In Regency England, two brothers vie for Mabel's affections. Their passionate rivalry puts her reputation on the line and tests both her sense and sensibility to the maximum. On the verge of despair, she must cast the die: to decipher the most enigm...
"It was not Everett who started the rumor." Mabel's knees did a marvelous job of holding her up. Perhaps her body was getting used to being betrayed by men she thought to be wonderful.
"He flew into a rage when he heard it from someone, somewhere—and stormed away. He abandoned you to it. If he didn't, it would be him begging you to marry. I would have seen to it..." His arm rose as if to catch hers, and dropped, just like his voice. "I would have stepped aside... I swear."
"How could you?"
His lonesome eye stopped on her, almost matching the blind one in its blank sadness. It implored, do you understand how much I need you? How hard I had fought for love? His father refused it outright; his mother's was ever tinged with guilt and regrets; and he lost his brother's when he chased revenge. What of Cordelia? she wondered and just didn't know; but he looked at women with distrust.
She understood what he was—hemmed in by the mounting dread of own imperfection. Lonely. She recognized it too well, but still... "How could you?"
If she wanted to hold on to her outrage, she should not be looking at him crying. The masks were falling off, one by one; and the true face of his soul underneath wasn't a villain's grimace or a cold emptiness. It was flawed, not evil. Or so she guessed.
A sort of fatigue seized her. This had to stop somewhere, this solitude. Someone had to take a chance, and not only for his sake. They were two in the room, not the whole of London, and may London think what it wants. This had to stop.
"I will bring you your shoes," she said quietly.
He made a gurgle of protest.
"Would you rather a servant do this? Someone who doesn't care one whit for you?"
"And you... care?"
"You can't walk on broken glass barefoot."
The moon was out, its light streaming through the window, catching on the sharp edges, the triangular surfaces, the wicked curves strewn around the room. Some shone as stars, the others—as daggers, poised.
Nobody should walk on such bed of glass barefoot.
She searched the closet, knelt and helped the strangely shaped foot into a fitted boot with a thick sole; straightened and touched his hand. It would be such a waste to walk back to the bedroom and take them off again.
"Let's go without, Radcliffe. You could use a breath of free air."
He leaned on her with silent obedience. She threaded arm around his waist; unexpectedly hot, unexpectedly soft from his velvet housecoat. Together, they walked across the broken mirror, ignoring its curse. It crunched a few complaints.
She had never been this far in his private apartment, but the door opened easily enough into the garden, letting them outside. Over the threshold, the night steamed with fog and silver. She withdrew her arm after ensconcing him securely by the wall.
Then she walked out of the shelter of the house, and tilted her head as far back as it would go. She was under Heavens. It was neither cloudy, nor perfectly clear, with London's haze dulling night as much as it dulled the days. But she peeked through the veil. Whatever fore did she have to obey the ancient names given to the stars, recall the frightful tales? They looked serene enough to her, if distant. She could call them Peace, or Harmony, or Kittens, and nobody could say or do anything against it. A fulsome sigh filled her chest. Yes, she could do that. Forget the past.
"I forgive you," she said, turning to Radcliffe.
"Will you please marry me?"
"Radcliffe!" She threw her arms into the air helplessly, walking to him. "One step at a time?"
"If I apologized to my brother?" He said it with the wheedling tenacity of a child. But do we truly grow up in sensibility with age, or simply learn to mask a child's one?
"You must!" Mabel exclaimed. "O you must!"
"I know." He chewed the inside of his cheek. "But will you marry me?"
This was no longer which brother was right or wrong, flawed or pure of intentions; their abominable father or anything in the past. This was only about who she wanted to marry, if at all. This was about her.
She came within an inch of him. Her heart thudded. Once. Twice. Thrice.
"You wanted a rose as a 'yes'."
He winced. "It sounded better in the moment, I admit."
"Take all the roses in your garden. All of them in England; in the world, even, if you love me. Do you truly love me?"
"Madly. Do you?"
"I love you."
"Mabel..." His lips closed on hers without surprise nor struggle.
Mabel didn't understand how Hazel hadn't been able to refuse Everett on that fateful night. But now that Radcliffe's arm wrapped over her shoulders; that she tasted salt of yearning on his lips, kissing them and releasing, and kissing again; she understood it now. She felt what a maiden shouldn't have suspected of existing pressing into her belly. A lover's kiss was sweet, but a man and wife's embrace... surely, it couldn't be all that frightening either.
"We'll have children," she whispered into his lips. "And if not, and if Everett never settles, Cordelia's sons will inherit the wealth. As for the title, stop burdening yourself with it, Radcliffe. Your happiness is dearer to me than anything."
He rubbed his forehead against hers, their breath mingling in a shelter against the rest of the world. "Let us return to the house. If I don't immediately write to your Father for his permission to marry you, I will succumb to unmanly weeping if not an outright swoon."
She kissed him between words, making sentences longer than they had to be. "My sweet love, there is one advantage to marrying a girl on the verge of spinsterhood. I'm twenty-one years of age, and don't need anyone's permission to wed you but my own heart's."
"A license then. A license so that we could marry as soon as possible... tomorrow if I could arrange it. Yesterday would have been better... By Jove's beard, I'm not sure what I'm going on about. I'm too addled."
She blushed, then trembled at his impatience. "I would still want to travel to Lancashire for the honeymoon."
"Of course," he said, pausing for another suckle on her lips. "Of course."
***
Lady Catherine met them at breakfast. Her glance swept their faces, then their interlaced fingers.
"It is long past time that this house was filled with happiness again," she exclaimed, not scandalized by a shred. Her eyes glittered with tears from excess of emotion. "Long, long past time."
Mabel squeezed Radcliffe's fingers and whispered into his ear. "And the manor as well. We shall exorcise your Father's wicked ghost forever."
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