Chapter 19 #3
“Yes, under circumstances our dear friend understands quite well,” Verbena snapped. “Or has she not seen fit to share those particulars with you? She seems to have shared everything else.”
A strange sort of vacillation overtook William. He opened and closed his mouth several times. “Flora has not been gossiping with me, if that’s what you mean. I have only…inferred certain points.”
Inferred! Verbena glared at a couple passing by much too close. After they had moved on, she continued. “Will you help me or not? A letter delivered discreetly, that is all I ask.”
He turned to her at last, and the agony in his eyes made her stifle a gasp.
There was a sheen of tears there as well, the sight so familiar, Verbena felt the odd sensation of having this very conversation at some other date.
But that was impossible. Everything William embodied, actually, was altogether impossible.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot be your messenger.”
And here we must pause, dear reader.
Cleverness was to Verbena as natural as drawing breath, yet in that moment, she cursed herself as the worst kind of fool.
What had once been muddied waters were now perfectly clear.
We can forgive her, for how is anyone supposed to see the truth when the veil of lies has been draped atop every bowed head from the moment of our birth?
But we digress, if only to enumerate what Verbena had at last come to realize.
Thing the first: William was in love with her. No man could look as he looked and sound as he sounded without being desperately, hopelessly in love. And she knew that look because—thing the second—she had so recently seen its twin on Flora’s own face.
Verbena’s gaze drifted down to William’s fine-boned hands, which he was once more preoccupied with massaging.
If Verbena were braver and more presumptuous, she could have taken his right hand in hers and felt the same calluses that Flora bore.
She had done it before, had she not? In that dark greenhouse, the air thick with wet life, William’s palm a contrast of soft and rough in her grasp.
She had not made the connection at the time because it would be inconceivable for anyone to make such a leap, and yet—and yet—
Facts slipped into place like dinner guests at their assigned seats. He was her, and she was him, and the two were one. Simplicity itself.
What a relief it was to discover one’s affections had not been cruelly divided, but rather delightfully fixed! What a joy, knowing one’s heart recognized its mate before one’s eye could. It was like something out of a fairy tale.
Except, of course, Verbena had never believed in fairy tales, rejecting them even in leading strings as frivolous nonsense.
Reality impressed itself upon her like a marble slab.
Even if she was correct in her assumptions, she could not make any move to indicate what she knew, or thought she knew, not while in St. James’s surrounded by what seemed like half the population of London.
Furthermore, the truth did not change her circumstances.
She was promised to étienne, and to dissolve that union now would be tantamount to throwing him to the wolves.
But surely William could understand that.
Why did he not confess to her so that they might be as Verbena had planned originally, outside the bonds of wedlock but together nonetheless?
Did he not think her worth the trouble an affair might cause?
If only she could persuade him without wielding her knowledge of his secret like a rapier—if only she could describe how welcome he would be in her bed, as himself, as Flora, as anyone he wished, so long as he touched her with those aching, callused hands.
“Miss Montrose?”
Verbena roused herself from her quiet ruminations.
All these thoughts had flashed through her quick mind over the span of an eyeblink, yet her spirit felt them as if an eon had passed.
She looked into William’s sweet, sad eyes and saw in them the same soul that existed within Flora.
It was like being shown a vision in angled mirrors, which projected the figure again and again into infinity.
“Yes?” she said, strangled.
“I was saying, I apologize that I cannot be of use to you in this matter,” said William, “but I think it best if I abstain from any involvement.”
Verbena looked about helplessly. The park teemed with witnesses. “Perhaps, Mr. Forsyth, we should adjourn elsewhere and discuss this matter more privately.” She needed only to tell him what she suspected, and time to convince him she loved him regardless.
“Privately.” William’s voice was flat.
“Yes,” Verbena said. She looked to him beseechingly, begging him silently to understand her meaning. “There is so much to discuss. You, and I, and our dear…friend, Miss Witcombe.” Oh, please understand me!
Yet William would not. He shook his head, his voice dropping to the smallest whisper. “It would not be prudent,” he said, “for any of us.”
“But—” Verbena tried.
“You are affianced,” William said, his eyes flashing with that stubborn fire Verbena knew so well.
How silly she had been not to have noticed Flora in him before now.
“You can no longer afford to meet with unmarried men in private. Simply speaking to me here is too dangerous. All your plans, all your machinations—it will all be for nothing if you persist.”
“William,” she said, and spoke into those syllables all she could not say.
William reared back as if slapped. His eyes were large and damp. “Don’t,” he murmured. “Please.”
Verbena cursed the hundreds of eyes that surrounded them. If not for their audience, if not for propriety, she would do more than simply say his name. How could she not wish to comfort the man when he was so clearly exposing his most vulnerable parts to her?
There was something of a poet in him, she thought. A laugh threatened to burble out of her; there was very literally a poet in him, or rather, a poetess.
She dared place a hand on his arm in sympathy, casting about for something to say that would not spell his ruin. “Will I see you again before the season ends?”
The final weeks were rapidly approaching. A few more balls, a handful of lavish events, and then the ton would disperse to the country until the following spring.
William shook his head. “I fear you won’t.”
“Perhaps I could persuade you to come to Lord Byron’s masquerade,” she said, casting about for some pretense to speak again. “Perhaps we might—”
“I am sorry,” William said. “A worthier gentleman has earned his spot on your dance card.”
Verbena flushed all over, her skin growing hot. It was only due to her legendary possession of self that she did not inform him of the truth: that she knew of none more worthy than he. “I do not dance,” she said instead. “I am quite famous for it.”
“Of course. I nearly forgot. Pointless, then, to argue about it.” William took two steps away from her. With a determined jut of his jaw, he touched the brim of his hat. “Good-bye, Miss Montrose,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd.
Verbena watched him leave the park, a mournful shape in a sea of color.
To any other woman, this would have been an ending. For Verbena, this was merely another variable. She might still succeed; she had to.
She strode back toward Mayfair, already composing the first of many letters in her head.