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She knew this feeling, this crushing, squeezing pain inside. She’d felt it before, when her father had passed away. When Anthony had boarded the ship at Plymouth. She’d thought then that Christian was breaking her heart. The truth was, she was breaking it herself.
Nothing was resolved. She had no answers. She didn’t know if she was ever going to get answers, but she had to move forward. She inhaled and bit her lip. She’d survived everything else life had thrown at her. She would survive this.
“Very well,” she said to the candle. “You do everything you have to do, Anthony. I’ll be here, holding things together.”
She could do it. She could do it all.
She just couldn’t do it all and have a husband.
“You said you wanted to show me something.”
Christian had expected the attic of Judith’s house to be like any other attic—filled with cobwebs, old clothing, and unwanted furniture.
Instead, it was clean and bright, tables laid out before them. A sheet of brass sat before him, with little toothed gears stamped from it. Three kittens lay in the sunlight streaming in from the single dormer window, a puddle of black and brown fur.
“I have something for you,” Judith said.
“Yes?”
She plucked a little blob of white off the table. He couldn’t quite see what it was; just a flash of gray in the palm of her hand. He heard the telltale sound of a clockwork mechanism winding. Then she set a key on the table, leaned down, and placed whatever she was holding on the floor.
It was a mouse—a little clockwork mouse of canvas and cotton batting, with wire whiskers. It immediately zipped away in a curving pattern across the floor.
Three predatory heads lifted from a nap. Six eyes widened in feline delight. And then twelve paws thundered after the mouse.
“Yes,” Judith told him. “I know there are already a plethora of clockwork mice to be purchased. But they’re so cheaply made that one good pounce will break the mechanism. These mice have been battle-tested.”
“I approve.” It seemed instantly appealing.
She brushed kittens aside and picked up the mouse. “Here. Let me show you again.”
She wound it once more and let it go. The kitten battalion raced after it a second time, doing its best to rend and destroy. He had to admit, it made for an amusing tableau.
“Benedict tells me that he intends to go into trade,” Judith said. “Please don’t wince.”
“I’m not wincing. I thought you intended to hide that fact.”
Judith shrugged. “We had a discussion, and we decided it together as a family. We’ve hidden too much. It’s time to stop pretending that we are anything other than what we are. We’ve traitors in the family. It’s either cower beneath a bush and hope that some man chooses to look down on one of my sisters all the rest of her life, or defy them all. Benedict thinks we can start to manufacture the mice, and Theresa has agreed to use the money I’d set aside for her as seed money.”
He wondered if this was her way of subtly testing him. To see if he would run shrieking. If so, it wasn’t going to work. “I’m good at defying people,” he said. “I offer my expertise on that score.”
Her eyes dropped. “I spent so long trying to get my family back on the conventional path. Eton, trusts, Seasons, marriages—all without asking if it was the right path. We don’t want the destination. No matter what his birth may have been, Benedict will never be a gentleman lounging in a club smoking cigars. Theresa will never be a giggling debutante. She would get bored and set the ballrooms on fire. Literally.”
He took a step toward her. “What of you?”
Her eyes dropped and she inhaled. She picked up the clockwork key. “I am never going to be a lady.”
He reached out and took her hand. “No? Because the position of Lady Ashford is open, and I’ll be damned if I give it to someone who makes clockwork mice that break after a single pounce. It’s been waiting for you these past eight years.”
She inhaled.
“All that time, there’s been a hole in my life.” He stroked her palm. “It was so oddly shaped that I never quite understood how to fill it. But I know now. The hole is the shape of your younger brother, who won’t go to Eton. It’s shaped like your sister, who I fully expect to lead an armed revolt through the city streets. It’s shaped like approximately eighteen cats and any number of clockwork mice.”
Her fingers clenched on his arm. Her eyes were so wide, looking up at him.
“It’s shaped like you,” he whispered. “Strong, never giving up. Accomplishing miracles.” He reached out and ran his finger down her cheek. “I know you have every reason to dislike me, but I intend to balance those scales out, over and over, until you can’t remember why you ever felt that way. Tell me, Judith. Have I any chance?”
And Judith had thought that saying good-bye to Christian would be simple.
Here. We’re well. We’ve figured everything out. We should avoid one another, lest we do anything irrevocable.
He was looking at her so intently that she yearned for irrevocable. If his attention could have changed worlds, she’d be in his arms now. But her world had shifted since the last time she’d seen him.
She looked down, where their hands joined. Her fingers seemed small in comparison to his. But her hands had put together clockwork. They’d learned baking and sewing and a thousand tasks that she’d never thought herself the equal of. She’d managed. The person she’d become was larger than the girl who’d once dreamed of a once-upon-a-time with this man.
A vision slipped into her mind of her hands running up his chest. She could almost taste him, could almost feel his skin, stubbled with dark hairs, beneath her hands.
She’d traded these hands for the knowledge of how he would feel. And, no, she wouldn’t want it back. But… Still, before it all ended, she wanted to know. She wanted to know what she was missing.
“Christian.”
He looked at her. His eyes were dark and so deep that she could have tumbled into them, if only she would let herself fall.
She wanted to know. If she didn’t discover it now, she never would.
And so Judith did what she had wanted to do from the moment she took his arm in the carriage and yelled at him about swans. No, if she was being honest, she’d wanted it deep in her gut from the moment she’d sat across from him at her humble tea table. From the moment when he’d found her alone and given her a clockwork shepherdess. The moment he’d smiled at her and told her it wasn’t proper, a
nd she’d looked into those dark, deep eyes and told him that she didn’t care.
Ever since then, she’d wanted to fall.
So now she did.
She took her hand from his.
He inhaled, his fingers questing toward her.
Their eyes met.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No.” He took a step toward her.
She set her hand on his chest. “I’m sorry that you had so much to worry about. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to share it with you.”
He didn’t move away, and she stepped so close she could feel the heat of his body.
“Don’t apologize.” His voice was low. “Just say you’ll be with me from here on out.”
She took hold of his other hand, bringing it to press against her heart. His fingers convulsed lightly against her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that we were never what we could have been.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not an apology.” She ran her thumb down his hand, down the coarse hairs that dotted its back, to his cuff. “I only wish things had been different.”
“So do I.” His voice was hoarse. He leaned down to her. “So do I. I’ve wished it every day.”
“Maybe they can be, for now.”
“Forever.” His breath feathered against her lips. His hand turned against her chest, sliding around her waist, pulling her hard against him. She wasn’t sure if he leaned down to her or if she leaned up to him. She only knew that it felt right, the two of them together again, like two brass gears that had been machined for each other, turning in perfect harmony.
It was right when their lips touched, right when their hands tangled, his just enough larger that he could hold her in place. Their tongues met like a heavenly conjunction, spilling light through her. It hurt, the knowledge of how right they were together. She could have had this, this sweetness, this perfection. In some other world, she could have had this every day.
“Judith.” His lips moved against her. “God, Judith.”
She opened up to him and to the future she would never have.
