Epilogue #3
He came to Annabelle and put his arms around her waist and pressed his face briefly into her side, the way he had done since September when something had gone right, and he was satisfied. She held the back of his head. When he stepped back, he turned to Dominic.
He put his arms around him. Dominic did not hesitate. His hands knew where to go.
James stepped back and looked up at him.
“I love you, Uncle,” he said, plain, unhurried, in the tone he used for things that were simply true.
Dominic looked at him. “I love you, too, James,” he said.
James held there for a moment. Then he turned to his governess and said, “I am ready,” and went upstairs without looking back.
They went up together. James was already in his room by the time they reached the landing, with the lamp at its preferred level, the blanket arranged, and the ship book open to the formation page.
Annabelle checked the window latch. Dominic adjusted the lamp.
“Goodnight,” James said, settling against the pillow.
“Goodnight,” came from both of them at the same time, on which James didn’t comment.
Annabelle pulled the door closed. The corridor was quiet, the hall lamp throwing amber along the floor, and she stood with her hand still on the door and did not move.
He was a step behind her. Her hair was coming down on the left side, the loose strand at her right temple in its usual position. She was still in the deep blue gown, and the lamp made the fabric look darker than it was.
She turned. Her eyes went to him.
“Come on, then,” she said.
Their room was as Mrs. Howell always left it at the end of an evening: fire banked, curtains drawn, the lamp on the far table turned low. Dominic closed the door and turned the key, and when he turned back, she was already unpinning her hair.
Not for him, or not only. It was simply the first thing she did at the end of an evening, removing the weight of the arrangement. Her back was to the mirror, her eyes on the window. Three pins, then four. The dark hair came down.
He crossed the room.
She turned at the sound of him, pins still in her hand, and looked up. He took the pins from her, set them on the dressing table, and worked the last of the arrangement loose himself. Her hair came down fully.
She tilted her face up.
“He cried,” she said.
“He didn’t cry.”
“His eyes went very bright.”
“That is an entirely different thing,” he said, and she laughed—low and full, the kind that came when she was caught completely off guard—and he leaned down and kissed her.
She came into it with both hands at his lapels. The laughing went out of it after a moment, and she leaned in, and he walked her back until the edge of the bed found the backs of her knees, and she sat down and looked up at him.
He reached for the back of her gown. The hooks were small and close-set, and he worked them down without hurrying. She sat forward to let him, her hair falling across her shoulder.
“Miles is going to be insufferable about being an honorary uncle,” she said.
“He already is.”
“He told me earlier that he intends to teach the child to play cards. He said it as though this were a virtue.”
“Miles’s virtues are his own.”
“They are.” A pause while he worked the last hook free. “I think he means well.”
“He does,” Dominic said. “He always has.”
The gown came past her shoulders. She stood to let it fall, then turned to face him. The fire in the grate was low and steady, and the room was mostly amber, and he stood in front of her and looked—not rationed, not carefully apportioned—the full thing.
She reached for his cravat.
She had his cravat loose and his coat off in three minutes, with the efficiency of someone who had learned the geography and found pleasure in the knowing. He stood under her hands.
He lay her down, and her arms came around his shoulders, and the room narrowed to the two of them and the fire behind the grate and her breathing at his neck.
She was different from how she had been months ago; he was different.
Four months of knowing each other in this room, and the knowledge ran in both directions now.
He knew where she held her breath. She knew where to press her hand to undo him entirely.
The half-withheld part he had not been fully aware of doing—the fear of arriving somewhere and having it taken from him before he had finished arriving—was gone.
He had woken beside her every morning for four months now. He would wake beside her tomorrow.
He moved, and she made the sound she made when the angle was right—low and immediate—and pulled him closer with both hands.
He stayed where she wanted. He had learned her this way, with full attention and no hurry, and the learning had arrived at a place where neither of them had to find it anymore: it was simply already there.
“Don’t stop,” she said against his jaw.
“I wasn’t going to,” he said.
He held the moment back until her breathing had gone ragged and her fingers tightened in his hair. She came with his name in her mouth and her body pulling against him, and he followed her in the way he had followed her in everything that mattered: all the way, without hesitation.
He lay on his back, and she came with him, her head at his chest, her hand spreading flat over his ribs. The fire moved behind the grate.
“March or April,” she said, to the ceiling.
“March or April,” he confirmed.
She was quiet. Outside, London settled into its small hours: a night cart, the sound of wheels diminishing toward the park.
“James will be extraordinarily thorough about it,” she said. “He’ll want to know every stage.”
“He’ll have read the available literature before the week is out,” Dominic said.
She laughed into his chest.
The fire went lower. The room cooled in slow degrees. Her hand on his ribs, his hand in her hair, not doing anything.
Just there.
He had spent a long time not believing this was possible.
Not because he hadn’t wanted it, but because wanting it had always come with the knowledge that he would eventually break it: that a man built the way he had been built would eventually reproduce the only architecture he had ever been given.
He had been wrong. He had been wrong in the way the young are wrong about the absolute verdict of their own histories—that what shaped you must, in the end, consume you.
His mother’s music room had held forty people tonight. It had held music in it. James had played.
He pressed his mouth to Annabelle’s hair.
She made a small sound.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
“I’m not asleep,” she said. “I’m thinking.”
“You can think tomorrow.”
“I think every day. It is not a thing one can postpone.” She turned her face up and looked at him in the near-dark. “Are you happy?”
He looked at her. The room was almost dark now, the fire nearly out. Her face was close, and her eyes were open, and she was asking in the way she asked everything: directly, wanting the true answer.
“Yes,” he said.
She held his eyes for a long moment, making sure of it. Then she turned her face back to his chest and closed her eyes.
“Good,” she said, and he knew she meant it, because he felt the same way, too.
This…all of this, was good.
It was perfect, and it was theirs.
The End?