Page 45 of Fair as a Star

“Beryl—”

“No,” she said. “I want you to.”

He reluctantly took it. The article she’d bookmarked was on the subject of acute melancholia, and was purported to have been written by a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London. Mark’s gaze moved swiftly over the small typewritten text.

Everyone must be struck by the intense self-feeling of the melancholy man. His egotism exceeds even that of the paralytic or maniac. He thinks that everything is centered in him. His superlative misery is a theme on which he loves to descant. His depression is great, but he magnifies it in the recital of his woes.1

Mark had expected a cold denunciation of her feelings, but this was worse, so much worse, than he’d anticipated. He tossed the journal aside in disgust. “This is rubbish.”

She picked it up again. “It’s confirmed medical opinion.”

“Yes, precisely. Opinion. It isn’t you.”

“But there’s more.” She turned to another folded page. “You can see for yourself.”

“Beryl—”

“It says here that the melancholy patient is selfish. That they desire nothing more than coddling at the expense of everyone around them. And that—”

He stilled her hand on the page. “I don’t need to see any more.”

She stared down at the medical journal. Her fingers were clenched around it, holding it tight. A shaft of warm sunlight through the window illuminated the right side of her face, leaving the left in shadow.

It occurred to Mark then that she’d always been thus. A part of her shadowed. Hidden from view as surely as she hid her whitework. That vulnerable, hurting side of herself she never dared show to anyone for fear of being judged and found wanting.

But she was showing it to him now. Trusting him above anyone else.

“Let it go,” he said gently. “Let me take it away.”

Her eyes squeezed shut, her voice quavering. “He told my mother that I must enjoy the attention. Perhaps he was right. I wanted to see you, and now you’re here.”

“I’ll always be here when you need me. I should have come sooner.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not you, it’s me. Melancholy makes people manipulative. The journal says—”

“It’s rubbish,” he said again. His fingers curled gently around hers. “Let it go, sweetheart.”

The soft endearment fell like a honeyed balm on Beryl’s frayed nerves. Mark had never before called her sweetheart. She was certain she’d remember if he had. The effect was that dramatic. It warmed her. Soothed her. Made her list closer to him, secretly longing for more of his voice and his touch.

She could scarcely believe that only two days ago he’d kissed her. On her return from church, she’d wondered how she would ever again look him in the eye. How she would ever speak to him normally. And yet, here he was, being her friend. Closer, and somehow dearer, because of that kiss. Because she knew how well the two of them fit together. As if they were made for each other, body and soul.

Slowly, she loosened her grip on the medical journal, permitting him to take it from her. Her heart lurched as she felt it slip away.

He folded it and tucked it behind him, well out of her reach. “Why do you keep such a thing?”

“I don’t know.” She’d often puzzled over that herself. It was a perverse compulsion. “I suppose it’s to make myself face the facts, unpleasant as they are.”

“And you reread it? When you’re at your most vulnerable?” He looked vaguely appalled. “Why would you torture yourself that way?”

Beryl’s mouth trembled. It was torture. She was hurt every time she read it, each recitation of the words reopening a wound she’d never fully permitted to heal. “Because I don’t want to forget what I can be at my worst. I want to strive to do better.”

“By berating yourself with the opinions of men who don’t even know you? Who have no idea what a wonderful, giving, extraordinary person you are?”

Tears stung at the back of her eyes. “You don’t have to say that.”

“It seems to me that someone needs to say it to you, and often.” He shot a revolted glance at the discarded medical journal. “If you require a medical opinion, consult with someone, by all means. But let it be a man like Dr. Black. A modern thinker, not some antiquated relic who would have you believing your melancholy is merely the result of vanity and self-indulgence.”

She’d never heard Mark speak in such a way. He sounded almost angry. “Are you upset with me?”