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The only thing worse, Viola realised, than being trapped in a small moving box was being trapped in a small moving box full of Lady Marleigh’s opinions.
“He was the joy of my life.”
“I would not be who I am without him. I have many regrets, but knowing Marleigh—even if that meant losing him—could never be one of them.”
looked at him now as a woman to a man, claiming all the freedom of it.
Her world was a piece of warmth in the shape of his mouth.
“Indeed. I am the worst of hosts. Can’t shoot my guests. Can’t swear at them properly.”
Oh God, this was a torment. Wanting so terribly to be seen, and terrified of what it might mean if she was.
“The world teaches men to listen only to what they want to hear and women to tell it to them.”
I rather like the notion that I am some kind of glove-hunting adventuress. It is somewhat more exciting than the truth.”
What more could I need?” “Company? Diversion? Dresses that don’t look like the fever dream of Marie Antoinette?”
“Justin would be a terrible ogre. He’s far too polite. He would say things like, fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, would you please forgive me the discourtesy were I to grind your bones to make my bread.”
“You do know, don’t you, that you don’t have to utter every thought that enters your head?”
There was something inestimably cruel about the connectedness of lives. The way one’s own suffering, and the things one did to relieve it, became so entwined with the suffering of others.
“Viola, I mind my own business so consummately that minding other people’s is all the joy I have left to me.”
How something in her could call to a part of him he had long thought dead.
How it was possible she could feel like homecoming to a man who had never before had any sense of home.
It made him want to take her apart with the same exquisite carefulness she used to put herself together, find his way through all the depths and layers of her, like a pearl diver who barely knew how to dream the treasures he sought.
Better, he thought, to be haunted by the living than the dead.
It was the least you owed. A small price for a fluke of birth that gave you far too much of everything.
pass for the Duke of Gracewood instead of this cracked vase of a man that everyone could see through.
So he lied. He let himself lie about who he was or wasn’t or couldn’t be. Because he was lonely. Because she was pretty. Because she could laugh when he had close to forgotten how.
What faculty did she possess, what gift, what magic that could conjure laughter from nothing. From dust and air. From places so full of tears.
“Ah,” offered Lady Marleigh sagely. “Feelings.”
You have shown him understanding and compassion when he has probably felt alone for a long time. It is not so very surprising he trusts you.” A bitter laugh clawed its way out of Viola’s throat. “I remind him of… me.”
“Ours.” The word tasted like a kiss, like the heat of her mouth under his.
“Nobody is as they were,” she said. “That is what life is.”
It had never occurred to him to question beauty before. He’d always assumed it was obvious, fine eyes or a trim figure, rosebud lips or hair of whatever colour was currently fashionable. But it wasn’t. It was details. The way you could wait forever for the dimple to appear beside someone’s mouth, unable to imagine ever growing tired of seeing it.
There was too much to navigate, that was the problem, too much lost, and too much gained, and no real way of knowing where the truth of you began and the shape of the world ended.
“Because I need to tell you, Miss Carroll, that I like you too. I like your quick mind and your kind heart and your bold spirit. You make me think as I had forgotten I could and laugh as I thought I never would again.” “I… I…” Oh God, what was she to do? She had to stop this. But she couldn’t. She yearned for it too badly: so much she’d never dared want, now falling into her hands, as effortless as blossom in spring. “I know,” he went on hesitantly, “we have been acquainted for barely more than a week. But I would like to be the man you believe I can be.”
“I could never marry you, Gracewood. The world—” “Forgive my language, but”—his eyes were as steady on hers as the clasp upon her wrist, his mouth suddenly full of smiles—“fuck the world. I will change it for you if I have to.”
It was… a small thing, was it not? The tiniest corner of what he was offering—impossible though it was. Could she not have this? Just this? They would go to London. He would meet someone else. He would forget her. He’d had lovers before. She knew he had. It would be one kiss among many to him. Like swords in his armoury. Boots in his cupboard. And she had given up so much for so much. This was surely close to nothing. A fleeting part of someone she had loved, in one way or another, for most of her life.
How many times must I mourn you?”
Silence, and a thousand splinters in her chest. Here was a fragment of her pride, here a piece of shame, this a shard of longing, strewn across the battlefield of her heart. Mud and blood and edges and wounds, and how was she to put herself back together?
But she hadn’t known the way he looked at a woman he admired. She hadn’t known the intricate vulnerabilities of his throat beneath her fingers. Hadn’t tasted his breath upon her lips. Hadn’t seen him gather up the dust of his heart and make an offering of it anyway. She hadn’t known he would make her feel beautiful.
Had circumstances been other than what they were, Viola would surely have laughed with him. For it was she who had taught him how.
Viola—could have offered her friendship to anyone. And she had offered it to him:
This was a different pain, a deeper one—the understanding of having failed so completely the only person who had never failed you
My soul calls to yours and yours to mine, and that will never change.”
I’m not looking for perfect. Only for you.”
It was as fragile as sunlight upon frost, a fresh-budding blossom not yet unfurled, just the press of his closed lips to hers, the taste of tears between them. But there was a surety to it too. A thousand promises of an impossible spring.
But there was a larger loneliness, one that came from inhabiting a space she’d had no choice but to build for herself, only to find that nobody could inhabit it with her.
Which was something he had chosen not to take personally, given Lady Marleigh’s general wariness towards opinions that were not her own.
It made him feel claimed. Promised. Reassured. Seen—in ways he still could not see himself—as someone better than he had ever believed he could be.
“Viola, I should warn you I am no portrait.”
“As far as I’m concerned, depravity applies only to acts committed without consent or without care.”
“I love you. I love you when you’re arrogant. And I love you when you’re kind. And I love you
As a strong proponent of the Death of the Author, I sincerely believe that any interpretation of a text is valid, as long as it can be justified by reference to that text. So, what’s the wackiest, most out-there reading of the book you can reasonably support? Are there indications that it’s all taking place in a holographic simulation in the future? Is it all really an allegory for the journey of Osiris through the underworld? You have as much authority here as I do: go wild.
