gregory in hot pursuit.
Kate is clearly trying to repress laughter.
“Oh Gregory,” she says. “He loves love, doesn’t he?”
“I fear for the ladies of London. I did catch him reciting poetry in the mirror the other day, so that explains it.”
When their eyes meet, the dam cracks. The sound of her laughter washes over him, like molasses, like sunlight. He wants to bottle it up, drown in it – it has been so long. He feels enthralled, in thrall, almost adrift.
“He did ask me last week if ladies liked sonnets.”
“Do they?”
“I said I personally was not much one for sonnets, but it would depend on the lady, and that some ladies quite like romantic verse. Was his sonnet any good?”
“I’m afraid I don’t believe Gregory has a future as a poet, if the recital was anything to go by.”
“I believe this is the third governess he’s developed a crush on.”
“Three? By my count it is four.”
“Four? No, I definitely recall three – there was Miss Peterson, and then Miss Knightley, and now Mademoiselle Laurent.”
“There was also Miss Harris, though I believe he may have only been twelve then, so it would have been before – before we married,” Anthony says, suddenly stumbling over his words.
“It must have been,” she says.
The laughter has slid right off her face. Silence settles; the spell breaks. Kate has gone still, no longer meeting his eyes, and Anthony – Anthony finds he still cannot stop staring at Kate. Even in her chill, she is still beautiful, and he still wants to kiss the curve of her jaw, the shell of her ear, kiss her back to laughter.
For a single, mad moment, he almost reaches for her, then flexes his hand, stops.
She would not welcome it.
Back to stasis then, to the sundered lands.
What he has come to understand is this:
Loss is a many-shaped thing. We are so often the architect of our own destructions. You can grieve someone who is still alive. They can stand right in front of you, and you can reach out, touch them, their solidity, their nearness, and they should be impermeable, but your hand will pass right through. You can create your own ghosts.
They are at another ball when he sees her talking to Dorset. She is laughing. He is too far to hear their conversation, but it does not matter.
The roiling feeling of jealousy – this is not new. He feels it, often. He knows she would not stray from their marriage; it would be most unlike her. And he knows he has engendered these precise circumstances. Still, when he watches her laugh with other men, the way she no longer does with him – he cannot help the clench of his jaw, the burning in his stomach.
But there is another sinking feeling, layered on top of the jealousy; a thought that leaves him reeling with abject horror.
She could have been happy, with Dorset, he thinks. After all, Dorset had clearly been interested, two years ago, before Anthony and Kate had gotten engaged. Dorset had only stopped courting Kate because it had become patently clear to all involved that she was likely to become Lady Bridgerton. Anthony remembers it clearly, for he has long since stopped pretending he had not been mad with jealousy then, watching Dorset with Kate. It colours his present day jealousy, even now.
But she had chosen Anthony – and to what end? To no happy end, that was certain. She could not have wanted this for a marriage. Kate had always been spirited. She had been brimming with life. Their marriage is the opposite. It is civil. It is a bed of ice. Even if she had known it was not a love match, he cannot imagine that she had envisioned the wasteland he would lead her to. He had stolen all these years from her. He is still stealing them. He had married her so he could monopolise them, and then he had promptly laid waste to it all. They have become wanderers in a desert, in the wilderness, in the ruins of what might have been. He had carved the elegy with his own hand.
What had he done to them both?
He finds he cannot sleep. Restless, he fetches a candle and heads for the library.
But the library is little consolation tonight. It only plunges him further into his morass of regret. He can think only of that night, during her first visit, when he had insisted this would not be a love match. The more fool him. He wants to rewrite their story, but it is too late. It has always been too late. There was no longer a kingdom to return to. And why would she want to? He had been the one to make exiles of them both, and she has since made a life, in the wake of his absence. It is only him that stands here, trapped in time and space.
The door creaks. He looks up. For a second, he thinks she is a hallucination that he has conjured up out of his despair. She looks exactly as she did, two years ago, curls loose and unbound, illuminated by candlelight. Her eyes are wide.
“Sorry,” she says. “I did not realise you would be here. I won’t disturb you further – I am merely fetching a book.”
The civility makes him want to shake her. He feels angry, suddenly, irrationally. How can she be so placid, so distant? Had it all meant so little to her? Standing in this room, alone at night, with the rain outside – does it bring up nothing for her?
“Kate,” he says.
She looks startled by the sound of her name. “What is it?”
His mouth goes dry. The sight of her, here, like an echo. He feels untethered, as if the moment is no longer real, no longer taking place in this universe but in some distant, faraway space. His composure disintegrates. He cannot even focus on her face. He feels like a wild thing; a burning recklessness takes over. He finds his words tumbling out, in a rush, unstoppable and inevitable.
“I love you,” he says. “I think I have loved you since that moment in the woods.”
He is staring at her, desperate and pleading by equal measure. His pupils are blown wide.
“Anthony, you are in your cups,” she says.
“Kate, I swear I am not. Kate, you must believe me.”
“Anthony,” she says, her voice quiet, hewn at the edges. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to.”
III. A ROMANCE
There it was, his heart, laid bare, laid up like an offering, the whole raw, bloody core of it –
And Kate did not believe him. If he had thought he felt devastation before, this is something else altogether. There is a roaring in his ears, and the sound of her voice feels faraway, almost strange, as if he is listening to it through an ocean.
“Right,” he says.
“Anthony, I,” she says, and stops. “I’m sorry.”
(A fork in the road:
What Anthony wants to do, desperately, is to run. He had bared his heart and she did not want it, and so what was there to do? In that universe, Anthony says, “Right, of course,” voice hollowed, and says, “Forgive me. I will take my leave. I’m sorry, Kate.”
In another universe, maybe even this one, Anthony, a braver man, or maybe a more desperate one, maybe at his lowest, scraped and bruised and bloody, despairing, cracks.)
And so: Anthony says, his voice breaking, “What would it take? For you to believe me?”
Kate stares at him. Her face is still unreadable.
Kate feels, too, the roaring in her ears. The candlelight casts the room with a glow that makes it feel almost unreal, like she is dreaming. Perhaps she is dreaming. If she were to be really, truly honest with herself, she has had dreams, not unlike this, where he comes to her, begging, mouth full of apologies. In those dreams, it is simpler. If she forgives him in those dreams, if they fall into one another’s arms, incandescent with joy – well. That is only in dreaming. She finds that now, in reality, she feels no joy, only the headlong rush of anger.
“Anthony, do you really not know? You left. I know we had agreed on the terms of the marriage, but you cannot tell me that you really thought that those weeks were nothing but duty. Did it never occur to you how much you would have hurt me? I stayed up, waiting, you know, for you to come to my door. I felt like such a fool. Anthony, you made me feel like such a fool. We have lived like mere companions for nearly two years. I do not know how you expect me to believe.”
“Kate,” he says, “I – I was a coward. I know. I should never have run. I knew it even then. Every day since I have regretted it. Kate – God – I never wanted – I’m so sorry.”
His voice sounds broken, his forehead crinkled, and he looks so sad that for a second, she nearly cracks, has to remind herself that words mean nothing – to forget herself once was forgivable. To forget herself again would be nothing short of stupidity.
She shuts her eyes, as if she could will this moment back to the realms of her dreams.
“Anthony, I – I can’t do this right now. I need to go,” she says, and as she flees from the library, she cannot help but realise the irony of it, the reversed tableau.
The past two years rewind in her head – every moment of it, the hope and the fear and the misery and the joy of it all, blurring together until she can barely tell month apart from day. She stares at the ceiling of her bedchamber.
She does not know what to believe. She had not been lying to Anthony; she does not know how to believe him. He had been the one to stand in that library, across from her, telling her he was not looking for love. He had been the one to leave, with neither warning nor explanation. She knows she has been distant, her walls up, ever since – but, she thinks, he started it. The thought feels almost childish, but there is no other way to put it. He had been the first. He had been the one to start answering in monosyllables, to stop touching her, to treat her as a polite acquaintance, as if he were continents away even as they sat across from each other. As if he could not bear to even be in her presence.
She had only responded in kind, for she would not be the kind of woman who would pine away, sad and lonely, chasing after her husband who did not want her. She would not be Ophelia, drifting in the lake, swallowing lungfuls of sorrow, flowers in her hair. If Anthony did not want her – she would erect a thicket of thorns, salt the fields, flood the moats and raise the drawbridge.
And she had succeeded – for months, the pain had receded, become tolerable at first and then, as time passed, whittled down until it raised its head only at the witching hour, in her dreams, in only the occasional moment of weakness.
And now, here he was, storming her ramparts, a cannonball to the heart. In one night, he had undone nearly two years of careful work.
Did she believe him? She doesn’t know.
(Another question she dares not ask herself:
Does she love him still? Did she once love him? She doesn’t know this, either.)
Here it was then, his fears proven true. Anthony had told Kate the truth, and she had rejected it. What was there to do, now?
He stares at the ceiling. Every fibre of his being is screaming, run, but he had run, and run, and where had that gotten him? Here, alone in his bedchamber, desperate, lonely in love. Was their story always fated to end this way? He can’t help but think he had been right to run from love, all those years ago – his problem was that he had run too late.
Yet even as he tries to convince himself of this, he knows, deep down, that he is lying to himself. He knows, deep down, that he had been doomed from maybe even that moment in the woods. He had denied love, and instead, he had merely lost her; the feelings had never waned. Shielding himself from loss, only to find, surely enough, that loss had come for him anyway. He would always have fallen fast and hard, in every universe, and it would always have felt like the blossoming of a bruise. There was never another option; there was never an option. Once Kate had come into his life, that had been it. Even if he had married another, she would have always been there, as she is now, a spectre of his mistakes. She could have been oceans away, and he would have loved her still. Forget her – he could never.
And so what now?
In the morning, Kate comes to a decision. There is a part of her that wants to beat a hasty retreat, to pretend as if the night had never happened, go back to their carefully curated, perfectly polite distance. But she can only bury her head in the sand so much. When Anthony had retreated, it had been easy to match him beat for beat, to steel herself and fortify her defences. But here they are, and Anthony’s confession –
– it is not so easy to forget, that.
And so in the morning, she, for the first time in a long time, knocks carefully at the connecting door between their bedchambers. He opens it instantly, almost as if he had been waiting behind it.
“Kate,” he says, and that desperate, plaintive note is still there, and against her will, Kate finds herself again thinking, maybe, maybe –
“We need to talk,” she says. “I deserve answers, after all this time. I had not wanted – at the time, I had not wanted to ask. But I find I must, now.”
“I owe you answers,” he says.
“Why did you leave, Anthony?” she finds herself asking. “It – I know we had agreed otherwise. But times were good, weren’t they? Would it have been so bad to have had feelings for one another? You made me feel like I had imagined all of it.”
“You didn’t imagine it,” he says. “I – you should come in. We should sit.”
She perches at the edge of an armchair.
“I do not mean to make excuses, Kate, before we begin – I need you to know this. I know what I did may be unforgivable. But I want to try again. If you would be willing to.”
“I need an answer first, Anthony.”
“I – you know, already, about my mother, how it was much the same as with yours. I thought love meant loss, always, inevitably, and I did not think I was strong enough to handle loss. And those weeks – you were not wrong. You did not imagine them. When I realised that I might already love you, I panicked. I am not saying it is right. But I panicked, and I ran. I thought it would be easier, on both of us, if love did not factor into it.”
“You hurt me. It did not make it any easier for me.”
“I know, Kate, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know it was a stupid, stupid thing to do, now. It did not work, in any event. I was already, by that point, madly, desperately in love with you. In the past two years – I found it didn’t matter. I loved you, and I lost you anyway. You do not have to accept it, but I truly mean it, Kate. There is not a day that passes where I do not rue what I did.
“Kate, I know I cannot take back what I did. I know how badly I acted, how I ruined this for the both of us. But – if you are open to it – will you let me try and convince you? I promise – if after this, you still no longer want to reconcile, I will leave you alone. And if you do not want to – then I will respect that, too. But I have realised that if I didn’t at least try for your forgiveness, I would regret it to my dying days.”
She is quiet. She doesn’t know what to think. His voice is so sincere, and Kate – the foolish, romantic, hopeful part of Kate, who she had so desperately tried to purge – that part of Kate wants to believe him.
But she has spent the better part of two years trying to banish that part of her. It is not so easy to undo.
She exhales. Her mind is churning. “Four weeks,” she says, finally. “But no more.”
After, she thinks: why did I say yes?
She fears she has only opened herself up to heartbreak. She tells herself, it is only four weeks, but she had also told herself that she knew what she was doing, what she was getting herself into, before the proposal, before the wedding, after the wedding – and that had not worked. She had still been devastated when he had gone cold. For all her insistence on shielding her heart, she had been falling in increments, anyway.
But, she thinks – maybe this is what she needs. The closure. Four weeks, and then she can finally close the book. For it has been exhausting, these past two years, to carefully guard her heart at all times. There are times she has looked at his face, his ears, the crinkle in his brow, and felt that crashing, sinking feeling. Self-censorship has made her weary. She has been living in an emotional purgatory, whenever he is around.
Four weeks – and she can put this to bed, either way, once and for all.
The next day, she wakes to a note slipped under her door. I will be out, riding, if you care to join me, it says.
She wavers. And then, exhaling, dons her riding habit and heads out. When she catches up with Anthony, he looks almost shocked to see her, but on the heels of that, he then beams so widely that she cannot help but soften, at how genuinely pleased he looks.
After their ride, he says, “You know, I was not sure if you would join me.”
“In all honesty, I was not sure either,” she says, looking at him sideways.
“I am glad you did,” he says. “I have missed riding with you. I think of it, often.”
“Well, you did buy me this horse,” she says, patting Nectar. “One of your better decisions, I must say, though the bar is not high.”
“It is not particularly high,” he agrees.
“Well, there is something to be said for self-awareness,” she says, and then he laughs, the sound warm and honeyed, almost surprised.
She feels herself soften further, for a moment, before she has to blink herself out of it, remind herself that none of this is anything new. They have been here before, and it had not come to a happy end. It was not enough. She was not sure what would be enough.
On Wednesday, she wakes for breakfast later than usual, and is taken aback to see a plate full of fruit already in front of her. She looks at it, the fruit cut into chunks, the golden, sweet fragrance, the smell of home and summer, sticky heat and too much humidity in the air, and says, in shock, “Is this a mango?”
Anthony says, “I remember, that time, you said you missed summers back home, and that you missed the food, especially the fruit, and – I just thought, it might be nice.”
“However did you manage to find a mango in England?”
He shrugs, a bit, and says, “There are some trees, in the Royal Botanical Society’s greenhouses. I called in a favour.”
“How much did you spend on this mango?”
He looks abashed. “Kate, I am not trying to buy your affections, you know. I just – I know you miss India, sometimes. I thought it might be nice to bring you something to remind you.”
“No, no, Anthony. You are right. It is a beautiful gesture.” She looks at the mango, on her place, carefully bites a piece, wanting to savour it. She feels overwhelmed, suddenly. “Thank you.”
There is another mango, the day after, and the day after that, another morning ride. After, as they dismount, he holds out a hand to her. When she takes it, she feels like she has lurched headlong into danger. It is such a cliche, she thinks, to say sparks flew, and yet –
Yet what else could she call this feeling, dilated eyes, breath slowing? They have not been so close in months, but her body has not forgotten; her body knows his. She looks up at him, at his heavy-lidded gaze, and exhales, her breath frosting in the space between them. Whether unconsciously or not, they have leaned in closer together; she could close the distance so easily. He is clearly waiting for her to decide.
Her hand moves, as if of its own volition, and her thumb grazes the side of his face. He inhales sharply, his eyes fluttering shut.
In the distance, the crack of a twig – Kate jumps, and pulls back. When she looks at Anthony, he is watching her with that heavy, intense gaze of his. She wonders, suddenly, if he had never stopped looking at her like this, for the look has a certain familiarity. She had chosen to ignore it all these years, for it had not accorded with anything she believed of him, of their relationship.
But now, faced with that look on his face, the naked, unabashed longing, like he wants to devour her whole –
– she finds herself looping back through time, sifting through her memories. Had she, in the name of self-protection, wilfully put on blinkers? Had he really looked at her like this, all this time? And if he had – what did that mean?
If the other Bridgertons notice a certain easing of tension between Kate and Anthony, they are kind enough to not say anything.
Daphne had talked to Kate about it once, obliquely. “My brother,” Daphne said, “means well, but he can be a right idiot. He will come to his senses, one day. Until then, I must apologise on his behalf.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kate had said.
Daphne had looked at her. Kate had carefully avoided looking back. After a moment, Daphne said, “Of course. My mistake. But Kate – you know, we love you in your own right. If you ever need someone to talk to, you know where to find me.”
One night, after playing whist with Anthony and the Bridgertons, they walk back to their bedchambers together. He lingers at her doorway, kisses her hand before they go their separate ways.
It is familiar, she thinks, and dangerous, how it feels as easy as breathing, to slip back into these cadences with Anthony. He is trying so hard, but habits die hard. She is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, the carriage to be revealed as naught but a pumpkin, for apocalypse and sea foam.
Still. She feels the afterimage of the kiss on her hand, like a burn.
One day, during a ride, they are passing through a field of flowers.
After, Anthony says, “My father died amongst the flowers. We were picking hyacinths for my mother.”
He talks so rarely of his father. She pauses, lets him continue.
“After he died – I was not the same. I suppose you probably have heard as much from my family. My mother was not the same, either. She fell into a deep well of grief. I feared we would lose her, and Hyacinth too. You know this, but I suppose I never told you that it was why I had sworn off a love match. I was terrified, after that. In many ways, I am my mother’s son, not my father’s. I saw what love did to her, how it wrecked her, and thought I would never let myself be that vulnerable.”
She lightly touches her hand over his. “I can see how, at eighteen, that would have been ruinous. You know about Mary. I feared we would never get her back. Some days, I still don’t think we got her back, not fully. She always moved through life more wearily, after that. But we cannot let our parents define us, Anthony. I am not Mary. You are not Violet. We are not our parents.”
“No,” he says. “We are not.”
The understanding between them feels as fragile as gossamer, to Anthony. He is ever-conscious of how little time he has left; it has been nearly three weeks. He has been keeping a count. Ten days, then nine, and nine is so short. He tries to suppress it around Kate, but inside him is a blazing panic, a black chasm of fear.
What if he could not convince her? Could she not feel this between them, as sure and certain as gravity? He fears, sometimes, that he is the only one, especially when she keeps pulling back at the last moment. Would he be doomed to rue and sorrow, to wander in the ruins of their story? How could he live with nothing but memory to sustain him?
But there is nothing to do now but stay the course. If she leaves –
– Well, he had already lost her, years ago. If he did not try, he would never find his way back to her.
In the study, after tea, she comes to drop off papers. Anthony says, “Stay. I have not seen you all day.”
She hovers, then sits. “How is your correspondence going?”
“I am almost finished,” he says. He pauses, as if he is weighing his next words. “You know, I almost wrote.”
She furrows her brow. “You did write. We were not completely estranged, Anthony – we communicated plenty about the things we needed to.”
“No, I mean. I wrote you love letters, and apology letters, and sometimes both in one. I should have sent them. I wasted so much time, you know, running from this.”
She says nothing at first, then: “Why didn’t you send them? If you knew, even then?”
“At first,” he says, “I was still convinced I could train myself to not love you. I thought if I kept a cordial distance between us, the feelings would fade. But months passed and still, I thought of you, night and day, at sleep, at waking. I am a fool, Kate, but there is only so much self-denial one man can take. And then – well. It had become clear to me that I was too late. You had moved on. And I was terrified of what would happen if you rebuffed me – I did not think I could handle it.”
She looks at him. “But then the night in the study?”
“It had been so long, and I had seen you that night with Dorset, and it was not that I was jealous, though I was. But I thought – I had taken so much from you. You had been so happy, and then whenever you were around me, it was like someone had sucked the joy out of you. And only around me. I could not bear what I had done to us. I was not thinking, I was just despairing. And yet I’m not sorry I did it. I’m glad I said something, even if I was not in my right mind, and I wish I had sprung it on you in a better way.”
Finally, she says, “I’m glad you said something. I don’t think I am sorry, either.”
He packs a picnic. Something about the quaintness feels almost absurd to Kate, like she and Anthony are playacting at different people. But perhaps they are those people now. Yet she cannot help but feel touched – even more so when he pulls out a flask, pours her a cup, and on her first sip she tastes cardamom.
“I know you hate tea,” he says, almost bashfully.
“I do,” she says. “You know, chai was one of the first things to go, when we started running out of money. It is not that it is particularly expensive – but we had so little, those days. Even the few rupees for chai were too much.”
“I’m sorry you were ever in that position. It should not have fallen to you, like that. You were so young.”
“No younger than you, when your father passed.”
“Kate, it was hard, but I will not sit here and pretend that my family’s wealth and status did not make it easier, for me. Even with seven siblings – I at least never had to worry about the material side of things.”
She sighs. “I love Mary, I do. But sometimes – I do not think she meant it. But she was so absent. And I was so worried, trying to keep things afloat. And perhaps it was in my own head, but it most likely was, but I felt like – if I couldn’t keep us afloat, then she and Edwina would have no use for me, any longer. I couldn’t bear to lose them, too.”
“Kate,” Anthony says, and his voice is pained. “You know they don’t think that.”
“I know, intellectually, that she loved me. But she was – in those days, it felt like she was looking right through me. And then when she did see me, she would just cry. I thought maybe if I could fix things, she would love me how she loved Edwina, effortlessly. And then we got so desperate I had to write the Sheffields, and I told you this, before, how they wrote back. And I realised there was nothing, just me, and if I failed, we had really nothing at all.”
Anthony looks stricken. “Did I trap you into marriage?”
“No,” she says, “that’s not what I meant. But you already knew that was why I was on the marriage market.”
“I did. And I don’t blame you – I just, I feel guilty, that you felt forced into this.”
“I wasn’t. I went into this eyes wide open, Anthony.”
“Is that why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you find it so hard to believe that I could love you?”
Kate is silent, at first. “You mean, everything with Mary and Edwina?”
“Yes.”
Pensive, she says, “I suppose it might be part of it. I think I have long struggled with the idea that someone would love me without me having earned it.”
“You do not need to earn love, Kate.”
She looks at him, then at the sky. Something loosens in her chest. “I know. I just don’t always believe it.”
That night, there is a knock on their connecting door. Anthony jumps to his feet, thinking for a wild second that he is hallucinating it, but when he opens it, there Kate is, on the other side.
“May I come in?” she says.
He feels like he might stop breathing. She is wearing part of her trosseau, from the wedding, and her hair is loose, unbound – he has not seen her like this since he left. He inhales. He will never smell lilies and think of anything but her.
“Of course,” he says, as all of him lights up, fireworks, saltpetre.
Kate had dithered for hours over whether she should knock or not. If she did – she knew she could not come back. She was crossing Styx, she was Orpheus, she was –
She was knocking. She is knocking.
When Anthony opens the door, she exhales, lungful, steps over the threshold.
They crash together, quickly, after that. It has been so long, but her body still sighs into his. His kiss is open mouthed, glancing at first, and then longer, deeper, truer. His skin is warm, so warm, and she is burning all over as he pulls at her stays and then her chemise and she pulls at his shirt, and then they are skin to skin, lip to skin, he is whispering her name like a prayer, an incantation. His hand feels hot against her. “Anthony,” she gasps. His response is almost a growl; he steers her back onto the bed, linens rucked up around her. When he pushes into her, she arches, each thrust a tidal wave of longing. She thinks she hears him murmur, “I love you,” but she is not thinking, this is no time for thinking. She is too busy falling.
After, lying in his arms, she says, “I believe you,” and he turns to her, face hesitant and joyful all at once.
“Are you sure? Kate, I do not want you to feel pressured just because–”
“I’m sure, Anthony.” She pauses. “I believe I rather love you, too.”
His face is wondrous.
“I love you,” Anthony says, and she thinks, I know.
“I love you,” Kate says, and he’ll etch this moment in amber to preserve, to warm him on cold nights.
“You need to know I’m not looking for a love match,” he had said, once, and he had been wrong. “You need to know I am not expecting a love match,” she had said, and she had not been lying; but she is glad he had been wrong, all the same. I fear we wasted years, that I wasted years, he will say, and she will say, but there are so many years ahead. Water under the bridge, bygones and bygones – perhaps not a grand love affair, but a romance all the same, after all, violins and all, the crescendo and the denouement.