Page 19 of The Phoenix Bride
“Why?” I ask. “There is little point in leaving. Best I stay where I am.”
“You can’t remain here forever.”
“Why not? I have seen London before, and I know what it is like. It is full of stink, and crowds, and disease.”
He makes a galled noise. I cannot see him—I am currently on the other side of the tree—but I can imagine the aggravation in his expression, and it makes me smile.
“If you dislike London so much,” he says, “then why did you come here in the first place?”
“I didn’t have much choice,” I reply. “It was this or a grave; but that doesn’t mean I have to like it here. That doesn’t mean I have to begratefulfor it.”
“This or a grave,” he echoes. “What do you mean?”
“I was alone in the estate, after my husband died. I had visitors, but…I was unwell. Even more so than now.”
Still making my slow loop of the linden, I look to my hand, sprawled across the tree’s trunk. My fingers are curled, as if clinging to something, to prevent me from falling.
There was a well at the base of a hill near our manor. Five times, I sat on the edge and stared down into the hungry dark, imagining pushing myself forward. I never did. Perhaps I would have, had I stayed. I suppose I should be grateful I left when I could.
I walk into something. Startled, I stumble back: Mendeshaslooped the linden in the opposite direction, and we have crashedinto each other. He grabs my arm to prevent me from falling.
I look down at his hand, and then cast a warning glance to where Margaret is standing at the courtyard’s entrance; she is on the other side of the tree, thankfully, and she can’t see us.
Chagrined, Mendes releases me. His face is flushed. “Pardon.”
“It’s fine.”
I am unaccountably flustered, and for a moment all I can do is shuffle my feet and look at the ground.
He clears his throat. I glance back up. “Do you ever consider remarrying?” he asks.
This is such an abrupt question that I snort. “Who would marryme?”
Something guilty passes over his face, but I can’t begin to speculate why. “I didn’t mean to imply…Forgive me. It’s only—do you intend to spend the rest of your days here, in this house, alone?”
It sounds so awful when he puts it like that; it isn’t as if I haveplannedto spend my life grieving. It just seems so impossible that I could do anything else.
He continues. “Even if London scares you, the answer is not to shut yourself inside this place and force yourself to malady. Find somewhere else to go instead. Meet new people. Swear to me that you will consider it?”
I look at his face. He is a handsome man, I see that now. He has a complicated sort of beauty, not the sort of open, smiling gorgeousness of Will, or the gentle prettiness of my rose-cheeked sister. His is the sort of face that, like a well-read book, is somehow lovelier for its cracks and lines, that invites you to study it for hours, until you can look at and think of nothing else.
We stare at each other, silent. A linden flower falls from thebough above him, landing on his hair. Acting on instinct, I reach forward and remove it, combing the petals out with my fingers.
He blinks at me. Perhaps I should be embarrassed, but I only feel relieved he didn’t flinch.
I drop the flower. It is often said in fairy stories that it is impossible to tell a lie beneath a linden tree, and I know as I reply to him that I will have to keep to my word.
“I will consider it,” I tell him, and his baffled expression softens.
“Good.”
“How many appointments do we have left?”
He says, “Just one. Next week.”
“Next week,” I say. “And then you shall be free of me.”
I say it with a small, bitter smile—a lamentation as much as a joke—but Mendes shakes his head. “You are not a burden, Cecilia.”
