Chapter 24 #2
“Because today, when Lord Keaton told me about the bishop,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, blinking a few times like she could not quite believe what she was about to say, “I felt such a rage, Matthew. Such a horrible anger. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to scratch his face and poke his eyes and kick him in the shins for trying to harm you. I’ve never felt anything like that before in all my days. ”
He gaped at her, shocked to hear even the descriptions of such things come out of this sweet little woman. “You did?”
She nodded, blinking several times. “Maybe I stayed awake so I could tell you that too,” she said with a sigh and a shrug. “Maybe I needed to confess. I didn’t do it, though. Don’t worry.”
He almost laughed then, fondness bubbling up in his throat, warm and fizzy. “I wasn’t worried.”
It made her give him a tiny little curving smile, looking up at him through her pale lashes.
He chuckled then in earnest, reaching out to take her hand. “I do get angry, though, Rosalind. Of course I do. I probably have to swallow my feelings more than other people do on merit of who I am to my community, but the feelings are still there, all the same.”
“But you said you do not pretend,” she reminded him. “Not ever.”
He gave a helpless little laugh and shrugged. “I don’t. I simply leave the rude parts unsaid, I suppose. Tact and lies are very different things, Rosalind.”
“What do you do when you are angry?” she asked, scooting closer. “How do you let it out? I am guessing you do not punch magistrates.”
“Is that your only frame of reference?” he asked, his heart glowing when she giggled.
“No,” she said. “Vix stomps around and says very clever things that are only mean if you’re smart enough to listen properly. I don’t suppose you do that either.”
“I don’t,” he agreed. “No one gets angry like Vix. I won’t lie to you, however. I have punched a man or two before, in my student days.”
“Have you really?” she asked, sounding a sight more breathless about it than he would have anticipated, enough that he must have stared, because she immediately blushed. “It is only that I can’t imagine it.”
“I am angry at Keaton,” he told her. “I am angry at the bishop. But with both it is kind of the soft ache of frustration that you feel when a law passes that is unjust or a natural disaster harms people who don’t deserve it.
They are more powerful than me, so the best I can do is adapt to them.
And I will. We will give a good service this Sunday and the next and hope for the best. If the worst happens, we will handle that too. ”
She tightened her lips a little but nodded, shifting a bit on the mattress. “That doesn’t sound like anger, though,” she pointed out. “It’s too reasonable to be rage.”
“Rage,” he repeated, sighing. “Rosalind, I am going half mad with rage about that bloody professor your parents brought to London. Does that count?”
She blinked at him, too stunned for a moment to move. “You mean Douglas?”
“Yes, I mean bloody Douglas,” he admitted, almost spitting it out.
“I saw him, you know. He was pristine and handsome and fashionable. He was absolutely everything I am not, and do you know what that did to me? How it made me wonder at how happy you could possibly be settling for a life with me when that was the man you would have chosen otherwise?”
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “Oh, that isn’t—”
“Fair,” he finished for her. “Or reasonable. Or at all anything to be proud of. But it is very human, isn’t it? And you asked if I feel those things. So, yes, I do. I do.”
She was still frowning, listening to the silence of the air around them like she was absorbing what he’d said completely before she attempted to speak again.
“I’ve no interest in Douglas Muir,” she said softly.
“I wish he would have stayed in Aberdeen and far away from us. How can I prove that to you?”
He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “You don’t have to,” he told her. “I believe you.”
“No, but that isn’t … it isn’t—” She cut herself off with a little grunt of frustration. “You think I would choose him or someone like him over you? Do you think that, Matthew?”
He took a deep breath and closed his lips, forcing his eyes open to look at her. He didn’t answer.
“I could not possibly care less about how well combed a man’s hair is!
” she snapped, her cheeks flushing red as she threw his hands away from her lap and pushed herself back to standing.
“I haven’t a single heartbeat devoted to the cut of a waistcoat or the shine of a pair of shoes. That is not what … that isn’t … oh!”
She was pacing now, her bare feet thumping against the carpet as she walked in circles, clawing her hands open and shut as the heat dipped from her cheeks down to her throat.
“Oh, it’s happening again!” she observed, turning to look at him, wild and glassy-eyed. “I’m so angry!”
He stared at her, partially because it was shocking, but mostly because she was magnificent. “At me?”
“Yes, at you!” she snapped. “Evidently, Matthew Everly, you are the only element on this earth, full as it is of wonders, that is capable of bringing this horrible blaze out of me. Just you! Only you!”
“Oh,” he managed to say as she paced toward him, reaching out and putting those clawed hands into his messy curly hair, holding his face so that he would look at her.
“Oh!” she mocked back at him, her eyes alight. “Why do you think that is? Why do you think that one specific person, only a solitary individual, would do this to me? Would awaken this in me? You know the answer, Matthew. Don’t you?”
He really could only stare for quite some time, feeling the heat coming off her palms into his cheeks, listening to the heavy drag of her breathing.
“Matthew,” she repeated, softer this time, her eyes a swirl of hazel chaos. “Answer me. Why would it happen only for you?”
“Because,” he said, his throat dry and his hands shaking, even though they were still and resting in the sheets. “You love me.”
She breathed out then, all the fury draining from that breath as she climbed forward, right onto his lap, and pushed her mouth hard into his, more of a declaration than a kiss.
“I love you,” she whispered against his lips. “I love you. And it’s made me angry.”
He laughed into the sweetness of her mouth, holding her around the waist as he kissed her back, as he accepted this unfathomable gift she was giving him.
“I love you too,” he told her. “And I think it’s made me whole.”