Chapter 129

His face turned gray as the church spire.
"I'm so sorry to tell you, Your Grace, but you came all this way for nothing." She peeled herself off the wall. Ignoring him, ignoring everything except the ground beneath her feet, she turned away, began to walk. Away from him. Away from everything in that second too. What he thought, about this, about her, had nothing to do with her.
"You're lying," he shouted after her.
"If that is what you want to believe, Your Grace."
"How do I know? Because I know you. You're not Babs. You're not Marietta. Do you think I don't also know I was the first? Why the hell didn't you just tell me?"
His voice, quiet, deadly, cut across her senses. It wasn't going to stop her. But she knew she owed him that much. She swung round.
"Why? You ask me? Why do you think, when you can't say a single civil word on the subject?"
He turned his face to the side. "Are you trying to tell me you were prepared to take-"
"I wasn't just prepared. I did it."
"Because you know my feelings on marriage?"
"Because I am precisely what ruined your father."
Beneath everything, and above all else, now he knew most of the truth, he would see how inconceivably foolish it was, and would be, for them both, to put her above everything else.
He passed his tongue over his lower lip, dropped his gaze. "A scullery maid?"
"Called Dora. But you probably know my real name, seeing as you've turned out the workhouse. So please, don't express surprise."
He exhaled, shrugged faintly.
Despite everything that had been hard in her life beneath that bright star that was damned near extinct, to watch him nod his head and square his shoulders was the hardest thing she had ever done. Harder than leaving him, harder than losing Topaz, harder than these last months had been when she had done everything to erase his memory.
He turned away too. It hurt, but she let him. It hurt as though a metal claw had torn open her rib cage and ripped out every bit of her.How was she meant to do that? Let him go? The rasp that tore from her throat was like a rusty hinge. She must hold him once more. Just once. The father of her child. Demeaning as it was, sometimes in life there were things you couldn't manage.
Before she could take a step forward, he stopped and lifted his head.
"That was my move. I suppose this is yours? Although I have to say, I far prefer your other name. The invented one."
"Your Grace, why can't I just get rid of you? I am worse than that. I am a scullery maid who was once imprisoned for her father's debt. No matter what I think I am, I can never get away from that fact. And worse, much worse."
"Don't tell me the much worse, Dora. Not yet. Keep that for another day when I have suitably digested this fact."
"I can't. It ... it has to do with ... with Zena-"
"Hush." He took a step towards her.
"With who I skivvied for, who took me out of the Marshalsea because he knew my papa, who .... "
"I will have to silence you if you go on, you know."
"Things you'd have read in the newspapers, things I kept trying to hide from you. Things--"
"What did I say? Hmm?" He placed his hands on her hips.
"But, then again, I suppose you don't read newspapers. And maybe your always burying yourself in your own concerns and shouting first has its merits. It probably explains why you never found out."
"What? Something you may not even need to tell me?"
She probably didn't. Topaz was dead. But then again, the others were still at large. Why start with lies?"Oh, I think I do. and when you hear-"
"Look. I'm just not very good at being married, Splendor. I did it once, and it was a disaster."
"I know. And that's why I understand that you now letting me down is fine. it's absolutely-"
"But now I am married, again. To you."
"You're ... not, technically speaking, married to-"
"And I've not technically divorced you either. I suppose that's your move, to say what you just have, but it's been over three months now. And that's my move. I can't explain it, but it's as if you complete me. You create a space in my heart where it's safe to love. If you will live in it, I think I'd like that. The truth is-"
After the achingly long months without his taste on her tongue, she couldn't help it. Her fingers had tangled in his hair before she could stop them. Her guard ebbed, down, down, as her hot blood coursed through her veins. She saw a lifetime of moves, each leading to the next. Some shocking, some daring, some faltering, some just getting to the next day. All of them were beneath a star, into which life had been breathed once again. She knew before he broke the kiss, if he was prepared to step out on a precarious tightrope, ready to throw everything to the winds that howled around them, then she was too.
"The truth is," he added, "you probably did that from the start, I just couldn't countenance it. If that's why you left, it's all the more reason for me to love you. Besides," His hand curved her stomach. "I believe you have something of mine. Now, it's your move. Tell me you love me."
His voice sounded different from how she had ever heard it. Perhaps how any woman ever had.
She needed to answer.
Her move. Her answer.
Time to tell him not just what he needed to hear, what she knew in her heart and soul.
"I thought you'd never ask," she said.
She told him with a kiss.
END OF VOLUME TWO