Chapter 9 #2
“But that is my own fault, really,” he went on. “It has been years since I saw her last, and in my time away, I have not been the best correspondent.”
Phaedra furrowed her brows. “But you said you had exchanged letters.”
“We had.” He shrugged, the motion jagged in its briefness.
“At least, in the beginning. But it was always… difficult, when my turn came to write. Even with her system, I always struggled. At first, because of mere ineptitude, the sheer difficulty of putting my experiences into words delaying my response more and more each time. But then, after a while, delay slowly turned to avoidance, and the reason behind it to guilt.”
“Guilt?” Phaedra asked in surprise. “Whatever for?”
Nathaniel glanced up at her, his lips quirking into an amused smile.
Only then did she realize how familiar a tone she had assumed, how direct and almost demanding her question had been.
As if she would know him. But she did not.
And even if she did, this was not her way, despite what her ever repeating offenses would suggest. Because while her art did indeed have the tendency to become wild and bold and careless, she herself never did. With anyone.
Heat displaced the pallor in her cheeks, knowing that that was not entirely true. That there was indeed one particular circumstance in which she would permit herself this degree of command. But she also knew that that could have nothing to do with the man sitting before her, however he might react.
“I apologize, Mr. Hawthorn,” she said, her eyes falling to the pad in her lap, hoping he would think her embarrassment accountable for the color that would not leave her skin. “That is not how I meant it. I do not mean to question your experiences.”
“And if I do not mind?” he asked. “If I would rather you did so?”
The strangeness of his questions made her pause, and when she looked up to meet his gaze, she found herself trapped by its swirling beauty.
She wondered what ingredients she would need to mix that exact shade of green, how many layers it would take to create that precise play of light and shadow.
What skill it would demand to create something that could capture attention and never let it go.
“Why?” she asked, her voice falling feather-light into the space between them.
“Because,” he said, “I have been alone with my thoughts for far too long. So long, in fact, that I fear I may convince myself of anything and everything, just so they may not drive me to complete madness. So I would be more than pleased—indebted even—to have someone… check me.”
She had not caught the exact moment his tone had changed, when his expression had shifted into something much more fragile, but the words he had spoken suddenly felt different, leaden with a meaning so very similar but not quite the same.
As if he would be asking something without truly asking, the intention conveyed through every other medium but words, and she wondered what exactly it was.
Whether it even mattered. Because for a terrifying heartbeat, she felt she would do anything he asked.
And yet, as she waited for the awakening signs of apprehension to creep over her skin, they would not come.
No numbing fear of being alone with a man she barely knew, isolated and at his mercy on grounds separated from the rest of the world by distance and nature.
Despite the tightening of her muscles and the rapid flutter of her pulse, she felt… at ease.
She saw his lips move before hearing his words, and realized she had been staring. She straightened in her chair, urging her wayward thoughts back into order.
“The guilt I felt—that I still feel today—is a simple thing, really,” he said.
“It comes from the sole circumstance that I could leave while she could not. Even if my departure had not been my own choice and had pained me deeply at the time, I did eventually come to see it as anything but a punishment. But Ana was not as fortunate.” His thumb grazed over the spine of the journal, almost reverent.
“I could have taken her with me. In the latter years, when both of us had grown.
We would have had the means, and I doubt our parents would have objected to it.
If they would have even cared. But I was so…
taken by the freedom and carelessness of my life as a student, that I became entirely self-absorbed in my own well-being.
“I learned to manage my condition, and there were even times when I felt I was thriving despite of it. So whenever my sister’s letters would reach me,” his lips pulled apart in a pained smile, his misery palpable in every word, “they no longer felt a comfort, but rather the dreaded reminder of my failings. Of things I tried very hard not to acknowledge, and the home I was no longer welcome in. Even if I no longer wished to return.” He sighed.
“And now I am here, left to wonder that had I done her the barest of kindness, this may not have happened.”
Phaedra swallowed against the knot in her throat, the grief of his words, alive and writhing, twisting around them in a tight coil. The urge to reach for his hand, to diminish the distance aching between them was near unbearable.
“It was an accident,” she breathed, her words so soft he might not have heard them.
But he had, his eyes snapping to hers with an expression that almost made her recoil in her seat.
The weight of it drove into her bones, welding her into place, and when she could finally speak, the words came out choked. “Was it not?”
“That is what I intend to find out.”