Kissing likewise became another vital part of their evening routine.
Despite this, or in some way because of it, Daniel still held the most crucial fibre of himself apart from her. Quite aside from and yet alongside with her arrival he began to understand certain truths of his own soul. The further his body transformed in a wildly different direction, the more sure he felt in what he was and what he ought to be.
Yet how could he possibly tell anyone that the heart of a man beat beneath his breast? And expect to be believed?
Even if Sukie were to believe him, it might still dash all they held to pieces. Perhaps she only loved him as a lady, and her affection would wither when she knew him for a gentleman. He could bear the scorn of all the world—the scorn of God himself—but if she spurned him, he knew not where to turn.
He contemplated this one particular evening whilst he waited for her arrival. So deeply did he think on it that he didn’thear her footstep in the hallway beyond his door. The creak of its opening made him flinch. Sukie noticed.
“You look grave as saints, Fairfield!” she observed with wide eyes. “Whatever’s the matter?”
Daniel swallowed hard. He couldn’t bear to lie to her any longer. “There’s something I must tell you.”
Sukie shut the door in silence and joined him in sitting on the bed. He wanted to take her hand, as always, but tonight he lacked the courage, having used it all up in forcing speech from his clenched throat. He couldn’t even look her in the eye as he began. But begin he must. And so he cast his gaze to the rafters, took a deep shuddering breath, and spoke.
“I am a gentleman,” he said.
Four words he had oft spoken in his own mind but never yet breathed aloud. He knew not how Sukie took them; he couldn’t bear the sight of her face just now. So instead he continued. How his body resembled that of his fellow pupils, but his soul was quite another thing altogether. How trapped he felt both in his own flesh and in the role thrust upon him by Mrs Bailiwick and Mr Grigsby and his long-dead parents who’d promised him as an inheritance to another boy scarce older than himself before either of them could even talk. How his blood had boiled over with envy when Felix’s voice broke and his bones stretched beyond the bonds Daniel himself might never escape. How to hear folk call him “Miss” Fairfield sounded like coals raked over his soul and how “Mrs Knoll” sounded even worse. His voice grew raw and hoarse with the telling, until at last, his heart torn from his chest and its secrets spattered all across the room, he fell silent. The silence grew. His eyes felt drawn toward Sukie, as ever, and at last he ceased to resist their natural gravity.
She stared at him with her beautiful dark eyes flown wide.
“I am a gentleman,” he repeated, the words no less strident for the rasping quality of his voice.
She continued to stare at him. Then that impish smile he’d loved so well tugged at her lips.
His heart sank. After all this, she thought him jesting.
“Is that all?” she said.
Daniel balked. “All?”
She cast her laughing eyes upon him; he realised she smiled not with mockery, but with relief. “I thought you meant to tell me you were going away or something else horrible!”
The potent mixture of astonishment and relief in the wake of having braced himself for dread unrealised left him quite unable to speak or do anything but gaze at her.
“What ought I to call you?” she asked. “Aside from Fairfield, I mean. That’s only your surname. You’ve a given name as well, haven’t you?”
Given from himself, to himself, indeed. He steeled his nerve and replied, “Daniel.”
“Daniel,” she echoed, with bright eyes and lips parted in wonder.
It was the first time he’d heard anyone besides himself call him by his real name, and the sound of it made his heart soar. It flew higher still as she leaned in to kiss him. She left her palm against his cheek as she withdrew to fondly gaze at him from those dark and beautiful eyes.
“My darling Daniel,” she said and smiled in a reflection of his own joy.
~
Neither hide nor hair of Lofthouse or Butcher appeared in town throughout the rest of the week. Daniel supposed their business, whatever it was, kept them tucked away.
Saturday morning passed in a flurry of figures. The noontime bell jolted Daniel from a suspended reverie, half-anxiety and half-eagerness, not unlike what he’d felt before he’d hosteddinner. His prior experience as an artist’s model had not produced fond memories.
However, he reminded himself (not for the first time) as he walked home, this particular portrait did not spring from Tolhurst’s commission. Nor would it come from Tolhurst’s own hand. Tolhurst was dead. And perhaps this particular adventure would replace malcontented remembrances with something brighter and better to look back on.
He arrived home to find Sukie in the parlour. She sat mending in her wedding gown. It had originally been Daniel’s—the cornflower-blue poplin. Daniel had never liked the look of it on himself. Sukie had surprised him by picking it out for her own when they’d gone through his ill-fitting wardrobe selecting which items to keep and which to sell off to fund their journey. But the moment he saw it on her, he realised its beauty. She’d looked resplendent in it on their wedding day. She looked resplendent even now. He could do no less than approach her domestic throne and bend to kiss her.
She smiled up at him when he pulled away. He sat down in his arm-chair beside her and accepted her gift of his own shirt, needle, thread, and a button to re-attach to it. They mended together in companionable silence until the ringing door-bell roused them.
Daniel opened the front door to find Lofthouse standing with both hands clenched around the strap of the leather satchel slung across his shoulder.
