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Slowly, his eyes opened. Her heart crashed alive in her body, flooding her with such pounding she could hardly take in air.
She had an arrow, of sorts, and she carefully aimed it. ‘When I do, your mother has said there is a kind vicar...that you provide a living for...who might be looking for a wife. I should meet him.’
His lips barely moved as he spoke. ‘I will see that he calls on you.’
‘You do not have to. I will.’
She pulled back from his grasp but she couldn’t walk to the door.
His body remained still, but his gaze didn’t. The thoughts she couldn’t touch were there, showing in his eyes.
It wasn’t fear of dying without him that overtook her when she looked into the brown, but the truth of living without his touch. And she took the strength he used to stand still and captured it in her body to stand there immobile.
His hand reached to her face, but she flicked her head back out of reach.
‘You must not forget, I’m not an English society miss,’ she said, ‘which your mother tells me is important to you. I have tried for two years to want to be one and I see I am not, and will never be. I will be always free. I may not be a lady by birth, but I am worthy to walk the same earth as you.’
‘You are.’
‘I saw my mother cry when my father left us and I swore I would never beg for a man’s attentions. I would have them freely or not at all. Whether he is a vicar or a soldier or a carriage maker, I will find a man who falls to his knees and thanks the heavens for me. And when he speaks words to me, they will be true. How I feel for him is not so important—as how he thinks of me. I am not a goddess. I do not wish him to think I am such. But he will have me in his heart as if I am.’
‘I would like to see you with your hair down...’ His voice was a whisper with a rumble that could only come from a man’s throat and hardly touched the air, but swirled around her at all sides, as if an artist with a thousand brushes had taken her as his canvas and danced his brushes lightly over her body.
She pulled one pin from her hair.
He took it and held it between them, letting it linger in their vision, and she couldn’t take her eyes from the fingers that held it so lightly.
‘Your hair always looks as if your next movement will tumble the locks around your shoulders. I catch myself holding my breath, waiting. The wisps dance with your body, but the rest of it stays, looking soft and...like you. But even with the pin removed—’ instead of returning the clasp to its place he palmed it ‘—it doesn’t fall.’
His hand fell away, as if he’d forgotten what it held. His gaze moved over her tresses before returning to her face. ‘A meadow. Did you know, it is always as if meadows or forests surround you? When I was a child, I would lie in the grass and look up at the puffs of clouds, and then close my eyes. Sunshine warmed my face. The grass softened the ground beneath me.
‘The world had the same scent of an oak leaf held to my nose. At that moment, if a bird flew over me, it was as if its wings brushed my face and I was alive and everything was quiet in a way it had never been before. I could feel the poetry of the world and now that same verse surrounds you. I can feel the warmth of your hair against this pin.’
She reached out, putting her palm on his chest, cloth caressing her fingers. ‘You have been reading—too much of that man who writes about women walking softly at night. Byron.’
‘I would never say you walk softly in the night. “She walks in beauty like the night...”’ His eyes flicked back to her face. ‘Those words I do recall and they do apply. I’m sure there’s more after that, but when I look at you, I cannot even remember who I am.’
She stood so close she could even see the way his pupils seemed to fade into a softer colour at the edge. But she could not see herself reflected. She shook her head. ‘I do not think Byron knows the true meaning of love either. Words. Perhaps that is why I have had so much trouble thinking of reading. It is bad enough when false words are spoken. To put them down on paper is even worse.’
‘I admit, words do not do you justice.’
She stood immobile, and one edge of his mouth moved up. He took a step and reached up, and both his hands went to loosen her hair and she felt strands against her skin. Finally, her hair fell around her shoulders as he stepped away, but he wasn’t truly moving from her. He was using his eyes to remain close, looking at her lustrous hair.
Taking her hand, holding it open, he dropped the pins into it. Then he closed his fingers over hers and pulled them up, dropping a kiss over her knuckles.
She put the pins on the table and stood with her back to him. The mirror reflected from his shoulders to his waist.
