Ninth Day of Christmas #4
They laughed as they imagined Mrs. Wattlesbrook the next morning mystified by the snow homunculus that had sprouted overnight.
When their conversation slowed, questions popped up inside her: What about Tom?
And Wattlesbrook’s expectations? And no intentions, only seeking closure?
Kestrel shut down the questions. At night, it was easy to pretend the two of them weren’t really themselves, as if they’d torn their way into a pocket universe.
For a few hours in the winter dark, she could exist as a Regency woman with her man.
Here, there was no past, no trauma, no rules.
Just Kestrel, Hank, and a world as solitary and blue as the inside of a seashell.
Kestrel pulled Hank to a tree she’d been dying to climb—branches the ideal girth and spacing, stretching bare and beckoning her in and up.
“How are you doing that?” asked Hank as she easily out-climbed him. “How can your tiny limbs reach?”
“Tree climbing is a mental game,” said Kestrel. “You have to be the squirrel.”
She reached the highest climbable branch and howled victoriously. Then she leaned against the trunk and looked out from her crow’s nest, breathing in the moonlight on snow, the night air so cold it was almost solid ice, the peace from the winter-resting trees. Breathing everything.
There must have been Regency girls who sneaked out at night, pulled pranks, and balanced propriety with desire, never certain on which side they would fall.
Kestrel felt a kinship with Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility, who had nearly suffocated in her world’s structure and expectation.
Kestrel had experience with trying to tuck all the unruly bits of herself in tighter and tighter till the tick-tick-tick of her heart felt like a bomb counting down.
And, if she was being honest with herself, Kestrel related to selfish, coquettish, impetuous Lydia Bennet, one of the villains of Pride and Prejudice.
If fifteen-year-old Kestrel had been seduced by a handsome twenty-five-year-old man in uniform, wouldn’t she have left Grandma to run after his promises of love and freedom?
The nineteenth century hadn’t judged Lydia kindly, but Kestrel felt only compassion.
In the end, Austen’s wild girls couldn’t both stay wild and find love and acceptance.
Marianne Dashwood was somewhat broken and subdued when she got her happy ending.
Lydia Bennet stayed flighty and immature, and remained disliked by all who knew her.
As Kestrel balanced at the top of the winter-bare tree, a burning question bloomed in her more as a feeling than as words: Could there be a place for a wild girl like Kestrel in Austenland?
Her thoughts stilled with the cold and strangeness of winter at night, and she climbed down quietly.
She let go of the last branch without looking, knowing that Hank would catch her.
His arms grabbed her waist, briefly holding her to him.
When he started to put her down, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his cheek.
His body was so warm, his arms so strong.
She felt as light as a baby bird, as secure as a deep-rooted tree.
“Would you . . . ?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Would you really?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
She didn’t know what she was asking, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her energy reached out to him with hope, with need, and his responded with yes, yes, yes.
She felt his heart thumping against her own.
Their heat intertwined. And as her body warmed against him, the walnut-like lump beside her heart—an angry, bitter, undigestible object—started to soften.
She felt forgiveness not as a choice but as a chemical reaction.
Here in Hank’s arms, with his family so far away, the resentment couldn’t maintain its form.
Here in Austenland, the betrayal and humiliation of their twenty-first-century breakup hadn’t yet occurred in time. Maybe it never would.
As the hard outer layer of that walnut-like wound dissolved, it transformed into a kind of soft, trembling, relieved joy.
Sometimes life was so unexpectedly beautiful, the wonder filled her up till she couldn’t help but sing.
Her voice was low and crackly, singing for herself and maybe for Hank and Mary Francis too.
Ooh and ahh, mmm and ayy, syllables of wonder, notes of ecstasy.
On the ride back, Kestrel delighted in the feel of Hank against her back, his thighs alongside hers.
She was in Austenland. And Hank was here too.
Nothing made sense in her mind, but her body shouted that being with Hank was right.
Despite the lack of sense, surely it must work out this time.
Impulsively, she swung around backward on the horse so she faced him, wrapped her legs around his middle, and kissed him.
He kept the reins in one hand, the other pressing against her back. Holding her close, pressing her to him.
Oh yes, Kestrel would definitely have been one of those girls.