Page 37 of Faceless

She was his.

For a handful of seconds, he did not speak. He could not. He was standing two feet from her in the dark with her hands still in his, and he had just heard her speak vows she had not been able to find the words for — heard her voice catch on the second whatever, heard her cast about after what he had said because she had nothing of her own to reach for.

She had been shaking since the door opened. She was shaking still. He had known her for nearly a year and had never seen her tremble at anything in her life, and the reason she was trembling now was him.

He pitched his words very low. He had rehearsed the whisper in this room for a fortnight, spoken into the dark until it came without effort. “Are you cold?”

A second of silence. “Yes.”

“Will you come with me?” He tightened his grip on her hands very slightly — not a pull, only an indication — and stepped half a pace back.

She did not move.

He felt it before he knew it — her arm locked, her whole body locked, her hands rigid in his, the refusal coming out of a place that had not paused to be consulted. She was standing in a bedchamber with a man she had never seen, who had just called himself her husband and had asked her to come with him, and her body had done what her body could do.

“Only to the table,” he whispered. Low, flat, as plain as he could make it. “Mrs MacLeod laid supper before we came in. I want to take you there and put you in a chair. Nothing else.”

Her hands did not relax. But after a moment, her feet moved. He released one of her hands so she might walk beside him.

He went slowly. He counted the steps for her without saying so — eight to the table from where she had stood — and when they were two paces away, he said, “Two more. The chair is on your right.” She put her free hand out and found the back of it. Over it, draped, was a folded wool blanket — her fingers closed briefly on it before they found the wood. He let go of her other hand so she could lower herself. She sat.

He took the blanket from the chair back, shook it open, and brought it around her shoulders — not settling it on her, not letting his hands rest there, only drawing it forward until the edges met at her collarbone and then letting it go. The weight of the wool fell into place on its own.

“The fire was not lit tonight. The room will not warm itself.”

He reached to take her hands. He missed — his knuckles caught her forearm through her sleeve, and he pulled back.

“Forgive me.”

“You cannot see, either.”

“No.” He found her hands on the second attempt, took them in his. “I cannot.”

He had practised this in the dark all week — where the plate would be, where the silver cover, where the knife, where the glass — and he knew the arrangement of the table as surely as if he had laid it himself. Her hands had been the variable.

He brought her right hand down to the rim of the plate and let her fingers rest there. He was leaning over her, close enough that she would have felt the warmth of him if he had been any nearer.

“The plate is directly in front of you.”

He brought her hand out and to the right, to the knife. He let her fingers close on the handle. “Your knife.” He brought her hand back across, past the plate, and set it on the fork. “Your fork.” He brought her hand up and to the right again, and held her fingers against the base of the wine glass, which he braced with his other hand so it would not tip. “Your glass.” He brought her hand across to the far corner of the table. “There is a candle here in a shallow dish. A flint beside it. When you are alone, you may light it.”

He released her hand. He lifted the silver cover himself, set it aside on the table, and the warm smell of the food came up into the dark between them.

“There is roast beef at the back edge of the plate. Potatoes to the left of it, roasted with herbs. A Yorkshire pudding on your right — Mrs MacLeod had not made one before. I asked her to try. It is a dish, I understand, that is common in Hertfordshire. It may not be quite as you are used to. I hope you will forgive her, and me. There is bread if you prefer it.”

Her hands were very cold, and the tremble in them had dropped from the surface to something deeper as he worked — not gone, only moved inward.

Her hands went still on the table. “Why did you mention Hertfordshire?”

He had been waiting for it. He had not been able to decide, in the planning of tonight, whether to offer the information ahead of her question or to give it when she asked, and on the whole, he had thought better to let her ask. Answering it took nothing from him, and it gave her the sound of her own voice in the room asking a question and receiving a plain reply, which he thought she would find useful.

“I had your family enquired after before I made the offer. Thoroughly. This is not the sort of arrangement a man should propose without taking care. I wanted to be sure of your character and your circumstances. I learned what I could — what any gentleman making such a proposal would learn — and on the strength of what I learned, I sent the solicitor.”

There. That sounded plausible.

“If you would like, in the coming days, to know what I was told and what I asked after, I will give you the whole of it. I will not keep that part from you.”

“I have my fork,” she said.