Page 2 of The Phoenix Bride
“I am glad to be alone with you finally,” he said. “I have missed you desperately.”
I swatted his shoulder. “It’s only been a week since we saw each other last. And now you will see me always.”
“Our bed is newly made upstairs.”
“We can’t leave.”
“Yes, I know.” He ran his hands through his hair, and he grinned at me. “You provide me much distraction.”
I tugged at his collar. “I like you in blue, Master Thorowgood.”
“And I you, Mistress Thorowgood,” he replied.
We giggled together at that, giddy. Will kissed my cheek. “Do you think it was fate that led us here?” he asked me.
“Fate, or Robert Eden.”
“I never thought I would be glad of such a man. But for so long, I believed that I would love you from afar.”
“But now, you will not,” I said.
“Now, I will not,” he echoed. “And there is no man in England as happy as I.”
Flushing, I kissed him again to silence him. Will had been in possession of a constant earnestness, an insistent, innocent honesty, which had always disarmed me. His happiness often seemed greater and more genuine than mine could ever be.
We returned to the house. At our entrance, Margaret—who had been keeping court at the center of the foyer—clapped her hands together. Beside her stood a canvas upon an easel, covered with white cloth. She said, delighted, “Come, Thorowgoods! The portrait must be unveiled!”
I have always had a poor estimation of my appearance, particularly when painted, and it was with some reluctance that I pulled the cloth from our wedding portrait. Still, it was a fair thing, a kind thing: I looked much like Margaret in it, enough that we might have passed as identical. We were born just fifteen minutes apart, and yet we bore only a passing resemblance—not so in the portrait, however. The painter had lightened my hair, almost enough to match hers and Will’s. My nose had been made smaller, my mouth bigger. My eyes were bluer than they are in reality. I was pretty, but there was no life within me; I looked very much like a painting, and very little like a woman. Will’s likeness, meanwhile, was all sunlight and splendor. He had a face born for portraiture. He seemed as if he would burst from the canvas and take me in his arms.
The guests cooed and applauded. Will said, delighted, “A fair picture! Don’t you agree, Cecilia?”
“A good likeness,” I lied.
Satisfied, Margaret—who had paid for the portrait as a wedding gift—instructed its placement upon the wall. We returned to the banquet afterward for the final toast. By then, Will and I were itching for the others to leave. It was a great relief when theguests trickled out, one by one, until only my sister remained. She embraced me.
“I am so glad,” she told me. “Be happy, Cecilia. You are blessed.”
I was blessed, indeed. That day was unquestionably the most wonderful day of my life. For Will, too, I could tell that it was. Before bed that night, we danced again, humming and pacing shoeless upon the rug. We fell to the mattress half asleep, pawing at each other, laughing; for we were restored, and the king was restored. We had each other. Nothing else would ever matter again. All would always be well.
—
One day that summer, as we lounged in the sweet-dry grass of our unkempt gardens, Will asked me: “When was it, Cecilia, that you knew you loved me?”
The answers I could have given. For romance’s sake, I could have said,the day we met a decade ago, when we were thirteen, when you came to our house with your father to see my sister for the first time. That day had been a humiliation for me. Maggie had risen to the occasion, of course; she was polite and pretty and she sang like a nightingale. But I had quickly established myself as an excellent foil to Will’s would-be bride. I’d stayed up late the night before, reading in the library; exhausted, I poured half of the teapot onto the floor instead of into the cups. Thinking to mend the matter, I informed the horrified congregation that the rug required regular watering. Neither Mother nor Will’s father were amused, although Will had laughed so much he had to hide his face behind his hand. I remembered watching that laugh. I remembered thinking,Margaret is always the lucky one.
Or I could have told himlater,made ours a love forged in adversity. When Margaret had instead been wedded to Robert,my mother had sent an offer of me to the Thorowgoods as a replacement. I had been the one to suggest it, pleading with her, hands gripping her sleeves; she had capitulated, for pity’s sake, but we’d both known there was no chance. “Why would Master Thorowgood agree, Cecilia?” she asked me even as she poured the wax to seal the envelope. “You have no dowry. Best to put it aside, and we will make you a decent match, with a merchant, or—or perhaps a doctor.”
I had waited for the reply like a tragic heroine, pacing the corridors in my nightdress, staring longingly out of the window. I did not have to wait long. The response from Thorowgood Senior came swiftly: an emphatic no. That could have been the moment, when I’d thought that Will had forgotten about me—when I’d decided, heartbroken, to put him out of my mind. I have always been compelled toward the forbidden.
But it wasn’t then. I didn’t spend the next two years lovesick. In fact, I willingly met with merchants and doctors and lawyers, men who were wealthy but not noble, those who wished to climb the vines of high society by taking a pauper gentlewoman as a wife. Some I liked, some I did not. I even considered marrying some of them, but the matter was hardly urgent. We had what we needed from Margaret, and my mother wasn’t particularly concerned with forcing them upon me. Her disapproval was mild and uninterested. She allowed me to live in relative independence. I took lovers from the village, and once I grew bored of them, I turned to poetry and music. I did not love Will then; my infatuation had faded. When my mother eventually told me that Will’s father had died, I had considered this news of little consequence, and I hardly looked up from my stitching.
No, the moment I fell in love with William Thorowgood was two weeks after that, the very same day he proposed to me. I hadbeen playing the harpsichord in the music room when I heard the sound of the carriage. I looked out of the window, expecting to see Margaret. Instead, it was Will at the door, about to knock, with a posy of bluebells in his hands.
I opened the window and peered outside. “Will!” I called, almost laughing in astonishment.
He looked up at me. “Cecilia!” he replied. “Hello! It has been too long!”
“It has! What are you doing here?”
