Chapter 11

The door closed with a cold little click. Belle blinked hard. She was not going to cry. She was not going to cry. She was not—

A tear slipped traitorously from the corner of her eye, and she dashed it away with her free hand. It would not do for Sir Horley to find her weeping. This was, after all, entirely her own fault. And she suspected people who threw trifles had as much right to shed tears as people in glass houses had to throw stones.

She had learned to cry back when she thought she was going to be a heroine. It had seemed like an essential skill, to shed perfect, crystal tears in a quantity that did not mar the complexion. Real crying, she knew, was ugly, and she did not trust it. At least not when she was the one crying. With heroine tears, she did not have to worry what people would think of them, other than that they were pretty. If they saw her truly crying, truly distressed, what if it came across as manipulative somehow? Especially when, sometimes, in darker moods, she half feared it was herself she was trying to manipulate.

After all, what cause had she for self-pity? Most of her problems, she would be the first to admit, were of her own making. There were so many things she could have done, had she just been a little braver, or a little less proud, or quite a bit less wilful. Then again, if she’d married Valentine as he had demanded, he wouldn’t now be with Bonny. And if she’d lied to Peggy about loving her ... well, Peggy would have seen through that, and left her for Orfeo regardless. And when it came to Sir Horley, all she’d really done was adjust the woman he was unhappily married to. So perhaps he was right. Nothing had materially changed, and she had always been—would always be—irrelevant.

Her gaze wandered to the splatter of jelly and custard that she, or technically, if you wanted to split hairs, Sir Horley, had left upon the rug like the remains of a murder. She tried to console herself with the thought that the last time a man had frightened her, she had shot him. From a certain point of view, this was an improvement. It was still not ideal. Probably you should not, as a general rule, throw desserts at people when you felt angry and hurt and overwhelmed. Of course, she was being abducted. Although it likely said something about the world as a whole that not being sufficiently ladylike during an abduction would be deemed of greater concern than abducting someone in the first place.

She gave her bound wrist a little tug. It was impressively secure. Provocative remarks aside, this was not so very surprising. When he was not obliterating himself with alcohol, Sir Horley had a capability that, between Bonny’s commitment to the fantastical and Valentine’s commitment to doing as little as possible, Belle had always found rather reassuring. Besides, there was a knife within easy reach—she could have been free in seconds. Through the door or out the window and ... and ...

So why wasn’t she?

Sheer exhaustion? Not wanting to break her word to Sir Horley, even under the current circumstances? Or was it something even more banal than that? The realisation that she didn’t have anywhere to go. Yes, she’d talked up a storm to Valentine and Sir Horley both about her desire to return home (that, at least, was no lie), but what would she do when she got there? She had no education in either estate or domestic management. Not that she really needed any. Valentine had dug them out of debt and hired people on Bonny’s behalf—probably she would find the place pristine, profitable, and better run than it had ever been. Which left her what, exactly? A fallen woman, as Sir Horley had said? An eccentric? A haunting? And stranded, yet again, somewhere she didn’t quite belong.

Maybe it was right, after all, that she and Sir Horley wed. They had unhappiness in common. The only difference was that she would not hold him responsible for hers. That she had long since feared was entirely her own business. Her own doing. Much like her present circumstances.

With a sigh, she picked up a fork and speared one of the roast potatoes she had not previously used as a missile. It was a perfectly reasonable roast potato, but in that moment it seemed like a wearisome roast potato. While she was conscious of a distant sense of hunger from her body, the thought of eating did not please her.

Very annoying, because she would have loved to have been the sort of woman who addressed her emotional turmoil by tucking into a plate of food the size of her head. It was how her twin would have addressed his emotional turmoil. It was probably a residual problem of heroism. Having determined as a teenager that being a heroine was likely her only path to happiness, Belle had trained herself to discipline in ways Bonny hadn’t needed or wanted to, and now she was stuck trying to undiscipline herself. To be someone who lived fully in her body rather than fashioning it for others.

By the time Sir Horley returned from his bath, looking better in general, not just better for a man who was no longer covered in custard, she had managed a halfhearted repast. Silence hung between them like laundry forgotten upon a line. It was hard to know what to say to a man you had thrown a trifle at, after which he had tied you to a chair. Although, as husbands who blamed you for the ruin of all their hopes and dreams went, she supposed she could have done worse.

She had always enjoyed looking at Sir Horley, in the comfortable, purely theoretical way you could look at someone when there was no question of desire. And she had enjoyed, in return, a relief from the burdens of beauty. As her friend—back when he had been her friend, instead of whoever he thought he was now—he had made her feel admired but not desired. Liked but not loved. And it had been a gift as sweet as spring water. A fresh breeze in a too-small room.

He was not beautiful like Valentine was beautiful—pristine and impossible—or dazzling like Bonny, which, honestly, was mostly about Bonny and had little to do with his actual appearance. But there was something complicated about Sir Horley that Belle found compelling: brazen hair and distant eyes, and a curling cat smile that rarely reached them. That was supposed to be a bad thing, she knew from every book she had ever read. Your eyes were supposed to light up with the sincerity of your joy. And yet, she wondered, why be so indiscriminate with your joy? Why keep it somewhere for anyone to witness and anyone to take? She trusted Sir Horley’s wariness, if only because it was familiar.

“I’ve sent for more water,” he said, at last.

“How kind,” she returned, not intending sarcasm but finding sarcasm thrust upon her by merit of her situation. “Do you think you could perhaps see your way to releasing me?”

“I ...” Sir Horley was radiating discomfort. “I suppose I should not have tied you to a chair.”

“I suppose I should not have thrown a trifle at you.”

“Or a chicken.”

Her eyes widened in outrage. “Sir Horley, that is against the rules.”

“What is?”

“During an acknowledgement of fault on both sides, it is dishonourable to pile on additional faults.”

“Where is this legally codified?”

“It does not need to be codified. It is known .”

“Well, I did not know it.”

“And now you do.”

They considered each other, eyes far more wary than they were joyful.

“So,” Sir Horley asked, “I am not permitted to seek verbal redress for both the chicken and the trifle? And, for that matter, the potatoes.”

“The aim is to reach a state of equity. If you must include the chicken and the potatoes, I shall have to remind you of the fact that you are abducting me.”

“And I shall have to remind you of the fact that you abducted me first.”

“I did not abduct you. You agreed to come with me.”

“Because I was drunk and desperate. I did not ask you to interfere in my life.”

Belle opened her mouth to point out ... oh, all manner of things. That perhaps he should have. That he clearly needed her to. But then she realised she was far too sad and tired. “This is not equity,” she said instead. “It is continuing to argue.” Picking up a dinner knife, she sawed none too carefully through Sir Horley’s cravat and laid its remains upon the table. “I am going to bathe.”

Ideally, bathwater would have had less cream and custard bobbing on the surface of it. But this was not a situation for idealism. It was a situation for ...

Well. Belle was still working that out.

She was unsurprised, either because it was not surprising or because she was fully out of emotions, when—her ablutions complete—Sir Horley insisted she take the bed. He was, after all, insisting on marrying her. And the prospect of a marriage filled with nothing but insistence made what was left of her spirit quail.

Creeping between the covers in the semi-darkness was at least a little soothing. And the bath—even including the remains of a trifle—had been welcome too. Perhaps after a good night’s rest she could ... she could ...

Oh, she could what?

Run away yet again? Cause some mayhem yet again? Drag some strangers into her apparently infinite nonsense? Even Belle’s interior voice sounded just about done with her. This is your bed —her metaphorical bed, that is; the literal bed belonged to the inn—it wanted to tell her. It was probably about time she lay in it. Her life, she reflected, was becoming, or perhaps had always been, brutally cyclic. She had grown up knowing it was her duty to marry, for Bonny could not, and she was as good as promised to Valentine. Though in the end it was Bonny who had saved her from that fate and Valentine who had offered her independence. And yet here she was, being impelled into matrimony all over again, and this time she had only herself to blame.

She knew she should have used her freedom better, but reality was a cruel mistress. With piracy and highway robbery off the table, or any of the other sorts of things that seemed to come about so easily in novels, she’d been forced to confront the fact that she had neither the genius nor the education to change the world. She would never be the first woman to land on the moon or discover a river or demand admittance to the Royal Society. And perhaps none of that would have mattered if she’d been able to fall in love like Bonny, or like Peggy, or like every other damn person she’d ever met, for whom it seemed as natural as breathing. As inevitable as sunrise.

At the advanced age of two and twenty, she could no longer pretend that she was simply waiting for the right moment or the right person. Love was not going to just happen to her like her monthly menses. Moreover, she did not want it to happen. Even the thought sat strangely upon her. A puzzle piece with nowhere to fit. And yet she felt no lack without it.

In some ways, was that not worse? Should she not have been aware of some ... hollow or unwholeness? Certainly Bonny thought there was something terribly wrong with her. And perhaps there was. But she also understood, with some deep personal instinct, that this ... wrongness, this inescapable truth, hadn’t been imposed upon her. It wasn’t distress or mistrust or fear. It was part of her. More than that, it belonged to her. The same way her heart belonged to her.

She stared unseeing into the darkness, not quite defiant, and wondering, not for the first time, if she was a monster. What it meant for her if she was. Would marriage to Sir Horley, another man who would see her as a burden, be worse or better than marriage to Valentine would have been? He was not a duke, but she liked him more. Then again, how much would he like her after a lifetime’s conviction that she had taken something vital from him? Did the vital things—independence, many of her legal rights—such a union would take from her not count?

Perhaps not. That was the problem with love. Its supremacy went unspoken and unchallenged. If you could not abide it, all that was left was to be powerless. And it was past time she accepted that. These were not the sort of thoughts likely to bring her much solace. But there was something peaceful in resignation. And she was, in any case, very tired.

When she next stirred— tiredness and capacity to actually sleep on this occasion acting in harmony—the room was greyish with predawn light. Sir Horley was slumped upon the window seat, his brow resting against the glass, and a bottle swinging from between listless fingers.

“You look like a portrait,” said Belle, drawing herself into a sitting position. “ Gentleman in Despair .”

He half turned. “Fitting. Because I am a gentleman in despair.”

“On account of having to marry me?”

“On account of everything, Belle.”

They were silent for a few long moments that somehow seemed even longer. Of all the times to be awake, this, Belle had always thought, was the worst. It made one feel so utterly alone. “Are you intending to drink that?” she asked at last.

“Hmm?” Sir Horley stirred, apparently having forgotten what he grasped. “Oh ... no, I suppose not.”

“Then why do you have it?”

He sighed heavily. “I had not yet decided whether I needed it, wanted it, or simply intended to prove to myself I could not have it.”

“And what was your conclusion?”

“As you see.” The bottle made a definite-sounding clunk as he placed it upon the floor. “I am endeavouring to be a better man for you, my dear.”

She hugged her knees beneath the covers. “I do not recall asking you to be any man but yourself.”

Another silence. Belle wasn’t sure if she could sleep with Sir Horley brooding so emphatically in a corner of the room.

But then he spoke again. “How ... how is equity generally attained?”

“Pardon?”

“You said earlier that our aim should have been to reach a state of equity. Recall, if you will, that I am an only child. In my household, there was no such concept. Just authority and submission, rebellion and catastrophic mistakes.”

He spoke so lightly that it made Belle shiver. But she did not think he was likely to accept sympathy from her just then. “Well”—she did her best to match his lightness—“when Bonny and I are— were —not in accord, we would admit our part in what had gone awry and then apologise to each other.”

“An apology did not seem in the air at supper.”

She opened her mouth, ready to defend herself on principle, then closed it again. Because she had only just realised something. “Bonny was always the one to initiate,” she admitted.

Sir Horley’s silhouette contrived to project a sardonic air.

“But,” she went on quickly, “as a gesture of good faith, I can begin on this occasion.”

“Can you?”

Theoretically. “You are not helping.”

“Am I supposed to?”

She took a deep breath, idly chastising her past self for having obliviously taken advantage of her twin’s more conciliatory nature. “I am sorry for convincing you to run away with me at a time when your ... when frankly most of your faculties were compromised.”

“This is making me feel so much better.”

“I’m not finished,” she snapped.

“Then pray continue.”

His haughtiness reminded her a little of Valentine. But it was a reflection glimpsed through cracked glass. A wounded, brittle thing, like her own pride. “While I maintain I had only your best interests at heart, and a sincere desire to help, I do understand how ... how painful and ... and demeaning it is when someone acts for you instead of with you and—”

“Belle ...” His tone was softer now.

“I’m still not finished,” she snapped. “You are very bad at this, Sir Horley.”

“You are surprisingly good. Do you mean a word of it?”

“Would I be saying words I did not mean?”

“No, I”—the softness lingered in his voice, and something that almost sounded like surprise—“I don’t believe you would.”

Having started, Belle was going to damn well finish. “Nevertheless,” she persisted, “I have trapped you in a situation that you feel honour bound to see through. Also, I have thrown a roast chicken, several potatoes, and a trifle at you. I should have done none of those things.”

“You have introduced me to several new experiences,” he offered, sounding painfully, tantalisingly like the Sir Horley she thought she knew. “I have never had a trifle thrown at me before. Or, for that matter, a roast chicken.”

“What about the potatoes?”

“Nor potatoes. Nor”—he hesitated for a bare second—“so graceful an apology.”

She cleared her throat loudly.

“And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.”

Ideally an apology should not have been delivered alongside a quiver of amusement, but Belle was pleased to hear Sir Horley laugh. Or almost. “Sorry for what?”

“Threatening you with a gravy jug?”

“As you should be.”

“Acting the boor downstairs.”

Rising, he crossed the room and stood by the bed, looking down at her with a complicated expression. While Belle was fairly used to people looking at her with complicated expressions, this one eluded her. Tiredness she could easily identify. And perhaps a trace of fondness too. Resignation also? Old sorrows. Fresh pain.

“And,” he went on softly, “for your being stuck with me now.”

“That does not require apology.”

“Generous. But erroneous.”

She gave a faint hiss of frustration. “Must we be stuck with each other?”

“Don’t let’s start that fight again.”

“I wasn’t. I just meant—” She broke off. “Are you aware that you’re looming?”

“I’ll let you rest.”

“No, I’m awake now, and so are you. Sit down. Or better yet, come in.”

His eyes flew wide. “Do what?”

“Come in with me?” She drew back the covers helpfully.

“I can’t do that.” Sir Horley was actually blushing. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“We’re going to be married.”

“When we are married, we will have separate rooms like everyone else.”

“And yet right now,” said Belle firmly, “we have only one bed. Surely you aren’t intending to spend what remains of the night on the window seat.”

“That is exactly what I’m intending.”

“Your intention is stupid. Besides, talking in bed is the best way to talk.”

Sir Horley twitched, neither withdrawing nor coming forward. “Usually”—he seemed to be striving for cynicism but only came across as flustered—“when I am in bed, I am unconscious or otherwise occupied.”

“Then you have been doing bed wrong. Here.” Shifting over a little, she flapped the covers again.

“I hope you don’t think ...”

“Think what?” Realisation struck her, and she almost laughed aloud. “That I could seduce you? That I wish to seduce you? That I would go about seducing someone in such a fashion?”

He seemed to recognise how absurd he was being. But he was still not out of protests. “You can’t want this,” he muttered, as he climbed gingerly into bed with her.

“Why? Do you steal the blankets?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Squirm like an eel all night long?”

“Indeed no.”

“Snore?”

“Certainly not.”

His outrage had been cresting with each question, and she could no longer contain her amusement.

“What is this in aid of, Belle?” he asked, with mingled resignation and impatience. “Other than mockery?”

“I’m not mocking. People don’t invite people into bed to mock them.”

“Don’t they?”

“Well, I don’t. I respect my bed too much.”

“Good for you.”

She wriggled back under the covers herself, turning onto her side so she could watch him comfortably. Not that it turned out to be a particularly comfortable view, for Sir Horley was lying on his back, rigid as a corpse.

“You look cosy,” she observed.

He threw his hands in the air—impressive, considering he was lying down. “God. We’re not even fucking, and you’re critiquing my performance.”

“You used to be so at ease with me.” The hurt in her own voice had snuck up on her. She’d done her best not to dwell on how much she missed Sir Horley—if you drove people away by kidnapping them, that was, after all, your own fault—but she felt it especially keenly, almost as though she was being taunted, in this moment of closeness that was not closeness. The kind of closeness she had lost and lost and lost again, so many times before, and had begun to think could never truly be hers, in a world that saw it as a way station, when, for her, it was journey’s end.

“I know,” he said wearily. “But that was a different time. I was a different person.”

“And the person you are now cannot accept touch in comfort or companionship?”

“The person I am now ...” His voice broke on some aching sound that tried to pass itself off as laughter. “The person I am now clearly has no damn clue. Have you forgotten I’m abducting you, Belle? You should not be offering either comfort or companionship.”

“That’s my whole point, though. We need not be stuck , as you put it before. We could still choose each other.”

“I cannot make you happy.”

“You could try. That’s more than anyone else has done. And I would try back. If you will allow yourself to think beyond a future that looks like Bonny and Valentine’s.”

“I have never believed that would be my future.”

“You’ve already told me it’s what you yearn for.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Well, no.” Belle gestured at herself. “Clearly not.”

He made a vaguely apologetic noise but did not actually apologise. “Have you ever considered that it may be easy for you to reject love because you live with an abundance of it?”

It should, perhaps, have occurred to Belle before now that a man who was not sure how to reach equity might not understand the rules of talking in bed, the most important of which was not to verbally strike at your interlocutor, no matter what you were feeling. But was that how people thought of her? As rejecting love? Surely it was the other way round? That love had rejected her. “For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “it is not so easy.”

This time there wasn’t even an apologetic noise. “You’ve always had a family, Belle. You’ve always had Bonny. Even the aunt and uncle you take for granted because they’re boring have always been there for you.”

“I do not deny that I’m fortunate in many ways.”

“At the risk of sounding repulsively self-pitying, I have never had anyone. My own parents did not want me. My uncle died because of me. Now even my aunt will have none of me.”

“And,” asked Belle, trying to strike a balance between consoling and interrogating, “are uncles and aunts and parents the only people one may be loved by?”

“They are the first people one should be loved by.” Sir Horley shifted uncomfortably, and his discomfort vibrated into Belle through the magic of proximity and mattresses. “What does it say about me that they didn’t?”

“What does it say about them ?”

“That they found me unfit to love. And that others have been finding me so ever since.”

The pain in his voice was real, for all the sentiment was profoundly incorrect, which was why Belle delivered her conclusion of “You realise that’s complete hogwash?” as gently as she could.

“A lifetime’s experience suggests otherwise.”

“You do not know,” she pointed out, “that it was for lack of love that your parents gave you up.”

“You’re right,” he returned too easily. “But as expressions of affection go, you must admit it was an anomalous one.”

“And”—it was the most nonchalant voice she could muster—“you have made no attempt to contact them?”

“Why should I, when they have made none to contact me?”

“Has your aunt ever—”

“Whatever you are about to ask, the answer is no. Stop scheming, Arabella.”

“Scheming?” Belle was not good at sounding innocent, even at the best of times, and this was far from the best of times.

“Yes, I know you, and I know your nonsense.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed, rather in the fashion of the governess who had been employed to teach Belle the rudiments of being a lady and lasted less than three days. “You are wondering if you can find my wastrel parents and uncover some terrible misunderstanding, proving that I was loved all along and am therefore free to be happy in whatever unconventional form is available to me.”

“I am not,” said Belle vehemently and untruthfully.

“Not every question has an answer. Not every story has an ending, let alone a happy one.”

She was not, despite some people’s conviction to the contrary, immune to hints. It was just that she tended to ignore them, sometimes to her own detriment. “Do you not wonder, though?”

“Fuck me,” he growled, very much done with her. “Yes, I fucking wonder. But I prefer that to the alternative, which is offering people who have already cast me aside opportunity to cast me just a little bit further.” His hand came up to partially shield his eyes—not that the gloom offered her much of his expression to begin with. “I know,” he went on, more moderately, “that I should stand defiant, reject what rejects me, find meaning in bonds I forge for myself, but I am ... I am too tired and too”—whatever word nearly slipped from his tongue, he abruptly swallowed—“tired. Just once I would like to have—or have at least the possibility of having—what other people have in the form that they have it, simple and uncompromised.”

Belle had, of course, entertained such thoughts on her own account. After all, who did not, occasionally, wish to be the same as everyone else? To be able to take more of life for granted. Ask fewer questions. But it was hard to hear them from someone else, especially when you were both a complication and a compromise. “Then I should suit you down to the ground,” she said lightly. “For I can think of little more commonplace than an unhappy marriage.”

A deep, rich, familiar-yet-half-forgotten chuckle rippled from beneath Sir Horley’s arm. He may have had an instinct for Belle’s shenanigans, but she knew his sense of humour. They had laughed together too often for her not to. It had meant a lot to her, at the beginning of their friendship, to find someone who would meet her sharp-to-sharp and follow her fearless into the dark. And now ... now she was not sure if she relished the reminder or if it was merely something else that hurt.

“Oh, Bellflower,” he whispered, half turning to her. “What a bore I am these days. I’m sorry not to be what you hoped for when you came so valiantly to my rescue on my wedding eve.”

“Have I said that?”

“No. But you must be thinking it.”

She shook her head. “I would always rather your honesty. It was wrong of you to play games with me in London.”

“I know. Does it help that I wasn’t intending to? I thought I was playing games only with myself.”

Shifting onto her side, she folded a hand beneath her cheek and mirrored his posture. She was not sure what had inspired it, or if it was conscious on his part, but she could feel something changing between them. A softening. Perhaps it was the magic of talking in bed blessing them at last. “How so?”

“My aunt has been threatening me with marriage for years. I suppose I saw that time with you as a bit of a last hurrah: pretending I had no cares and little shame let me believe it for a while.” He reached out, playing with one of her curls as he had been wont to do before, his touch gentle and idle and easy. Nothing like his drunken carelessness. “It was fun.”

She lay very still, barely daring to breathe lest she break the enchantment of the moment, this tentative offering of trust. “You can have fun as yourself.”

“With you?”

“Why not with me?”

“Because it’s not real, Belle.”

So much for enchantment. “You mean,” she said, “ we’re not real. Because we aren’t family as the world defines it and we aren’t lovers because we don’t fuck.”

“Please”—his voice roughened, though not with anger—“don’t ask me to give up my dreams for yours.”

“Recall that you are the one insisting on this marriage, not I.”

“For the sake of—”

“My reputation, yes, yes. But I’m a little offended you think this situation is somehow a dream of mine.”

“Then we are to both give up our dreams?”

“I do not think the kind of dream I am built for is the kind of dream this world will permit to exist, so perhaps, in that regard, I am asking you to give up more than I am giving up myself.” She paused. And then continued more lightly, “Although I am pretty and companionable and sober and therefore probably also the better bargain.”

Another laugh from Sir Horley. “To my credit, I am currently sober. But you are the better bargain.”

“And you will claim ownership of my property and fortune, while keeping your name and legal identity.”

“I would not take advantage of you.”

“I know that. I would still rather it was not mandatory to give you the opportunity.”

“Your point is well taken, Belle.” He let her hair slip from his fingers. “I am selfish and ungrateful.”

“That was only my point a little bit,” she told him.

“Generous.” There was irony in his tone, but a trace of sincerity too.

“My wider point,” she went on, “is that since dreams have not thus far proven much use to either of us, would it be so terrible to try for something else instead?”

“And what would that something else be?”

“Whatever we choose to make it?” Belle tried. “Whatever we build for ourselves? On our own terms. Might that not be better than a lifetime of hoping for miracles?”

“Frankly”—he gave an odd, wry laugh—“I’ve no idea anymore. I’m not even sure who’s trying to talk who into what. Why are you making such a passionate case for a marriage that we’ve clearly established neither of us want?”

Belle shut her eyes and tried to gather her fragmented thoughts. “Because,” she said, carefully, “I am willing for us to go our separate ways and live with the consequences, and I am willing to marry you and try to make the best of what we have. What I am not willing to do is to spend the rest of my life as a sacrifice you made or a price you were forced to pay.”

“When you put it that way, it does seem a rather bad deal from your end.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He sighed. “I cannot allow you to be ruined.”

“I know.”

“And”—he seemed to be choosing his words as she had done, as though they were volatile and untrustworthy, in need of delicate placement—“I cannot promise that I will never ... wonder. Or have regrets. Or feel on some days or on some nights or in some moments—and as you have seen, I can have some very bad moments—that we should have chosen differently.”

It was strange, Belle reflected, for a woman who had once rejected a duke for not proposing correctly to now be lying in the half light waiting for a man who had just explained why their life together would be miserable to say but .

“But,” he went on, “I will try. If that is what you want, and if you will try also, then perhaps we can make—I don’t know—something out of the wreckage of all this. And I will never reproach you for what I could never have, and I will never make my fancies and my follies and my disappointments your concern. Can that be acceptable to you?”

It should not have been. It should have been desultory. Piecemeal. Wholly not enough. Except perhaps that was fitting because she was not enough. She would never be someone who someone else chose, and none of the things she cared about would ever matter as much as the one thing she didn’t. Once, and it was mind-boggling that it had only been a handful of years ago, she had let herself believe there could be an alternative. The friend, the partner, the lover who might stay. As a teenager, she had written stories with Bonny, thousands of stories, stories where she was a pirate, a princess, a space traveller, a sky monster, an explorer. In growing up, it had been necessary to accept that such adventures were not to be hers. But she was beginning to realise that she had not fully let go of the hope in them. The possibility of a life lived, in its own small way, uncharted. Yet as complete as any other.

“I suppose,” she whispered, “it will have to be.”

They said no more after that. And as Belle lay there trying to work out if this was the beginning of something or the end of it, if she was building a future or burning one, if she was the heroine, the villain, or—most lamentably of all—just another supporting character, she felt a subtle movement beside her. She heard the edges of Sir Horley’s breath grow ragged. Then the creak of bedsprings and the rustle of the sheet as he turned onto his side. He made no other sound, but Belle recognised the particular quality of the silence that followed. She had lain in such silences herself, and she wondered where his thoughts had taken him. If they had followed paths as intricate and unanswerable as her own. If he, too, was scared and uncertain and alone.

After a moment, she put a hand gently upon his shoulder. He was trembling—in that tight, tears-repressing way—even before she touched him. Beneath her palm he was fearfully alive, deep shudders running through him like fractures. Drawing closer, she tucked her body around his, neat as a crescent moon, her arm curled across his hip.

“What are you doing?” he asked, in a rather stifled voice.

“I thought you might need this.”

“I most certainly do not.”

But the fingers he had clasped about her wrist did not push her away.

It had been long enough since Belle had held anyone that it was odd—odd but not undesirable—to be learning a new person. Sir Horley was not snuggly, the way Bonny was snuggly, or restless like Peggy. He had his own strength, for all he pretended otherwise, and his stillness was a wild animal stillness, full of mistrust and tension. She felt a little like Tam Lin’s Janet clinging to snakes and lions and fire. If he had not retained his grip upon her, she would have withdrawn, uncertain of welcome.

Minutes passed. Yet Sir Horley did not grow impatient or shake her off. Instead came something almost like surrender. A barely perceptible softening, a quiescence of body and mind that eased him into sleep, still in her arms.

Sadly, slumber did not come so readily in return.

This is my husband, she thought to herself. This man who shied from comfort, cried unseen in the dark, and would forever mourn something he believed he was unworthy to seek. She wondered if she could convince him that marriage to her need not preclude him from finding whatever he needed. But she didn’t think he’d believe her. It was far easier to put your faith in a beautiful possibility than risk a messy reality. Dwell in the sweetness of could have been instead of amongst the bitter reeds of tried and failed or not what you wanted after all .

Dawn had crept upon them as they talked. The bloody freshness of the light found threads of scarlet-gold in Sir Horley’s hair. Truthfully, Belle ached for his hurts but also knew she was unequal to them. Books were so insistent on the power of love to heal, to redeem. What was left if you couldn’t give that?

“Keep your dreams,” she whispered. “And blame me, if you must, that you never had a chance to live them. Nor be disappointed by them.”

In some ways, she almost envied him that he could still harbour hopes so specific. Over the years, hers had mostly faded into nebulous, contradictory longings, for freedom and companionship both, that increasingly felt as ridiculous as her younger self’s determination to be a pirate.

A princess.

A heroine.

Happy.