Page 38 of The Phoenix Bride
“I enjoy your company. I would like us to be friends.”
“But—even if…” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. Your sister would never allow it.”
Cecilia doesn’t bother to deny this, and we both fall quiet. The moon watches us impassively. On the water, a barge floats by, stuffed full of raucous gentry. They cast paint spills of light and color across the water, their laughter a dissonant chord against the patient rhythm of the tides. Neither of us speak until the noise fades away.
“We could meet in secret,” Cecilia says. “Tomorrow night. Why not? I could sneak out again—through the door this time, late, when Margaret is asleep, and then we could find each other.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why? You don’t want to see me?”
“If we are found out…”
“I will take the blame if we are discovered, I swear. I only want…” She sighs, covering her face with her hands. “I know it is selfish to ask,” she says into her palms. “I don’t want to put you in harm’s way; I could go alone, but…”
“Don’t go alone,” I say, alarmed. Cecilia would be in great danger, out after dark in London, with neither money nor chaperone.
She drops her hands. “Does that mean you’ll come?”
“I…”
“Please come,” she says. She takes hold of my forearm,leaning forward to look at me, pleading. “We could meet at midnight. The intersection by the townhouses. Say you’ll be there.”
There is no sensible response but refusal, and yet the words cling to my throat. The way she is staring at me—through her eyelashes, desperate, luminous—is utterly overwhelming. I feel as if any reply will be inadequate, as meaningless as silence.
“Please, David,” she says. “I beg of you. We hardly know each other, it is absurd, but…I feel better when you are with me. I don’t know why, but I do.”
“My company can’t provide you a cure, Cecilia,” I tell her. “I can’t restore you to the way you once were.”
“I don’t expect to be as I once was; I don’t think that’s possible. But I’d like to be someone I can recognize as myself. I despise this hollow stranger I’ve become.”
“You will always be yourself. No one can take that from you.”
“Then prove that to me,” she says. She lifts her chin, and the breeze sends her hair sprawling around her shoulders. “I need you to prove it. I need someone else to help me prove it, someone who is not Margaret, who is not myself. I see that now. And even if you can’t provide a cure, even if you can’t treat me—you must see me again. Promise that you will.”
In the planes of her face, hope overlines desperation like oil upon water. Rejection and acceptance seem cruel in equal measure.
I say, “Only once. It can’t be more than that.”
“I know.”
“Very well,” I tell her. “Tomorrow at midnight. I will meet you then.”
She is so pleased she laughs, a sound clean and bright, and Irelease my reservations. When we met, I saw myself in the mirror of her grief; since then, I have been unable to separate reality from reflection. If I left her now—if I never saw heragain—I would leave some part of me with her, trapped behind the glass.
So I must see her again. Even if only once.
Even if I know that it may lead us both to ruin.
—
When we return to the townhouse, Lady Eden runs down the stairs to greet us, skirts in hands, eyes welling with tears. She flings herself at her sister, embracing her. Cecilia remains stiff and pale within the shackle of her arms.
“I am so glad you are safe,” Lady Eden says. “I was sick with worry.”
Cecilia replies, “I didn’t go far. Only to the park.”
“Without chaperone—and through thewindow.Were you hurt?”
