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“You do not know that. You cannot know that for certain,” Antony said with feeling, snatching the glass back up off the table and taking a big gulp.
“Really? Can’t I?” Fergus asked, his eyes wide. “Because I watched your Duchess today take a vow before God to love you until the day that she died. She didn’t look like she was lying to me. She meant it.”
“Dianne said she’d marry me too,” Antony said the woman’s name at last. It had been so long since he had said it; he was rather surprised not to feel the customary pain that came with her name. “She promised to marry me, then look what happened.”
“Do I have to point out the obvious bit that you and Dianne never actually got to the ceremony?” Fergus asked, growing more animated. “Dianne never stood up in front of God to make a vow to you. Your Duchess did today.”
“Stop calling her ‘My Duchess.’”
“Well, she is, isn’t she?” Fergus chuckled, though Antony could see no humor in it. He was simply growing more annoyed that Fergus couldn’t understand things from his perspective. “Hermione is not Dianne, Antony.”
The words cut deep. The annoyance Antony was feeling was stripped away. He turned in his seat to rest his elbows completely on the table and stare down at the glass in front of him.
“I know she isn’t,” he said with conviction, despite the quietness of his tone. Hermione was entirely different to Dianne and had managed to worm her way into his thoughts even more than Dianne had ever done. He was incapable of staying away from Hermione, incapable of not flirting with her. He had even pleasured her whilst a ball was going on because he so badly needed her!
“She has more power over me than Dianne ever did,” he confessed his fear at last. “I cannot let it go any further. If I let myself fall in love with her, and then she leaves too, how will I ever pick myself up off the ground again?”
He felt a clap to his shoulder from Fergus, urging him to look up from the glass. “I’ll be there to help pick you up off the ground for one thing,” Fergus said for a smile. “For another thing, I’m holding true to my belief. I do not believe your Duchess has any intention of ever leaving you.”
* * *
Hermione gave up staring at the door and retreated toward the bed. She blew out each of the candles on route, casting the room into darkness before she clambered onto the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck, trying to find sleep.
Yet sleep did not come, just as Antony had not. For a while, she gazed at the ceiling, thinking of what could have happened between them had he come. She thought of what had passed between them in the library on the rug and let her imagination wander to what else could have happened, especially now that they were married. There were no rules anymore, no boundaries. They could have made love.
An image flashed in Hermione’s mind of what it would be like to have Antony above her, smiling in the way he always did, flirting with her as he made love to her. She could picture pulling at his hair in the heat of the moment, tugging on it playfully then scoring lines down his back with her nails as she reached the same peak that he had given her before.
There was a sound in the corridor, and Hermione turned her head toward it. She kept her eyes on the door for many minutes, praying that, at some point, Antony would walk through it.
