Page 76 of The Beloved Escapade

“I said in this house that the quest came first.”

His voice cracked on it. He let it crack, hands still moving, his whole body speaking once his hands had left hers.

“I said it to your face, and I meant it, and you, magnificent creature, you signed on anyway. Hear the new terms. They are not negotiable, and I am aware that I am in no position to set terms, and I set them regardless. You first. You, first, always, before the quest, before the family, before the dead. And the quest, if God is ever kind enough to give it back to me in any form, comes a distant and grateful second. And if He never gives it back, then I stand here tonight with nothing under my feet but plain earth, and I find, Lucia, I find that it is enough. As long as I have you.”

His hands came back over hers, and Lucy stood in her doorway with the lantern held between their four hands. Behind her, in the house, a black seam stood open. The words there is, there is, there is a door beating against her teeth. She did not say them. She could not. They were not the point. They had never been the point. Everything in her that was her father’s daughter had one question left, and she would die before it went unasked.

She did not step back to let him in. Not yet. She stood her ground on her own threshold. Lifted her chin. Watched his face take in that the verdict was not yet given.

“Why did you always stop?”

It came out of her low and level. It landed on him like a facer. She watched it arrive. He flinched, honestly, the way men flinch at a true wound.

“Every night,” said Lucy. Her voice did not rise and did not soften. “Every night you came to me, or let me come to you, and you gave, and gave, until I could not see straight, and then every night, at the last, without one exception, you took my hands away and kissed my knuckles and stopped. I called it respect because I could not bear to call it anything else. This morning, I called it a man with one foot outside the door, and I released you on the strength of it, and you let me. So before I move one inch, Lorenzo di Bianchi, you will stand in that rain and tell me the truth. Why did you always stop?”

For a moment, he could not speak at all. She watched him gather himself. The Italian in him was still there in the set of his shoulders, in the way his breath came as water streamed down his face.

“Because I was terrified,” he said.

The rain and the lantern. His eyes never left hers.

“Not of you. Never for one instant of you. Of me. Of what I am, Lucia, of what I have watched myself be my whole life. I am my family’s fever in a good coat. A bee in a bottle. I have watched my madness eat everything it was ever given, my father’s peace, my mother’s patience, my own youth, every friendship that stood too close to the flame, and this spring, I watched it start on you. I watched myself go absent from your arms. I watched your light bank down day by day.”

His hands tightened on hers around the lantern ring. She felt the press of it.

“And I thought, in my great wisdom, that there is one thing I can still do for her. One gift left to give. I can leave the door open. If I never finish it, if I never take the last step, then the vows are not sealed, she is not bound, she can walk away. That was why I stopped, Lucia. Every night. It was never the heart withheld for lack of love. It was the heart withheld in terror of what its love does, hoarded like a coin sewn in a hem, so that when my madness had cost you everything else, you would still own yourself.” His voice went to gravel. “A door that still opened. I stopped because I loved you past bearing and I did not trust myself to be loved back. It is the truth, and it is not a flattering truth, but there it is.”

And there it was. The whole of it. The spring’s black riddle answered on her own doorstep in the rain. It was not the answer she had steeled herself against. Something in Lucy’s chest, that had been holding its position since a crypt in Devon, broke ranks all at once and ran free, racing to the river of time, racing to catch the boat.

“Then hear my speech,” she said. Her voice betrayed her at last. Went thick and cracked and did not care. “I perjured myself. This morning. In the library. Every word after the quest is ended was perjury, signore; the witness recants the whole of her testimony. I did not release you because I wanted my freedom. I released you because I love you past keeping you, and I thought the kindest thing my love could do was open your cage, and I have spent all day and all night learning exactly what my freedom is worth without you in it⁠—”

She got no further. He crossed the threshold.

The lantern was rescued by somebody. She could not say whom. It went down on the hall table still burning. Lucy was in his arms. Rain-cold arms around her. His rain-cold mouth on hers going warm. It was the chart-cabinet kiss, and it was nothing like it. That one had been triumph. This one was homecoming.

She was crying, apparently. She discovered it only from the salt where their mouths met. He was murmuring against her lips between one kiss and the next. Her name. And Italian. And her name inside the Italian. Mia, mia, mia. It needed no translating at all.

“You are soaked,” she managed at some point, laughing and weeping into his collar. “You are ruining my gown, you dreadful man, you are ruining the hall carpet⁠—”

“I will buy you a hundred gowns. I will buy you Persia’s carpets. I have plenty of money, and I never have anything to spend it on.” He set his cheek against hers, breathing hard. His hands framed her face as though she were something that had been dropped once and would not be dropped again. The Italian in the way he held her was all heat and certainty. “Lucia. Sunday.”

Her heart stopped and started.

“The vicar will be confused, and obliging. Sunday. My mother will be relieved … although she did not know we had canceled, so she will just be happy there is a wedding, and unhappy that you are Italian and that we are leaving for Florence,” said Lucy Carroway against his mouth, level as a rule laid on a table.

“Sunday,” breathed Lorenzo, like an oath, like an amen. He kissed her again.

The hall was suddenly no place at all for what was happening between them. Lucy took his cold hand in her warm one and drew him, walking backward, laughing, weeping, through the dark of her own house toward the one room where a fire had been lit that evening. The lantern came with them in his free hand. It threw their tangled shadow enormous up the halls of Grey House. The library received them, and the door was kicked shut.

The fire glowed red in the grate. The lantern went onto the floor beside the great hearthrug. Low gold light washed over them. Lucy’s hands were already on him, cold and clumsy and desperate. She needed the wet coat off him. Now.

His soaked coat hit the boards like a dead body. The sound of it went through her. She was still half in her own wet things, the fabric sticking to her skin, and his fingers were fighting her tapes and losing. She laughed, short and shaky, and pushed his hands away. Undid the damn things herself. Fingers shaking so hard the knots fought her. Then the wet fabric peeled away from her skin and the cool air of the library hit her bare breasts and belly, and she did not care. She was already reaching for him again.

His boots next. Mud to the knee, soaked through, stubborn as hell. She dropped to her knees on the rug to help, yanking, impatient. The first boot came free with a wet suck. The second followed. Then she was at the falls of his breeches, fingers working the buttons, the wet cloth heavy and cold under her palms. She could feel him underneath already, hard and thick and straining against the fabric. Her breath caught. She had waited for this, yearned for it. Every half-finished night, every time he had stopped, every time she had been left aching and empty. She was done waiting.

The last button gave. She dragged the wet breeches down his hips herself, aggressive, impatient, and his manhood sprang free, heavy and flushed and so hard it looked almost painful. Rain-chilled skin, but the heat of him radiated. Thick. Longer than she had expected even after all the times she had felt him pressed against her through layers. The head was already slick. Lucy made a sound she did not recognize. Low. Hungry. She wrapped her hand around him without asking, felt the velvet-hot skin jump in her grip, and stroked once, firm, from base to tip. His answering groan came from deep in his chest, and his hips jerked into her hand.

Then his shirt. She rose and helped drag it over his head, the cravat already a damp pile on the floor and the tapes at the neck already loose, and then his stockings yanked off, and he was bare in the firelight. All of him. Rain-chilled skin warming fast under her palms. The hard length of him against her hip the second she stood. She pressed closer on purpose, rubbed against it, felt the wet tip paint a line across her skin. Another low moan tore out of her.