five
Next thing she knew, he was on his knees on the grass in front of her.
“I have been wanting—needing to talk to you about this, Jo,”
he said, and suddenly she was deathly afraid.
“You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t—what are you doing?”
Has the boy taken leave of his senses?
“Please, Jo, I…”
he tried to take her hand.
He has.
“Don’t!”
she said impulsively.
“Surely you know. Surely, you must have guessed.”
He lifted his eyes to her face, and they were full of tears.
Josephine froze. She had never seen him cry.
The night Beth died, he had held her so tightly she had worried he would break her ribs. He’d wet her hair with his tears, but with her head buried in his neck, she hadn’t seen him cry.
Suddenly, she longed to bury her nose in his neck again, to feel his warmth, his familiar scent.
To feel safe and protected, like she had when they were both in their early adolescence.
To feel the scratch of his shirt against her cheek. He was home for her. All that was left of home; all the home she had ever needed.
And all of a sudden, it looked like everything was crumbling around her. Suddenly, it felt as if he was about to take it all away.
“I love you,”
Laurie–her Laurie, except no, it was a different, foreign, intense version of him—repeated. This is a nightmare, she thought. I will wake up any minute now.
“I have loved you since the moment I saw you.”
“You were three years old.”
“I know.”
He did not laugh.
“It only got worse from then on. I have—”
He kind of choked and stopped breathing for a second, then with visible effort he brought himself under control again.
“I have been obsessed with you for years now.
I could barely hide it, always following you around, sticking close to you.
I am sure I annoyed the heck out of you when we were kids, but I couldn’t help myself.
And my attachment grew as I grew, and… surely you know this, Jo, don’t you?”
She couldn’t speak. She could barely move.
“Suddenly, it turned into love,”
he went on, a bit breathless.
“Real, breath-stopping, heart-pounding love.
All-consuming.
Burning.
These last two years have been pure torture Surely you have seen how I stop breathing every time you so much as look in my direction.
I was about to pass out on the day of the wedding, when I saw you appear in the church, with that dress.
And when you’re near me, dear God, I…”
“Stop,”
she wrought out.
“Stop it, Teddy, this minute.”
“Marry me,”
he said instead. Still looking at her. Still on his knees, his hands upturned, as if in supplication. In prayer.
“Marry me, Josephine St. Claire. I am insanely in love with you and I promise you here and now that I will go to my grave trying to make you happy.”
Josephine stared at him.
Licked her suddenly dry lips.
Time seemed to stop.
He called me ‘Josephine’, she thought. I wish he’d kept calling me ‘Jo’ as he always does. Why did he have to go and call me by that ugly name? I hate that name. It’s not me. I should be ‘Jo’ to everyone, not just him. I should be ‘Jo’ to myself.
Why haven’t I had the courage to do that already?
Wait. Did he just propose marriage to me?
Of all the stupid, nonsensical, idiotic things to do—
“Did you say ‘grave’?”
she asked.
That was the first thing she said after Laurie’s stupid proposal. It was the first thing that popped out of her mouth.
His expression turned into one of anguish, pure anguish.
“You are mocking me,”
he whispered. She had thought a moment ago that it wasn’t possible for him to get any paler, but he did.
“Not yet,”
Jo said.
“But get up from your knees or I can’t promise not to.”
“You… you reject me?”
he murmured in this small, disbelieving voice.
He made as if to stand up, but his legs failed him, and he stumbled. Thought better of it, and stayed on his knees in front of her. Except now he looked like a wounded soldier, slaughtered in the battlefield. His entire body sagged in defeat.
“Reject what, Laurie? You are not in your right mind,”
Jo tried to reason with him. This cannot be happening. We will be rolling with laughter at his idiocy tomorrow. And I’ll give him an earful for scaring me so.
“This joke has gone on long enough, now stop it.”
“It is no joke!”
he nearly screamed it. His eyes were glittering with angry tears.
“I love you, Jo. I’m mad with it, I mean it. Can you seriously have been this blind? Both your sisters, even your idiot of a brother have known for years.”
Now it was Jo who felt as if she would faint. The blood drained from her head.
“What?”
she whispered.
Laurie jumped to his feet and put an arm on her shoulder.
“I’ve shocked you,”
he said, his voice returning to normal for the first time.
“I’m—I’m sorry, please don’t faint.”
“I don’t faint!”
Jo pushed his arm away impatiently.
“You look like you’re about to.”
His eyes searched her face with alarm.
I’m not about to faint, she realized. I’m about to melt. How absolutely embarrassing. What is wrong with me?
What is wrong with him?
How could he make her melt just by standing here? Why now, all of a sudden, when she had known him forever?
It was that stupid hunger in his face. Those tortured eyes, those lips… Did he always used to have such an intense stare? It was looking down into her soul, making her feel things. Stupid things. Dangerous things. Inappropriate things.
“Jo?”
Laurie asked anxiously. She had never been silent for so long in her entire life.
“Stop being ridiculous, Teddy,”
she swatted him away impatiently.
“I have enough to deal with, losing both sisters in one night, and…”
“I know.”
The blasted boy was back on his knees again, turning her face to his with a finger on her chin, his eyes impossibly blue, fighting to catch a glimpse of her face.
“I know. I know you, Jo, I know that’s what you’ve been thinking all night. More than tonight, these three days, probably, since the wedding. Since Sir John proposed to your sister.”
Jo sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve, like a child. She didn’t care.
When had she started crying? Crying was disgusting. She had to stop at once—except she didn’t seem to be able to.
Laurie’s hand came around her wrist gently. When had his fingers grown so big they could circle her whole hand effortlessly? They felt warm and strong, and steadying. His arms were strong and roped with veins—No. I won’t think of the muscles on his arms, no matter how prominent.
I won’t let him comfort me. I cannot rely on him any longer. I never will again. Not after this.
The realization hit her: This was real. It was happening and there was no coming back from it. She was losing him. The world dropped from underneath her feet.
“I needed to…”
Laurie appeared to be fighting for words.
Stop being so dramatic, drat you! she wanted to shout at him, but she was terrified as she had never been in her life.
“I thought… I knew how you felt. I know every thought that goes through your head at any minute. And I wanted to tell you that you are not alone,”
Laurie swallowed hard, his jaw moving as if he were in pain. He met her eyes, and she went absolutely still.
“I did not want you to feel as if you were left alone for even a second. But I’ve bungled it. I—I spoke too soon. I could not wait a moment longer. Forgive me, Jo, forgive me. But you must understand, I have been in torment.”
There it was. That word. Torment. She could see it written plainly on his face. He was in torment. She just could not accept it.
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Would he stop saying that?
“Look,”
she said, trying to be sensible. Let us be sensible, for once. We can be sensible, even if it’s Laurie and me.
“You cannot blame me for being surprised, to say the least, given your recent behavior. Laurie, I have barely seen you since we’ve been in London. I thought I was losing you too, along with everyone else.”
“Never.”
Laurie was shaking his head, and looking up to her face with such determination in his eyes that it scared her. No, it wasn’t just determination. There was something else there too. Something primal, possessive, something… Something akin to hunger.
“You’ll never lose me, Jo.”
“Stop calling me with that childish name! How dare you come here, at my sister’s wedding, and call me that, and say those things…”
“What things? You act as if I have betrayed you in the worst way, instead of laying out my soul to you, and binding myself to you in the most intimate way known to man.”
That was it.
Jo could not stand it anymore. If he referred to another ‘intimate’ thing, she would go mad. She stood on shaky legs and started to walk away, but Laurie’s hand, a manacle on her arm, stayed her.
“Do not run away from me, for heaven’s sake.”
There was such desperation in his voice that she stopped mid-step. She could not resist the pleading in it. “Please.”
She turned around to face him.
“Fine,”
she said.
“Let’s talk this through. Teddy, these things you think you are feeling, they are not real. Besides, we are… You are my best friend. My brother, almost.”
“I. Am. Not. Your. Brother.”
Laurie’s eyes were spitting fire, his whole body coiled in anger.
He shuddered a little, as if the very thought was repugnant.
This was new, too.
If felt as if it had been only yesterday when they had sat on the floor of her father’s library and laughed themselves silly over the caricatures of the fops and dandies that were rumored to be walking around London. They had plotted their future together, half in jest: They would join a pirate ship and run away. They would hide themselves in a cottage deep in the countryside and never have to deal with society. They would…
But that had been two years ago.
Now suddenly the thought of being her best friend filled him with rage.
And, worse still, it made her feel somewhat resentful too. She did not understand it. Why did it sound so strange when it had felt completely natural a minute ago? What had changed within the past few minutes?
Laurie’s idiotic, tortured eyes and his stupid, passionate proposal, that’s what.
“All I’m saying is that we are as ill-suited to romance as a fish and a bird,”
Jo started saying, but stopped when she saw a muscle tick on Laurie’s jaw.
He pressed his lips together, but did not move his hand away or get up.
“I was wondering why you have been distant lately, and I think I know why,”
she went on carefully.
“It is because we must leave our childish games behind. I mean, today is proof of that, isn’t it? It is time to follow in Meg’s footsteps, find a husband for me, a wife for you,”
at this Laurie went gray about the mouth and swayed a little, but Jo went on, “and do… whatever it is we are supposed to do with the rest of our lives. But here is the problem: I don’t want to. I’m boyish and headstrong and I don’t fit anywhere. So everyone will move on, grow up and leave me behind, won’t they? And you as well.”
Laurie was silent, his jaw working.
“You stopped coming around to our house the last two weeks before we came to London,”
Jo said, trying to hide the trembling from her voice. She hated how vulnerable she sounded. She had vowed never to let him see how much she’d missed him.
How much it had hurt.
“It’s because I couldn’t stand it, Jo,”
Laurie replied.
“I had reached my limit. Being near you and not telling you how I felt… I could no longer endure it. Being near you was pure torture.”
“Well, that’s polite,”
she murmured.
A strangled laugh came out of his lips.
“You know very well what I meant, you rogue.”
He hadn’t called her ‘a rogue’ in years. He’d given it up at around the same time when it had begun to be ‘inappropriate’ to practice sword-playing together. Aunt March had caught them at it; it had not been pretty.
“Jo, I couldn’t control myself,”
Laurie turned serious again. His gaze was back to being hungry, desperate.
“Looking at you, your face, your…”
he swallowed—nearly choked.
“My what?”
“Your hair. Jo,”
he reached out a hand to brush away a strand from her forehead, and his fingers were trembling, his breath coming short. What was wrong with the boy? Was he sickening? “You have no idea how beautiful you are. The things you do to me.”
He closed his eyes and the color left his cheeks, as if he were in pain.
“Torture,”
he murmured to himself.
“Not touching you is torture. Not… kissing you.”
“Don’t say that as if you’ve thought of it before.”
“I have thought of little else,”
Laurie whispered. Jo just gaped at him, trying to wrap her mind around what he was saying. All this time? He had been thinking of… kissing her? Her?
Traitor.
“Don’t look at my lips,”
he said, sounding dazed.
Jo startled. She hadn’t realized she was looking at them.
She couldn’t look away.
A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the rose bushes behind her, and their fragrance swirled around them in the purple night. A sudden flush travelled up her neck and reached her cheeks. Suddenly, she was so hot all over, she felt dizzy.
“Don’t look at my lips,”
Laurie repeated, but it wasn’t her Laurie. It was this new Laurie, who spoke as if every word was a struggle, whose voice was a low, masculine rumble, whose eyes were devouring her whole, whose lips were pink and luscious and… “Unless you want to snap the mere thread of control upon which I am barely hanging.”
His eyes flashed.
She had never seen him like this. His expression was positively wolfish.
“Then what will happen?”
Jo asked breathlessly.
“I will go crazy, well, crazier than I already am. But I won’t kiss you.”
Laurie pressed his lips together—had they always been so bite-worthy?—and a vein popped on his forehead.
“Not until you beg—”
She gasped, and that seemed to jolt him back to his senses a little bit.
“Not if you don’t want me to,”
he amended quickly.
“Nobody asked you to,”
she murmured.
But her brain was thinking something different altogether.
I might want to kiss you, it was thinking. It had never occurred to me before tonight, but now that it has… I can think of little else.
I could kiss you.
I wouldn’t beg, but I would like to…
I could kiss you.
It’s the marrying part I object to.
The world toppled around her.
She got so dizzy, she could barely keep her seat.
Did I just think I could kiss Theodore Augustus Laurence? No, did I just wish I could kiss him? That is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
Mortified, she was mortified.
She did not even dare look at him.
“Well, I won’t,”
Laurie was whispering. Whispering, in that husky, new voice, that made all her bones tingle. Stop it, she thought maddeningly at him. Stop doing things to me.
“Why not?”
she asked, hardly knowing what she said.
He held her gaze.
“Because if I kiss you now, I will never stop.”
Her lungs constricted. She tried to draw a deep, calming breath, and it caught in her throat.
You are ruining everything, she thought at him.
You are ruining everything.
…
They were silent for a few minutes.
The night shrouded them in darkness, but Jo was sure that her cheeks were glowing pink. Laurie got to his feet and paced down the garden path, his shoes silent on the stones. The only sound that reached her were his anguished breaths; he was panting as if he had just ran the length of Hyde Park at full speed.
Jo’s heart was beating like a drum. I need my friend, she thought frantically. I need to tell this to my best friend. Except he wasn’t here. This tall, tortured, sculpted man had taken his place, looming over the flowers and lanterns in the distance, all black curls and brooding eyes, and nothing would ever be the same again.
“First of all, you are barely older than me,” Jo said.
“You would always be wiser than I, no matter our age,”
Laurie replied, lifting a hand dismissively. But he took a step closer, and immediately she felt calmer.
“You could be my brother.”
“I am not!”
he screamed it this time.
I know, she thought. Trust me, I know. Tonight has made this amply obvious.
“You…”
she did not know how to continue.
He came closer still. Had he always had such broad shoulders, such a tapered waist? Had his hips always moved so sinuously, so…? Wait, what am I thinking? Stop it, brain. Stop thinking, stop… stop looking!
“What, Jo?”
Laurie asked, dropping on his haunches in front of her.
His shoe brushed the shimmering silk of her petticoat, and she shivered. Somehow, this felt more intimate than holding her hand. She had held his hand countless times, when she wanted to quickly get on her horse, get over a fence, or wrestle him for some idiotic reason. But she had never worn a white dress with delicate flowers, as she did now, or had curls in her hair, or sat in a garden with him while fireflies danced in the velvet dark. She had never heard him tell her he loved her.
And she had never had to break his heart.
Until now.
“What other reason do you have to reject me?”
Laurie asked.
“I never intend to marry,”
she said flippantly—but it was not a lie. She had often talked of this with Amy, and even occasionally with her brother. They had no need to marry for money, and they all valued their independence far too much.
What they had never discussed out loud was their absolute terror of marriage, seeing what it had done to their parents: effectively killed them.
It was grief that had destroyed them in the end, but what else was grief than love destroyed? It seemed that every good thing had within it the possibility of loss. And Jo was determined to stay away from love.
Her siblings would never speak the ugly truth, not between them, not out loud, but each knew the others were thinking it: they had seen it happen before their eyes. Love was cruel—love could kill.
Meg had been brave enough to take the step with her Sir John, but Jo was not sure she would ever love anyone enough to risk marriage.
But Laurie… Laurie she loved already. More than she loved anyone in the world.
“I don’t want to get married,”
she repeated.
“What if you fell in love?”
Laurie asked.
With me, he meant. Jo went cold all over.
“Is that your reason?”
he pressed.
“That you do not want to get married?”
She pressed her lips shut.
“Even if it is to someone who worships you? Even if it’s to me?”
She looked away.
“But Meg just—”
“I am not Meg,”
she almost snapped. Laurie looked so frustrated as if he was seriously considering pulling out his hair.
“I need an actual answer,”
he persisted.
“What other reason do you have?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have changed,” he said.
“You have?”
“I have given up everything: gambling, billiards, cards, the company of those rakes…”
“You needn’t change for me,” Jo said.
“I changed for you initially, but I found I wanted to change for myself. You were right; that was not me. I… You saved me again, Jo. I’m free of all that. I am your Laurie.”
Jo nodded, her heart full. He remembers every word I ever said to him. He changed for me.
“What other reason do you have?”
he persisted.
“I…”
She had ran out of words.
“You’re scared.”
He said it gently, but it was an accusation all the same.
Jo had been confused before, but this enraged her. Now he’d done it, the foolish boy. She was furious.
She stood abruptly, forgetting all of Meg’s lessons about ‘moving gracefully, like a lady’.
“I am not,”
she hissed indignantly.
“I’m not scared—I only want things to stay as they are. Why must anything change?”
“Coward,”
Teddy murmured to himself. Was the idiot smiling?
“I am not a coward!”
She was fighting the urge to stomp her foot.
“You are the one… You are ruining everything!”
“What everything, Jo? What am I ruining? By telling you I love you? That I want to never be parted from you, not for one second?”
Jo opened her mouth—then closed it.
How could he not see it?
“Everything. Just everything,”
she said, her voice defeated, small. Lost.
But Laurie, pacing around, drowning in his own pain, paid her no mind.
Two years ago
Dear Beth,
Teddy has new friends.
You know that’s what I call him when we are doing utterly nonsensical things together—which is most of the time. I have called him ‘Teddy’ since we were children, and I see no reason to stop. He calls me ‘Jo’, which I love. He’s the only one left who calls me that.
Meg absolutely refuses to answer to what she calls ‘a silly childhood nickname’, so she must be ‘Margaret’ now.
Oh how I hate growing up.
Anyway, I was upstairs in my room, writing by the window, when I saw Teddy come down the short path that he and I opened between our two properties as a shortcut. He was running at full speed, and I took the stairs three at a time, much to Papa’s consternation, to meet him at the door. He was breathless—he had come with news.
‘I’m off to London!’ he told me excitedly.
‘Again?’ I replied, dismayed. ‘You were there only last week, and it’s such a big journey.’
‘Nothing I consider when there is such company to be found.’
He was quite aglow with excitement. My heart sang for him, and sank for him. Who knew it could do both these things at the same time?
‘I have met these new friends in town,’ he said excitedly. ‘I cannot wait to invite them up here so they can meet you, Jo.’ His eyes were searching mine for an excitement that mirrored his own. I did my best; I am an actress after all. ‘Dominic and Leopold are the leaders of the pack, crazy bounders the lot of them, of course.’ He smirked most idiotically. ‘Then again, all of them are rakes. Isn’t it just delightful?’
‘Dominic and Leopold?’ I asked. I knew those names. They were the Christian names of the Duke of Ashton and the Heir to a Marquis. Laurie was a bit too free with them. ‘You mean Justin’s friends.’
‘Mine too,’ he said, with forced conviction.
I considered it for a second. ‘He introduced you to them?’ He nodded like a puppy. ‘And now you call the duke ‘Dominic’ and he calls you ‘Laurie’?’
I promise you, Beth, he grew crimson as a poppy.
‘I call him ‘Ashton’. They… they like to tease me,’ he said. ‘They said Laurie was a childhood name, and reminds them of a girl. Sometimes they call me ‘Laura’, it sends them into peals of laughter. I don’t mind, really. Usually, they have been drinking and losing heavily at cards at the same time.’
‘Do you do that too?’ I asked.
Deeper grew the blush. I fought the urge to swear like a sailor.
‘That’s not you, Teddy,’ I said.
‘You don’t know what is me.’
‘You have forgotten how to speak the English language now as well, it appears,’ I retorted with a calmness I did not feel.
He was beginning to look annoyed.
‘You are watching me change before your eyes and it intimidates you, admit it.’
It terrified me. Who he was becoming. But I would not admit it, not to him, not after the way he was behaving.
‘Do you drink heavily too?’ she asked. ‘Gamble?’
He shrugged.
He did. My stomach sank.
‘They are vile,’ he mused, ‘but it is magnetic, watching these god-like creatures part the throng of the ton as if they are the waters of the Red Sea. Every single night, Jo.’
‘Do they now.’ I was hoping he would say more, condemn their ways.
He did not; instead, he merely smiled, an indulgent, wistful sort of smile. He wants to be one of them, I thought. I’m losing him. I’ve lost him.
He was gone in a few hours, and did not come back to Concord for a week. But when he did, he was back to his old self, and everything was forgotten. Or at least I pretended it was.
The truth was that I need my memories of us to be intact. Perfect.
I need them not to be memories, but the present.
Am I holding on too tight to something that is long past?
I can’t let go, Beth, I can’t.
I want everything to stay the same. I want to keep writing violently romantic plays for everyone, and I want us all to keep growing up in this idyllic life in the country, as we have until now. Eating apples in the winter, oranges for Christmas, chestnuts when it’s too cold to step out of the house. Skating on the ice, then climbing trees in the summer. Writing, riding, talking around the blazing fire. Is that not a full life? It is for me.
It was for Laurie too, until now.
Growing up, he didn’t have anyone, and then he had us.
We adopted him, and when things got especially tough for him, we saved him. He spent every waking moment in our house, instead of his own empty one—parents dead before he was old enough to know what a parent was, guardians who did not care two straws for him, at least not until he came into his vast fortune. The enormous mansion he would one day inherit was no place for a boy. It was cold and empty, its only residents being governesses, tutors, riding masters, and a veritable army of servants at his beck and call.
Laurie never wanted to be in it. He spent every waking hour at Orchard Hall, escaping out the window the moment his instructors were looking the other way. Running to us. To me.
So, I spent all my time with him and did everything I could to cheer him up. I wrote scenarios for us to act out, I learned how to fight for him, with him, so that he wouldn’t miss the company of a boy.
That was before our sisters grew up and abandoned pretending in the attic so that they would start pretending in the ballrooms. Pretending that they liked being stuffed into dresses, that they were interested in insipid conversations with insufferable self-aggrandizing oafs, just so that they could find a place in the world.
And Teddy… Teddy is not pretending any more, I don’t think. He genuinely prefers our brother’s friends’ company to ours—as was natural. And he genuinely prefers the attention every girl showers him with, apparently, even though he still retains some of his boyish shyness, which I find irresistible.
But that will be gone soon too. And he will be gone, married, or on a grand adventure, or both, and leave me behind. And it will kill me.
I would rather keep him as he had been when I first met him: A little boy with a title. Nobody knew what to do with him. He’d had no place in the world except in our house. Which will eventually be empty, when Meg and Amy marry, won’t it?
Amy agrees that she doesn’t want to marry either, but she is growing up to be a terrible flirt. I’m afraid she won’t be staying here for long after she is old enough to be in society. So here will I be, no sisters, no Laurie. Just me and Papa.
And the ghosts.
Eternally,
Your sister