Page 134 of The King's Man
She took a step back. ‘Don’t talk like that.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Thamsine, Thurloe won’t see you because there is nothing he can or will do. I go to the scaffold in the morning.’
She straightened her shoulders, and he could see the strain in the line of her jaw and her throat as she swallowed. She would not make a scene or make parting any more difficult than it already was. That, in its way, was harder to bear than hysterics.
‘Talk to me of ordinary things, Tham. Tell me some gossip.’ He smiled and walked around the table, folding her in his arms.
She leaned her head against the soft linen of his shirt.
‘May has a suitor,’ she said.
‘That is good news. Who is the man?’
‘A carter. He’s a good man, solid and reliable. Just right for her.’
‘What about Nan?’
‘She is honing her tongue. I swear it grows sharper by the day, but she is pleased for May, I think.’
‘And Jem?’
‘Henpecked by Nan. She all but runs the inn now..’
With closed eyes, he caressed the nape of her neck, curling his fingers in her soft hair and trying to impress on his memory her warm, living scent.
‘And your sister?’
‘She has her good days. Since the children have been with her, she has been better.’
Thamsine gulped and her shoulders stiffened as the tears she had been struggling to contain escaped.
He held her closer and they stood locked in an embrace. There seemed to be so much to say, and yet words were inadequate and unnecessary. All that needed to be said was in the tears that soaked his shirt and in the touch of his lips on her smooth forehead.
‘I’m sorry, Tham. So sorry,’ he whispered. ‘It shouldn’t have ended like this.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice muffled by his shirt.
In a sudden, swift movement he released her, his hands cupping her face, flushed with her distress, her tears spilling from her eyes. With savage ferocity, he kissed her as if he wished to draw the life force from her and hold it within himself. Thamsine’s tears spilled unchecked down her cheeks and onto his hands.
He pushed her away and strode to the window, looking out but not seeing the busy courtyard, his back to her, his arms wrapped tightly around his body. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her again. He couldn’t trust himself to remain strong.
‘Go, Thamsine,’ he said in a voice tight with emotion.
‘Kit … ’ Thamsine’s voice wavered.
‘Go … ’ he said softly. ‘Please, for both our sakes.’
He heard the door open and shut. His left hand clenched the barely healed fingers of his right and he welcomed the pain. He needed the pain.
She appeared in the yard below him, moving stiffly as if a puppeteer controlled her limbs. Halfway across she stopped and turned to look up at his window, her face wet with tears. He swallowed, fighting back his tears as she turned and walked away with her head bowed as if it were she who walked to the scaffold.
Chapter 46
In the dark, lonely hours before dawn, Kit sat at the table and wondered what he should be feeling. Death had always loomed at the edge of his consciousness, but always a sharp, brutal death on the battlefield, not a calculated, judicial determination of place, time, and means.
He had asked for and been granted paper and a pen, and he grasped the pen awkwardly in the fingers of his right hand. The fingers had knit as well as they could but they were stiff, the joints unyielding. He would never wield a sword again but then, he supposed, that was really of little importance now. He could at least try and write one last letter.
‘Dearest Thamsine,’ he began, and sat chewing the end of the pen. The awkward letters looked like the ill-educated scrawling of an eight-year-old child, not his usual immaculate hand.
