Chapter Forty-Five
Damien’s eyes snagged upon the oily black door on Houghton Street as he waited, and he thought of Ava. He thought of everything Lillian wanted from her – of everything he would end up taking from her, and the sickening feeling returned, clawing at his stomach.
And then the door swung open. And she was there. And all the courage he thought he’d summoned, all of the good reasons why he should do this – why he should tell her – left him.
‘Damien,’ Ava said – his name a soft breath between her lips, which were oddly pale. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I …’ he began, his throat becoming oddly tight.
I need to tell you something.
Something I should’ve told you sooner.
And then he saw her eyes. They were a brilliant, cerulean blue – and he felt something within his chest squeeze.
‘Ava? Did something happen?’
‘Could you …’ she began, her voice quiet. Trembling. ‘Could you walk me home?’
They walked in silence as they wound their way through the city – past the rows of shops on Ranelagh Street, the fine tearooms on Bold Street – but this time it wasn’t a comfortable silence.
What stretched between them now felt like a held breath – fragile, and taut, and it made Ava itch to shatter it.
‘Ava, there’s something I wanted to—’
‘Lillian wants me back on stage.’
Damien paused, dark eyebrows lifting slightly. ‘Lillian wants you to perform again?’
Ava nodded.
‘And what do you want?’
‘I know I do not want that,’ said Ava, feeling the truth of it in how her throat tightened.
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Ava said, lifting her voice slightly so it would carry above the thunder of carriages along the wide road. ‘What if it happens again? What if I—’
‘Fail?’ Damien offered.
Her gaze flicked to him. ‘Embarrass myself, is what I was going to say.’
He considered this for a moment as they walked past a street seller and his cart of oysters. ‘What if you don’t?’
‘If I don’t do it, then not only will she discard all my mother’s things,’ said Ava – and the thought of it made something prick at her stomach. ‘She’ll—’
‘What if you don’t fail?’ he amended, pausing – one hand resting upon her forearm. ‘What if you triumph, instead? How would it feel?’
She hesitated, furrowing her brows. ‘It would feel …’
She closed her eyes, trying to quieten the hum of the carriages, the chatter of people moving to and fro upon the pavements – but instead they grew louder, and it felt like everything was crowding her at once.
The past – that stage – her mother’s room.
All of it. ‘When I try and picture myself there,’ she began, running her tongue over dry lips.
‘It’s as though … as though I cannot breathe.
For every time I try and picture it, the same thing happens. I … I freeze.’
His voice was quiet. Steadying. ‘You’re not wrong to be afraid,’ he said.
‘Our fear is often justified, Ava. But we cannot be led by it. You know you are not the same woman now as the one who stood upon that stage, then – for that woman thought her gift was lost. And you know that it isn’t. You know better than your fear.’
When she finally opened her eyes, and looked up at him, she saw there was a crease between his brows, his gaze unfocused.
‘Do I know that?’
‘I know it,’ he said, eyes meeting hers, if only for a second. ‘I believe it.’
She huffed a half-laugh through her lips. ‘You may be alone in that belief,’ she said. ‘For I am not so sure.’
His expression shifted just slightly. ‘So believe it with me,’ he said. ‘Believe it with me, and I shan’t be alone.’
It was a mirror for what she’d told him that day in the apothecary, and she felt something unfurl within her.
She reached for his hand, entwining her fingers with his, and for a moment – just a moment – the world felt steady again.
For he was right – wasn’t he? She wasn’t the woman she’d been upon that stage.
That woman had been scared, and heartbroken, and …
and lost. And standing here, with him, she didn’t feel like any of those things anymore.
‘Ava …’ Damien said, his voice taut as his fingers slipped from hers. As his jaw tightened, and his brow furrowed – and she felt the warmth within her begin to fizzle.
‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ she asked, for his eyes were flat and lifeless, and now he wouldn’t look at her.
‘What?’
‘I interrupted you before,’ she said. ‘You said you had something … ?’
She watched his throat bob, watched him hesitate. ‘It doesn’t matter now. Let’s just get you home.’
It looked very much as though it did matter, but he was already moving, already walking, and she fell into step with him, the silence between them needling now as they tracked through the city, the salt wind cold upon their faces.
The lamplighters were already out with their ladders, each lamp casting a soft trail of golden light across the square.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, risking a glance at him. His gaze was fixed determinedly on the road before them – hands stuffed into his pockets.
‘I was just wondering what my father would say,’ he said. ‘If he could see me now.’
They turned onto Park Lane, the briny scent of the wind mingling with coal smoke.
‘He’d likely tell you that you need to visit a barber,’ Ava said, eyeing the faint line of stubble upon his jaw. That elicited a smile from him at least – although it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘I think he’d be more horrified by the state of my shoes,’ Damien said, reaching to rub at his eyebrow. ‘Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he’d look at me, now, and see—’
She watched him open his mouth and close it again, a knotted expression upon his face.
‘See what?’
‘See what he has always seen,’ he said, his voice soft.
They were past the church now, and nearing her house – with the tangled clump of weeds in the narrow front garden, the black iron gate – although it was open, and squealing back and forth on its hinges in the wind.
And Ava frowned.
For there was something on her doorstep – someone curled into a ball upon it – and it was only when she drew closer that she realized who it was. And she felt her heart shoot into her throat.
‘… Oliver?’