Chapter Eleven #3
“He’s kind,” I say.
“You care about him. That comment hurt your feelings.”
“I don’t like to be reminded about… I don’t even know anything about them.”
“Well, that’s understandable. But he’s not… You don’t think he’s actually dangerous.”
“He didn’t kill his wives. I know that much.” He may not have told me everything yet, but I do know he’s not capable of true cruelty. I don’t need him to tell me in order to know.
Isabel nods. “You seem like a very smart woman. I’m sure you know who you’re married to.”
I’m not sure about that. And I chew on that for the rest of the evening. But I don’t turn Lucian away when he turns to me in bed.
I’m also relieved when it’s time for us to go to England. I exchanged numbers with Isabel the night of the dinner, and she texts me before our plane lands, telling me that my tour is arranged.
“Lucian,” I say, as we descend into London. “Isabel Swift has arranged for me to take a tour of the research facilities at Oxford. I can come anytime this week.”
He looks up from his book. “If you wish.”
“I do wish. Please. I know that… I know that I will never go to school. I understand that. But it’s my dream to even be able to see a place like this.”
“You enjoyed talking to her.”
“Yes. She’s a premier researcher in the field of infectious disease.”
“I know that,” he says. “I confess I just didn’t realize how exciting that might be for you.”
“Science captured my attention from the time I was a child. It contains truth, which I find comforting. But there’s also so much left to be discovered.
Both of those things together make it seem like magic.
I want to be part of it. I want to be in the middle of it.
Making magic. The kind that can give people answers, and save lives. ”
“I doubt I’ve ever been half so passionate about anything as you are about this,” he says, his expression filled with wonder.
“Oh well… I know passion isn’t especially mysterious or cool but I…”
“I’ve never cared about that either. It’s only that my ability to love much of anything was taken from me a long time ago.”
“I know,” I say. A reminder to me that he isn’t really my enemy. My feelings were hurt, and I let myself get wounded. There’s no need to be like that; he hasn’t done anything to me.
“Do you think that you might be able to do some of the sightseeing with me?”
“I will be busy doing negotiations. But I will at least try to do the Oxford tour with you.”
“I would like that,” I say.
That’s when I decide that I’m going to arrange something nice for him as well.
The morning of the tour we take a private train car from London and even though it feels strange with all our security detail, that’s when I spring my surprise on him. Our walking tour of the favorite haunts of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
He looks at me as if he’s been hit in the head. “When did you plan this?”
“When we got here. I mean, to England. I did a little bit of research, and I colluded with the security guards to arrange for our travel to give us time.”
“I like it,” he says. “Very much. I can’t remember the last time anyone ever gave me a gift. Particularly not one so thoughtful.”
My eyes fill with tears. I examine his face, my dragon. I don’t even really see the scars anymore. Or rather, I don’t see them as separate from him. There isn’t a perfect side of his face, and a ruined one. There is only Lucian.
We walk along a placid green, the smooth pond full of ducks creating a pastoral scene, particularly with the glory of Oxford in the distance.
It’s easy to imagine being a literary sort, wandering and letting ideas swirl around in my head.
Though, I’ve never considered myself creative.
I wonder if Lucian does. He loves books.
I wonder if he would’ve tried to write one if his life were different.
I wonder who he might’ve been.
Seeing him like this makes me ache. I wish I could know this man. But then I wouldn’t have the one I know already. Both possibilities make me so terribly sad. All of my feelings for him are just too big.
I hurt myself on him constantly. What he says, what he doesn’t say, what others say. What I can’t ask, what I won’t ask. I’ve been dumped into a relationship—a marriage—with no previous experience with such a thing and sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
But I don’t want to let go of him either.
When we finish the tour, and arrive at the main research building, he stops me just before we enter the building. He puts his hand on my cheek. “Thank you, sparrow.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, trying to dampen the smile rising on my face just slightly. Because I don’t want to look overly pleased with myself.
But I am.
Because no one has given him gifts. But I have.
Because I know him. Or at least, I’m starting to.
But there’s still so much to him… He is a cavernous vault.
Containing a whole dragon hoard, I assume.
Of years, experience, knowledge. He doesn’t want me to access it.
He doesn’t want anyone to; it isn’t personal.
He’s told me things, so many things, but I want more. I want all of him.
I don’t even know what all of him is.
I wonder if he does.
I’m introduced to so many venerable experts of the field that I’m dizzy before we even begin to tour the facility.
It’s everything I could’ve ever imagined.
Part of me breaks inside, imagining what it would’ve been like to live here.
To study here. To talk to these people, every day, share information as we make new discoveries.
To go out onto the quiet greens, to stare at that same pond that Tolkien did, not to think about a fantasy world, but think about our own.
That isn’t my life. It’s not going to be.
I had a dream. And I have to let it go. Admitting those things to myself is difficult.
I wanted it. Enough that it hurts. It’s not going to happen.
I don’t want being here to be a sad thing.
It’s a dream of a kind to even get to stand here.
It’s something more than what I was going to get.
And I just have to be grateful for the afternoon.
We don’t travel back to London. Instead, we go to a country manor house, which has been beautifully outfitted for our use. As ever, with Lucian, there is a splendid feast for dinner, and I find myself trying to taste it, trying to enjoy it, as I reflect on the afternoon spent partway in a dream.
“Are you well?”
“Just sad,” I say. “But thank you.”
“Why are you sad?” He sounds genuinely concerned.
“Because it was a little window into a life I might’ve had.
And I’m just trying to let it go. It’s something that I wanted.
It’s something that I dreamed of for myself.
It was wonderful. As wonderful as I thought it would be.
Sometimes when you see something in real life it doesn’t measure up.
But this did. It was everything and more.
Part of me is glad that a place like that exists.
Something that’s every bit as magical and brilliant as you think it might be.
But part of me is sad. Because I have to let it go.
You are right. I’m as much a romantic as anyone in my family. I just romanticize different things.”
“You can’t have it because of me,” he says.
“That’s right,” I say, looking up at him.
“You know, you make a wonderful impression on everyone, everywhere we go.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You were upset, that night in France, when the diplomat said that I needed to hang onto you.”
I’m surprised that he noticed that.
“I was.”
“Why?”
“Because I realize that almost everyone in that room knew something about you that I didn’t. Not just people you live with in a palace, but these people across the world. And consequently, they know things about my marriage that I don’t. They met your previous wives, didn’t they?”
He’s silent for a moment. “They met Colette. I don’t think anyone ever met Andrea.”
“Colette,” I say. I test her name out. That was his first wife.
I know her name; everyone does. She was princess of one of the other Mediterranean islands in the Sun Belt.
Their wedding was supposed to be a celebration, a demonstration of unity, ushering in a new era.
Instead, within two years she was dead, and many people blamed Lucian.
After all, there had long been rumors about his madness. His rages.
A beautiful queen, who never bore the king a child, dies in a country that verges on medieval, and people begin to suspect the medieval thing.
“We were very young when we got married,” he says. “Younger even than you. I was twenty-one. She was nineteen.”
“Oh,” I say. He’s silent. And I need to know, even if part of me doesn’t want to know. “Did you love her?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. It looks like he’s in another time.
Another place. Like he’s searching for something.
For answers, or a memory. “I thought I did,” he says.
“At the time. She was beautiful, and she was…” He looks as if he’s weighing the words in his mouth.
“She was my first woman. You do feel quite like you are in love after your first time when you’re so young.
” He looks at me with no small amount of irony, and I want to slide under the table.
I don’t like how clearly he sees me. I also don’t like how clearly I’m able to see him. And I feel…jealous.
Yes. That’s what it is. Jealousy. Because at one time, there was a woman who had him, young and a little bit less hard, maybe. A version of him who was discovering desire, rather than wielding it expertly as he does with me.
A woman who had that sort of giddy feeling with him that I do sometimes. A feeling that I’m certainly alone with.
“I’m surprised,” I say. “That there was no one before her.”