Page 86 of The Phoenix Bride
“I don’t love him.”
“What does that matter?”
“I love you, David,” I say.
He gives me a pleading, anguished look, and repeats, “What does that matter?”
I flinch. “It matters to me.”
“You should go with him. Go to Kent. Get away from this place.”
“Get away from you, you mean.”
“That, too, yes.”
I make an awful, pitiful sound, precluding a sob, and I am so ashamed of it I slam my palm down on the keys in frustration. The harpsichord hollers as if it is in pain.
“Did last night mean nothing to you?” I ask.
“It meant everything, but—”
“Everything, and yet not enough, clearly.”
“Cecilia, please,” David says. “What choice do you have? What choice do we have? At least, in this way, you will be free. We won’t have to fear our discovery.”
I scowl at him, blinking back tears. I breathe in shakily to prevent myself from sobbing again. “It is cruel to be so cruel,” I say, “and frame it like that, so I am not permitted my anger.”
“I am sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I say. “Leave me to my grief, if you believe it so necessary. Be harsh so I will resent you, and so resent your leaving less.”
“You want me to hurt you?”
“Yes. I want to despise you. Make it so.”
“I don’t know how,” David replies.
I say, “That is because you are awful.”
“I know.”
“You are an awful person, David Mendes. I am glad I am leaving. I wish I’d never met you.”
“I know,” he repeats.
I pull him in for a kiss. He kisses me back, desperate, pressing me into the harpsichord. The movement sends notes scattering through the air like ashes in wind. Yet another loss to bear—another memory to make, to carry like a lodestone with me—and you would think I would have learned by now how to suffer such things without weeping. But it is a lost cause. Tears well and fall. David soon tastes like salt, and he pulls away to swipe his thumb across my cheek.
“Things will be better soon,” he says. “You will be happier.”
“You could come to see me in Kent.”
“I cannot.”
“But why?”
“You need me to tell you again? All the reasons we cannot be together? I would have thought you would be sick of it, by now.”
I smile bitterly and say, “I am finished with others telling me what my life ought to be like, and what I ought to want.”
