The Tower
Florinda read the letter by candlelight, as she had every evening since it had arrived.
The paper was soft now from handling, the creases worn thin where she had folded and unfolded it a hundred times.
She knew the words by heart—had memorised them within hours of first reading—but still she traced each line with her fingertip, as though touching the ink might bring her closer to the hand that had written it.
Dearest, Darling Florinda. I have no right to write those words, but I feel I might die if I do not.
I miss the weight of you in my arms. I miss the lavender in your hair. I miss the fourteen stairs, morning and evening, that were the only moments I allowed myself to want.
Outside, the rain hammered against the windows. Inside, Florinda sat curled on the settee with a letter from a man who was marrying someone else in three days, and wondered how long a heart could break before it simply stopped.
A sound.
She looked up from the letter, frowning. A scraping noise, like branches against glass—but harder, more deliberate. The wild roses often scratched at the tower windows in wind, but this was different. This had rhythm. Purpose.
A shadow moved against the grey sky beyond the window.
Florinda's breath stopped.
A hand. Bloody, torn, pressed flat against the windowpane.
A face.
Frederick.
The letter fell from her nerveless fingers.
* * *
She was staring at him as though he were a ghost.
Frederick clung to the windowsill, rain streaming down his face, blood dripping from his hands onto the ancient stones.
His coat was torn. His hair was plastered to his skull.
He could feel a dozen wounds where the thorns had found him, and he did not care—could not care—because she was there, rising from the settee, her golden hair unbound and tumbling past her waist, her grey eyes wide with what looked terrifyingly like hope.
And on the floor at her feet—a letter. His letter. The pages he had poured his heart into, never meaning to send.
She had been reading it. Reading him.
"The window," he managed. His voice came out a rasp—he had not spoken in hours, had not drunk since morning, had not done anything but ride and climb and pray. "Open the window."
She moved. Crossed the room in three strides, her hands fumbling with the latch. The window swung open, and the rain blew in, and Frederick tumbled through the opening onto the dusty floor of the tower room, landing in a heap of wet wool and bleeding hands and desperate, desperate relief.
* * *
"You climbed the tower."
Florinda stood over him, her hands pressed to her mouth, watching him push himself upright on the dusty floor. Rain was pouring through the open window, soaking the floorboards, soaking her bare feet. She could not bring herself to close it. Could not bring herself to move.
"I did." Frederick rose to his knees, then to his feet. He swayed, caught himself on the windowsill. Blood was dripping from both his hands, leaving dark spots on the floor between them.
"In the rain."
"I noticed."
"You could have called up." Her voice was climbing toward hysteria, and she could not stop it. "Asked me to lower... a rope. A sheet. Anything."
"Your hair." He was staring at her—at her hair, unbound and tangled, falling past her waist in a golden cascade that caught what little light remained in the room. "Glorious as it is, it would not have reached. I checked."
She laughed. It came out broken, half-sob, wholly uncontrolled. "You cannot be here. The ball is in three days. You are engaged—"
"I am not."
"—to Penelope, and whatever you feel for me, whatever you wrote in those letters—"
"Florinda." He stepped toward her, and she stepped back, and they stood frozen, two feet apart, the rain hammering against the tower stones.
"I am not engaged. The contract is void.
Penelope was already married—three years ago, to a dancing master named Thomas Harrison.
Her father forged an annulment. I have proof.
I rode through the rain and climbed a wall of thorns to tell you.
" He raised his bloodied hands, palms up, an offering. "I am free."
The word landed between them like a stone in still water.
"I do not understand." Florinda's voice emerged as barely a breath. "Free?"
"Free." He took another step toward her.
She did not retreat this time. "The betrothal contract required that Penelope be unmarried.
She was not. The entire document is void.
I owe Lord Ashworth nothing. I owe Penelope nothing but sympathy for the prison her father built around her.
" His voice dropped. "I owe you everything. "
"You cannot—" Her voice broke. "I cannot survive another hope, Frederick. If you are lying—if this is a dream—if I wake and find myself still in this tower with nothing but your letters and my foolish, ruined heart—"
He raised his hands. The wounds were deep—she could see torn flesh, blood welling fresh from a dozen cuts. "Does this look like a man who is lying?"
* * *
She caught his hands before he could lower them.
Her fingers were cold—she was barefoot, he realised, and wearing only a thin dress, and the tower was freezing—but her touch was gentle as she turned his palms upward, examining the damage.
He watched her face as she traced the wounds, watched her grey eyes follow each cut, each scrape, each place where the thorns had found him.
"You could have died." Her voice held wonder. Horror. An emotion he was afraid to name. "Climbing in the rain, in the dark—"
"The door was locked." He did not pull his hands away.
Could not have pulled them away if the tower had been burning down around them.
"I was not going to stand on the other side of a door when I could reach you through the window.
I have spent eighteen months standing on the other side of doors that honour demanded I not walk through.
I am done with doors, Florinda. I am done with honour that requires me to want you in silence.
I am done with counting gold threads and pretending it is enough. "
She lifted her eyes to his. They were wet—with rain or tears, he could not tell. "Nine years," she breathed. "You have wanted me for nine years?"
"Nine years since you knocked me flat on my back in that stable.
" He turned his hands in hers, lacing their fingers together despite the blood, despite the pain.
"Nine years since you ruined me for anyone else.
I have tried, Florinda. I tried to want Penelope.
I tried to be the dutiful Duke who married where he ought and felt what he should.
But I cannot stop counting you. Fourteen gold threads.
Seven freckles. Twenty-nine letters. Eighteen months of wanting you in silence.
" His voice cracked. "Nine years of wanting what I could not have.
And now I am free, and you are here, and I am asking you—"
He stopped. Dropped to his knees on the dusty floor, heedless of the rain, heedless of the blood, heedless of everything but the woman standing before him with her golden hair loose and her grey eyes blazing.
"Will you let me stay?"
* * *
She should say no.
She should be sensible. Should insist on proof, on waiting, on all the things a proper lady would demand before allowing a man to stay in her tower—her tower, God help her, this was becoming a fairy tale whether she wished it or not.
Frederick was kneeling before her, soaked and bleeding and wild-eyed, and he was free, and he had climbed a wall of thorns to reach her, and she had spent nine years wanting him too—had spent the last eighteen months trying to convince herself she could want someone else—had locked herself in this tower because she could not face a world in which he belonged to another woman.
She did not say no.
She dropped to her knees in front of him, seized his face in both hands, and kissed him.
It was not gentle. Was not the soft, tentative press of lips she had imagined in her weaker moments, when she had allowed herself to dream of what she could not have.
It was claiming. Demanding. Her fingers dug into his jaw, his hair, pulling him closer as her mouth opened against his and nine years of wanting poured out of her like water through a broken dam.
He made a sound against her lips—half groan, half prayer—and his bloodied hands came up to cup her face, to thread through her hair, to pull her closer until she could feel the pounding of his heart through his soaked coat.
"Florinda." Her name emerged ragged, wrecked. "I should—we should—there are proprieties—"
"Damn propriety." She kissed him again, harder. "If you climb back down that trellis, I shall push you off it myself."
He laughed against her mouth—a real laugh, startled and delighted—and she felt it vibrate through her, felt it crack open a space in her heart that had been locked for longer than she could remember.
They rose together, mouths still tangled, hands still seeking. He was walking her backward toward the settee, and she was letting him, her fingers working at the buttons of his ruined coat.
"Your hands." She pulled back, breathless. "You are bleeding—"
"I do not care."
"Frederick—"
"I have spent eighteen months not touching you.
" His voice was rough, stripped of all the careful control she had heard in it before.
"I have carried you up and down fourteen stairs and not let myself feel what I wanted to feel.
I have written twenty-nine letters describing in excruciating detail everything I wished I could do to you.
I am bleeding, yes. And I do not care. I would bleed a great deal more for the privilege of touching you properly. "
Oh.
Oh.
* * *
The coat fell first.
Then the waistcoat, the cravat, the lawn shirt that clung to his skin with rain and sweat. Florinda's fingers were clumsy with urgency, with cold, with the trembling that had overtaken her body the moment she had stopped being able to pretend she did not want this.