Page 49 of The Phoenix Bride
“He seems sweet enough.”
“Yes.”
“He would allow me my freedoms, I think. Give me security. We would likely spend half the year in London, too; I’d be near my sister.”
“I thought you didn’t like London.”
“I think I could come to like it,” I admit. “If I had the time to learn it properly. Tonight has taught me that. But I have never lived in a city before, not really. I don’t know if I can.”
“You can, if you wish to,” he says. “I felt the same once. When I first chose to move here, I wondered constantly if I was making a mistake. I feared this city would be cruel, but it was not. Or rather—even though ithasbeen cruel sometimes, I have never regretted coming here.”
“But you are brave,” I tell him, my throat tightening as I speak. “And I am not.”
“You are brave, also.”
“I am not. When Will—” My stomach turns, and I stop speaking. I breathe shakily. David waits without prompting me. I continue. “When Will passed, I was asked if I wished to see him—to see the body—before they took him away. To say goodbye. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t evenlookat him. I wasn’t brave enough.”
“Will didn’t need you to look at him,” David replies. “To look would have been for your sake, not his. It was your right to refuse.” I shake my head, breaths speeding to gasps. He reaches toward me, offering his hands, and I take them. “Cecilia, I think you have more courage than I do. More courage than anyone else I know.”
“That can’t be true. If I had courage, I would have told SamuelGrey to leave me alone. I would have refused my sister and refused the world, and…”
I trail off. David smiles encouragingly at me. “And?”
And I would have told you how I felt about you—how I have felt about you, I think, since you took my hand in yours and showed me I was still alive.
I don’t say it. I look into his eyes, and he stares back at me, unwavering. He is as steady as the ground beneath my feet, fingers warm against my skin, patient, accepting; and if Will was a slip, a slide,thisthreatens a plunge.Thisis why they call it falling. I must step away from him, or soon I will be lost entirely.
I don’t step away. His hands loosen—releasing me—but I clutch on to him, keeping him there. Our fingers interlace.
“What are you doing?” David asks me. But he lets me cling to him, all the same.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Will you pull away again?”
He doesn’t say anything in response. His hands remain in mine, and the silence grows expectant.
I can hear my pulse thudding in my ears. “Why is it,” I ask him, “that the heart sometimes speeds or slows?”
His grip on my palms tightens, and I take a step closer to him. He says, voice strained, “For many reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Well—it is affected by stress, for example, or exertion, or fear. Different responses mean different things.”
I raise one of his hands, pressing his fingers to my neck, so he can feel my pulse. It is thrumming like a songbird’s wings.
“What does this mean?” I ask him.
He breathes in shakily. I expect him to step back, but he doesn’t. “I…”
“What does it mean, David?”
“We can’t,” he says.
“We could pretend we can. Just for a moment. Please?”
“We can’t,” he repeats. “Tell me you don’t mean it, Cecilia. I won’t know what to do if you mean it.”
“Can a heartbeat lie?”
