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She had only gone a short distance, climbing a hill to where a small patch of trees met a rundown fence before a fallow field.
Diane passed an hour or two, sitting against the fence, grumbling to herself. She knew very well how to sit still with nothing else to do but think. The little goat had trouble grasping the concept, and seemed quite determined to wrap its lead around her, with how it bounded against the radius of its freedom.
“I don’t actually think you’re a fainting goat. I don’t think that sounds like a real thing,” she told it, because she had no other options for conversation.
The goat only shrieked back at her, and she decided to take its noise as agreement.
She knew as well as Liam did, she had no other options. She had neither the skills nor the constitution to find work and support herself, all she had ever been taught was how to live the life of a gently bred woman.
She held no love for Martin, but the thought of her collection being discovered, damaged even, was too much to bear. Every moment that passed was a moment she could have turned back to save her art from falling into the wrong hands.
If she’d acted rationally back at the church, if she’d been brave enough to face her friends and family with a difficult decision, perhaps she could have called off the wedding with minimal repercussions, and been able to open up other decisions. If she went back now, she would have to live out the consequences of her behavior as a spinster, confined to the whims of her guardians.
She would have to make the decision between him and going home. Those were the only fungible options, while they still felt like no choice at all. All she wanted was one more option to know which way her heart pulled truly.
Sitting in a field was likely not going to yield any such prospect, or divine some truth to her that she hadn’t already been able to see. But the time spent there would give her the space and breath to think, and some solitude would keep any more talk of proposals at bay.
If anything, this was the last bit of agency she could squeeze out of this one day of independence.
So when she spotted Liam coming up the hill after her, she sighed in exasperation.
Diane crossed her arms as he reached the top of the hill and found a spot to lean on the fence next to her.
Several breaths passed in utter silence, half because she wished to have her solitude, and half because she was trying to come up with some scathing greeting. The more she thought on it though, the more she supposed she didn’t feel particularly scathingly towards him, more a low simmer of annoyance.
“I found us a room at the inn. I don’t know how much time you need, but I’d rather not end up sleeping in the field tonight,” he said after a few moments, surprising her.
The relief of hearing that eased away the tension in her chest like a tourniquet around a wound. Feeling flowed forth unbidden, emotion in her voice.
“Believe me, I understand perfectly well how little time there is. But the decision is not simply between you or Martin. All my art is back at the church in my trousseau.”
“And retrieving your art is paramount to all else?” Liam asked, his voice even, impartial. She cast a quick glance to him, how he looked steadily away from her, towards the view of the village, ever stoic. He was playing statue again, but now she had an inkling of what was behind the stony facade, that he was likely wondering how scribbles could somehow come before the feelings she had for him, the tender and passionate moments in the garden.
“I don’t expect anyone would understand,” she began quietly, “I was never allowed most everyday enjoyments. No running, no dinner games, no dancing at balls. No novels that were too exciting, no conversation too stimulating. So often I was simply left alone.”
The low tide of long held pain started tearing at her voice. So many years she had been pretending she didn’t care anymore, that she had accepted how others would inch around her.
“There’s something invisible about drawing. No one sees the time or the thought or effort that goes into it. Hours pass and people believe you’ve only been sitting alone. They can’t see the way what you’ve created can make your heart race. It was the only thing I had any real agency over. It was an escape from everything, whenever I needed it.”
She wondered if he thought she was making her dirty little hobby sound grandiose. He hadn’t thought her drawings constituted infidelity, but he hadn’t known the hundreds of hours that she had spent pouring over the shading of skin against skin, imagining that touch.
It was many moments before Liam sighed and offered, “Perhaps I don’t have the whole of your troubles, but I know some.”
She glanced sidelong to him, watching that mask of stoicism.
“I spent a lot of time at Martin's side. Because the family estate was his to inherit, he always assumed a role of importance. Ever since we were boys, he chose the order of the day. I've learned it is better not to express a hope, or an opinion. It won't be taken into account either way.”
She hadn’t considered that. She had spent all this time loathing the thought of having to spend her days with Martin, but Liam had been living that reality.
“I'm sorry, I didn't know,” Diane started to say.
“You wouldn't have,” Liam shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I don't think I've expressed this... unrest, to anyone.”
“Deciding to disrupt his wedding must have taken more courage than I initially credited you with.”
Liam’s stoicism cracked for a moment, letting slip the smallest of smiles. “Hardly courage. To wait until there was an opportunity to reveal my knowledge quietly. Walking out, that was your courage.”
A warmth blossomed in her chest, all the way up to her cheeks. He thought she was brave. Brave! Had anyone ever said that of her? She shook her head to at least pretend outwardly that she felt modest about his comment. “I was angry. At you, if I recall.”
