Chapter Forty-Four Theo
The bluff helped him heal with remarkable speed, of course.
The day after they had arrived in Lavnonshire, the wound was no longer red and flaming at the edges.
It did not weep. Each time Nina came to nervously lift the bandages, the flesh seemed less mottled.
Still, every couple of hours she came with her warm cloth to clean it, to replace the bandaging.
She did it without looking directly at him, answering his attempts at conversation in monosyllables.
She touched his skin as though it burned her.
Part of him hoped it did. Surely that was better than indifference?
In the night, she woke to check on him, illuminating the room briefly with a candelabra, and her in its nimbus. The most beautiful haunting Theo could think of.
The quieter, crueler part of his brain knew that she was acting out of guilt. He’d thrown himself into the path of a bullet meant for her. He knew Nina well enough to understand she wouldn’t reconcile with it easily.
If he were honest, he was well enough now that he could change his own bandages. He could stand without too much pain, but he didn’t. He waited for Nina to come to him, and he lay still and quiet, like a carnivorous plant.
Daylight clung still, and Theo found himself wishing for dark. The afternoon wouldn’t bleed away.
The others were sauntering in lone corners after an early supper.
It was difficult for each of them to tolerate one another’s presence in close quarters.
Even Patrick and his own father seemed always on the precipice of coming to blows.
John was downstairs, hunting through Mrs. Trunk’s inventory.
Patrick and Polly, he presumed, were in their rooms.
Theo finally stood. His muscles unfolded, the blood rushing to the soles of his feet.
The window overlooked the ocean as though he were looking at the world from a mountaintop.
The waves, aquamarine and foamy, shuddered against the ramparts.
The wind howled its agonized lament. The last light stuck to the horizon, refusing to vanish.
Down on the path overlooking the cliffs, her elbows propped on the railing, was Nina.
The cold had emptied this thin vein of a street, and the spray from the ocean made it uncomfortable for strolling. But Nina stayed where she was, hair tucked inside Patrick’s cap, a dusty oversize coat billowing out behind her.
Theo felt his heart hurtling toward an approaching end. He felt as though at any moment, a cliff would rear up before him, and he’d go hurtling off it before he could stop.
Without thinking on it too much, he left the window and took the stairs one slow step at a time, finally entering the shop.
He smiled to Mrs. Trunk and skirted by John, who was at that moment upending an old cello with his back turned.
Theo went out to the street quietly, carefully, his hand supporting his stomach as though he were keeping his intestines in place.
He limped across the lane to Nina, put his arms gingerly on the cold railings. He’d forgotten to don a coat, and the wind lashed at him.
He ignored all of it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said to him eventually, distantly.
He nodded, though he did not look to the sea. “You used to enjoy painting it.”
“I found some canvas and brushes in the shop,” she said absentmindedly, frowning at the rolling clouds. “I hardly remember what it feels like to paint.”
Theo had rarely heard of a thing sadder than that—an artist who’d forgotten herself.
She finally looked over at him. “You seem improved.”
He shrugged. He didn’t want her nighttime visits to end. Instead of answering, he changed the subject. “You used to stand right here and watch the waves when we visited as apprentices,” he commented.
She looked indifferent. “Did I?”
“Yes. You asked me to meet you in this very spot in the middle of the night. Have you forgotten?”
Her expression fixed itself. She was careful not to look at him.
Theo leaned on the guardrail and looked down into the wash. “Mrs. Trunk kept us in separate rooms and wouldn’t let us so much as speak after nightfall. We had to be clever. You left a message in my pocket.”
The column of her throat worked to swallow the memory. She kept her eyes on the view. “I don’t recall.”
“Really?” he asked casually. “You kissed me like crazy. Practically ravaged me.”
“Stop it, Theo,” she said emotionlessly, though heat flooded her cheeks. She turned and walked several paces down the lane.
But Theo was right behind her, close enough to murmur, “You haven’t thought of it since? I myself revisit it frequently.”
“Then I pity you,” she hissed, turning on the spot. “If the only happy thing you can dredge from your memory was some kiss when you were eighteen.”
“As I recall, we didn’t stop at just a kiss.” And he wasn’t lying. Just thinking of it stirred Theo, enough that he could ignore the voice that told him to stop pushing her.
“Fuck’s sake,” she murmured, like a miner would. It didn’t sound right in her voice, from her lips. “What are you doing?” she asked him then, coming much closer than Theo was prepared for. He was hit with a sudden rush of her. “What is this? Some sorry flirtation?”
He tried not to blink, as though doing so might result in a loss somehow. “Perhaps,” he said. “That depends on whether it’s working.”
She seemed close to either laughter or tears. She cinched her eyes closed and opened them again. “This… thing you imagine still exists between us, Theo. It isn’t real.”
Theo shook his head. “It’s real to me, Nina.”
“Theo—”
“Please, just let me say this and then I’ll say no more.
” Here was that cliff he was barreling toward, the fall inevitable.
“I know your feelings for me can never go back to the way they were. I’m not so arrogant that I can’t see that.
But I prayed every night that you would be brought back to me, and I promised all sorts of desperate things to God and to the House to have those prayers answered.
And then suddenly, you were there in Kenton Hill, and I felt as though every good thing I’d ever done counted for something.
As though God had gifted me you.” Theo heaved, his breath expanding in his chest. “Surely only love is worthy of that sort of miracle?”
“You’re insane,” Nina said, eyes widening.
He felt suddenly unmoored, like every thought he’d ever had was horribly singular. “I know.” He swallowed. “But I can think of no better reason for a man to lose his mind.”
He watched a dozen different emotions skitter across her face.
Some he latched on to—sorrow, remorse, familiarity.
They were better than the pity, the frustration.
In the end, any reaction melted away and left her blank.
Her lips thinned and the gold flecks in her eyes blinked out of existence, and she exhaled as though she were trying to expel him.
Over the cliff edge he went.
“Is that the last of it?” she asked.
“No, not nearly.”
“Then journal the rest,” she said. “And bury it.” She closed her eyes. “If Polly finishes the translations quickly, we may be on our way to Hoaklin as early as tomorrow evening.”
Theo felt the concussion of what she’d say before it hit.
“You shouldn’t come with us, Theo,” she said. “There’s no sense in it.”
He rocked backward on his heels, felt something cold and viciously sharp stab at his windpipe. But he looked out to the ocean as she did and pretended he wasn’t falling. “I want to come anyway.”
“You don’t believe in this, Theo,” she said bluntly. “And it’s dangerous. You were almost killed. If you were to die in this undertaking, it would be—”
“I have my own undertakings,” he said thickly.
Nina closed her eyes. “Me.”
“Us.”
“There is no us.”
Another blow. Another hole to match the others. Soon he’d be riddled through.
He looked at her then, and surely the light shining at that moment wasn’t a coincidence—the way it clung to her and brightened her skin, turning her ethereal, as though even the heavens were determined to keep his attention on her.
“There is to me,” Theo murmured, broken but true.
“Everything you’ve ever said to me, everything you’ve ever done—it’s still here.
” He pointed to his chest, where he felt her beating heart next to his own. “I can’t simply tear it out.”
Her jaw tightened. “You can.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Not hard enough,” she said, turning to him.
“It isn’t easy. It takes time. You have to halt those thoughts in their tracks.
Divert them, until you can’t recall any of it.
Not the touches or the laughter or the promises.
Eventually you’ll find that all of it, every single piece, is imaginary.
Just a memory, a little more faded each time it’s inspected, washed of whatever magic it had.
” There were no tears in her eyes, no shake to her lips.
She spoke as though she read from a transcript.
“Then other things will return. The ability to think without thinking of me, to hear another woman’s voice and not compare the sound.
Eventually, the pain won’t exist at all. You’ll be free of it.”
The ocean blurred. He did not lift his fingers to wipe his eyes out of defiance—even that felt like a shedding of her.
“Was it truly as easy as that?” he asked. “To be rid of me?”
Something in her expression closed. “I’ve had more than enough practice.”
He thought of whatever family she’d left in Scurry, her Aunt Francis, her mother… and him. Perhaps, that was the difference between them, that she was in flux, morphing to the shape of her confines, peeling off her home and her name and moving onward while he stayed as he was.
“Are you asking me not to follow you? Or are you telling me?” he said now, bracing himself.
He remembered her at a much younger age, dressed in Artisan navy and unable to meet his eye.
Now she looked at him unflinchingly. “I’m telling you.”