June 15, 1605 London, England
Long shadows are creeping in at the corners of the market by the time Beatrix and Oliver finish their meal.
Beatrix feels like she might burst. She returns their mugs to the brewster while Oliver takes the bucket to the oystermen.
She’s eaten her meal—more than sixpence worth—and has no reason to linger. She doesn’t say goodbye.
A heaviness settles in her chest, grows with every step away from the market, tugging her back. A foreign, forgotten sensation. She glances over her shoulder.
Oliver navigates his way along the crowded street. He stops next to a row of towering houses, trying to get his bearings. A man runs into him, and a woman curses them both as she narrowly misses the collision. Oliver steps out of their path.
Beatrix shakes her head. He’ll be robbed blind—or worse—by the end of the day at this rate. Not that it’s her problem.
Movement in a window three stories above Oliver catches Beatrix’s eye. A woman pokes her head out, then disappears. She reappears a moment later, bucket in hand.
“Oliver!” Beatrix shouts. He’s too far away to hear her.
She runs for him, ignoring the cries of the people she knocks as she pushes through the bustling street.
He looks up at the commotion, those bright eyes meeting hers a moment before her body collides with his.
He stumbles backward, and Beatrix’s momentum sends her careening past him.
He throws out his arm and catches her around the waist, pulls her into him before she can crash headlong onto the cobblestones.
A bucketful of refuse splashes into the lane where Oliver was standing moments ago. He steps back, pulling Beatrix with him, and pales as the realization of what he narrowly escaped washes over him with the stench.
Beatrix steps away, and his hand falls from her waist. “A little free advice,” she says, catching her breath. “When you’re in London, keep your head up and your feet moving. And for Christ’s sake, stay out of the gutter.”
“Thanks,” Oliver says sheepishly. He runs a hand through his disheveled mop of curls. “Maybe this was a mistake.” The anguish in his eyes is fleeting, a dark cloud blotting out the sun for a single moment before clearing.
“London just takes some getting used to, that’s all,” Beatrix offers. She shouldn’t care. The feeling unsettles her. She shoves it away.
Oliver sighs. “Right.”
Beatrix recognizes his defeated tone: the voice of someone trying—failing—to prove something. “I could help you. Show you around the city and make sure you don’t get covered in shit,” she says with a wry grin. “For a crown,” she adds, before her offer can be mistaken for charity.
“A crown?”
She might as well be robbing him at that price.
“But you left the market,” he says. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Not for a crown, I don’t.” She has nowhere to be without the crown, either, but he doesn’t need to know that.
He considers her for a long moment. “All right, deal.”
It sends a pang of guilt ringing through her chest. She shoves that away, too.
“So, where to next?”
She tries to see London through Oliver’s eyes, the way she might have seen it if she had crossed London Bridge under different circumstances.
Beatrix from little Lancaut would never have imagined a place like London could be real, with palaces and cathedrals taller than the trees in the forest, a bridge so wide entire houses fit on both sides, and more people in the streets than she thought existed in all of England.
If that Beatrix had seen London, somehow, she would have wanted to see more. She would have wanted to see it all.
She smiles at Oliver. “Follow me.”
They head west along the Thames, walk the length of the river from the Tower of London up to Ludgate.
Oliver is more taken with the jostling crowd filtering through the old stone gate than the imposing fortress, and she almost loses him in the throng of people more than once.
They stroll past St. Paul’s and through the bustling produce markets of West Cheap, both feeling too full to buy anything.
They eavesdrop on the ship captains persuading bankers to purchase their exotic cargoes at the Royal Exchange and admire the Roman wall.
As the sun nears setting, they head back to the bridge.
Beatrix leans against the rail, the cool of the stone bleeding through her dress as she watches a fishing boat disappear beneath her feet. Oliver leans next to her. His arm brushes against hers.
“And that is London,” she says, a little sad that their whirlwind tour has come to an end. “What do you think?”
He grimaces. “I think I’m lucky I found you. I would have been hopelessly lost.”
“I found you,” Beatrix counters.
“Fair enough.” He straightens, pulls a silver crown from his coat pocket, and offers it to her. She closes his hand around it with both of hers.
“That’s a lot of money to pull out in the middle of London Bridge,” she hisses, glancing at the crowd of people shuffling past.
“You’re the only one who’s tried to steal it from me.” He presses the coin into her hand.
A wave of guilt washes through her. “It’s too much.” Wasn’t she just like him the first time she crossed this bridge? She would have been foolish enough to trust anyone who offered her a kind word that night, or even a passing glance.
“It’s what I agreed to.”
He had agreed. Besides, she can’t eat guilt, and it won’t keep her warm, either. She should take his money, and he should consider it a lesson learned: Trust no one. But she can’t bring herself to take the coin. “You didn’t know—”
“That you were taking advantage of me?” That infuriating smirk from the Globe is back. The spark in his eyes, too.
Beatrix scowls at him. “If you knew, why on earth did you agree?”
“Like I told you at the Globe, you are very persistent and very pretty, and I needed a guide. I consider it a crown well spent.” He closes her hand around the coin. “A deal’s a deal.”
“Fine,” Beatrix says. She slips the coin into the pocket of her skirt. And then, so she doesn’t sound completely ungrateful, adds, “Thank you.” It feels too close to a goodbye.
She doesn’t want it to end, this rare day in a sea of familiarity. She wants to linger in it. “Now that you’ve explored London, what’s next?”
“Venice, I think,” Oliver says. “But I’ll come back to London someday.” As if he’s certain. “What about you?”
“London suits me just fine,” Beatrix says. “Besides, ‘somedays’ are treacherous things.”
Oliver frowns. “What makes you say that?”
“Either you waste your life dreaming of a someday that never comes, or you realize too late that your chance has passed you by. A someday that happens is a rare thing.”
Oliver studies her face. “I think someday offers hope.”
He’s right. But hope is a treacherous thing, too.
“I have seen my fair share on these streets,” Beatrix says. “Everyone regrets something. Nine times out of ten, those regrets start with someday.”
“And the tenth?” he asks.
“Someone.”
His smile falters. Barely. Enough. And when he fits it back into place, it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Funny, I thought there would be more.”
Beatrix thought so, too, before she realized the truth of it. “It’s hard to regret someone once you’ve loved them.”
Oliver stares out at the water. “I know no one is guaranteed a someday,” he says. He sounds defeated again. “No one is even guaranteed a tomorrow. Or a today. But believing you will get there is better than the alternative.”
“And what’s that?” Beatrix asks.
“Giving up hope.” He catches her eye, as if his words are meant just for her.
If only it were that simple.
“You’re right.” If he hears the lie in her cheery tone, he lets it go. “I’m sure you’ll get to Venice. And if—when—you visit London again, you’ll be a natural.”
He grins at her. “I appreciate the vote of overconfidence.”
The last dying rays of the sun light the Thames, setting it on fire: orange and red and gold.
The twilight chill of late spring won’t be far behind, the breeze off the river already cool against Beatrix’s skin.
She waits for her heart to sink with the sun, another dark night stretching before her.
It doesn’t. This must be what it feels like to have a full belly and a heavy purse.
“Are you staying the night in London?” she asks, nonchalant. No expectations. No commitment. It means nothing, unless he wants it to.
The glint in Oliver’s eyes when she meets his gaze is unmistakable now, the twist in his lips telling. But he hesitates a moment too long. “No. I’ve already stayed longer than I meant to.”
Beatrix’s disappointment surprises her. Then again, she isn’t used to goodbyes.
“It was nice to meet you,” she says. It’s not just a pleasantry. All her days are the same, an endless cycle of sunrises and sunsets that blur together into months—years—she can’t tell apart, except that each night is longer and lonelier than the last. Today has been different.
“I seem to recall you wanted to stab me not six hours ago,” Oliver points out.
“I didn’t want to stab you.”
He laughs. “Oh, well, that changes everything.” His smile fades, and he turns serious. “Thank you for a truly remarkable day, Beatrix.”
She forces a smile. “I’m glad you think so highly of it.”
He hesitates another moment, then turns away from her.
“Thank you,” she murmurs as he disappears into the London crowd.