Page 93 of The Unknown Birds

Above the storm the heavens wait to be seen.

—Edward Thomas

The Sorrow of True Love

Ashley hadn’t cried when she was sent packing back to London, though her mother wept enough to fill the sea. She hadn’t shed a single tear as she sank deep into despair over losing Rook, nor had she sobbed on the shoulder of Tom’s sister, at the news of his passing.

Instead, she built a wall of brick and mortar to keep back all the tears she refused to cry, as though if one single drop seeped through a crack, the whole dam would burst and bring her crashing to her knees.

Rook’s magnificent return had threatened the integrity of that embankment since January, and somehow, slipping back into a semblance of old times, reminiscing with the captain about all the ghosts who had haunted the fringes of her life these last twenty years became the crack that would be her undoing.

She had no idea how long she’d been huddled at the foot of her grand bed, weeping hard enough to shake the walls of the great house, trying desperately to get ahold of herself, trying to force herself to remember how to breathe, when at last there came a knock. Probably the beleaguered footman wanted to fetch a doctor or the young maid brought a draft to help her sleep.

Scrubbing at her tears, Ash rose on shaky legs and opened the door—only to find Rook standing on the other side, grey eyes haunted and stricken at the sight of her puffed and blotchy face.

“It’s nothing,” she said, turning away from him and pulling her wrap tight around her. “Only everything, after all this time.”

He followed her into the room and gently closed the door behind him. “Too much of you was left behind in France?” he blurted out, startling her back into her senses.

The time had come for a full and final confession—nothing but the whole unbridled truth—after which she’d beg him to remain her friend and forget about her feelings. “How could I be tempted to marry anyone? When there was never anyone for me but you?”

He exhaled slowly, eyes set like stone. Then he swept her up in his arms, wrapping her in warmth and heady bergamot and home. Wiping a tear from her cheek, he traced the line of her jaw with his thumb before kissing her so tenderly it ached, then again, ravenously, like one small taste had ignited a voracious need.

His kiss grew almost frantic as he turned her back against the door, finally finishing what he began twenty years before.

The feel of the wood against her shoulders echoed the feel of the trench when another kiss had started, with a furtive glance over his right shoulder, and then ended with a look of horror at what he’d done: kissing a fellow soldier. The image was still singed into her brain.

She put her hands on his solid, heaving chest and he took a step back, rubbing his neck as though embarrassed by his ardor.

“I should apologize,” he whispered, almost to himself.

“I thought… you liked men…” she blurted her confusion.

The glazed look in his eyes turned clear and sober. “What if I do?”

More confused than ever, Ashley couldn’t help stating the obvious. “I… am not a man.”

A tiny smirk hitched the side of his fine lips. “No. It would make all this slightly illegal if you were.”

Ashley’s mind was reeling at the implication.

She had known some men preferred men, but upon learning it, she had assumed their preferences were binary—running to one or the other. The possibility had never occurred to her he might like both. Was he suggesting she had it wrong this whole time? That he could care for her as she did him despite her gender? Even because of it?

“Ash,” he said, tilting his head to catch her eye. “I have loved you for nigh on twenty-three years. Man or woman, it makes no difference. You were always it for me.”

“Loved,” she gasped.

“Can you even doubt it? The word is too small to contain the depth of what I feel for you. You are…”

“A piece of my very soul,” she finished for him.

When he nodded, she fell against him, kissing him once more, her tongue searching for his as their spirits had searched through space and time.

He lifted her off the ground and spun her, still kissing, and she clung to him, like he was a raft and the world around them a raging sea. The spin threw him off kilter, his cane and her wrap forgotten on the floor as they toppled to the bed, still holding on for all that was dear.

Pushing himself up with muscular arms, he scooted backward to the head of the luxurious bed, and Ash followed, walking on her knees to straddle him while his gaze traced down her like fire. He yanked his shirt free from the waistband of his trousers before ripping it off over his head, sending buttons flying.

“I’ll find them later,” he murmured when Ash looked to see where they’d fallen. “We can ask the maid to sweep them up.”