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Diplomatic Immunity

2026-10-22T20:34:49+00:00

Diplomatic immunity

1. The tutor

April, 1882

“Le théâtre?” George Forsyte said. “Je ne vais pas au théâtre. I was made to recite plays at school and I had my fill of that. I am out of words to say about the theatre. I would be out of words if I were speaking English, my dear tormentor. I have memorised this long list of words about curtains and lights and which are the best seats and whether actors and actresses wear paint or if maquillage is the same word and here I am with nothing at all witty to say.”

“It is not as if you ever do,” said his tutor, Monsieur Renard. He was lounging in a chair in George’s sitting room, a glass of sherry in hand. One would think he was not paying attention, but one would be wrong.

“Now, if two prize-fighters were to walk out onto this hypothetical Parisian stage, then I’d know what to say about it. I could narrate the fight to a blind old man sitting at my side who wished to know if the fight were as exciting as the bouts of his youth.”

“So you say,” his tutor said, with a gesture that indicated, very clearly, that George was welcome to try.

George grinned with half his mouth. It was time to take control of this conversation. “Let us begin at the beginning, then, when the curtain rises, with our two prize-fighters standing mid-stage. Their knuckles are bare and they are wearing regulation tight trousers. They have identical enormous waxed moustaches. I cannot tell them apart, other than that one of them has a tattoo on his left biceps.”

Renard opened his mouth, as if to ask the usual questions or push him to say more, but then closed it again without saying anything. He stroked his greying reddish whiskers then leaned back, waiting for George to do whatever it was George would do.

What George did was smile to himself, and say, “The tattoo is of a lion, for your satisfaction.”

“Improbable,” said Renard.

“An English lion.”

“Absurd.”

George held imaginary opera glasses to his eyes. “I see it now. The other fighter also has a tattoo, and I shall identify it to satisfy your curiosity, my honoured professor. It is a unicorn.”

“C’est en faire trop. Over-egging the pudding, as you English say.”

George brushed this away.

“Time is called by someone backstage and they square up against each other. They swing at each other in a most decorous manner, at mid-stage under electric light. Did I mention this Parisian theatre is electrified? My apologies. Everything should be electrified, I am told. These boxers are so polite, prancing about on the stage, dodging and feinting, that the audience thinks it all arranged, like a ballet. Neither man lands any blows at all, and the audience is becoming restless and unhappy. We are all quite disappointed by the show. No blood is a disappointment at a prize fight. The crowd is there to see teeth fly.”

“The old man by your side cannot see,” Renard said, impatiently, and George heard the insult ready to be launched. As always, it drove him to rise to the challenge.

“He can hear for himself that no blows have landed. It is all too genteel. The umpire is angry. The crowd is angry. This may go all night with no end to it. They shall drum the fighters out of town at this rate.”

“How tedious.”

“Wait! The lion has landed a stinger to the unicorn’s chin.” George shot out his right fist and pulled it back.

“Are they animals or men?”

“The unicorn is a Frenchman, of course. He retaliates with a blow to the gut and the fellow with the lion falls against the ropes and looks as if he’s about to vomit. He comes up to scratch, however.”

“Fine salon conversation you offer.”

“You requested it. Our British champion dances and ducks and lands a punch! An upper-cut, then the left, then the right. He repeats the dose, and our Frenchman is now bleeding from his eye.” George punched as he spoke: upper-cut, left, right, and again.

“Here is the blood we have awaited.”

George was carried away with his story now, and narrating without thinking that he was speaking another language. He danced and threw punches at the air.

“It is a flurry of blows now, and the audience in the theatre, genteel as they are, all smell blood and their passions are aroused. If you are close enough to the stage where the ring is you can hear the feet on the boards, hear fists striking flesh, hear the Frenchman grunting as he’s hit, and as his face is pummelled. Then he goes over like a felled tree, and the sponge comes up! The lion is victorious.”

George slumped and wiped sweat from his face. There was silence for a moment in the sitting room. George watched Renard and waited for his verdict.

“You have been reading something other than the newspapers I have been bringing you.” Renard drank more of George’s very good sherry, and crossed his knees.

“The sporting papers and a boxing primer. I had to read that with a dictionary beside me.” Then in English George said, “My accent with the boxing slang—”

His tutor said a word that he would not say in polite English drawing rooms, and George laughed. His tutor then said, “You are still holding your mouth like an Englishman.”

George wriggled his jaw about. This was difficult. He would start out doing the right things, then he would slide back into the public school drawl and stop speaking through his nose. “I think no one will want to hear me talk about prize-fighting anyway,” he said, in French again. “Horses, perhaps. And yes, the theatre. I am going to a musical tea next week, hosted by my sister. Lucie shall play, along with my most lovely cousin Irene. I know little about music, but I do know that the two women are most wonderfully skilled.”

“Her Christian name?” said his tutor, sitting up straight in his chair. “Stop. You may with family, but you must not with the daughter of a diplomat with whom you are not an intimate. When speaking of her to me you may never.”

“But—”

“You must learn to say one in private and another in public. And you must not use the familiar pronoun. This is like the gender of words. English does not have it, but you must learn it or suffer for it. Now again. Say that again, but properly, you imbecile.”

George drew in a deep breath, and tried again, more carefully. “My cousin Irene, who is most skilled, shall play the piano at this event of my sister. She has earned her medal at the Paris Conservatoire. Mademoiselle Béranger, whom I met at a dinner in honour of the engagement of my cousin, shall play the violin. She also earned her medal, and plays most wonderfully. I am not a connoisseur of the music, but I am aware enough to appreciate their skill and enjoy their performance.”

“Now you sound like a first-year pupil, reciting lessons from a book. Say it like a natural man speaking to a friend.”

“Damn your eyes,” George said. “My lovely cousin Irene earned her medal in piano at the Conservatoire in Paris. She is a marvellous musician, a most sensitive interpreter of Chopin and Schubert. I am not the connoisseur of music, but I know enough to hear her talent when she plays, and she is good. I met Mademoiselle Béranger at a dinner in honour of Irene’s engagement to my cousin. Mademoiselle Béranger was—bon sang, comment dit-on bridesmaid?”

“Demoiselle d’honneur, you half-wit. This speaks for itself.”

“Mais bien sûr.”

George gave himself a moment to think by pouring more sherry for Renard. He picked up his own glass and wet his lips. Thirsty work, speaking in a language other than his own. He drank more water than sherry during these lessons, so he could keep his wits about him, for he had learned to his cost that Renard would push him harder if he thought he was not doing his best.

He put all of himself into these sessions when Renard was here, and he spent his evenings reading what Renard had set him to read. He hadn’t worked like this since he’d been at school, but he had never complained. Lucie had only said pleasant things about his progress with her native language, and he would endure far worse to earn praise from her.

The daylight faded, and George’s man Nash came in silently to light the gas-lamps. George’s collar began to wilt. Renard made him converse on the topic of the crash of l’Union Générale, touching up his financial vocabulary.

At the end of two hours of sweat, Renard stood and drained his glass.

George did the same. “Thank you as always,” he said.

“You progress,” said Renard. “Soon I shall stop despairing of you.”

“High praise,” George said. “Thursday?”

“Thursday.”

He saw Renard to the door himself, then came back into the sitting room to find Nash tidying up.

“Going well, sir?” Nash said.

“Well enough that we shall move to Paris soon. Then you shall need tutoring as well, so you can find your own lovely French girl.”

Nash cocked his head, silently, and George gave him a cheerful grin.

But Paris was not in his plans. The lovely girl was not his yet, however much he might know himself to be hers. He had yet to ask Lucie if she would marry him, and he had a fence to jump before he could do that honourably. He had to know what her father required of him and if he came up to scratch. It was long past time for George Forsyte, sworn bachelor, to speak to Monsieur Béranger about his daughter.

2. The Béranger salon

Wednesday night was the usual salon night for the Bérangers, and George was attending as usual. Lucie’s mother lived in Paris most of the time, visiting London only rarely for particularly grand official events. Lucie had told him this was why she played hostess for her father, and had since she had left the Conservatoire. Lucie enjoyed London, enjoyed the relative freedom of being away from most of her family, and enjoyed learning yet another language. She also enjoyed the relative stability of this posting, because it gave her a chance to get to know the English. London, she had once confided to him, felt safer to her than Paris did.

George was reminded at times that Lucie had seen a Prussian invasion and a revolution when she was a child. Her father had come out of it with a successful career, but other men hadn’t. His own tutor had fled Paris in 1871. He had stayed after the general amnesty for Communards only because he’d married an Englishwoman while in London. So Lucie was here, and her mother was not, for reasons George had never probed too deeply. Lucie would tell him more when she wished.

Tonight Lucie and Irene were to play a much-anticipated duet, and there was rumoured to be a poem someone wanted to recite. George wondered if he would enjoy it or not. The poem, that was. He would enjoy the music, because it would give him an excuse to stand quietly and watch Lucie. In this pastime he was exactly like his cousin Soames, and the two of them would stand shoulder to shoulder at times, watching Lucie and Irene play duets.

The rooms on the first storey of the Béranger home were devoted to the salon on these evenings. They were pleasant rooms, conservatively furnished, lit with beeswax candles supplemented by gaslight. A few servants circulated with wine and other refreshments. The guests talked; this was why they were in attendance. The English would have gossipped among each other, George thought, but the Béranger guests had other things to discuss. They talked about the performances, the news of the day, politics, art, and whatever was of interest.

George mixed with the guests. The regular attendees knew him well by now, and he’d begun to be able to hold his own with them in conversation. They were, he knew, being indulgent with him and not speaking rapidly or using too much slang, but still, he was doing so much better than he’d done last summer that they had stopped commenting on it. He would have to say as much to Renard, who would probably tell him not to get above himself. No, penser en français: ne te monte pas la tête. If he said ‘get above himself’ in French would it be funny? He should try it.

He was on familiar territory, at least, as they were discussing the collapse of l’Union Générale again. This was all over Renard’s newspapers as well as the London financial papers; he’d discussed it with Soames and Parkes several times, because it had affected the markets. Here he could talk as if he knew what he was about, because he did know what he was about and he had invested in learning the vocabulary. He dared open his mouth a little more than he had last time, and he found they were not laughing at what he said. To the contrary, they seemed to find his opinion worth listening to.

He felt buoyed by this. A year ago he wouldn’t have dared say anything even in English about a banking crash.

There was a whist game going on in a side room. George knew better than to go near it. As he walked past the doorway into the main room, he heard a change in the note of conversation, and smiled to himself. He knew that sudden hush and the murmur of male voices. Irene and Soames had arrived, and the men were taking a look at the heathen goddess. Lucie advanced towards them to do her duty as hostess, and George drifted near so that he might be a familiar face for Soames. He gave a warm handshake and a smile to his cousin, who was looking somewhat unfamiliar with a new moustache on his face. Then he was graced with Irene’s ever-delightful greeting, and then Lucie was off with the pair of them, introducing them round.

George stood by the piano, because he knew they’d make their way back there soon enough. He let himself drift into his own happy thoughts as he watched Lucie perform introductions. She was gracious and sparkling as she did it. Would she want to have a salon if she married him? Would that be a thing he could do? Would she marry him? He’d known he wanted to marry her almost immediately, the very first week he’d met her, but did she want the same? Would her father approve? Her father knew he was courting. The whole room knew he was courting. It would be rather wonderful to be married to her. It really was past time he spoke to her father and set things in motion.

But he knew that. He had to stump up and do it.

He knew he was smiling like a fool as the little group came over to the piano, but he couldn’t be bothered to stop. Lucie took her violin out of its case and began doing the things she did with it to get ready to play. Irene played a single note. Lucie played the note back at her, and nodded.

“It is always a pleasure to perform on your Pleyel,” Irene said, to M Béranger. “Chopin’s instrument.”

“You must perform him for us some evening,” he replied. “An evening devoted to him.”

“It would be beyond pleasure to do so.”

Lucie said, “Tonight, however, we play some quite new Fauré: his sonata for violin and piano. The Andante only, lest we outstay our welcome.”

“Ah, never,” said one of the more musical salon regulars, M Tessier, a somewhat older man who came with his literary wife sometimes. George knew them all now. Irene was introduced to him, and charmed him smoothly by asking him if he would enjoy some Saint-Saëns on a future evening, and he charmed her right back. George caught Soames’s eye and received a wry smile from him.

Someone else asked what they were performing, and Lucie announced it again more generally, and Irene sat to the piano. Lucie raised her violin.

George circled the room and came to rest where he could watch the musicians’ faces. Soames was turning pages for the two women. The expression on Soames’s face was interesting: his brows were furrowed, and he looked almost angry, but he was clearly not angry. He was concentrating deeply, George suspected. George recognised the piece; he’d heard Lucie and Irene play it several times before, rehearsing. Ah, that was Soames’s problem: he always said that he didn’t understand Fauré at all. Soames’s mistake was, in George’s opinion, trying to understand the music in the first place. It went on round one and the job was to relax and get along with it, whatever it was. For example, this music was easy to get on with because two lovely women were playing it; it wasn’t great thundering military music; it didn’t require him to sing. It was even pretty at moments. George knew himself to be shallow about music and he was at peace with this.

M Béranger appeared at his elbow quietly. “May I have a word with you, mon cher ami, George?”

“Certainly, sir. I have been wishing to have a word with you as well.” He had, and now was the moment. He was ready to do it.

Béranger beckoned him to the side of the room, where they were out of the way of the people interested in listening to the music. He tucked his arm into George’s, which made him slightly uneasy, and said, “We have very much enjoyed your company these last months at the salon. My daughter’s face is brighter when you are in attendance.”

They both looked across the room at the piano, where Lucie was playing the violin, and making that charming little bowing motion with her shoulders she sometimes did when the music moved her, the one she kept trying to eliminate from her playing. George found his own face brightening. He turned back to Lucie’s father.

“Monsieur, I have been wanting to speak—”

“Ah, but George, mon ami, I have a question for you first!” M Béranger released him and stepped back.

George raised his eyebrow. He was now experienced enough with business negotiations to hear the start of one. He said merely, “Oh?”

“Indulge me, please, by answering a few questions about London neighbourhoods. I know you are informed about them! I hear that your cousin at the piano, that most beautiful woman who was at the Conservatoire with my daughter, lives in South Kensington. Tell me, is that a desirable neighbourhood?”

George blinked and smoothly changed his mode from suitor into collector of house property. “Quite. It’s not Mayfair, but it’s perfect for someone like Cousin Irene.”

“Why is this?”

George blinked again, for surely Béranger knew this. “South Kensington—not Kensington, mind—is full of established professionals and educated sorts, rising men. It’s close to Albert Hall, the Museum, and the Park. Good houses, pretty architecture. The crescent my cousins are on is particularly lovely.”

“A good house for a young couple?”

George now knew what M Béranger was about. He said, “Topping. Just right for a man with Cousin Soames’s income, newly married, perhaps with a new family.”

“Ah, now you have stepped close to my question. The friend I have in mind wishes to be half of such a young couple, and I would see him settled in a neighbourhood such as that. What sort of situation must he be in before he considers it?”

George’s eyebrow twitched again. “Looking for the bien biens, eh? Rack rents in South Kensington are about a hundred to a hundred and fifty, depending on where. I’d recommend nine hundred to a thousand a year to start, with enough capital saved to decorate and furnish. The amount needed there depends on taste. My cousin launched out. Ah, mon cousin a dépensé sans compter.”

“A thousand a year? That seems like a reasonable expectation,” M Béranger said. “For my friend.”

How unfortunate a wretch was he that he knew the answer to the pound, and knew exactly how short his own income was of this mark.

“Je vous comprends,” George said, switching to French to match Béranger again. “A professional should reach such an income easily.”

“It is a certainty. And one would certainly hope that he would have a good sum to settle on his wife. I am told that her family is requesting enough that she have two hundred a year, so that she might be well provided for. Ah, they reach the conclusion.”

George joined in the general applause. He couldn’t recall hearing a single note after M Béranger started speaking to him.

M Béranger rested a hand on his shoulder. “It is good we have had this talk, George. Please do continue to make my daughter smile, and also bring your lovely cousin to play as often as possible. But I shall deliver that invitation myself now.”

And with that Béranger was off, on his way to say pleasant and almost certainly sincere things to Irene, for the Fauré had sent the room into intense raptures. The salon-goers George knew to be especially interested in music and French composers were at the piano in animated conversation with the two performers. George smiled wryly to himself. The fox had out-foxed him and out-negotiated him in about as much time as it had taken him to realise what was happening.

Something to aspire to.

Two hundred a year. What was that, six thousand? Damnation. But if he kept working, he’d reach it with enough of a cushion. Soames’s investments had a way of progressing steadily, but it wouldn’t be overnight. On the other hand, the man had as good as told him he knew he was courting, and given him his blessing to continue. Had he won or lost this negotiation? There was no such thing, Parkes had told him once. Both sides had to feel satisfied or the man would never do business with you again, and who wanted that?

George blew out a long breath.

He made his way nearer to Lucie, who was packing away her violin. He watched her shuffle sheet music into order and tuck it away, while making animated conversation with her guests. Next came a poetry recitation; Lucie introduced the fellow who was to do it, then found her way to a quiet corner. George arrived at her side with a glass of wine in his hand for her.

“It was lovely as always,” he said, in English, quietly.

“Thank you, George,” she said, and accepted the glass.

“Lucie, do you have a moment?”

She looked round the room and pressed her lips together. “Tonight is quite difficult.”

“I understand.”

Lucie touched his arm very briefly. “I must go and speak with the Ambassador’s wife now; she seems to be leaving. Stay for supper afterwards. Soames and Irene will as well.”

“Right you are.”

George watched her make her way through her father’s salon on light footsteps, pausing now and then to accept thanks for the performance earlier. She truly did own his heart, and he needed to sit with her and simply hold her hand. Nothing to do but listen to this poem and work out how much of it he understood and if he could hear it as poetry or not. Cracking difficult, he expected.

He found his way over to Soames, who he hoped would be more baffled by French poetry than he, and stood with him while the fellow read his poem. It was part of La Légende des Siècles by Victor Hugo. Hugo had turned eighty earlier in the year, and the salon’s more homesick members had been honouring the man by reading from his work at least once a month. This poem was historical, as far as George could make out, and not particularly interesting. He could not hear what made it poetry, not well enough to feel he had it understood. He could appreciate good old Willy Shakers when spoken, and he’d memorised more Lewis Carroll than he wanted to admit simply so he could recite it at Lucie and make her laugh, but apparently he was not ready for France’s most fêted writer.

The reading came to an end, and there was spirited applause and then a buzz of conversation rising again.

George scouted round the room and spotted a fellow he’d been introduced to last time, a newcomer to London who’d wanted to talk Richmond Park riding and seemed to be in need of a house. Best not waste this opportunity to talk about one of his favourite pastimes while getting on with that work. George ambled on over to do his own sort of negotiation; it would pass the time before supper.

George had recently become a regular at the suppers that followed M Béranger’s salon, another sign that his courtship was advancing without a word spoken about it. There were only eight people in attendance that evening, an intimate group, and the conversation was warm and casual in consequence. The meal was light, and Béranger’s wine good as always.

This evening he was lucky enough to take Lucie in, or perhaps Lucie had decided to arrange it that way to please both of them. It was a pleasure to touch her, however formally, and hold her chair, and have an excuse to lean towards her and talk to her and no one else. They were seated in the French fashion, with the host and hostess seated facing each other at the middle of the table, not at the ends. This gave George a very good view of M Béranger talking to his dinner partner, Irene.

“Your father is enjoying trying to flirt with Irene,” George said, quietly.

Lucie looked across the table at her father. George saw the fond look on her face. She answered him equally quietly. “I don’t believe it is flirting, precisely. He is exerting himself to be especially charming, because he wishes her to perform again. This is how he practises his art.”

George picked at his food. He still couldn’t talk to her in private. How was he supposed to open his heart to her like this? He sighed and drank some wine. It was a very good dry burgundy, a Chambertin unless he missed his guess.

Lucie said, still quietly, “I am reminded: Did you have a pleasant negotiation with my father?”

“Negotiation? How the devil did you know that? You were playing!”

Lucie smiled at him. “I have watched him at work too often to miss it.”

“He stole a march on me. Didn’t know we were boxing and he’d already knocked me out of time.” George mimed his head snapping back, and Lucie laughed.

George remembered one of the things he had wanted to ask. “Do you know what you’re playing at my sister’s tea? She said something about you and Irene and one of her fourpenny foreigners.”

“Yes! We’ll be playing Mozart, a piano trio. It should be pleasant.”

“I should like you to meet my parents,” George said, and flushed as he said it.

“It would be lovely to meet them,” Lucie said. “It would be—I get ahead of myself.”

George looked down at his plate. He too hoped, but he also was getting ahead of himself.

Lucie’s father spoke up for a moment, with a voice intended for Lucie. “Our piano is a wonderful instrument indeed, Madame Forsyte, but I fear my dearest daughter’s violin is not its equal. It is the instrument we gave her when she went away to the Conservatoire, and she has outgrown it—out-learned it and out-paced it.”

Irene said, “You must then find her a better one. Chanot is here in London, as is Hill. I’m told they make fine violins.”

“You would suggest English luthiers to me? Chanot is French, at least.”

Irene laughed, and Béranger began talking of Pleyel and Érard.

“Is he trying to charm you?” George said, to Lucie, again very quietly.

“Perhaps. He is also right. My instrument is only adequate. I wonder if he is planning something.”

She did have a fond look on her face as she said this, and this made George feel better disposed towards M Béranger than he had earlier in the evening. Settlements were about protecting one’s daughter, after all.

3. Francie’s musical tea

On a Saturday shortly afterwards, Irene and Soames were conveyed in a hansom cab from their home in South Kensington to their uncle Roger’s in Prince’s Gardens nearby, just south of the Park. They had been invited to one of Cousin Francie’s musical teas, and Irene would be performing. Under her arm was the sheet music for a Mozart chamber piece for piano, violin, and cello. She’d rehearsed it earlier in the week with Lucie and a Bohemian cellist Francie had been sponsoring, and again that morning. Soames had not heard it yet, and she was looking forward to his reaction.

They were on time, and Roger’s butler ushered them up to the drawing room with other guests who’d arrived with them. The space had been rearranged to accommodate musicians and the piano at one end of the room, with seats for guests and tables for tea things at the other.

“It looks different like this,” she murmured to Soames.

“The room is nearly the whole storey,” he said. “They hold balls here too.”

Irene squeezed his arm. So much money! A mansion with room for a ball and a musical tea with the Forsytes and all their connections attending.

Francie was well-known for these musical teas. Irene had performed once before, and Francie had been delighted. She’d confessed to Irene that she wanted to know Irene and all her musical friends, so both Lucie and Miss Whitford had been invited to the tea to perform. Francie’s taste in music was not Irene’s, but Irene did appreciate that Francie cared about musicians, and could recognise skill when she heard it. She had therefore welcomed Francie’s overtures with open arms. So had Lucie, but for the additional reason that she wished to know George’s family better. Or so she’d confided to Irene.

Lucie was playing, so of course George had promised he would be there. He still kept a room in the familial mansion, so attending could be a simple matter of dressing properly and walking downstairs. And indeed he did so, to the surprise of the Forsytes in the room. He came over to greet Irene and shake Soames’s hand, and seemed to be on his best behaviour.

Irene watched him with some amusement as he made his way through the guests, behaving as if he were the host, politely welcoming them all. He was, as always, especially charming to his aunt Emily, Soames’s mother, who he always claimed was his favourite aunt. George was, however, being studiously cool and polite to a degree that itself invited comment. He greeted Mlle Béranger with calm distance, and immediately moved on to greet Miss Whitford. He was too distant to be believably George; her cousin was many things, but frosty was not among them. Or so Irene thought. She suspected she knew George’s heart better than some of the cousins who’d known him all his life.

Francie got them started with one of her popular songs and then a performance of the lively “Kensington Coil”, which brightened the faces of the aunts, who had heard it many times. Even Aunt Ann applauded the work of “our dear Francie.” Irene went with Soames to pay their respects to Aunt Ann, and subject themselves to her kind yet unsparing analysis of whether they were happy or not. Apparently she was satisfied with what she saw, for she drew Irene down for a kiss and whispered that Soames looked as content as she’d ever seen him. And was there any news of—? No? Such a pity.

Irene did not want to discuss this topic with Aunt Ann, not today. She escaped and made her way over to Winifred for a much less demanding and intrusive greeting. Winifred looked well, just beginning to be in an interesting condition with her second child. Irene knew, though most of the room did not yet know; the two sisters by marriage had become quite close. She had been asking Winifred to tell her what it was like, carrying a child, nursing one, and Winifred had been open with her. Now the two of them watched George introducing Lucie to his mother and leaned their heads together to comment quietly.

“She’s a little slip of a thing, but she has a way with her,” Winifred said. “Most spirited. Is what they say—?”

“What are they saying?”

“Well, about George. He’s here, for one thing. I would never have credited it if I weren’t looking at him myself. Goodness me.”

Irene watched George from under her eyelashes. He hadn’t kept up the pretence of indifference for longer than five minutes. He was in fact utterly failing if he wanted to keep his feelings hidden, for he was watching Lucie with a smile on his face that was entirely transparent. He was happy to listen to her, happy to watch her, happy merely to be in her presence. Well, there was nothing to be done about that.

“I am looking at him as well. He certainly seems pleased with something.”

Winifred said, “And it is most obvious what, or rather who. Mrs Roger seems to have noticed it. I do wonder what Uncle Roger will think.”

“Whatever he thinks, we shall hear it relayed at a shout.”

Winifred laughed, then kissed her cheek and moved on to greet a cousin’s wife Irene knew less well. Irene herself went over to stand with Rosalyn Whitford and learn how things were going with her. Another musician played, and then a third. Rosalyn went up to the piano to take her turn with some drawing-room safe Chopin.

Irene looked briefly round the room for Soames, and found him standing discreetly to the side of the crowd, set apart, where he could observe and listen quietly without being noticed. She caught his eye and smiled at him, and was rewarded by his downcast gaze and a smile in return. Irene found her way through the crowd at the tea to his side. She wound her arm through his. “Is all well?”

“I cannot say I enjoyed the piece that fellow with the cello played.”

“It was his own composition,” Irene said, with a little smile that made Soames’s lips twitch under his clipped moustache, exactly as she had wished. He did look good with the moustache; it balanced his chin somewhat. “We shall be playing a Mozart trio that you will enjoy more, I think.”

“Oh?”

“Most importantly, Lucie is being introduced to the Rogers, and Francie is making much of her.”

“Good,” Soames said. “When do you play?”

“Next, I think.”

“Oh,” he said. His face said everything Irene needed to hear from him, as did his little squeeze of her arm in his. He would say almost nothing to her while they were here, and ask his questions about the piece later, when they were at home. She wanted to kiss him, as always, because of that smile, but could not. She settled for touching his hand and returning his smile with her own warm look.

Irene slipped away from him and went to Lucie, who stood near the piano with her bow and rosin in hand. She greeted Irene with a kiss on the cheek and then tucked the rosin away in her violin case.

“I do not need it; I merely pass the time fussing with it,” Lucie said, in French. “J’ai le trac.”

“This is nothing you have not done before a thousand times,” Irene said, with her hand on Lucie’s. “We have prepared, and we all three know the piece well.”

“But here! In the house of his family! With his mother and his father listening!”

Irene looked round the drawing room, seeking out specific faces. “I am not certain of his father. Ah, no, there is Uncle Roger, by the mantelpiece. You will play beautifully. You have done the work.”

“As will you, my dearest friend. Ah, I shall relax and simply do my best. The music deserves the attention today. Mozart is charming. Always a pleasure.”

“And our cellist is a most skilled musician.”

Francie approached the two women and asked if they were ready. Irene stepped up to the piano—another Broadwood, of course—and adjusted the bench to her liking. The cellist appeared from the balcony, smelling of caporals, a very Parisian scent for her. She did not like cigarettes, and was glad Soames did not smoke as a habit, but this scent took her back to her time in Paris, and that was a sweet feeling.

The man smiled at Francie and settled into his chair, cello and bow in hand, Mozart on the stand before him. Lucie was playing without consulting her part. Irene had a score on the piano stand that she did not truly need, but Francie was set to turn pages.

Francie cleared her throat, then called the drawing room to attention. She said, “This next piece is Mozart’s piano trio in E major, the first movement. Our performers are Mrs Soames Forsyte, Mademoiselle Lucie Béranger, and Monsieur Vilém Slavík.”

The three of them had got on well in rehearsals. The cellist Slavík had a lovely delicate touch with Mozart. Irene had enjoyed playing with him, and of course playing with Lucie had become comfortable; they were now easily able to find communion with each other and with the music. She suspected Soames would be able to find his way into this piece, and was looking forward to his comments in private afterwards. He usually found it easier to grasp the more intimate pieces, and chamber works were nearer to his understanding than the full orchestral ones.

She looked about the room during a slower moment and was amused to note their three loyal admirers standing together: Soames, George, and dear Uncle Jolyon. She reminded herself to give Uncle Jolyon a kiss afterwards, and ask him what he thought of the Mozart, and if he would wish to join them for Neumann’s Nibelungen Ring performance next month. She did hope he would.

There was polite applause when the Mozart was done, loudest from their three admirers. It was not the thrill of concert performance, but it was something, and Irene knew it was well above the level of the usual drawing room playing. The cellist knew this as well, and said so to the two women, in French, which he spoke rather better than English. They returned the compliment, and then there were pleasant exchanges with other listeners. Francie announced the next piece. Irene’s part in the tea was now done, and she gratefully retired into the audience to give Uncle Jolyon that kiss and be rewarded with his delighted smile. She then sat to drink tea and eat a bit of tea cake as her own reward, with Soames, George, Lucie, and Uncle Jolyon sitting with her. Some cousin was playing Mendelssohn in the background while they made quiet conversation.

“What do you think of the audience of Forsytes, Cousin Irene?” said George.

“They listened most politely,” she said, with some irony.

“Chamber music is a bit rarefied,” said Uncle Jolyon.

“I enjoyed that piece,” said Soames. “The instruments were conversing with one another.” And that was as Irene had expected; his ear had advanced over the last months.

“It helps that you enjoy Mozart,” she said to him.

“He’s champagne,” Soames said, looking down.

Lucie said, “Very good! I like this idea of Mozart. Champagne. This was the drier variety.”

“I like champagne in all its forms,” said George, and he smiled at Lucie, who smiled back at him.

“But George, it is a joke about chamber music being dry, you understand.”

George covered his face with a hand. “I didn’t notice. I simply enjoyed it without thinking about it.”

“Mozart is easy to enjoy,” said Uncle Jolyon. He raised one formidable white eyebrow at her and tipped his head in the direction of George and Lucie. They were now looking at each other and not at anything else in the room. Irene smiled, held Uncle Jolyon’s gaze, and touched a raised forefinger to her lips.

“Later,” she said to him, very quietly.

When the Mendelssohn was over, Irene stood and drew her uncle over to the side.

Uncle Jolyon spoke first. “Am I much mistaken, or is George sweet on your violinist friend?”

“We are not making a fuss. His father—”

“Roger will have a fantod. It does explain why the boy suddenly settled down. Well, he’s a better man than his older brother. Sweet-tempered, and a good judge of wine. And of women.” At that Uncle Jolyon gave her a fond look. “Roger is all bark and no bite.”

“Mrs Roger will be delighted by it, I suspect.”

“You women always are.”

“Uncle Roger will come round when she persuades him.”

“Bah! Of course he will. Every man wants his boys settled down. But how are you? I’ve not seen you for a little while.”

“Soames has a client in Cheshire who invited us to stay. It was a pleasant visit; they are a lovely family. We had a refreshing time away from London.”

Uncle Jolyon studied her for a moment, then gave her a genuine smile. “I’m glad you’re happy. He’s climbing, I take it.”

“He seems pleased with business, and tells me he has had to turn clients away because he does not have enough clerks just at present. He is both training and hiring them. But tell me, Uncle Jolyon, how is dear June?”

“Complaining about school and how they won’t let her study what she wants. She has strong opinions, that one. No trouble working when she wants to, but if she doesn’t want to! Well, I get letters. From the school as well as from her.”

Irene laughed. “June will be a force of nature when full-grown.”

“For good or for ill.” Uncle Jolyon sighed. “About as unlike her father as possible.”

“I have never met him,” Irene said quietly, for he seemed sad about it. She had of course been told the story, several times over, each retelling coloured by the personality of the tale-teller. It would be hard on her uncle to be cut off from his son, or so she surmised.

“No, I suppose not. Well, he’s an amiable chap, too tolerant if you ask me. June’s still angry with him. Picked it up from her mother.”

“Poor girl. It must be hard to have lost both parents.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for her. June knows what she wants. She’s a Forsyte through and through.” He seemed to be grumbling in a perfunctory way, as if knowing he was complaining about the sun rising in the morning.

Irene laughed, and went up on her toes to kiss Uncle Jolyon’s cheek above his moustaches. She was very fond of him and June both. She then turned her attention to George and Lucie, who had stopped gazing at each other and were now talking with Soames about something.

“You’re matchmaking,” Uncle Jolyon said, with mock accusation in his voice.

“Nonsense,” Irene said. “They’ve done that themselves. What I am doing is looking at my husband and thinking fond thoughts about him. Oh! I do not wish to forget this. Shall you attend the Nibelungen Ring with us next month? I would be so happy if you would. I have been playing Liszt’s Wagner transcriptions, and they are so intense and grand I long to hear the whole of it.”

He sighed. “Can I resist an invitation from you? No. I shall hear Wagner with you, and find out what it’s all about.”

“Lovely. I shall ask Soames to arrange it, and we shall have a marvellous time.” Irene squeezed his arm. She most definitely had a favourite uncle.

“Here comes Roger,” Uncle Jolyon said. “Ready to huff and puff.”

Uncle Roger had made his way over to where his son sat, and was being introduced to Lucie. Very likely introduced a second time, for surely the two had met at her wedding? But perhaps Uncle Roger did not remember. The champagne had been both good and plentiful at the wedding breakfast, and Uncle Roger had been much celebrated for his part in the toast to her as the bride. Irene excused herself to Uncle Jolyon and went to Uncle Roger now, for she believed in rewarding kind-hearted behaviour from Soames’s family.

“How d’ye do,” Uncle Roger was saying to Lucie.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Forsyte,” said Lucie, most politely.

“You’re very handy with that violin,” he said to her. “Francie tells me you are a friend of Mrs Soames from some Conservatory.”

“The Conservatoire de Paris, yes,” Lucie said. “I studied violin there.”

“Ah, here she is. A pleasure as always to see you, Mrs Soames.”

“And you too, Uncle Roger. I’m very happy to see that Cousin George has introduced you to Mademoiselle Béranger. She is a most wonderful friend.”

Roger cocked an eyebrow at Lucie. “I saw you at the Soameses’ wedding, didn’t I.”

“Mademoiselle Béranger was a bridesmaid, Uncle.”

“You don’t say,” Roger said. He took a second look at Lucie. “Oh. That’s right. Well, if my daughter has you in her clutches to play at her teas, I’ll be seeing more of you, I’m sure. Don’t let Francie bully you.”

George said, “Miss Béranger, allow me to introduce you to my brother Thomas.”

Irene watched with some amusement as George got himself and Lucie away from his father as rapidly as possible. She turned back to her Uncle Roger and gave him her most soothing smile.

“Hmm,” said Roger. “She’s a pretty thing. What’s she doing in London?”

“Her father is a diplomat in the embassy here,” Irene said.

“That was a cross round her neck, wasn’t it.”

“It was, yes.” Irene had seen it round Lucie’s neck so often she’d stopped noticing it, but it came to her now what Uncle Roger would see when he looked at it.

Roger smoothed down a whisker and cast a bilious look at the piano where somebody was playing. “Never known that boy to like music.”

And with that, Uncle Roger was off. Irene watched him arrow his way across the room to Francie, no doubt to quiz her on what she knew about Lucie. She would have to ask Soames which way he thought Roger would jump. They would have quite a lot to discuss this evening.

Irene immediately made her way to Lucie, and took her away from George, under the pretext of needing to arrange their next rehearsal. Lucie knew this for a pretext, but took her arm and followed her lead away. The two women stood in a far corner, where they would not disturb the pianist, and compared notes.

“I have met his family now. They are pleasant enough. His mother stared at my cross.”

“His father noticed it, too.”

Lucie made a thoughtful sound, and Irene could see her considering them all. “George says he shouts and then calms down about everything. It seems strange.”

“He is a Forsyte brother,” Irene replied. “Each brother swears that the others are hopeless eccentrics and he is the only sensible one.”

“Yes, I see this. But I also see why George worries.”

“Uncle Jolyon told me just now that Uncle Roger is all bark and no bite.”

Lucie smiled. “Chien qui aboie ne mord pas. Perhaps he will bark at us, then lick our hands and be happy.”

Irene slipped her arm through Lucie’s. “Much ado about nothing. He will never understand what your Conservatoire prize means, but he will understand that his son is happy. Let us go and speak further with my uncle Jolyon, who will understand both.” And indeed, Uncle Jolyon was properly appreciative, and Lucie was delighted by him.

That evening, Irene and Soames discussed the Mozart over dinner, as well as Uncle Jolyon’s acceptance of their invitation to the performances of the Ring operas. Soames looked askance at German opera, but had enjoyed the Wagner transcriptions she’d played for him, so he was cautiously looking forward to this. He had been awkward in their first months of opera-going with Uncle Jolyon, but had relaxed and stopped bracing himself for whatever he had been fearing. The two of them got on well now.

After dinner, they sat near the fire in the drawing room, in chairs drawn close enough to let them touch if they wished. Soames slowly drank his nightly whisky and soda; Irene held a Victor Hugo novel that she intended to read, but had not yet been able to bring herself to start. Irene mentioned Roger’s reaction to Lucie. Soames replied that he thought Roger would come round eventually, but would need to rumble first, as well as reassure himself that George meant it and would stick to it. Irene privately worried about the religion; she did not mention this to Soames as she suspected he would not understand it.

When they retired to bed, they lay awake and discussed in quiet voices another topic that had been on her mind, the question of children. Irene knew Soames longed for children but had remained silent, waiting for her to decide that she was ready. She had decided she was, and told him so. If he was ready, she was willing.

He was ready, he said. And conversation ceased.

4. Dance at Roger’s

Balls were now most likely to spontaneously erupt at George’s father’s home and at the home of the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, for those were the two of the Forsyte brothers with unmarried daughters remaining. Shortly after the musical tea, Mrs Roger’s latest ball came off, attended by the younger Forsyte generation, filled out with a full selection of Francie’s lovers and all the suitable young persons of their acquaintance. Lucie was invited, as an eligible young lady now firmly in the family’s grasp and established as desirable for their young men to know.

Fortunate indeed, if your name was George Forsyte.

George had not attended a single one of these balls before, having established a habit of being at his club playing billiards with Dartie instead, but he shocked his mother by announcing his intention to attend and drink all of her champagne cup. He then pronounced that he would take a dance card for himself and ask ladies to sign his card for the privilege of a rare dance with him.

Eustace glowered at George, for he was in that state of youth where every public jest offended his foppish, over-elegant soul, and breaches of form were not to be countenanced. George grinned at his younger brother and left him dangling in uncertainty about whether he meant it or not, like a sentence with an unfinished clause.

But on the evening of, he appeared dressed properly and sober, having sent flowers to Lucie that afternoon for her to wear in her hair if she wished. He indeed took a dance card, which made Francie laugh. Francie had always had a wicked streak, and he’d loved making her laugh when they were children. He flaunted his dance card about and announced that if the ladies wanted a dance with him, they needs must sign for the privilege, this occasion only, future dances not guaranteed.

The room that had been arranged for the musical tea was now cleared for dancing, with the carpet rolled up and taken away for the evening. Little tables lit by candles were set at the sides where chaperones might sit, and by the piano were music stands for a handful of musicians. The gaslight was lowered to a level conducive to courting, and the champagne cup was plentiful.

George knew how to dance perfectly well, having been sent to the same academy all the young Forsytes had been sent to, to learn all the dances a young gentleman was required to know. He hadn’t danced a single step since those lessons and had once fully intended never to dance a single step again for the rest of his life. But here he was, negotiating with Francie’s friends and six or so other Forsyte acquaintances, solemnly informing them that yes he meant it, if they wanted to dance with him they would need to sign his dance card.

He went to Lucie first, of course, and arranged for her to sign his card for two waltzes. They then conspired to mark the dance before the second waltz as taken by a mysterious illegible partner, so that they might have a moment together.

While he stood to the side, smirking at the consternation round him, Cousin Irene found him and accosted him, if one could call a light touch on the arm from that woman being accosted. She was smiling, and George could not help but respond. There was a freedom in flirting with a gorgeous woman whose heart they both knew belonged to her husband; she was so playful. And they both enjoyed discomfiting Soames by giving him unexpected moments of pleasure. She knew in turn that his heart belonged to Lucie, and quietly carried messages for them. The result was a surprising friendship. George had not previously known that he could have a woman as a friend. He’d thought friendship reserved for men in one’s club, with whom one played billiards and drank.

But here she was, his unlikely friend, the wife of a second unlikely friend, resting her hand on his arm.

“I’m told you have a dance card,” Irene said, her eyes sparkling.

“I do.” He produced it from his pocket.

“Pray, let me see it. Ah, excellent. I have claimed a dance.”

“I’m surprised you have any open dances on your card, dear cousin.”

“I reserved a dance for you.”

“I blush!”

“There, my name is written. Perhaps you will write yours on mine, so that I might say my card is filled out.”

George scribbled his name against the only open spot, a lancers after the first waltz he had reserved for Lucie. “There. I look forward to it, dear cousin.”

“And I too. Pray you behave.”

“I never do what I ought,” George said.

But he behaved, and found that it was not so objectionable to dance with a succession of girls in pretty frocks and anticipate what it would be like to touch Lucie later on in the evening. Now that his heart was in pleasant shackles, he could ignore all attempts by his mother to match-make and simply enjoy whatever was going on, all the flirtations and drama and young men passing over the wall-flowers with whom he’d dance later.

After two dances he was glad he’d reserved the spot before his first dance with Lucie for a cool drink, marked on his card with the initials “ACD”. He wanted a slow walk round the paddock with a blanket on him, that’s what he wanted. He was in bad condition. He needed to walk more. Ride more. Get out into the country and jump more. He’d given it up to save money and he regretted it greatly now. Did Lucie ride? How had he never asked? Perhaps he could teach her. That would be perfection.

He took a slow perambulation round the room to find himself more champagne cup and let his lather subside. While serving himself he encountered his younger brother Eustace, dressed in the extreme of the fashion with a perfect buttonhole. He was squiring round a most aesthetic young woman who also happened to have a tidy inheritance coming her way, perfect for a life of elegant leisure if Eustace did not wish to find any sort of profession with which to occupy himself. George saluted the pair of them and asked his brother how he found the races this week, and if he’d won anything or if he’d lost it all at baccarat first. Eustace spluttered at him, and George wandered away while Eustace tried to explain to his companion that he didn’t gamble at all, never had, no, he was not that sort at all.

The next dance was his first waltz with Lucie.

Waltzing was not what he had remembered. What he had remembered as waltzing was an awkward and embarrassing closeness to a girl whom he had not known well, who was dancing with him because she’d been assigned to him. He’d danced because he’d been compelled, because his mother had wanted all her children able to meet the right people and then marry properly. He’d stepped on the girl’s feet and she’d stepped on his, and gradually they’d learned not to. They’d practised the steps until they’d been second nature, then practised them more until they’d both had some semblance of grace. He’d studiously avoided meeting her eyes, and she his.

He’d hated it. He’d rather have been riding.

This waltzing! This waltzing was different. This was riding a horse he knew well to the hunt, feeling it spring over hedges at the least touch of his heels, responding to every shift of his body. Riding was the best comparison he had for this union of minds and bodies he was feeling now, and he felt a fool for it, but there it was. He was looking into Lucie’s eyes, and she was guiding him and he was guiding her and together they were jumping fences and spinning round them or some dashed thing, only instead of smelling horse and leather he was breathing in her perfume. She was wearing the flowers he’d sent and his heart ached in a sweet way to see them in her hair. He was touching Lucie’s waist and hand as gently as possible, gazing into her eyes, and becoming completely lost in how close she was.

The room was full of people circling just as they were. Did they feel this way too? What a rum thought! This was why balls existed. It hadn’t struck him until this very moment, and now it was a facer, another pure facer, to realise that everything he’d believed about himself was wrong.

Then it was over, and they were standing still, looking into each other’s eyes, and he had to take his hand from her waist and that was not what he wanted. He offered Lucie his arm and escorted her to the side of the room where his aunt Emily was sitting.

“May I fetch you two lovely ladies some champagne cup?” he asked, because he was expected to.

“Please do, George,” his aunt said, and Lucie nodded.

He came back with glasses for the two of them and sat beside them, still tingling and dizzy. He thought he might swoon and need smelling salts if his heart continued to ache like this. At least Aunt Emily was sympathetic to his courtship, and was a safe shelter for them.

“Are you two enjoying yourselves?” she asked, with the reassuring smile of an indulgent aunt.

Lucie answered. “Yes, indeed, Madame Forsyte, it is a lovely ball. I have danced every dance except I cannot dance the quadrilles.”

“No?”

“I have never learned them! I had a music master but not a dancing master, so I am imperfectly taught. I learned only some dances.”

“Would that I had never learned them!” George said. “Though I am about to dance one with my fair cousin Irene, and if I cannot dance with you, Irene will console me.”

Emily set down her glass. “You always make me laugh, George.”

“This is why you love me, Aunt.”

“I can’t deny it, George. Now, dance. I’ll console dear Lucie while Irene consoles you.”

George went to find Irene, who was in turn on her way to find him. They made their way to the dance floor and were scooped up by three other couples looking for a fourth. The lancers, in George’s opinion, was one of the most absurd dances known to man, but at least it offered magnificent opportunity for conversation.

“Remind me how this goes,” he said to Irene.

“You seem to remember perfectly well.”

“I wish I didn’t. It’s just walking forward and back and then spinning round.”

“I see quite through you. You are enjoying yourself.”

George grinned happily at her. “Did I see you waltzing with Soames just now?”

“You did.”

George arched a brow. “Isn’t that bad form?”

“He told me it is, and then he told me he would forever regret it if he did not waltz with me at least once every ball we attend, so we have waltzed. I insisted he dance with others to atone for it, preferably girls who would otherwise not be dancing.”

“Poor devil.” George was of course doing the same, simply to be contrary.

“He seems to think it is not a punishment. He will never admit it, but he enjoys dancing. Did I see you waltzing with Lucie just now?”

“You did, and I fear you will again.”

“The room is already abuzz. You must take care to waltz with others, Cousin George.”

“The very thought makes me miserable. I have avoided this fate diligently for years, and now look at me! I am going to sulk.”

“You are not. You are the least sulky man I know.”

“If I did not know how fond you are of Soames, I would suspect you of flirting, but I know better. Thank you, cousin. I do in fact have other young ladies on my dance card for other waltzes. And if anyone throws you over, please give the dance to me.”

“I shall,” said Irene solemnly, “but only if Soames does not want it.”

George smiled at Irene. She was an impish wit in secret, he knew, and he loved watching her tease Soames. George owed a debt to Soames he felt he would never repay, if only because Soames would never allow him. The man would be an utter ass if he even tried. Well, he would be an ass if George tried repaying it in any straightforward way. Soames could be lured into eating and drinking well every now and then, and enjoying life without holding himself back the way he always did. George had resolved to do his best to lure him into it enough to relieve his own conscience about how much Soames had done for him, seemingly on a whim.

After Irene, it was back to ordinary girls and ordinary dances, and what had become an expected state of lather. He was most definitely going to start riding regularly again. He could spare the money now.

It was now the moment for that time-honoured tradition of private balls: the quiet walk in the conservatory for an almost-private talk. Lucie disappeared into it first, and George followed, with just enough of a delay that only people watching for it noticed, which is to say, very likely every single one of the aunts.

George found Lucie near the back of the conservatory, in amongst the spring flowers. He caught her eye and grinned.

“You dance like an Englishman,” Lucie said. She ducked behind the flowers in the conservatory, and George followed her, eager to touch her again after that waltz earlier, to say more gallant words. He found her considering a cluster of azaleas in bloom with a solemn face.

“What does that mean? I haven’t danced in five years at least,” he said, and was relieved by how easily that came out of his mouth. “I am only here to dance with you.”

“Your cousins are indeed shocked by the sight of you, and they are amused by your dance card.”

“Which you have signed your name to.” George produced his dance card with a flourish.

“I indeed did. And I see many other names there now as well!”

“Would that I could have given every dance to you.”

Lucie stopped behind the furthest azalea and gazed at him. They had not been able to talk alone for a fortnight, and George had decided that not talking alone was unbearable. He slid the dance card back into his coat pocket and advanced to her.

“Lucie.”

“Yes?”

“I should like, that is, I want to say—Lucie.” George switched to English because he simply couldn’t manage it properly in French. “This is all backwards and upside-down. Lucie.”

“George.”

He loved the way she said his name, with a soft G and an extra syllable in it that made it sound so much more interesting than it was normally. “Lucie, I am completely gone on you.” He touched her gloved hand. She did not draw it away from his, but blushed and looked down.

“Do you mind?”

“No,” she said. “I think I am gone on you too, as you say. Je suis folle de toi.”

“Would you marry me if I asked?” He said this in English.

“That is a strange question,” she said. “You should ask.”

George closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Veux-tu m’épouser?”

“Oui.” And that was so softly said, so sweetly said, that George had to look into Lucie’s eyes to be sure she’d said it. She had.

George looked round the conservatory rapidly. They were alone, at least for the moment. He gathered her gloved hands in his, and stepped close. He leaned forward and there—she rose to meet him—a first kiss! Too fleeting, a moment and it was over, and they were both looking round themselves, blushing. He wanted a second kiss.

“A thousand damnations, I cannot kiss you properly,” he said. Then, more seriously, “Lucie, I cannot give you a ring.”

“No?”

“Your father—he has not given me permission. I had a most odd conversation with him.”

“I thought your negotiation—”

George chose his words carefully, because he wanted to be sure Lucie understood him. “I had found the courage to ask his permission. But he did not permit me to begin to speak. He asked me many questions about the price of houses, and it became clear he was telling me exactly how much income I had to have first, and what I had to settle on you, without saying it.”

Lucie squeezed his hands, then released them. Woe was he. “You are doing well in business, you say.”

“Yes, but not nearly as well as your father says I must. I need far more capital to settle on you than I have. He wants a thousand a year and six thousand settled.”

“So much?”

“So I’m told.”

“I would be content with less.”

“Your father does not seem to agree.”

“Oh.” Lucie looked thoughtful and not all that happy. Was she unhappy with him?

George bit his lip. “Lucie, I am sorry I am not yet able to meet his standards. It shall not take long—”

Lucie said, “Do not fret, mon chéri. He has priced me, and priced me high. He wants to marry me off well.”

It wasn’t him. It was her father. George wanted a cigar to chew but didn’t have one, so he bit the fingertip of his glove instead. This was a caution. He was on the correct path, he knew. Her father’s demand was at the very highest end of what Soames had guessed, but it was within his reach. If he worked harder, he would meet it sooner. What he need do now was make certain she knew he was hers.

“We shall be quiet then, until I can tell him I have met his standards,” George said. He held his hand over his heart because he could not kiss her again. Call him melodramatic; he did not care. He needed her to know.

“I am yours,” he said. “Silent and true.”

Lucie mirrored him. “And I yours.”

He looked deep into her eyes. What he saw there made him feel things he had not ever imagined feeling. Nothing ever happened to him? What nonsense! Everything had happened to him.

“Je t’aime,” George said.

Dear God, words he’d never imagined saying, not that way, not those words, not ever. He said them again. And then she said them to him, and here he was weak at the knees, as if he’d taken a hard punch and was groggy.

Out in the ballroom, George could hear the little band begin to play something in waltz time. Their time to talk was over.

“This waltz is mine,” George said.

“Ah, no. Your dance card says it is mine.”

“True! We belong to each other.”

“Let us dance it together, therefore.”

George offered her his arm, and they walked out of the conservatory to join the waltz, already begun. If anybody watched them, he did not care; if anybody wondered at them, he did not care; he had finally understood why they taught every boy how to waltz, and why every man ought to want to waltz.

5. The valuation

Days later, George and Parkes were in Earl’s Court, inspecting a house property George had found that was potentially worth snatching up, renovating, and selling again. They were going over it together closely, noting what would need to be done if Parkes decided to buy. George watched Parkes carefully every time they did this. George himself evaluated location and overall architecture smoothly, with the benefit of years of watching his father in action, but Parkes knew things about water tanks, drains, and the soundness of wooden beams. George needed to learn them.

Houses were always so strange in this state, half-abandoned by their financially wrecked owners, horses with saddles on but no rider atop, waiting to have their reins taken in hand again.

George looked at the walls stripped bare, the paper clinging still to the plaster here and there. It was ghostly, a shell of a house, like a jockey’s silks with no colours at all. Wrong way to think about it. He was looking at it without all the gewgaws in the way, all the fancy tack and blankets. He could look at the gee itself, at the rooms and passages, the sightlines. George looked, and thought about conformation. The bones of the building looked good with nothing distracting him.

“We should hire a decorator,” George said, suddenly. “Make up the houses before selling them. Let the punter imagine himself sitting in an au courant drawing room.”

“I don’t employ decorators,” Parkes said.

“Something to consider,” George said. “Paint the walls, hang some copies of paintings, haul in some hired furniture. Like a stage set.”

Parkes grunted. “Show the house as they might live in it. That’s capital thinking.”

Parkes reached up and stroked the ends of his moustache. He was quite good-looking, in George’s estimation, and it was no mystery why he had all those women willing to share his attention part-time. He also charmed men somehow. George learned about prospects differently from how Parkes did, by lunching with them and gossiping. Parkes had some kind of magnetism that worked on men and women both that was pleasurable to watch, if mystifying.

George said, “Been thinking about how to do better selling the things.”

“We’re doing quite well, I think. You’ve helped expand what I’ve been able to consider exactly as I’d hoped. One of our bets hasn’t paid off yet, which is unfortunate but not yet a problem. Other than that, I’ve done well following your nose.”

Parkes wasn’t looking at him, and George wasn’t sure if he was doubting or simply distracted by the state of the back stairs.

“I keep my eyes and ears open,” he said, and tried to see whatever it was Parkes was staring at in the back stairs. They looked perfectly normal to him. They were stairs, going up, narrower than the main stairs, which were quite narrow to begin with, but quite sound. He looked at Parkes, and said, “What about the stairs?”

“A creak in one or two steps, but they’re otherwise sound. Listen as we walk up.”

George tuned his ears and listened, and heard the creaks. A better sort of tenant would want the back steps silent, and that was why Parkes was listening as they climbed. He nodded to himself. A small lesson learned.

“I heard some gossip,” Parkes said, as they emerged into the garret.

George held his finger under his nose but sneezed anyway. It was dusty up here. It was also bare and unpleasant. That could be remedied easily. He said, “Gossip? Do tell.”

“I heard three versions of what happened at a private ball this weekend. Our own dear Irene was mentioned in two of them, as having introduced her bridesmaid to the family—a French girl if you please, daughter of a diplomat living in London. In one version, this French girl is quite respectable.”

George tipped his head back, as if considering this news afresh. “I believe we both met this young lady at an excellent dinner when Cousin Soames was first engaged. A most interesting filly, if I recall correctly. What are the other versions?”

“In the second, she is an artistic sort, a violinist. Quite irregular.” Parkes frowned at the garret. “I have nothing here, other than the cracked window pane and a general need of being made suitable for respectable servants. Let’s go down the main stairs.”

George went down the steps to the third storey, listening for creaks. None. As they emerged from the stairs onto the hall with the spare bedrooms and sewing room or whatnot, he said, “Can’t be having artistic sorts among the Forsytes. Cousin Irene only passes because all the uncles are distracted by how she looks in evening dress.”

Parkes snorted. “The third version is quite shocking, in that it is whispered that a young Forsyte cousin is romantically linked with her, and was seen dancing with her. This was even more surprising in that this particular young man is a sworn bachelor who has never before attended his parents’ balls.”

“I am thoroughly shocked. She must be extraordinary, to have tempted a Forsyte bachelor.”

Romantically linked, forsooth. No one had overheard them, then, or seen their one kiss. He’d thought it was written all over their faces when they danced that second waltz, but perhaps not.

The walls here had been stripped more thoroughly than most, and the plaster was quite bare. There was nothing to see here of interest. Parkes indicated as much, and they moved down to the second storey, with the main bedroom, the bath, and where a W.C. should be. There was one, and the waste worked. Better than many unoccupied properties. Parkes made a satisfied face. George thought about how the grooms he’d known were always interested in what the other end of the horse was doing. Oats went in; dung came out; what came of that was important business, for horses and houses both.

The bedroom was large, with windows upon the street. George stood in its centre. What would it be like to be decorating a house like this, thinking to live in it after a wedding? It wasn’t grand enough for Béranger, but it was a good space. It occurred to him that other men would think the same.

Parkes stood next to him, hands on hips. “I looked into this story of the Forsyte bachelor, but no one would say anything. My dear school friend Forsyte was quite stonily silent about it, which told me more than all three tales put together.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. A silent Forsyte says far more than an openly voluble Forsyte does. He never does seem to learn this, but I think it is in his nature.”

“He should be careful not to play at cards.”

Parkes laughed outright.

George stopped and pointed out three places in the wall where someone or something had dented the plaster, which had taken some doing. This house was solid construction. Parkes smoothed his moustache and then shrugged. It was easily repaired.

They made their way down to the drawing room on the first storey and walked about inside it, looking round themselves.

George said, “Well, she needs her tail combed out, but her conformation thus far says she can run.”

Parkes said, “Let’s go and look at what matters.”

“The drains,” said George.

“The drains.”

They went all the way down into the kitchen, considered it briefly, then went further back to look at the belly of the house, its digestion. George carried a candle so Parkes could see well enough to contemplate the pipes. Parkes rapped on the soil pipe that led out of the house and into the drains. George had learned how to identify this specific pipe, and was watching and listening to how Parkes evaluated its health, and how much investment the house would need to bring it up to scratch.

Parkes shrugged. “Not quite flowing freely. Will need a look, perhaps some work, but not out of the ordinary.”

George tried his own knuckles on the soil pipe, ear close to it, brow furrowed. Listening to things was not his strong suit, but he would develop it. He could perhaps hear what Parkes meant. His opinion had not changed, and he decided to say so.

“I’d take a flutter on this one. I like her odds. She’s got sound wind”—here George touched the pipes. “No pedigree at all, but that merely improves our odds.”

“A flutter, eh?” said Parkes. “You’re confident, then.”

“Yes,” George said, simply.

“It’s not misplaced. You’ve got a keen eye.”

Parkes said this as if it were of no moment, but George knew Parkes was pleased with the results of their collaboration thus far.

“I should like to take that flutter with my own money,” said George. “Venture shares.”

Parkes turned a valve, listened to water flow, then closed it. “As a regular thing?”

“Yes. I’d like to win some real purses here. Commissions have given me a good start, and I jolly well appreciate them, but I’d like to start building capital.” He had six thousand to make and put away safely, after all.

“An understandable, even laudable goal. Quite Forsyte of you.”

“Blood will tell.”

Parkes grunted. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the coal chute. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, to George’s eye, though perhaps it was how dark it was in the basement. “Speaking of which, I had the oddest visit at my office the other day.”

“You’ve had a thrilling week.”

“Most,” Parkes said. “A fellow named Roger Forsyte called on me. Quite curious about my business. Very interested in what his son was up to and whether he worked or merely lunched.”

“Merely? Lunching is serious business.”

Parkes made that snorting sound of his, then led them back to the kitchen. “He seemed to have a favourable opinion of his son’s overall ability but not of his industry, and to be suspicious of my involvement.”

George wanted to say something cutting, but found it difficult. This was a sign of concern and interest, and who was he to scoff at it? Then he considered what Parkes had said his father was suspicious about.

“Your involvement? Did he use that word?”

Parkes said, “He used different words at different times. Involvement first, then money later, when he’d quite warmed to me.”

“Ah, I feel better now. You did talk to my father, and not to another man claiming to be he.”

“I told him you’d been recommended to me, and had done quite well working on commission finding prospects for me. He spluttered at this news.”

It was now George’s turn to snort. “He never paid me a commission, you see. Free labour from your sons is to be assumed. He was once outraged by Cousin Soames refusing to give him advice about a legal problem gratis.”

Parkes laughed. “Forsyte would never give his services gratis.”

George was well aware that that specific Forsyte in fact would do so for a friend, while continuing to be an utter stuffed owl about everything else. George was in a small circle of fortunates, very likely because he made Irene laugh. He needed no pecuniary excuse to continue doing so: Irene laughing was gorgeous, Lucie laughed when Irene laughed, and Lucie laughing was something else entirely.

He said merely, “He certainly deserves to price his services as he does.”

“Indeed.” Parkes stroked his moustache gently. “Still feel like the flutter on this one?”

George made a thoughtful sound. “Yes. I think the odds are longer than they should be—she’s priced wrong. The location and the house itself are worth more than this.”

“I agree. This is a good first house for venture shares. It’s been a good collaboration. We should do more, and get your accounts rising for whatever it is you’re planning. My own accounts have done well from it, and I should like to continue the arrangement.” Parkes said all this quite coolly, while he looked at the steps up from the kitchen to the back entrance.

George’s chest felt strange. He’d been praised by someone he respected, and he felt it. It was good, and he felt good, and if this continued a moment longer he would find himself saying something earnest. “Right then. I suppose we get my cousin Soames to draw things up?”

“As always.” Parkes turned and rubbed his chin. “I want another look at the entry hall.”

“First impressions?”

“First impressions. I’m thinking about your decorator idea.”

“Men have no imagination. Let’s not require them to have it, but supply it for them.”

The two men went up the kitchen steps to the entry to consider it anew.

6. The Hotch Potch

Young Jolyon sat in the Hotch Potch smoking room, reading the evening papers, smoking a cigarette, in his usual leather armchair at a table under a gas lamp turned high enough for reading. It was a comfortable spot. His chair smelled of well-kept leather and tobacco smoke. The club was an exclusive one, and it came with its masculine comforts. The hush round him, the quiet voices of waiters who walked on felt-soled boots, the silence of members who didn’t pry into one’s life: all was a peaceful relief to a man with two small children and a profession that was anything but steady.

The Hotch Potch was an indulgence, but he had not given it up when he had given up the rest of his life as a gentleman of leisure. Jolyon examined his soul more than most men, and it had never told him why he kept this one piece of his former life. Whatever the reason, he remained a member of the club, and frequented it of an evening to read the papers, speak with acquaintances, and absorb a single brandy while he did so. He did see his cousin George at the club now and then, and they nodded amiably to each other, but they had not spoken often before the rupture, and continued the habit of not speaking after.

Tonight indeed he saw his cousin wander past, looking much as usual, well turned out and pleased with himself. George nodded to him, and Jolyon nodded back, then turned the page of his newspaper. To his surprise, this time George paused, caught his eye, and came over to his little table. Jolyon looked up over the top of his newspaper, cautious.

“Forgive the intrusion,” George said. “Wanted to let you know that Aunt Ann asks after you now and then. If there’s anything you should like me to tell her, I should be happy to pass it on discreetly.”

The newspaper crackled in Jolyon’s hands and he gave George a sceptical look. George spread his hands and quirked a smile. “She asked again today at tea. Not sure how many years the old girl has left in her.”

“I see,” Jolyon said, and set his newspaper down at last. “You may tell our aunt that all four of us are well, and I am quite settled down and making a decent living at insurance. I am touched that she thinks of me, and I am happy to hear she is well.”

“I shall do so.” George gave him a slight bow, and turned to go.

On impulse, Jolyon said, “George, tell me—do you ever see June?” He knew there was a note in his voice that he hadn’t intended, but there it was. He missed June, and his father’s insistence on taking custody of her had been a hard blow.

George turned. “Ah. May I?” George indicated a chair, and Jolyon nodded. George sat, and leaned forward into the light of the gas lamp. Jolyon saw an uncharacteristically serious and thoughtful expression on George’s face. He waited for George to decide to speak.

George finally straightened and smiled, and Jolyon thought it was perhaps a fond smile. “I do see June. She is red-haired and fierce and opinionated and laughs at my jokes. She likes to remind me that the two of us were essential in the weddings of our cousins Winifred and Soames.”

Jolyon froze with his cigarette halfway to his lips, then recovered. He inhaled and blew out slowly. “Soames has married, then, and June carried the bride’s train? I can believe that. What I can’t believe is that you were involved.”

“Ah, but I was a groomsman. Cousin Soames and I are great friends now. Your face has become quite entertaining.”

“Forgive me, but Cousin Soames is not the most amiable of men.”

“But he is. He married a perfectly wonderful woman, and love has exposed the man who was hiding behind the sulk.”

Jolyon considered his burning cigarette. His cousin Soames had never seemed the sort of man to have anything at all worthwhile behind his sulk. But love was a strange thing, and perhaps its wild touch had revealed something long hidden.

George leaned back. “What’s more, June has an intense passion for Mrs Soames. I see her at their home often.”

“Ah, poor little June,” murmured Jolyon. She would be the age for passions like that. Whatever it was June felt, it would be felt most intensely, as hot as the flames of her red hair and her temper. He had never been quite sure how June came to be his daughter, but she most certainly was. There was the stamp of the Forsyte in her face and chin that was unmistakable.

George went on. “Strange things have happened since your departure, Cousin Jo. Irene—that is, Mrs Soames—has brought that exotic and wild influence of art back into the family, and magic is in the air. Your father adores her just as much as June does, for she plays Schubert and Beethoven upon the piano.” George made a gesture with his fingers. “She plays for him often, I believe.”

“My, my,” Jolyon murmured. His heart had quivered when George mentioned his father. He was left to deduce from the lack of news to the contrary that the old man was well. In fact, George had gone out of his way to tell him that his father was happy. Would he ever see either his father or June again? Well, he had made his choice, and his father had made his, and there they were stuck.

Aloud, he said, “I am glad to hear all of this, however much I am surprised by it.”

George said, “I can’t say that the family has changed at heart. Property is still its religion and apostates beware! But it has been at its best of late. It has united in moments of surprising generosity. Cousins have married. Children have been born. Gossip is exchanged. Time passes.”

Jolyon said, “So it does. I don’t miss the aunts’ gossip.”

“There is the difference between us.”

“I should have said it was the horse racing.”

“Alas. The turf has seen less of me recently.”

“Ah, yes. I have not seen Dartie in the club of late.”

“I play billiards with him now and then, but at the Iseeum, not here.”

Jolyon gazed at his cousin through his cigarette smoke. The idea of George not betting on horses was extraordinary. But then, he himself had gone through a period of gambling at university, only ending when his inability to pay his debts of honour had come to the attention of his father. He’d reformed in shame immediately, and never repeated the error. Perhaps even George had grown up.

George’s grin had not lost its rakish tilt, however, as he said, “Well, Cousin Jo, thank you for your news. Aunt Ann will be tickled.” He rose from his chair, and was gone.

Jolyon sat alone, bemused, and stubbed out his cigarette. At least his father had company in his life, and he’d always enjoyed music. The rest of the family did not seem to be moving entirely in the same direction they’d been when he’d seen them last, but was that truly surprising? The billiard balls had been struck by new hands holding the cue.

Young Jolyon lit a second cigarette, an indulgence he saved for these club nights, and smoked it while he read the papers he could not afford to take at home.

7. The uncle

May 1882

George took up riding again, as he’d sworn to himself, and established a relationship with a stable in Richmond Park that would hire him a lively gee with good manners and a liking for a brisk canter now and then. He was happy to exercise himself this way on early mornings. Early morning was a time that had not previously existed in George’s life, and it was a surprise to him to find it enjoyable now to be out at that hour, in the fresh spring air, getting himself back into training. It was wonderful to smell horses and leather and engage in that conversation between man and mount, in the language he’d spent so much of his youth learning to speak.

The gossip about George and that French girl did rage round the family from the evening of the ball at Roger’s onward. It was freely discussed in the drawing room at Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road, turned inside out and examined in all ways. The gossip reached George’s parents and was the subject of hot debate over their dinner table, with the parents and the younger Rogers still at home taking sides about whether George ought to be allowed to have feelings for a French girl.

George got all this news from Nash one morning while being shaved, it having reached his valet via his father’s coachman, during a visit from his mother in which she had not brought up the subject to George even for a moment. His father had also not breathed a word. His parents were, it seemed, playing coy. He’d stuck a pawn out in the middle of the board and they were jolly well ignoring it.

“Well, it’s pleasant not to be shouted at, at least.” He watched Nash whisk up shaving soap in the mug.

“Indeed, sir.” Nash began applying soap with the brush.

“It’s salon night,” George said, through the foam.

“Yes, sir.”

“Lucie’s uncle will be there, she says. The good coat, if it’s back.”

“I would certainly hold my jaw still while being shaved if I were you, sir.”

“Infernal cheek,” George muttered, with his jaw motionless. Nash had taken the razor in hand, and George held still. No nicks wanted for tonight. He was clean-shaven against the current fashion, with side whiskers, so Nash had quite a lot of face to scrape smooth.

“The good coat is back. You had left billiard chalk in its right outside pocket.”

George grunted. He’d been distracted, was all he could say. Or not say, if he wished his throat intact. He closed his eyes and let himself think. He wanted to ask about his riding breeches next, though surely it would insult Nash if he did so.

Nash reached his upper lip. He said, quite as if shaving a man’s lip were not difficult in the least, “You are lunching with Mr Winters, the current owner of the Earl’s Court property. You are meeting him at that chop-house off Cornhill you enjoy.”

George made a noise to indicate assent. His first venture shares deal. He’d do a little chaffering and put the man into a good mood, then bring signed papers back to Parkes’s office. If all went well, that was. He felt confident about the task of putting the man in good humour; it would be his first time taking charge of getting the papers themselves signed, and that made him a little nervous.

Nash wiped his face clean. Glossy-smooth and perfect, as his face was every morning now that he was a town gentleman instead of a country gentleman. A country idler. A country dabbler at farming. Dabbler at riding as much as possible while farming as little as possible. Whatever the hell he’d been doing in ’80 when he hadn’t been desperately playing the jester to keep the wife of the neighbouring landowner flirting with him. When she had inevitably broken his heart, he’d moved back to London and sworn himself to bachelorhood. He couldn’t remember what excuse he’d given his father, he’d been in such a state. He’d taken rooms, engaged a valet to keep his things more or less in order, and flung himself into uselessness.

Nash was now busy dressing a man who was not quite useless any more. It was pure luck that Nash could also keep his daily engagements in hand. George could improvise quite well if someone fed him his cues, and Nash had a knack. He’d received a rise for that.

George dressed for City business and a bit of walking, which is what his day usually treated him to. He had a measuring tape in one pocket, and a folded-up map of the west of London in the other. Notebook, pencil, pocketbook, coins, bric-a-brac. So much nonsense he carried now-a-days so he could take his own lunars of houses, as his father put it.

Nash handed him his watch, a thing of no particular distinction, with nothing at all on its chain. George threaded it into his waistcoat, wound it twenty turns, checked its time, and dropped it into a pocket.

He said, “I must call at Bayswater Road in the mid-afternoon, then round for tea with that fellow who wants to rid himself of some properties in the Kensington Potteries. I won’t be dealing with him unless something surprising happens, but I want to keep his kettle warm.”

“Do we have his card, sir?”

“Yes, from last week. Something German-sounding.”

Nash went out into George’s little study and found the card in the box where George kept them, and brought it back.

“Thank you, yes, this is the chap. I’ll take a note when I return if he says anything worth remembering.”

“Very good, sir.”

Nash had taught him that trick. Whoever Nash had worked for before George had been dashed good at this sort of thing. Nash wouldn’t talk about it, and George wouldn’t presume to ask.

He went off to his day of work happily. The morning was spent on a walk through some streets looking at addresses listed as for sale, to see if he thought any of them worth further investigation. He scribbled in the little notebook he carried in his pocket; one deserved a second look. Then he got onto the Underground and endured the smoke and heat all the way into the City to meet that chap Winters for lunch.

Winters was in his thirties, with a moustache that did not distinguish itself, under a head of receding hair. He was delighted to meet Mr Forsyte again, he said, and wiped perspiration from his brow with his handkerchief. George stole a trick from M Béranger and tucked his arm into Winters’ and escorted him to their cubicle, where they could eat their chops, prime chump, with floury potatoes. The smell of other men’s meals whetted George’s own appetite, already keen from regular exercise. Lunching might be serious business, but it was also enjoyable.

Winters was affable enough for a man who’d nearly ruined himself on investments in house property in Earl’s Court. After one glass of port, he was confessing the existence of creditors to George, who was all sympathies. After a second, he was explaining that he was down to one property he needed to be rid of, and if he could this would allow him to satisfy the last demands of his creditors. In George’s opinion, he had his eyes fixed on the winning-post, and not on the jockey coming up past him, so he was willing to part with it for less than it was worth. Or less than George thought it was worth, and Parkes had agreed. After that second glass of port, it was not difficult at all to close the sale. George was a little sorry for the fellow, and did not drive the terms as far as he might have; Winters had to feel he got something out of it too. Parkes’s rule, and a sound one. Parkes always took the long view.

With this prudence in mind, George concluded the sale on better terms than he’d hoped, and on terms that made Winters look relieved. He watched Winters sign, then took the stylographic pen and signed his own name to the papers. Geo Forsyte, then the date. His palms were a little sweaty, but he’d done it: the contract was signed.

He shook hands with a relieved Winters, and parted with him on good terms. The conveyancing started now, and that was a nuisance, but routine. His first venture shares deal! His own money was at stake, and there was a pleasant thrill in his blood as he considered this, the thrill he used to feel betting on horses. Here he could bet that his judgment of property value was better than the next man’s, and that was a surer thing. No crooked grooms nicking tendons or dosing a horse the night before; no jockeys taking money to ease up at a crucial moment. Just his own eyes and ears on a house, considering where it was, what condition it was in, and where the market was going.

George folded the papers neatly into an envelope and slipped them into his pocketbook. He settled the bill with the chop-house; Winters need not encounter an embarrassment here. George left the restaurant and made his way west out of the City on foot. It was a fair spring day, a little windy perhaps, but a good day for a walk. The wind had lifted the stink of coal smoke away for a few hours. George was a Londoner born and bred, but he had learned to hate that smell.

He walked steadily, happy for the exercise. His destination was the Bayswater Road, and his Aunt Ann. He had his news of Young Jolyon for her, and he had not yet been able to find her alone. What he had to share was not for Juley’s or Hester’s ears.

He made good time as he walked. Riding again had put the muscles back into his legs, and he felt them. He wanted to trot and show his paces. His entire body felt alive in a way it hadn’t since that summer of ’80, when he’d come to his crisis. The muscles in his arms had returned as well, slim as he was.

When he reached the home of his Uncle Timothy, he found his Aunt Ann alone in the drawing room. Mrs Small was at the stores, Smither told him; Miss Hester was making her calls for the afternoon. It was an ideal moment for the conversation he’d hoped for.

Aunt Ann received him cheerfully as ever. She might favour Soames as keeper of the family soul, but George knew which nephew was most likely to make her laugh.

George had known this drawing room since childhood. He’d been shown the butterflies under glass and been horrified by them; he had often studied the stiffly posed daguerreotype of his grandfather, the photographs of his uncles and their wedding parties, the family group from ’79 that showed all of the elder generation at once. There had been anti-macassars on the chairs for as long as he could remember, however little his generation used macassar. He had a score of cousins who had the same experience of this room through twenty years and more of near changelessness. It ought to have been a dusty place George hated to visit, but it was not: the drawing room in his Uncle Timothy’s house in the Bayswater Road was instead a place of comfort and welcome, where his aunts accepted his gossip and repaid him in kind; where the family came to remind itself it was a family. Even so cynical a man as he sought out the simple pleasure of sharing gossip in this drawing room.

George waited for Smither to serve him his glass of brown sherry and leave. He conspicuously watched her walk out of the drawing room, knowing his aunt was watching him. He turned back to her and grinned.

“Well, George? You obviously have something to tell me, so out with it!”

“I come bearing news of my cousin Jolyon, Aunt. I chanced to speak with him a few nights ago, and I thought you might wish to hear about it.”

They leaned forward conspiratorially towards each other; she smelt of lavender, an old-fashioned scent that George associated with her. He shared his news, in tones low enough that Smither could not hear it. His aunt would either share it or not; he thought not. She was delighted by the news, as he had suspected she would be, and also pleased to hear his own assessment that Young Jolyon looked well and rather happy. She was tickled to receive Jolyon’s good wishes. She really was quite fond of the fellow, despite her public condemnations of his immorality.

This news ingratiated George with her nicely. He would never admit to any motives but those which were ulterior for this act, so he allowed himself to drink a little more sherry in a state of satisfaction.

Today, however, his aunt had some words for him as well. She rapped him very gently with her folded fan, and said, “What was that you told me, George? About nothing ever happening to you?”

George set his glass down, and spoke in a more ordinary voice. This news was for Smither to hear, if she were listening. “I was mistaken, Aunt. Something did happen. You have no doubt heard all about it.”

“And?”

“Nothing official yet, I’m afraid. I’m waiting for my income to reach the amount her father wishes to see.”

“Very sensible of you, George,” said Aunt Ann, and she rested her fan on his wrist instead of rapping him again. “Now see you do everything properly, mind.”

“I shall, Aunt. I look forward to introducing her to you some day soon.”

She would spread that round, which was why George had told her, and from there it would reach his father, who might or might not approve of his prudent behaviour. There being nothing else he wanted the entire family to know, he shared no more confidences, but did keep his aunt amused with tales of house property and bargains snapped up under the noses of other men. When Mrs Small appeared in the drawing room, little dog in her arms, he fled immediately. Some interrogations were too frightening to be faced.

George went off to his next appointment, the one with the fellow with the German name. He was most definitely not interested in the property that this fellow Brunn had, it being in the middle of the proper slum that was the Kensington Potteries. The fellow owned other properties, however, and was a business connection worth keeping. They had a pleasant-enough chat at the fellow’s office, in which George sounded him gently for his hobby-horses.

Then he went home to his rooms. He first wrote his notes about Brunn before they left his memory. His perambulations had not taken him past Parkes’s office, so next he handed the contract papers over to Nash to send to Parkes by messenger. He was delighted to tell Nash it had all gone well, better than he’d hoped, and he had given a good account of himself.

When it came time to change and go out for the evening, his nerves began to tell. Tonight at the Béranger salon Lucie’s maternal uncle was expected, M Théodore Chassagne. Lucie had told him that her uncle made a point of visiting his eldest niece to see how she was faring so far from her mother. She’d reported this with some fondness, so George was predisposed to approve of him. He was in fact eager to impress him in whatever manner he could find.

At the very least he needed to look his best.

“The good coat?” he said to Nash, who made a little sound at him and showed him where it rested on the clothes horse, ready to be donned once George had changed collar and cuffs. George changed, switched his studs twice before settling on the plain gold ones Nash recommended, and fretted. The good coat went on, and George thought about whether he wanted to afford a second good coat. He decided against it.

On the Béranger doorstep George reminded himself of Renard’s chastisement: don’t use her Christian name in public. Remember that as carefully as he remembered the gender of words. Stay polite. He didn’t know this Oncle Théodore as an intimate yet, and so he must remain formal, and call him M Chassagne.

Blasted French. Renard had told him once that Russian had no ‘the’ and ‘a’ and that must be even worse, so—he was distracting himself. He had to find his courage and make conversation with her uncle in due course.

He entered the home, was announced to the salon, and greeted Lucie with a secret smile. She introduced him to her uncle, and George shook hands with the man. It was a cool hand, removed from his own immediately. M Chassagne was lean, on the tall side, like a good horse for riding to hounds. He had a waxed curled moustache that was beginning to grey. George looked for any family resemblance in the face, and saw it in the blue eyes and the slightly waved hair. Chassagne had a more solemn look than Lucie or M Béranger ever had, however. Or at least he did in this room, meeting these people.

George was not sure what to make of the man yet. He’d need to listen and perhaps tap on his pipes.

The entertainment this evening was Madame Tessier reading Victor Hugo, yet another reading in honour of his eightieth birthday. George found his mind wandering during the reading, which went on longer than it ought to have, at least if Madame Tessier had been paying attention to the ordinary bounds of courtesy. However, it was Hugo, and the salon was inclined to indulge her because of this, for they were all feeling sentimental. After the reading there was little appetite for more formal recitation or performance, and the salon fragmented into smaller groups discussing whatever it was they were interested in.

George circulated. He found his way to the round and comfortable Madame Tessier and thanked her for the reading. She seemed rather uncertain about how it had been received, so he put her at ease by asking why she had chosen that story, and if she recommended that he read Hugo in translation or in the original. He knew that was a long hop, but it would settle her right down to have something to smash to the boundary. Indeed it did, and she was all smiles a few minutes later, and telling the visiting M Chassagne what an amiable man M Forsyte was, quite cosmopolitan for an Englishman. Chassagne asked George how he came to attend the salon, and George decided to tell a simpler variety of the truth: that he had met Mlle Béranger and her father when she was a demoiselle d’honneur at his cousin’s wedding, and he a groomsman, and he had enjoyed one salon and the conversation so much he had resolved to attend a second if M Béranger would have him. Here he was now, a regular.

That had been reasonably navigated, and the musical man M Tessier pounced upon the excuse to talk about George’s cousin and his lovely wife, the pianist who’d played Fauré some weeks ago with Lucie. Ah, yes, Irene, always remembered wherever she went. George exchanged a smile with Madame Tessier, and said, “He ought to compliment the violinist as well,” and she laughed.

M Tessier gestured widely, and said, “They were both marvellous, and I wish to hear them again, as Mademoiselle Béranger promised. When does she play next? You will know, Monsieur Forsyte.”

“Not next week, I think,” George said. “She is learning a new Brahms violin sonata just now.”

M Chassagne looked at George with his intent blue eyes, then across the room at his niece. He said, with a little smile under his moustache, “I am delighted my niece continues to play well and to entertain you all. She is most talented.”

Another pair of guests appeared, most eager to greet M Chassagne, and the little group dissolved into the greater swirl of conversation. George cheerfully talked with everyone he knew. He looked over at Lucie now and then. She stayed near her uncle’s side all evening. She seemed entirely happy to be talking with him, and the affection appeared mutual. George felt a little swell of warmth in his chest to see her joy. This was what love was, he supposed. She was happy, so he was happy. It seemed a good bargain to get twice as much happiness as a man might usually get.

Supper after the salon was attended by the usual intimates of the Bérangers. George escorted in Madame Tessier, who had been invited because of her recitation. Lucie was escorted in by her uncle. It was not a large table, but it was a talkative one, as these suppers always were, at least when George had been in attendance. Tonight was no exception, for M Chassagne had news from Paris: gossip, political news, the latest about the crash of l’Union Générale, and—most interestingly—wine news. George drank cold Chablis and listened to him talk, and watched him in a pool of candlelight, quietly judging the wine he was served. He swirled it in his glass and held it up to the candles on the table, and tasted it in that peculiar way George had seen men taste wine when they knew what they were about.

Chassagne was one of those men. He seemed to approve of Béranger’s wine overall, but not enthusiastically. He was a wine merchant of some kind, George knew, in London for business. As he listened, he heard Chassagne mention American growers, and George realised that he was there to arrange the purchase of rootstock for grapevines. George sat forward, for this was of great interest.

At a reasonable pause, he spoke. “Sir, please, do say more if you are willing. I am aware of the great devastation, of course, and of the possibilities of American rootstock, and the many questions we all have about what this shall do to the flavour of the grape.”

M Chassagne smiled upon George. “You fancy yourself a connoisseur?”

“Ah, sir, not at your level, but if I am going to drink the grape, I prefer to drink the delicious variety. I mourn the death of the great vineyards. I had occasion to serve a dear friend the 1865 Château Lafite last autumn, and it is a tragedy to think that its like will not be with us again.” George had got his eye in, and had forgotten he was speaking French.

“Spoken with true feeling. But perhaps the harvests may be better with the new roots?”

George grinned. “We must wait and drink in hope of that happy possibility.”

Chassagne smiled back at him. “We shall hope indeed. A handful more years, I think. Too many of the vineyards hesitate to act. But tell me, do you prefer the Bordeaux wines, M Forsyte?”

“That particular vintage suits an Englishman’s palate, and was a perfect companion for partridge at a meal in that friend’s honour. I enjoy the drier wines, particularly drier champagnes. The Burgundies are something I am always willing to taste. And Lucie most definitely prefers the Chambertin, which of course is dry.”

“I see,” said M Chassagne. He reached deliberately for his water glass, not his wine glass, and drank from it.

The silk of Lucie’s dress rustled, and George looked over at her. She was looking at her father, and she seemed worried somehow. Béranger had a smile on his face, amused and indulgent, as far as George could tell. He seemed relaxed, so whatever it was Lucie had reacted to was not alarming. Perhaps he’d said something that everyone knew about her, and had been awkwardly belabouring the obvious. Perhaps he’d botched his grammar. George drank more Chablis.

Chassagne set his water glass down. “Dry champagne,” he said. “You are a thought ahead of the general taste, but I think its popularity rises.”

“Sweet wines have a place, but the dry makes for contrast,” said George.

“Aha,” said Chassagne, and pounced upon this thought to commence a vivacious discussion of suiting wines to dishes from a novel perspective that George was quite taken by.

The rest of the supper was quiet on Lucie’s part, though her uncle was garrulous enough with George, each having found a worthy partner in this ever-important topic of conversation. George went home pleased with the evening and his performance with the language and with Lucie’s uncle. He’d done reasonably well, he thought, and kept up with everything, and understood the reading as it went. He would have good things to report to Renard, who would have to work to find something to mock him for this time. He crowed to Nash first, for the practice.

8. Dinner with the Soameses

George was often invited to the home of his cousin and friend Soames, now that Soames was married, to dine, sit in comfort by a fire with something to drink, and have a chat about City matters, the market in house property, and whatever came to mind. Similarly, Lucie was often invited to the home of her dear friend Irene, now that Irene was married, to learn new music together, to dine, and to talk with her of an evening. If the Soameses were to invite their friends over on the same evening for dinner, music, and conversation, well, who was to remark upon it?

Thus it was that George and Lucie both dined with the Soameses a few nights after Lucie’s uncle’s visit, while Lucie’s escort—a Béranger footman named Louis—dined below with the Pelham Crescent staff.

Dinner at the Soameses was not grand but the courses were good and the wines well-chosen. Soames had a palate that he made no fuss about, and their cook was skilled. Or so George thought, and he had faith in his own palate. The asparagus was excellent, in a light lemon Dutch sauce. The spring chicken was perfectly roasted and seasoned with rosemary and salt. The meal concluded with Spanish olives. It was all quite surprising, really: not rich or extravagant, but restrained and subtle. The wines suited the dishes. It was eaten in good company, and this was the greatest pleasure of all for George.

Soames chose to round it off with brandy instead of port, and the men drank it while sitting with the ladies, still in conversation. Said conversation was warm and lively, for the four of them got on well with each other. Irene and Lucie were quite close now thanks to playing together frequently, and George had learned that Soames had a dry wit that could be coaxed out of hiding when he wasn’t on his back foot. A comfortable Soames was an interesting Soames, who could talk knowledgeably about paintings and art, and have a good conversation with George about anything except sport.

George realised he hadn’t tried to discuss sport. He knew Soames was not a racing man, but did he enjoy cricket?

“I was wondering,” he said, “if you’d gone in for any sport. You must have, at school.”

“I could not play cricket at all. I rowed a little,” Soames said. “And I learned to punt, which I liked very much. I love fishing on the Thames, just sitting in a boat and catching something now and then while I look for birds.” He had an odd look on his face when he said that, as if he were saying something he felt he ought not to say. Damned man, refusing himself any pleasure at all and wearing a hairshirt instead.

“Do any of you ride? Would you like to?” George asked.

“Ah!” Irene said. “I rode often as a girl. I should love to again.”

Soames cast his gaze down at his glass as he answered. “I learned when I was at school. There was an outbreak of scarlet fever at Marlborough, and they sent us all home for a fortnight. Parkes’s family invited me to stay so I did, and Parkes taught me to ride. Or their groom did, with Parkes chaffing me along.”

Lucie looked nearly as excited as Irene. “I had a pony as a child and rode it often, though I don’t remember it well. I should not mind trying again.”

George rubbed his hands together with glee. Richmond Park, a couple of nice sedate hacks for the timid riders, and his dream afternoon would be reality. “I shall arrange it all,” he said. “A sunny morning, a hamper with lunch, and we shall have you all enjoying the finest of pastimes.”

Soames made a little noise, and Irene shushed him and shook her head. It was settled.

After dinner, their hosts left George and Lucie to their own devices. All four were in the drawing room, and thus the proprieties were observed. George and Lucie were on a remarkably comfortable sofa. Irene was playing something; George didn’t know what. Soames was sitting next to her, turning music pages. George knew that he and Lucie were being indulged: chaperoned decorously, but given every opportunity to talk all they needed to, without fretting about being overheard or loomed over. Unless it was by Irene’s tortoiseshell-and-white kitten, who sat on the arm of the sofa watching them through half-closed eyes.

He looked at Lucie and grinned at her mischievously, and she responded in kind and slipped her slim hand into his. He kissed her knuckles, her fingertips, and then turned her hand over and kissed her palm and the inside of her wrist.

“I have a gift for you,” he said. “You were reading Alice in Wonderland, you said. Here is the next book.”

He slipped a copy of Through the Looking-Glass out of his pocket and offered it to her. He’d tied a ribbon round it, but made no more fuss.

He said, “You will enjoy it, I hope. There is a chess match, and a story about Humpty Dumpty.”

Lucie accepted the book from him and opened it. She leafed through, and there was a smile on her face that widened as she read. There were illustrations in it, quite absurd ones, and she would know their style from the first book. She stopped and her smile became brilliant.

“Oh! This is where the poem about the walrus and the carpenter is from. I remember you and Irene reciting it!”

“We were eating oysters, yes,” George said, pleased to hear she remembered it.

“A year ago now.”

“Have we known each other that long?”

“We have, mon chéri. It feels like I have known you all my life, but it has been only a year.” She craned up and kissed his cheek. It was not a kiss on his lips, but it made his heart thrill just as much to receive it.

“I love it when you say mon chéri to me,” he said, and that was as fatuous as the smile on his face. Ah, well.

“You are most thoughtful,” she said to him. “It pains me that I must tell you something now, while I have the chance to.”

Something pained her? George took her hands. “What must you tell me? Lucie?”

“My uncle. He noticed something at dinner. You made a tiny mistake and he ought to have asked about it or been upset about it, but he did not react, and this is suspicious.”

George’s brows came together. He thought he’d done well, damn it all. “What did I do wrong?”

“You used my Christian name and you knew which wines I prefer. The Christian name, this is perhaps excusable from an Englishman. Knowing and saying what I prefer so easily, this says that you are intimate with the family. And everyone in the room knows you, and treats you as an expected guest, and did not remark on this.”

George’s stomach turned over. Damn. Double damn himself. Renard had warned him and he’d—but surely it had not been so bad? “Why did this alarm him?”

“It means you are a suitor.”

George bit his lip. “But I am a suitor.”

“Even a suitor would not speak so, if he were French. That you do so in such a relaxed way tells him you are almost family. My father has accepted you as my suitor, and expects the match. My uncle ought to have asked! He ought to have exclaimed over it! But he did not. Because my uncle did not comment, he thinks it is something to keep watch on, without alarming us. He was so cool and correct with me after that dinner, and it was unlike him. I am certain he will tell my mother, but what he will say I cannot guess.”

“Je ne comprends pas.”

“My mother and father—you know they are not on good terms. She does not live with us in London, and so I must play hostess. My grandmother thinks she married below herself. I am not sure why, but I am sure that it is about the politics of the last revolution. This is one reason why I am in London. I do not wish to understand the politics of my parents, yes?”

“I still don’t understand. Your father obviously knows about me!”

“My mother will have an opinion about whom I marry, I think, and she might not wish to let my father make this decision on his own.”

George was taken aback. He kissed her fingertips and thought out what this meant. It was not a pleasant thought. “I have made trouble for him. I’m sorry I put my foot in it.”

“You could not have known.” Lucie’s voice was kind, but George knew he didn’t deserve it. He’d gone home and crowed to Nash, such a fool was he.

“I’d been enjoying talking about wine with him. But—” George thought over that conversation again. “He drank water when I said that, didn’t he.”

“He did.” Lucie considered this. “That was not about the wine, I think.”

“I wonder.” George contemplated Béranger living in London without his wife, on purpose, and Lucie’s uncle bringing intelligence home, like some kind of spy. “It must be devilishly awkward to have one’s parents at odds with each other.”

“Your parents are not, then.”

George switched to English, thinking about his parents. “No, not that I have noticed. I think my father flattened my mother when they were married and she hasn’t popped back up to full roundness since. But they get on.”

Lucie laughed at him. “You say such funny things when you speak English. You are charming in French, and you begin to be witty, but in English!”

There, she was laughing, and he felt less sick. “Some day I’ll be as fluent in French as you are in English.”

“We shall practise together, then.”

“I’ll make jokes in English, you’ll tell me what they would be in French, and then we’ll swap.”

“I shall try to tell them as well as you do. You have a way of saying a thing as if by accident when I know that it is your wit inventing as you go.”

Lucie looked at him with something that had to be admiration on her face, and George’s heart felt as if it were expanding in his chest. He kissed her hands again. Lucie was especially pretty when she was happy like this. Her eyes sparkled and everything about her was alive and eager. She was a wisp of a thing, but all pent-up energy, like a racehorse kept in a stable for too long. She was wearing a blue evening dress, a colour that matched her eyes, and a little gold cross glinted at her throat. She was smiling with him now, seemingly over her worry about whatever her uncle had reacted to, and George felt giddy, as he had the first night he’d met her. Possibilities had opened up before him when he’d heard her laugh that first time, and seen that smile.

George took a careful look to the side at the piano. Their hosts were entirely occupied with whatever it was Irene was playing; only the kitten was watching them, and it was sitting like the Sphinx, half-asleep. It wasn’t quite privacy, but it was enough for a kiss, and he took his chances with it. They leaned into each other and their lips touched for their second kiss, and then for their third. It was like a Sauternes whipped into cream on his lips to kiss her. So he kissed her again. He touched his forehead to Lucie’s afterwards and sighed. Damn, he was far gone.

“I wish we could tell everyone,” he whispered.

“We shall remain silent and true until we can.”

“We shall.”

The piano piece came to an end, and George suspected their opportunity for kissing had as well. His chest ached. What a pass he had come to!

After that he did have the pleasure of listening to Lucie and Irene practising their Brahms sonata together. He sat next to Soames, a glass of cognac in hand, and was united with him in watching a loved musician play: Soames watched the pianist, he the violinist. Soames was lost in some kind of contemplative haze that George didn’t understand. It was pretty, yes! He admitted that. And the two pretty musicians seemed to be conversing with each other, or singing to each other. It was a deuced lot more enjoyable to George than the Fauré was. He said so to Soames during one of the pauses when the two players conferred over the score.

Soames nodded. “I have difficulty with Brahms, but I can find my way into this. It helps to listen to them practise. They play it in paragraphs of a sort.”

“I don’t think about it, I confess. I let it float me away. You should try it.”

Soames opened his mouth, looked at George, then closed it again. After a moment he muttered, “You’re just like Parkes. I’ve no idea how to do that.”

George nudged him gently. “You should stop thinking and indulge your feelings now and then.”

“Now you sound like Irene.”

“And this is how you know I am correct.”

Soames snorted very quietly, and George saw him smile. “Point to you.”

“Let us look at our beautiful women, drink our cognac, and listen to whatever it is they choose to play.”

George and Soames shared a look of perfect understanding and agreement, and turned back to watch the women consult each other. Perhaps that contemplative haze was simply love, because Soames had a secret smile on his face as he watched his wife, and George knew the same smile had been on his own face since Lucie had agreed to be his.

Irene’s kitten leapt onto Soames’s lap. Soames flinched, as if he had no idea what to do about kittens. He stroked it, cautiously. George watched, amused, as the kitten clambered up onto Soames’s shoulder. Soames made a half-hearted attempt to shoo it away, then gave up. George could hear it purring.

“She spoils this thing,” Soames muttered.

The musicians began playing again, the same thing they had played before. Lucie stopped them part way in, and said something to Irene George could not make out. She seemed unhappy, and frowned at her violin as she adjusted something. They repeated the paragraph, or sentence, or whatever it was Soames had said. George could not hear the difference between what had been played the first time and the second. He looked at Soames, who shrugged very carefully, so as not to disturb the kitten, which had fallen asleep. Lucie and Irene seemed satisfied by their second attempt, for they continued on.

Soames said, very quietly, “They have spent their lives learning to hear something we do not.”

George wondered what it was like to have cared about something that long, or to have known from childhood what it was one wanted to do. Horses were the only thing he’d ever come close to thinking about that much, and he’d given up betting on them. He’d never really loved betting for itself. Riding and jumping—that was another thing. Taking up riding again had been good for him. It felt pleasant to be doing something he was master of, for once.

He’d teach Lucie. He sat watching her play, lost in a pleasant daydream of riding in Richmond Park with her, stopping every so often to sit on the grass, drink wine, and kiss.

9. The summons

June, 1882

Four weeks later, Lucie received the morning post from her father’s secretary. There were three letters for her: one from her younger sister who was at school in Lyons, one from a cousin, and one—by the handwriting on the envelope—from her mother. She took a paper-knife and sliced open the envelope. Her mother’s stationery slid out, a very pale green, scented with neroli. She unfolded the sheets inside. There it was, in her mother’s difficult handwriting, what she had been expecting.

Her mother wished her to return to Paris for a long visit, to indulge her maternal affections and learn how Lucie’s life had been developing. She further noted, without any ceremony, that Lucie’s acquaintance M de Marigny had asked after her; he would be invited to dinner while she was there so she could allow him to pay his respects. Lucie knew what that meant. She would be reminded what a suitable suitor looked like. Her mother went on to write that she was certain Lucie would take no action of which her mother would not approve; her mother’s permission was of course required, as was that of her confessor.

Her mother wished her return. She was invited to return for various social occasions, and to talk to her mother about her future. Invited, as if given a choice.

Lucie closed her eyes and counted to twenty in as many languages as she could. She tried to remember anything of Russian, but failed. Only six. Her father would be disappointed. When she was certain her temper had been chained up, she took out paper and dipped her pen into ink to write her own letters.

Lucie sent brief notes to George and Irene both by the next post. She wrote in English, for the practice, though writing was always easier than speaking because of how much time she had to think about the words. If all went according to plan, she would meet George at Pelham Crescent that afternoon, they would drink English sherry, and Irene would let them talk. Irene knew they were affianced secretly, and would help.

Then there was the response to her mother to write. She wrote her mother that if the weather was good, she would arrive in Paris tomorrow evening; she would send a telegram if delayed. She gave away absolutely nothing else. She held off posting this to be sure she meant it; she wanted to talk to her father first. Her mother was of course incorrect; it was her father’s permission only that mattered.

She then set herself to pack. It was something she was used to doing at short notice, as the daughter of a diplomat. Go here; rush there; visit so-and-so at the back of beyond in the freezing winter and be charming to all and sundry including the unpleasant man from Rome who had kept trying to stare down her dress although she had been only fourteen. She had avoided an international incident and been polite to him. Lucie did wish for her own home, such as Irene had, in the place she wished to live, with the man she loved. Until that time, she knew exactly what to pack, how to do so rapidly, and how to do so lightly enough not to need any servants.

Her father had time for her over the lunch hour. He read her mother’s letter, and then laughed in a way that she knew meant he did not take her mother seriously. She wanted to stamp her foot at him. He could do whatever he wished, and here she was trapped, having to do exactly what her mother demanded.

He shrugged at her and said, “Well? What would you have me do?”

Lucie closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him. “Write to her. Tell her I will not be going to Paris.”

“I can do no such thing.”

“You would leave me at her mercy.”

“You have all the tools you need. Remember to pack your dancing slippers.”

Her father had already turned his attention back to the work upon his desk. Lucie felt another flash of irritation, which she again suppressed; it would not further her interests to show such a thing. She wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but he would be disappointed with her if she asked. He had taught her much, over her childhood. She’d had the usual English, German, mathematics, and music tutors, but there had always been the unusual teachers alongside: the men at his dinner table who were always manoeuvring round each other, never saying what they meant.

His message to Lucie was in fact clear, and so was his affection. She knew this even though he frustrated her.

“I understand perfectly, Papa,” she said to him, with outward calm. “I shall finish packing.” And she left his office.

She was packed, the letter to her mother posted, and the money she would need arranged and ready to be taken with her, when Irene’s reply reached her. She was to call any time she was able; Irene would be there to talk, and of course George was welcome to call at tea. Surely they would both also stay to dinner. Lucie sighed with relief. Her father might think her capable, but she wanted a friend to talk to, and she wanted another kiss from George to carry with her across the Channel.

They had had a month of peaceful spring, a month of pleasant rides together, with George quietly teaching her how to hold her seat on a calm and steady horse. It had been such fun to be in Richmond Park with George and Irene, and sometimes Mr Parkes or even a very cautious Soames. Such fun to share a pleasant secret of pure affection. And now it was exploded, ended with one letter demanding her return.

When she called on Irene in the afternoon at last, it was all she could do not to fling herself into Irene’s arms in front of the servants. Irene saw it in her face and embraced her, and Lucie let herself sink into her friend’s arms gratefully.

Irene drew her into the drawing room and sat her down and took her hands. Lucie clung to them.

“Your note,” Irene said, in French, as was their habit. “Paris again?”

“I am summoned,” Lucie replied. “My mother. She says nothing of it directly, but my uncle will have told her about George, and she will want to make her opinion known. She wishes me to meet an eligible man who is French.”

“Would you appreciate a friend with you? I can travel immediately.”

Lucie kissed Irene’s cheek. “You are a wonderful friend, but it is impossible. You have met my mother. You remember her.”

“I do. She did seem to care for you and to think highly of your talents as a musician.”

“Yes, she does. But this is conditional, I fear. Conditional on my obedience to her wishes.”

At this moment Larkin came in with a carafe and glasses on a tray. It was that English sherry, which Lucie was still uncertain about. George had told her once that the Soameses served good sherry, and if she were to like sherry at all, this would be the sherry to enjoy. The English did strange things with their wines. She tasted it thoughtfully, and set her glass down. Irene was watching her quietly, and Lucie knew she was waiting to hear how she could help.

Lucie said, “My father has told me without telling me that I am on my own in this. He does not oppose me, but he cannot help me. I do have a request of you, ma chère.”

“What do you need?”

“Please forward George’s letters to me hidden inside yours. He cannot write directly, and he will want to.”

“Of course. In return I must ask you to look for the latest—”

Lucie laughed despite everything. “You need not ask. It is the one thing I anticipate about Paris this time. Even my mother will not try to keep me away from the music shops. I shall find new music for us both to play, and send you the very latest piano work I can find.”

Then, because talking about Paris was already a burden, she changed the subject. “But first! You have told me you have taken up the Hammerklavier, but not how you are getting on with it.”

Irene’s own face lit up, and Lucie could see her satisfaction. “I like it less than the Appassionata, and it is more difficult, yet I make my steady way through it. Persistence is earning me progress. I might wish it were easier, but the technique does come eventually.”

“Ah! I envy you. I practise and practise, and I cannot break through. You hear me with the Brahms!”

“I hear you, and I hear something different from what you hear, it seems.”

“What do you hear?”

“You have more than enough technique for that piece. What you lack is the courage to give your emotions to it. You are guarded. You are not putting the feeling into it that Brahms demands.”

Lucie fell silent. Was she guarded? Irene was often correct in her advice, and this advice was given seriously. Lucie knew how to be guarded; her father was always guarded because that was his profession. He had taught her that too. But in the music?

“I will think on this,” she said, slowly.

Irene touched her arm. “If you worry about technique, that is a different problem.”

“I do worry. There are other pieces that I know frighten me.”

“You need to find the piece that maddens you so much you cannot leave it alone until you have made it yours. You told me you’re afraid of Paganini. You must embrace him instead. I challenge you, as you challenged me. Perhaps the 24th Caprice? Brahms took that theme for the piano, and you might tell him he is quite wrong to attempt to claim it.”

“You do not set your ambitions low for me! But this is a wonderful thought.”

Lucie took her friend’s hand again. Irene had managed to make her feel better while inspiring her, as always; this was why they had become friends at the school in Paris. Then her face fell as she thought about Paris again. She usually appreciated her trips home: they were chances to see family, attend weddings, dance with cousins. This would be nothing like that. This would be captivity in her mother’s home in Faubourg Saint-Germain, for as long as her mother demanded, or until she won against her mother’s will.

George arrived at half-past four, straight from business. He was dusty from exploring attics and his cuffs were soiled with ink-stains from letter-writing. He was both anxious that he had been summoned and delighted to see her, and expressed both by taking her hands in his and kissing them.

Irene gently told them both she thought they had a great deal to discuss. She went over to the piano and began to play something soft and pleasant—Mendelssohn, Lucie thought. She was telling them, as always, that they were chaperoned, but also that they might speak without fear of being overheard.

Lucie drew George over to the sofa and they sat together. He immediately kissed her cheek. “What is it?”

“I have received a letter from my Maman—she wishes me back in Paris. I take the train tomorrow morning.”

“So soon? That’s—Must you?”

“I must. She tells me that two days from now they will have a young man to dinner who wishes to renew his acquaintance with me. He is prosperous, has an aristocratic connection, and is a most excellent young man of whom I once thought highly. Her message is most clear.”

George’s face was a study. “Prosperous, you say. Riche.”

“I showed her letter to my father and he laughed, which was most upsetting, then he told me that my mother had to make her opinion known and would do so.”

“Your uncle has spoken to her.”

“Most clearly. She wrote cutting things about my father’s approval not being enough, and needing the approval of my confessor, and—”

“Your confessor? Why—”

“My confessor. You are not of my faith.”

George looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared.

“I’ll convert,” George said, with that grin she ordinarily loved seeing. “Your side has grander churches and fancier costumes. Incense and candles and priests popping out of boxes—a much better show.”

“You make such light of it!” she said, and let go of his hands. She turned her back on him for a moment to regain her composure.

“Lucie! It’s merely a joke. I—”

“You do not understand, and it will take too long to explain. I must return home to dine with some tedious English Foreign Office stuffed owls, as you call them, and then I must leave on the earliest train.”

“Lucie!”

“Irene has my address and will send me your letters. If you write in French, my mother will not be suspicious.”

“Explain to me in a letter,” George said. “I’ll make a better joke. I’ll make the right joke, once I understand.”

Lucie sighed. There was so much that he did not understand that she wasn’t sure she understood herself, about the money and the tension between her parents. It needed to be puzzled out. And George most certainly did not understand what the Church meant to her mother.

“I will write,” she said, and that was all she could give him.

“I’m sorry,” George said. He had pulled at his hair and it was standing up all out of order.

Irene had stopped playing. “Cousin George, dear, would you like some sherry?”

George looked at Irene as if he had no idea what she’d asked. “What? I suppose.”

“I’ll return in a moment,” Irene said.

Lucie noted that Irene could have rung for Larkin, but had not. They watched her leave the room.

“Mon très cher,” she said. She fussed with his hair and put it back where it belonged, at least somewhat. “You are my beloved knight on his horse. Yes, I have been reading Looking-Glass, and enjoying the stories. I was unsure at first if you were Humpty Dumpty or the White Knight, and now I have decided.”

George stared at her for a long moment, then he said, “I’m Humpty Dumpty. I have had a great fall.”

“No. You are my gentle White Knight, and you have tumbled from your horse.”

“May your tumbling white knight have a kiss goodbye while we have a chance?”

He sounded uncertain of himself still, and because there was nothing else she could do, she kissed him. She bestowed more than one kiss upon him before Irene returned to the drawing room, and George had regained some of that sparkle in his eye. He did kiss with spice and a little fire on his lips, gently but with a promise of something more once they were allowed it. He had kissed before, she thought, but without care, and now he cared, and all that spice—a little cinnamon on his lips—was hers. He had not meant to offend. He did not understand, as he did not understand how he had stumbled with Oncle Théo.

He did not know what he was apologising for. And she did not know how to explain.

Irene returned to the room, with the sherry carafe and a glass for George, and they sat together talking for a little as ordinary friends before Lucie looked at her watch. They all went down to the front door, and Louis, the Béranger footman who had escorted Lucie on her last visit, appeared from below stairs. She met George’s eyes one last time and then left, turning her back on him decisively without a last word, lest she give away how much she did not want to leave.

The weather over the Channel was storming, and the waters heavy. Lucie was not prone to sea-sickness, but Louis, who was travelling with her again, was. He spent the Channel crossing on deck, hung over the rail. Lucie sat with their bags and read a good way into Verne’s Michel Strogoff. There were other novels at home she was reading, and Lewis Carroll was in her bag, but she had brought one novel of which her mother could not disapprove. She sat on the tossing boat and read about a courier racing across Russia. It was a relief to change to the train and the comfort of smooth speed inward towards Paris. Louis happily slept in the next compartment, recovering from the crossing. On the train, Lucie sat with the novel in her hands, unopened, thinking out what she might say to her mother, what her mother might say to her, what she would say in return. It would do her mother no good whatsoever. Her heart was George’s.

Diplomacy, her father had once told her, was neither a brute contest of wills nor a rapid contest of nerves like a fencing match. In diplomacy, the game was not the pure victory, but the mutual satisfaction. One could not leave one side feeling defeat or it would not be successful diplomacy. Both must feel they had won what mattered. Achieving this, he’d told her, relied upon talking and listening both. It was dancing. And this was why he had told her to pack her dancing slippers.

Her mother did not often listen. With her mother, all exchanges were fencing: a contest of quick wit, step and thrust and parry, a stroke and a point before you knew it. Or so her father had once said to Lucie, with a rueful look and an expressive shrug. This was the only explanation he’d ever given for why he was in London and her mother was not.

Lucie thought about this very carefully. Was this what her stay in Paris was to be? Her mother would certainly fence and try to score points. Her mother did not listen, so diplomacy and a mutually satisfying result would not be possible. Lucie would need to think, and to plan her actions in advance.

For her, it would be the slow contest of wits that was chess, until her mother understood she had no moves left but to release her. Lucie would remain silent and true, as George had promised her, until that moment.

It was in this mood that a cab deposited her and Louis upon her mother’s doorstep in the early evening. Louis carried their bags up, and rang. She went through the door and was greeted by her mother and grandmother with such courteous warmth, just as she had been when she had visited in the autumn for her cousin’s wedding. How was her dear father? How was her music? That lovely young English girl whom she had introduced them to when she had been at the Conservatoire?

Her mother’s house—not home, not her father’s home, merely the house she had been a child in—was as it had always been. The ornaments changed over time. The photographs of family slowly grew in number. When she visited, Lucie always felt the sense of time solidifying round the house like amber congealing round a fly.

So Lucie thought as she sat travel-weary at dinner, drinking her uncle’s good wine, eating her mother’s menu, listening to talk of how the young man she’d known as a girl had a most promising beginning at the bar, and would make a suitable match for someone. Her mother reminded her that they had quite liked each other when young, which they had. They had enjoyed playing with marbles together.

Her grandmother said, very quietly and with cloaked threat, that he was most devout, and this was to be commended in an age of such shocking disregard for the Church. Lucie merely nodded.

Had she been attending Mass? Yes. Had she been seeing her confessor regularly? Yes. This was good, for her father’s bad influence had not affected her.

Lucie did not react, but continued eating her dinner. It was not a grand dinner, but it was pleasantly familiar cookery, comforting after all that English cookery. So her childhood friend was devout, and had a good career at the bar. Of the two, the devout was more important to her grandmother, and more likely to be strictly true.

What else did she have to tell them? her mother asked, and here was a feint, a trap for the unwary. Lucie decided to answer as she had on her last visit.

“I brought my violin as always,” she said. “I have been working most diligently and practising, and I have so much I might play for you all.”

Her mother could not help but express pleasure in this, whether genuine in the moment or not, for the entire family was proud of Lucie’s achievements here, and her mother especially.

“Nothing else?” asked her grandmother.

“I think there is nothing you have not already heard,” Lucie said, quite as if the question were uninteresting. “There is some gossip from the embassy in London, but I think it is of only passing interest.”

“Your uncle had much to say,” said her grandmother, soft-voiced but sharp-eyed.

Lucie deliberately reached for her wine glass. All the wine in the house was courtesy of her uncle, who had taste and access to a wealth of vintages at wholesale prices. They drank well in this home. She had not yet decided what attitude she would take towards her uncle, who had betrayed her so. He and George had had a lively and happy conversation, with George all unaware that their secret had been divined. The two would get on well when she and George married. And that was a pang in her heart, thinking of George, and a marriage that felt so distant.

She set the glass down, and said a pleasant word about her uncle’s wine.

“Oncle Théo tells so many stories,” Lucie said. “He was full of talk about grapes on this visit. Oh! There was much discussion of the collapse of the bank, and great interest in the theories he had about who was to blame.”

She looked at her grandmother, entirely calmly. They would have to do far worse than this to rattle her. They would have to put her en prise to make her talk about George. But she feared this visit would not be short.

10. The Connoisseurs

George was in a state from the moment Lucie left London for Paris. She’d turned her back and left the Soameses’ house without a last goodbye, and she’d been upset with him, however much her kisses had softened it. He’d said the wrong thing and now her mother had dragged her back to Paris to meet another man, a better man with more money, and she had not written. Was she waiting for him to write?

On the fourth day, he sat down in his study to write his first love letter, and to write it in French to boot. He wrote three drafts in pencil, feeling more and more like a schoolboy set to write a theme for a lesson. None of it was any good. Renard would mock him for it, not that George would dare show him such wretched prose. He laid his head on his desk and groaned.

Just then Nash came in with whisky and soda, and hovered. “Mr Forsyte?” he said.

“Pay me no mind. I’m merely suffering.”

“Perhaps if you wrote in English first,” said Nash.

George raised his head. “Sly-boots. But a good idea.”

George had a taste of the water of life, found new life flowing in his veins, and wrote a short and heartfelt letter to Lucie in English. He missed her, and he told her so. He had gone riding yesterday morning in Richmond Park with Irene and Parkes, and she hadn’t been there with them to give the sun anything worth shining on. He was still sorry he’d offended with his jest. He hoped that at least Paris had something to keep her amused; music perhaps? She had his heart and he was finding it difficult to get on with his heart so far away from him. He sincerely hoped she would never travel so far abroad with his heart in her pocket again. He adored her. He remained true.

He rewrote it in French as rapidly as possible, trying not to think about how utterly top hat over patent leather boots he was about her.

He blotted the ink, let it dry, then folded up the letter in an envelope left unsealed. The next day he called round at Pelham Crescent to drink sherry with Irene and hand it over to her. She welcomed him with her usual grace, took his arm, and guided him into her drawing room. George breathed in the scent of roses and honey and felt his fretting ease. Irene would set it right. Irene would tell him everything would be fine, and he would believe her.

“I’ve brought a letter,” George said. “Has she—?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.”

“Is it too soon to write?”

“Not at all. She and I have had a steady correspondence since we were at the Conservatoire together. No one will remark upon it.”

He handed over his envelope. Irene slipped his letter out and made a little sound. “Your writing paper is larger than mine, and it has your address on it. George, I think you had better copy your letter onto my paper.”

George sat at Irene’s little writing desk and copied out his letter on her writing paper, which was a faint dusky rose colour, and scented distantly with the same. He took the opportunity to improve his penmanship, which had been ramshackle last night after all that fretting. It was odd to be so clandestine. It went along with the secret engagement, he supposed.

When he was done, Irene took the single page of his letter from him and nodded. “Your handwriting is not mine, but the paper and ink will not stand out. I’ll seal it with wax inside the envelope.”

“Such intrigue!” said George. “What ho, we spies!”

But this was forced enough that Irene set the letter down so that she might take his hand and kiss his cheek. “It’ll be all right,” she told him. “She’ll write back, and she’ll come back.”

“I feel twelve kinds of fool,” he said to her, plaintively.

“Let yourself miss her, and look forward to her return. Trust her.”

“I do trust her! But they didn’t tell me that love could hurt so.”

Irene made a sympathetic sound at him. “It can, I’m afraid. Some day you will quarrel, and that will be a different kind of hurt.”

“We did quarrel. Just before she left. I made a joke that landed very badly, and she left before I could set it right.”

“Oh, George. It does happen. You will set it right soon.”

“I apologised, but she said I didn’t understand.”

Irene pressed his hand, which she still held. “She will explain it. Indeed, she must. Ask her if you have not already done so.”

George kissed her hand, then released it. He returned to the tea-table, where a glass of sherry waited for him. He sat on the sofa where he had sat with Lucie, and tasted the sherry. Ashes. Love was unbearable, and he was certainly a fool for having let it happen to him. Irene returned to take her usual seat across from the sofa; he watched her seat herself in a crackle of silk, and taste her own sherry, delicately.

“How long do letters take to reach her?” he asked.

“A day at least,” said Irene. “The post in Paris is very quick, but getting there is the trouble.”

“So I must wait.”

“I’ll post our letters this evening. They’ll be on a boat tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Irene. You are an angel, come to succour me. Damn it.”

“Now, George, not in my drawing room.”

“Sorry.” He then made an effort and asked Irene to tell him her news.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Irene said, and there was a note in her voice that made him look at her closely. She seemed as serene as ever, pleased with herself even, so George let it pass.

The letter was sent off, and days passed, but no answer came. He wrote a second letter, and had an easier time of it. In this one, he tried to tell Lucie that life was going along. Irene’s kitten had caught a rat in the basement and upset the entire Pelham Crescent household, and he had laughed at them until he was sick. He’d resumed jumping hedges now that his legs were strong again. He thought about her twenty times a day at least, and please would she write?

In the middle of the second week, George realised he was moping. Moping was intolerable, so he tried flinging himself into work. He’d been told work could be soothing. It was distracting, at least, and he did need to keep making money and putting it away. Parkes told him to slow down and breathe; he was making decisions hastily. George knew what happened when he did that: he backed the wrong horse and came a cropper. He apologised to Parkes and did his best to settle down.

As he sat in Parkes’s office, writing up his notes from the day’s work, a letter arrived from Soames, inviting him to call at the Connoisseurs for a drink that evening, if he were free, or say when he was free to dine with them if not. George replied saying he’d call that evening, for what else did he have to do? Play billiards with Dartie, or go and look at chorus girls with him, and chorus girls had lost their charm. Dartie himself was still as amusing as ever, but his antics had begun to seem predictable.

He dined at his own club, then walked the short distance to the Connoisseurs. He was shown to the Strangers’ Room at Soames’s club and given a glass of quite good brandy to drink while he waited. The room was warm, and glowed with candlelight aided by gas. The club itself had a certain quiet aesthetic feel that George found pleasant. It was not what he himself wanted from a club, but he understood why Soames might like it. The Hotch Potch could be slightly absurd in its indulgence of the physical pleasures.

He tasted his drink. Not bad. He sighed. Where was Soames? And then his cousin appeared, his own drink carried by a waiter behind him. They shook hands, and sat.

“Well, cousin, I’m here, as requested.” George stared lugubriously into his glass and tossed off rather too much of it.

“Steady on,” said Soames. “I wouldn’t have bought you a drink if I thought you were going to treat it like that.”

“Sorry. I am reverting to past form. I want to drink myself blind,” George said, and set the glass down. He sat up in his chair and tugged his waistcoat straight. “Cousin. Tell me what I may do for you.”

“You can tell me how I can help you with Lucie.”

George picked up the glass again and swirled the brandy round.

Soames continued. “Irene is worried about you.”

George set the glass down again. “She is as wonderful as ever for feeling that way.”

“She says Lucie has not written a response to your letter.”

“Two. I have written two.”

“She also told me you’ve been secretly engaged.”

George sighed and drank some brandy. Now came the lecture. “We are. I confess it.”

“Why? I thought her father approved of you.”

“He told me until I have a thousand a year and six thousand to settle, I am not to bother asking. I am not troubling to ask him, but I couldn’t bear not asking her.”

Soames leaned forward in his chair. “You ought to have come to me straight away, George. I can’t help you if I don’t know.”

That was not quite what George had expected Soames to say. “I wanted to stick it out, carry through your plan. It’s all been going quite well.”

Then Soames shifted in his chair and set his glass down. “George. You said a thousand a year and six thousand settled?”

“Yes.”

Soames frowned. “That’s the very outside of what we discussed. Béranger is overreaching, given what I know of his finances.”

“How do you know?”

“I made enquiries for your sake. Men in the City, gossip, a little bit of asking round. He married money, but is likely in no position to match that sum.”

George said, “That sum makes my nose bleed. I can’t imagine hitting it soon unless I get very lucky indeed.” He paused, for Soames had a look on his face that was deeply thoughtful. “Overreaching, you said.”

Soames nodded. “He’s asking for as much as he dares, to see if you give it to him. I suspect he’ll settle for less.”

“Haggling over Lucie makes me sick.”

“See here,” said Soames, and he touched George’s arm, which meant he had something important to say. George looked up at him, ready to listen. Yes, he was a stuffed owl, but he was also a straight as a die, perhaps the most transparently honest fellow George knew.

Soames said, “It’s for Lucie’s benefit, not his. The French still practise giving a formal dowry to the husband. We send the bride off with linens and a trousseau, which are for the household, not for the husband. The French are—well, I have opinions, but I’ll spare you. He’s asking for the English practice of having money settled on her, and this is for her protection. If you break your neck jumping fences, she won’t be destitute.”

“Or come back to him and live in his house again, but this time with fatherless children.” George made a face.

“Your father would never treat her so, but he doesn’t know that.”

“My father. You say that, but I’m not sure what he’ll do.”

“You should tell him. He and your mother will be delighted.”

“My mother, yes. She wants to see everyone married. My father? He’s still angry with me.”

“About what?”

George shrugged. “Horses. Billiards. Drinking. Smoking. Doing nothing.”

“George, my dear friend.”

George stopped and looked at Soames. That was not the sort of thing that chap said.

“Your father hasn’t had any of that to be upset about in months.”

“He’ll remember it all as if it were yesterday.”

“And then he will become calmer, and think, and realise that you are the only one of his sons following his profession, and be delighted by it. They’re all like that, from Uncle Jolyon down to Uncle Nick.”

“He burns hotter than the rest of them.”

“Not hotter than Uncle Jolyon.”

George paused. “True. Devilish hot, that.” He thought of Young Jolyon, asking after his own daughter, because he knew nothing.

“Uncle Jolyon’s runs deep. Your father’s is shallow. Trust me. I know what I’m about.”

George sighed. Soames had a point and he conceded it. “Right. My father will rave and storm and tell me what a disappointment I am and then he’ll say something cutting about Eustace, most likely. Such a silk-lined dandy, that one.”

Soames’s moustache turned down, which told George his assessment of Eustace. “Tell me though. What can we do? Do you need proof of your prospects? A better position? I know you said her father wanted you to have more income. Would a partnership instead of venture shares make the same argument?”

“That’s an interesting idea,” George said.

“If we have this, you can take it to Béranger. It’s not quite the same as having the settlement he’s demanding, but it’s a concrete step. Then you can bargain him down.”

“But you said it’s for Lucie’s protection.”

“I had less than that for Irene, but I’ve put more in trust since the wedding. You can do the same.”

“You had less?”

“I had tied up some of my capital for some years. The investments have paid off now.” Soames had a certain satisfaction as he said that.

George considered that satisfaction, and further, the possibility of settling more on Lucie as he had more capital available.

“I take your point,” he said, slowly, thinking. “Talk Béranger down, put what I can into trust, then keep putting more in. You want to take care of her too, don’t you.”

Soames nodded. “I’m your lawyer now, but when you marry you’ll want me thinking of her interests as well. Marriage is about property, and both of you own it.”

“Property?” George said, more than a little surprised. “I thought it was about, about, well—”

Soames gave him a look.

“You know what I’m referring to.”

“Children,” Soames said. His gaze was downcast, and he had a tiny smile on his face. He toyed with his brandy glass for a moment, then drank, still with that little smile. Then he said, “But children are about property, because inheritance is a property question.”

“It’s all what you said when I asked you for advice the very first time. It’s a negotiation about property. Our family religion.”

“Our family—oh. Yes. Very good. But let me talk to Parkes. We’ll work out the details. He’d meant to do this later, but it has been in his plan.”

“His plan?”

“He sized you up immediately.”

“Damn you two.”

Soames smirked at him, actually smirked at him, then lifted his brandy glass to him and drank. George drank off his own. He was apparently good at what he did. Who would have guessed?

A few days later, he and Parkes went riding in the late morning. They wandered off their usual track, talking very little. Near noon they stopped at an inn deep in Surrey, well beyond Richmond Park. They handed their horses to a groom to water, and went inside to restore themselves. George ate shepherd’s pie and drank porter. Parkes did the same.

Refreshed, and with second pints of porter, they contemplated each other. It was time to talk about serious things. George didn’t know how to start the conversation, and that surprised him. He wanted to know Parkes was certain of him. How could he dare ask this?

Parkes spoke first.

“Forsyte and I talked,” he said. “I need to tell you that I’d have done this eventually regardless. You know what you’re about. You’re better than I am at spotting bargains, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

“Thanks,” said George, quietly.

“Forsyte suggested this partnership because he thought you knew things I didn’t. This is what partnerships are for. It’s no damned charity. I’m here to make money.”

“Right,” said George. “I am too.” He felt off-balance. Soames had been three steps ahead of him from the start. “Thanks for trusting me. Not sure why, but thanks.”

Parkes looked at him oddly. “I trusted Forsyte. I trust him more than I can say. Your cousin has been a steady friend since we were in school. He’s an odd man but he’s reliable and his brain frightens me sometimes. When he said you deserved a look-in, I took him seriously. He was right. He always is.”

“I didn’t think of him as the sort of chap to be a steady friend. I thought of him as a sneering cold fish.” At Parkes’s look, George said, “Can you blame me?”

“Yes,” Parkes said. “But I don’t care about that just now. The question is, do you want the partnership? I do. My name will be first on the board, as I’m bringing in more capital to start, but it’ll be profitable or I’ll be damned.”

George looked at Parkes, and saw that he meant it. “I will be your partner if you’ll have me,” he said. “I’ll do what I do best.”

“And I’ll do what I do best. Right.” Parkes nodded.

He stuck out his hand to George, and they shook hands. This was a binding promise in George’s world, and by Parkes’s face it was in his as well.

“That’s enough said,” said Parkes. He wiped the foam of the porter from his moustache. They stood to settle up; Parkes insisted it was his.

They rode back to the stables more slowly than they’d ridden away from them, side by side. They talked about everything except what they’d just shaken hands over: horses, wine, the excellence of the day, occasions when one or the other of them had been in terrible scrapes.

“You were at Marlborough, then,” George said.

“Yes, same year as your cousin.”

“I remember him as a boy. He would defend Winifred with his fists against all comers, even cousins years older.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Parkes said.

“What was he like at school?”

Parkes was silent, and George could see that he was thinking. Eventually he answered.

“I’ll say one thing. Irene has been good for him. He was curled up round himself like a hedgehog until she came into his life.”

Women! George thought about what they did to a man. Unpredictable things.

George patted his horse on the neck and told him he was a good horse. They’d been riding partners for a few weeks now, and they’d come to trust each other. George shifted his weight in the saddle and the horse responded immediately. They moved with an easy canter down the path, Parkes following behind.

The papers came round a few days later to the office George shared with Parkes. They signed their respective copies, with their clerk to witness, and handed them back to the messenger who’d return them to Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte for further handling. Soames promised a clean copy for George to show to whomever he needed to.

It was done. George was a partner. He had his papers. What he did not have was a letter from Lucie. Was she well? Was she upset with him? Was her mother preventing her from writing?

11. The letter

July, 1882

A week later Lucie finally managed to get a letter to Irene, along with a great packet of sheet music fresh from Parisian publishers. Folded inside the letter to Irene was a letter to George, in an envelope sealed with three dabs of red wax and pressed very flat. Irene forwarded the envelope intact to George at his club, along with a note explaining how it arrived, and her invitation to call round to share news if he wished. He received this letter when he arrived at the Hotch Potch for lunch. Lunch left his mind immediately.

George carried the letter into the Hotch Potch’s library. The library was mostly empty at this hour, save for a few older members snoozing in deep comfortable armchairs. George found his own armchair in a corner, and looked at the envelope carefully, turning it in his hands. His initials were written on it in Lucie’s hand. The envelope looked untampered with, not that he would know how to recognise such a thing. Perhaps a diplomat’s daughter would. Or was he confusing diplomacy with the arts of a spy? It scarcely mattered. Her letter had arrived. He opened it with his penknife.

My dearest George—

I have been here three weeks and I have not written to you, I know. You are distressed and fretting, I know this too, and I can see you in my mind’s eye. I have been a most dutiful and untroubling daughter. I wrote a note to my father and to two friends in London, with my grandmother most considerately keeping me company as I wrote, and so I am circumspect.

A young man I knew as a child has been to dinner several times. He is suitable. He has apparently started a good career at the bar. This man is chosen to please my father with his income and his education. He was not chosen to please me, for he has not attempted to make me laugh even once. My mother certainly does not know the least thing about what I should like in a suitor. I am cold to him, but he seems not to notice.

I informed my mother I wished to return to London soon, and she has in turn informed me that she thinks London has been a bad influence upon me. I asked her why, and she at last brought up the English boy whom my uncle says certainly must be a suitor. I will be kept here until I understand he is unsuitable. My uncle is aware he has lost my favour and has no influence over me any longer.

I am pinned in place until I find my way forward. This I have written in the night, and I will seal it in the way my father has taught me. Such pains I take, and all for a campaign my mother and grandmother will certainly lose. I am silent and I am true. I remember the azaleas in the conservatory. My heart is yours. Love, Lucie

George glanced round himself. No one was looking his way. He pulled his handkerchief out of his shirtcuff and passed it over his face. It disappeared into his cuff again and what remained on his face was an irrepressible smile. He read the letter again so he could enjoy how it ended again. Then he re-read the middle and found his temper rising. This could not be allowed to stand. He’d turn up and, and… He’d turn up and demonstrate himself suitable.

He immediately rose and went to a writing desk. He took up pen and club stationery to scribble a hasty note to Renard, begging him to come by at his convenience either today or tomorrow; George would make time for him whenever he was free. He would be going to Paris, and he needed advice. He wrote another letter to Parkes with his apologies, but he must travel to Paris on one day’s notice, to put the deed of partnership to work on Lucie’s mother immediately. A third to Irene, begging for the favour of a sudden dinner; he needed Soames’s advice and hers. A fourth to Nash, telling him where he was travelling and when, and asking him to make arrangements.

He did not write to Lucie. His letter would reach her before he did, yes, but he couldn’t trust it would not be read. He would request her address from Irene, and he would call upon her. He would have to hope she would divine his intentions when she saw him.

What else ought he to do? Oh. He had an appointment to keep with a fellow about a Redcliffe house, and he’d damned well keep it. He wasn’t going to come tumbling off his horse for no reason at all here.

George kept the appointment, let the fellow talk while he said about a quarter as much as usual. He took the price, which was good enough and not worth the effort of beating down, and was done with it.

Irene and Soames set a place for him at their table that evening, and he was able to secure both Lucie’s address and the clean copy of the deed of partnership he needed for his errand. He left their home warmed by dinner, a drink, Soames’s dry advice, and Irene’s hand on his arm at the door. He made his way to his own home to find Parkes’s reply waiting for him in his little entry. It was a brief note asking to be kept informed, and saying that he wished George luck.

He also found that Nash had a bag nearly packed, sitting ready in his bedroom, lacking only last-moment items.

“I sent ahead to that hotel you were recommended,” Nash said. “Do you plan to stay longer than a week, sir?”

George stared at the bag, at his little dressing case and shaving kit tucked within. Then he looked up at Nash. The fellow had a professionally blank face, as ever, but he was hovering. “No,” George said. “If I can’t manage it in that time, I’m coming back to make her father do something.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Damn it.”

Nash left his bedroom and came back a few minutes later with a brandy and soda. George accepted it and collapsed into the chair between his bed and the empty grate. He drank.

“She’s true to me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Nash was again masked, his clean-shaven face unhidden but also unreadable.

“But her mother won’t let her leave until she gives up. Which she won’t do.”

“A stalemate, then?”

“Until I get there.” George drank more brandy. “I need to look more respectable and suitable than this other fellow. What a thought. Me, respectable. Me, an earnest suitor. What have I come to?”

“The young lady seems entirely worth your labours, sir.”

“She is. Damn it.” George drank more brandy, and thought about rescuing Lucie. He wasn’t much of a knight in shining armour. He was a jester and he knew it. But he’d be damned if he sat here in London and let her face it all on her own.

The next day, Renard came shortly after lunch. His appointments were cleared, he said, and he was ready to help George with his plight, whatever it was. His face expressed polite curiosity and doubt. George paced back and forth in his sitting room, waiting for Renard to sit and accept a glass of sherry from Nash.

Renard tasted it, then set it down and leaned forward. “What is it, Forsyte?”

George drew breath. “She’s trapped and she needs me. Her mother won’t let her leave. I’m going to Paris tomorrow to beard the lioness in her den. How the devil do you say that in French? Damn it.”

“Stop,” said Renard, raising a hand. “Stop.”

George fell silent.

Renard went on. “You will say all this to me in French, and I will answer you in French as well. You must keep your head now, if ever you do so.”

George breathed in, out, and tugged at his waistcoat. He didn’t know how to begin in French. The words were gone. Renard stood and came over to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Think. Use your head. Tell me what you propose to do.”

George looked at Renard, at his greying moustache and beard, at his expectant face. What was he proposing to do? And then the words returned. He said, “I’m going to Paris to make my case to Lucie’s family. I’ve got the proof of financial standing that I need to make a showing against the rich suitor her mother is trying to get her to marry. She writes that she’s hating being there and is forced to talk to the fellow constantly. She tries to show complete indifference, and yet they all persist. I want to end it, and be engaged openly, damn it.”

“You are in quite a mess, Forsyte,” said Renard, and upon hearing his tone George came to full attention. Renard never addressed him with anything but an insult. “A secret engagement is not wise.”

“Her father knows we have an understanding.”

“And her mother does not?”

“Her uncle told her mother that he suspects we do and that her father knows about it and—”

“Stop. I do not wish to hear more of this drama. I understand now what I must tell you. You are going to Paris and you will be in the home of the enemy. You must prepare yourself. You understand this, yes?”

“Yes.”

“They will make no concessions to you. The city round you will make no concessions. You think you speak well with me, but I—I make concessions. This I shall cease.”

Renard sat again and drank more deeply of his sherry. It was his turn to draw breath. Then he launched into a discussion of what George would need to know when he called on Lucie’s mother, what he should expect if he were invited to dinner, and a hundred other things, without making concessions, while George took notes as rapidly as he could. He wrote half in English, half in French. He interrogated Renard as best he could, in proper French or Renard would not answer him. What a tangle his mind was! What a blessing Renard was.

The afternoon went by in an exhausting whirl of words. His man Nash served them both tea with sandwiches while Renard continued to drill him. At last Renard consulted his watch, and told George he’d be returning home to his family.

“Renard, old man,” said George, in English, because he could not yet manage deep gratitude in French. “I cannot thank you enough. Yes, I pay you, but it isn’t enough. Damn it all.”

“Ah, you will go to Paris and come back with her,” Renard said. “The question is whether you destroy her relations with her mother or not. And it is on you. Keep your head, and you will manage it. And do not pretend you are more capable than you are. You will be in Paris, and you will not understand half of what they say. Bonne chance, Forsyte. Let us drink wine when you return.”

12. The wrong war

George Forsyte arrived in Paris for the second time in his life far more sober than he had been the first time he’d arrived there. The first time he’d been there was at the age of twenty-one with Dartie alongside him. They’d drunk, gambled, smoked, and learned the ways of women alongside each other. He hadn’t seen Paris in daylight, not enough to remember. George thought of this now and shuddered.

He made his way from the Gare du Nord to his hotel on foot, mindful of his resolution to take more exercise, thinking about what an interesting and pretty city it was in daylight, when viewed as a sober man. He wished he’d paid more attention to ordinary things on that last visit. Ah, well. It was the past, and he was a different man today. He was here on a far more serious mission this time.

Renard’s warning was in his ears: the French of a London diplomat’s salon was one thing; Parisian French was another. The French of a family that might or might not be friendly to his application for their daughter’s hand was yet another thing. He took one more piece of advice from Renard: he strove to think in French while he was there. It was maddening to do, to phrase things in his head one way and then stop himself and twist them into another. He’d never before made his unfortunate brain turn somersaults like this, not even when at school writing themes in Latin for a flogging schoolmaster.

His hotel was a hotel recommended to him by someone he’d met at the Béranger salon, as friendly to the English but not too English; that is, a place where he would not be surrounded by tourists and could be assumed to know what he was about. Which he did not, but he had a Baedeker’s discreetly tucked into his pocket, and a map, and Lucie’s address on a card in his pocketbook. To his surprise, he found himself functioning well, and even making small talk and little jests with hotel staff or waiters, exactly as he might at home. They knew he was English, but he was a cosmopolitan French-speaking Englishman, and therefore in a different category from the one he had been in last time he’d been in Paris.

This time he was not here for the fleshpots and the demi-monde. This time he was here to make his case as a suitor for the hand of the woman who’d stolen his heart by laughing at his wit. He was here to prove he had settled down as his father wanted him to, and was now respectable and could provide for her and give her a pleasant house and servants and dresses and whatnot, all the things her father expected. He was a Forsyte, and he’d damned well prove it to them with the papers Soames had drawn up: a partnership with Parkes, signed and sealed.

The first thing he must do was call upon her mother. He did so immediately on his first afternoon, before he could lose his nerve.

He crossed the Seine to the Left Bank, following his map, and made his way to the edge of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to the home of Madame Béranger. There, he called upon her and was told she was not at home. He left his card with the name of his hotel written upon it with a gracious bow, and was on his way. He made his way back to the streets near his hotel, and found a street café, where he sat at a table with a glass of ordinaire and watched people walk by. He did some unaccustomed deep thinking and self-reflection, which was appropriate for a Forsyte in Paris.

He was a different man from the man he’d thought he was. The George he’d thought he was had sworn off women. He’d declared that if he could help it, nothing would happen to him. He would live and die a bachelor, serene and untouched. His resolution had lasted how long? Less than a year. He’d been at that dinner, and met Lucie, who’d laughed at a joke and made one back at him, then gone and ignored him to play music with her friend. Something had happened to him then and there. He’d been so surprised he’d let it happen: he’d called on her that very week, and then called again when she’d been welcoming.

And now look at him. He was engaged to be married to Lucie. And he was going to convince her family that he was a solid man who deserved their daughter’s hand. Call it reform. Call it whatever you like. George did not care.

He found a restaurant, ate a modest meal with a single glass of wine, and then went for a walk in the Tuileries to gaze upon the ruins of a palace destroyed in the insurrection that Lucie had said was vivid in her memory. Renard had been on the Communard side, and had fled. He tried to imagine what that must have felt like, and what it must have felt like to be a diplomat’s daughter, travelling at all times, with no settled home. He himself knew that he could come home to Prince’s Gardens any time he wished. His father might rumble and roar, but blood was thicker than tea, as he always said to his aunts. Home was a fixed place for him.

When he returned to his hotel he found two notes waiting for him: one from Lucie, and one from Madame Béranger. He read Lucie’s first. She was happy she would see him soon; curious why he was in Paris; curious why he had called upon her mother. She missed him dreadfully; she had not wavered. He was to exercise caution when talking to her mother and grandmother, for they would be watching for mistakes. Her heart was his.

George kissed this note, and tucked it away in his pocketbook.

The note from her mother he read with some trepidation. It was on pale green paper with a scent of some kind of faint citrus. Written on it in a cramped hand was an extremely formal statement of what day Mme Béranger received visitors. There was nothing personal about it, nothing welcoming about it. It was only barely polite, if he understood things properly. Well, it wasn’t as if he’d expected to be hailed as a conquering hero. He had hoped to be treated decently, but if they weren’t to do that, he would simply have to grin and bear it. Grin and jest his way through it.

“Very well,” he said to the note. “Madame Béranger, you need a pen with a wider nib. I shall buy you one as my first Christmas present to you. You shall hate it.”

He wrote on hotel stationery, in his finest handwriting, an exquisitely polite acceptance of her kind invitation, just warm enough to make it clear he had observed her chill. And they said he had wasted his time at Cambridge!

The next day he had little to do but wander about Paris disconsolately, eating good food and scarcely noticing it, drinking good wine and failing to savour it. Tomorrow he would gird his loins, and do whatever bearding was: prove himself a man of means, a sober and solid man who was most certainly good enough to marry the Béranger daughter.

On the day of Madame Béranger’s at-home, George called in the late afternoon, as was appropriate. He was dressed as perfectly as he could manage to be dressed. He was shown to the drawing room, which was dark, done in reds and heavy woods, and full of far more people than he’d expected.

Lucie came forward to greet him.

“It is good to see you well,” said George, politely. He bowed over her hand, but did not kiss it, though he wished to desperately.

Lucie then performed introductions. The chill in the room ought to have been visible like some kind of mist, and icicles ought to have been stabbing down from the arms of every chair, but no, it was all in the clammy handshakes and the barely-sufficient greetings. He was introduced to Madame Béranger; to the grand Madame Chassagne, who would be this family’s Aunt Ann, but only if Aunt Ann had no fond feelings at all for her vast army of nieces and nephews. Then he was introduced to Mlle Léonie Chassagne, Lucie’s youngest aunt; to l’abbé Séverin, a priest there for no reason he could discern; to Oncle Théo’s wife. It was an entire drawing room full of Chassagnes. George now understood the ordeal every new fiancée and fiancé endured when they were dragged by their heels into that drawing room on the Bayswater Road and asked to talk about themselves.

He sat perched on the edge of an uncomfortable chair. He looked round the room, searching for some kind of hint about what this family wanted from him. They looked rather different to the aunts he knew. There were no friendly faces here; some curious faces, perhaps, but no one like an Aunt Emily who wanted everyone to be comfortable and took steps to make it so. Not even an Aunt Juley to break the ice coating everything by saying something simply mortifying.

Lucie’s face betrayed her worry. What was she worried about? About him, and what he might say. She’d been upset he’d treated things lightly, for whatever reason, and that was his cue. He had to hold steady and not joke.

“Do tell us about yourself, Monsieur Forsyte,” Lucie’s mother said, making an iamb of the name. And so it began.

George was ready with something that was not the way he used to answer this question. He was proud of it, however. “I am a collector of house property, like my father before me. I purchase houses from embarrassed owners, repair them, and find new buyers for the improved property. I am a partner in a firm that does this.”

“How interesting,” said Madame Béranger, in a voice that said quite the opposite.

“In a growing city like London, it can be,” George said. He was unsure where to go from here. He’d expected further questions, innumerable questions in fact, from aunts entirely too aware of business matters, actively sizing up his prospects to see if he would do for one of their daughters.

“Tell us about your parents, Monsieur,” Madame Béranger’s sister said. “Your mother, is she well?”

“Ah. Yes. Quite well. My younger brother is just down from Cambridge, and she is proud of him.”

“You have brothers, then?” another woman asked.

“An older brother, a younger sister, and two younger brothers.”

“A pleasant family,” someone said, apparently to someone not George, for there was a whisper of assent.

“And your father?”

“Also quite well and active, still teaching me how to do what he raised me to do.” George felt more than a little confused. He had nothing to do but live by his wits and improvise. He resettled himself in his chair a little more comfortably, and re-crossed his knees.

They next asked him the names of his brothers and sisters, and George gave them, along with a few words about who each of them were, struggling to give them what they wanted. “My eldest brother, Young Roger, is not following my father’s profession.”

That was also a damp squib.

The grandmother spoke. Such a quiet voice she had, so soft. George leaned forward to be certain he heard her. “Were you baptised, M Forsyte?”

George felt a moment of confidence. This, this he could answer.

“I was most certainly baptised, and christened in the Church for a saint of importance to my family. Further, I have served as godfather at the baptism and christening of the son of a dear friend. This was a solemn duty to me, and I was honoured to have been asked.”

He would, he thought, not say the name Publius Valerius unless pressed, nor admit he had invented it.

There was some kind of flutter of relief in the room, most visible in the abbé Séverin. The man said, quietly, “Then it is only the customary undertakings; a small matter.” This was addressed to Lucie’s mother, not to George. Undertakings? Conveyancing? A matter of contracts. This made George breathe a tiny sigh of relief. Contracts he knew what to do about: fling himself into Soames’s awkward arms and beg for help.

“Do you take communion?” the priest said, now addressing George directly.

“Yes, ah, Monsieur l’abbé,” George paused. He had so very nearly said “father”, there, and only been saved by Renard’s drilling. “Though not as often as I should.”

He hadn’t done so since Cambridge, but it was truthful as far as it went. This answer was also a pass, though not quite the answer they wanted from him. At least they knew he wasn’t varnishing what he said to make them happy.

George was not entirely certain why, but his behaviour as a Christian man was under scrutiny. Of all the things to scrutinise in him, this was perhaps the worst. He hadn’t been to church since Soames and Irene’s wedding. Damnation, would he have to start going? He was going to draw the line somewhere.

Nonsense. Purest nonsense. George knew, however he might protest, that he would not draw the line anywhere short of where Lucie needed him to draw it.

Why did they want this from him? Whatever was going on? What did he see round him that wasn’t what he saw in the Bayswater Road? Not absence, but presence? Even as he formed the question, George saw the answer.

There were crosses round necks; there were rosaries in the fingers of one or two of the women. Religious paintings on walls, which the accidentally-educated George could name in theme if pressed. A carved wooden cross upon the wall which looked like a fine piece of work. This was all what his father called Papistry, and made sharp grumpy noises about. George tucked that thought deep into the back of his mind. He would absolutely never use that word or make any kind of joke about it. Come to think of it, he had made a joke rather like that to Lucie, hadn’t he. She’d still been upset when she’d left. He winced internally. Well, he’d made a mull of that.

The questions continued.

Staying solemn and sincere was the hardest thing anyone could ask of him, and here he was doing it, as gracefully as he knew how to do anything at all, for half an hour of intense catechism. Catechism! Such a word! His family; his parish church; his behaviour. He kept an eye on Lucie through all this. He saw no reaction from her that betrayed any mistakes; he was unsure if that meant he had done acceptably or if she had kept perfect control of herself.

The calling hour was over in the early evening. George politely took his leave at the correct time, careful not to overstay his welcome, and eager not to endure another moment of it. His reward was a brief touch of his palm against Lucie’s, the only touch he would get in this unfriendly drawing room, then he was shown to the door by a servant he knew from Béranger’s household in London.

“Is she well?” he asked, very quietly, as Louis helped him with his coat.

“Oui, Monsieur,” Louis said. “She endures. Please call again.”

“Tell her I shall.”

He descended the steps from the Béranger home, with the deed of partnership still folded crisp in its envelope in his pocket. It had been utterly unwanted.

George walked across Paris, making his way out of the Faubourg Saint-Germain towards the Seine, where he could cross and find his way to his hotel. He walked. Paris was beautiful at this hour in July. The light held. The lamps were not lit, and the walls of buildings glowed with low sunlight. Men smoked in doorways, women walked past holding packages. A cab drove past him, horseshoes clopping on cobbled streets. He smelled food cooking, cigarettes, wood smoke, and the ever-present horse dung in the street. It smelled different from London. He was not in his home city.

Did Lucie like it in London? It smelled like coal smoke there. Coal and factories and fog and grime. Paris smelled better.

His thoughts turned to that salon, and the questions they’d asked him. They hadn’t cared two figs for his profession. They’d asked about baptism, and communion. They’d reacted to what he’d said about being godfather to Dartie’s son, and not to anything else. What did that mean? Being a godfather meant promising to raise the boy as a Christian—Oh. Children. What religion would the children be raised in? They would care, wouldn’t they? He’d accidentally said something useful to them. Pure accident. No credit to his wit or his manners.

Undertakings, the priest had said. He hadn’t meant conveyancing. He’d meant something else entirely. It had been something about children. Which church they belonged to, he’d wager.

He found himself at the Pont Royal. He walked over the bridge and here he was at the Tuileries again. He’d been fighting the wrong war, hadn’t he. He’d been fighting an Englishman’s war: a war of income and settlements and property. He had needed to be fighting a Frenchman’s war: a war of religion and devotion and the salvation of his children’s souls. George had no idea if souls existed, and was content to leave arguments about this to other men. Religion was the thing one did when made to at school. He could make all the responses one needed to make in church at any time, eyes closed, one hand tied behind his back, but this was not what was wanted of him now.

Here the Tuileries were: alive in Lucie’s memory as a palace that had stood and now did not. Here they were, evidence of a war that made widows all across France. War was useless: a waste of money; destructive to house property; a disruption to wine-making. Fighting the wrong war was even worse.

Thus the unphilosophical George found himself thinking deeper thoughts than he was comfortable with. He found his way to a café to sit and drink. It was the apéritif hour, and he was served vermouth. Ah yes, his appetite was whetted, and it was whetted after the battle was over and he’d realised he’d been fighting the wrong foe. He was on his back foot, he thought, but his wicket was still secure. He had made no mistakes yet, and he had learned something.

At least he knew what he needed to apologise for now. He felt rather a cad for having made that joke. Did he know why he’d made it? Yes, he did. He would convert if that was what it took. Religion didn’t matter much to him, and Lucie mattered so very much.

His family would hate that. Would it take that? He had no earthly idea.

It came to him that Soames would know, and would explain it all. Relief flooded over him at this thought. He would write to his cousin when he got back to his hotel, and beg him for an answer. Then he’d have to tell Soames how grateful he was for whatever reason Soames had for being kind to him. Making Irene laugh? He would do that until he fell over.

The summer sun set slowly over Paris. George sat and watched the lamps being lit, then made his way to his hotel for some dinner. He wrote a note to Soames asking about marriages between Catholics and Anglicans and what he’d need to know. He went to bed early, and slept the exhausted sleep of a man who’d run himself off his legs.

13. The suitable suitor

The next day, a note arrived from Madame Béranger, inviting George to dinner that evening, if he were available to dine. Such polite fictions invitations were: if he were available. They all knew he was available. What else did he have to do in Paris? Nothing at all.

George sent his acceptance immediately. Did the Parisian post operate as well as the London post? He must trust it did. He dressed himself properly for the evening, all armoured in white tie, white waistcoat, and dark dress coat, with a perfect braid down his trousers. Was it the Parisian fashion? What a fascinating question, which at many other times he would be interested in pursuing. Now? He wanted only to turn up on time and with clean cuffs and shirtfront, shaven properly.

He arrived on time. A servant who was not Louis took his cloak and hat. He went into the salon ready for anything, but in hope of one thing in particular: the word with Lucie he had not been able to have yesterday. If he saw her and was given a smile he would be content, but to have his heart truly eased he wanted a brief word. Any word: it didn’t matter if the word were French or English, made-up or real.

George was neither early nor late, and the salon already had several guests in it, conversing casually. The abbé Séverin was there again, which surprised him; did French families keep tame priests the way English country gentry kept pet vicars? Not a joke to make out loud, damn his own fool mind for racing on the way it did. There was Lucie, and his opportunity for a handshake, and an exchange of smiles, and then she turned and introduced him to a fellow named de Marigny, whom she had known well when she was younger, she said.

George shook the man’s hand, said something bland and appropriate, and stood with the little group to listen and assess who this fellow was. M de Marigny. So this was the chap Lucie was supposed to marry instead of him, eh? He was Lucie’s age or a little older and from the finer points of his dress, most definitely prosperous. George did have to admit the fellow was good-looking, elegant, and entirely easy in his manners. He reviewed his own qualifications here and decided that he was not in a position to rate his own good looks, but he could rate his dress and manners as easy and elegant with confidence. He didn’t have to worry about being beaten by the fellow on that. But did Lucie care about that?

What did Lucie care about?

M de Marigny also seemed to have that attitude some men had that everything they said was important and deserving of someone’s attention. Lucie had written that he was at the bar; that explained it. Self-importance was guaranteed to get right up George’s nose and make him sneeze, and within three minutes of listening to de Marigny talk George felt his nose begin to itch. The fellow’s hair was far too perfect. He was a pompous pompadour in a silk waistcoat. George could feel the urge come upon him to mock aloud. He took himself away from the fellow lest the urge overcome him, it was so acute. He made his way over to Lucie’s uncle to make his cool and calm greetings, exactly as if he didn’t know the man had reported them. They’d had such a lovely evening talking food and wine, and the fellow had been a Judas all along.

The time to go into dinner came none too soon. M de Marigny took Lucie’s arm, and George saw her start at his touch. George was given Lucie’s mother’s unmarried sister, whom he’d met yesterday. The rest of the pairings made no sense to him: the precedence seemed wrong. The table seating was as Renard had told him, save for the precedence. Mme Béranger was on one side, at the centre; opposite her was her brother, Oncle Théo. M de Marigny was at Mme Béranger’s right hand, in a place of honour, and then Lucie was at de Marigny’s right hand. This was a violation of protocol for the youngest woman there, if Renard had been correct. His own partner ought to have been in that place. Perhaps he’d misunderstood.

The abbé—seated near to Madame Béranger—opened the meal with a bénédicité. George knew his duty here, and performed it gracefully with the ease born of many school years’ worth of prayers before meals. His head was bowed, and his eyes open just enough to watch for surprising cues. He declined to cross himself: it was a Papist gesture and they would be rightly suspicious if he performed it. He otherwise observed the forms. Or so he hoped. It was all a tightrope walk without a net, over a pit of flames, possibly with lions lurking below as well.

One of those lions was a lioness: the grand Madame Chassagne had her own head raised and eyes open, and she was watching him. George held himself quite still and strove not to blink. They watched each other, and said nothing. The prayer ended without incident.

As the soup was served, George took stock of the table and the attendees. He and his dinner partner—Mlle Léonie Chassagne—were at a corner of the table. He could see Lucie and catch her eye, but ordinary dinner conversation with her would be impossible. That had to have been deliberate. He counted heads. Fourteen people at the table.

He leaned close to his dinner partner and smiled conspiratorially. “You know, I think they invited me only so they had a lucky fourteenth.”

She smiled, as he had hoped. “You speak French well, M Forsyte. I was told you did not.”

“Let that be our little secret. We’ll surprise them. But please do tell me what the order of seating means. It’s quite different from what I might expect.”

“Oh? Please explain.”

“The English put their hosts at opposite ends of the table, and they each take in the guest of greatest importance of the opposite sex. Then it is all mixed by who the hostess thinks will make good conversation with whom. Of course courting couples are never paired up. I swear it is to drive us mad.”

The aunt laughed, with a glint in her eye.

George continued, “So, my dear Mlle Chassagne, I assume they paired us because they think we will make good conversation.”

“Alas, M Forsyte, it is no such thing. We are at the corner with each other because we do not matter. We are most distant from our hosts, who are the centre of all. See Madame Béranger and her brother? They are of importance.”

George let the point of that épée drive itself home. He grinned his most rakish, impish grin. “I will say this for Madame Béranger, that insult is most elegantly delivered. We shall have to turn it upside down and simply enjoy ourselves despite it.” He lifted his wineglass to Mlle Chassagne. “This wine is to be envied, and I suggest we drink our fill of it.”

She lifted her glass back to him. “Let us enjoy it.”

George drank enough of his soup to be polite. It was acceptable—not bad, but not to his taste. Despite his promise to drink his fill of the wine, he rationed himself. It would not do to dull his wits. His dinner partner drank more from her glass than he did, and was soon quite won over.

The relevé arrived and George took the measure of the table. Conversation was scattered all over, not confined to partners at all, no Hoyle’s Rules in force. He’d begun thinking he had to converse to his right, and now in the second course to his left, but there was no such regimentation. Here, they simply took aim and fired conversational volleys at will.

George listened to the volleys boom and echo, and felt his nerve waver. No one was making allowances for him here. There were thirteen people talking over and under and round each other, spluttering, muttering, speaking half-sentences, laughing, spitting quick replies round the table at each other. He couldn’t keep up; he had no hope of being witty at this pace. He felt as he’d felt in those first weeks at the Béranger salon. Renard had warned him, but he had not truly heeded it. He’d need his brain to turn back-somersaults as well as somersaults to survive this.

There was nothing to be done. He ate, he drank, he listened, he bided his time.

The entrée arrived, along with a more substantial wine to enjoy: a Chambertin. George suppressed a smile. He turned to Mlle Chassagne and found her not engaged in conversation at the moment.

He asked, “Tell me, please, what brings you to grace this table with your presence this evening?”

“Ah, M Forsyte, I have little else to do with myself. I am here at the spinsters’ corner, le coin des vieilles filles, where they banish women whom they wish never to marry. It is a peasant superstition, but I would not put it past my sister.”

“That’s damnable,” George said. Then it dawned on him that they’d put him in that corner with her. “Do they do this with men as well? The bachelors’ corner?”

“No. Alas, France is full of widows and the once-affianced who will never marry, ever since the Prussians defeated us. No man who wishes to marry will ever sit alone.”

George raised his eyebrow and studied her face briefly. She was not forty yet, he thought, likely young enough to have been one of those women left waiting after that war. Rule Britannia and the waves indeed. London sat comfortable and untouchable. Well, that was a caution and a half.

Mlle Chassagne was, he felt, a woman who had deserved better, for she had a sharp wit and many pointed things to say about the dinner guests that he found interesting. For one thing, she told him that she hoped her niece married for affection, for she was a vivacious and talented girl who was loved by her maternal aunts and uncles. It was not her fault her father was a man of the current regime, not in the least devout. That was her mother’s fault, for marrying for political advantage and then regretting it.

George’s suspicion was now confirmed. Her mother cared nothing for his prospects, and likely nothing for de Marigny’s either. Property was the Forsytes’ religion; he’d said it himself. The joke was that it was his, too. George touched his pocket where a copy of the deed of partnership rested. He’d had his hands up defending his face, and the blow had come to his gut.

Lucie had seen it coming and tried to warn him.

He moodily ate his entrée, which was better than the soup had been. Silence would not do in a dinner guest, however, and he needed to make a good showing. He turned his attention to the dinner guest to his left, a quite middle-aged woman with pince-nez and a stern look. He smiled at her brilliantly, because this was how one spoke with strangers, and the look melted. He asked if she was enjoying the evening’s wines as much as he was. This was a lucky opening salvo, for she was a connection of Oncle Théo’s wife. She assured him the wine was by far the most enjoyable aspect of a dinner here, and George could assent to that with some irony.

The rôti arrived, along with salade and more of the Chambertin. George noted the conjunction. Funny that dinner could consist of familiar courses shuffled together surprisingly. He caught Lucie’s eye across the table. She was in fact enjoying the Chambertin. She had also caught his eye every time he’d looked to her, and that was enough to make him feel happy despite everything. Then she looked at de Marigny to her side and her expression became indifferent again. The corner of George’s mouth went up.

The table’s rapid conversation swirled round the fellow, who seemed to have opinions about many things. George had not heard Lucie laugh once the entire evening, and that was itself notable.

“Am I wrong, or is that man tedious?” he asked Mlle Chassagne.

She hid her face behind her napkin for a moment. “He at times forgets that conversation requires more than one person.”

“As Lucie says, it’s a duet,” George said absently, watching the fellow. Then he realised he’d made his mistake again. He hastily turned to Mlle Chassagne and said, “Forgive me, it is an English habit to use names so casually.”

“M Forsyte, it took five minutes of your presence in the salon yesterday to make the relationship clear.”

George blushed very red. “I’ve let my guard down,” he muttered.

“One presumes her father knows?”

“He does,” said George. “But he cares only about my income. I think Madame Béranger cares about something different.”

“You are more perceptive than you appear.”

George grimaced. That was another blow slipping past his guard.

Entremets were served—not sweets but vegetables—and then cheese, and then ices. The cheese was a fascinating digression and George made a note of that as well; he would certainly serve it so himself for a change now and then. One did tire of savouries. He was, however, disappointed that what came next was not a withdrawal of the ladies. There would be no port, no chance to stand, smoke, and make conversation with the gentlemen, no chance to listen to what sort of jokes de Marigny told when the ladies were out of the room. Instead the entire table rose and returned to the salon for coffee.

Once again, the centre of attention was de Marigny, who seemed to think it his due as the pompous pompadour. George watched Lucie reply to something the fellow said to her. He could not follow all of the conversation, but he could follow her expression. She looked stiff, as if she were controlling herself.

Lucie had said one thing about this cad, and one thing only in her letter. He hadn’t tried to make her laugh. George grinned. The fool.

“Our English guest is smiling,” said the suitable suitor, in English, with a strong accent, clearly enough that he cut through the conversation in the room. The guests nearest the two of them quieted to listen.

“Indeed I am,” said George, in French, holding his mouth as Renard had instructed him to. “It has been a delightful meal in most curious company. I have at last met the family of Mlle Béranger.”

“And how is it that you met our Lucie?” The fellow used her Christian name, bold as brass.

“Ah. Did not Mlle Béranger tell the story? At the wedding of her dearest friend to my dearest friend. She was a bridesmaid and I was a groomsman, and we were paired with each other. I was told we made a handsome couple. The acquaintance seemed a natural one after that.” There was more than a little spice in his casually correct usage there. Apparently Renard had had the right of it when he’d needled him.

“Comme c’est charmant!” said Mlle Chassagne. At the sound of her voice, a few more guests came near.

“Who said that?” Lucie asked, with the first genuine smile he’d seen on her face all evening. “One of your aunts?”

“Aunt Emily. She was choosing which she liked of the wedding photographs. We were caught looking at each other and not at the photographer. He was upset to have spoiled a plate, but my dearest aunt said it was quite her favourite of the wedding party. Of course, the photograph of the bride and groom gazing at each other was her overall favourite. It’s a wonder the photographic chemicals did not burst into flames from that one.”

Lucie giggled. “C’est bel et bien un mariage d’amour. A love match, as you English say.”

“Le meilleur genre. Much better than a tennis match or, Lord forbid, a cricket match.” George rolled the R in cricket to give it the emphasis it wanted.

Lucie burst into another fit of giggles. Now they had nearly everyone’s attention, even that of l’abbé and the grand Madame.

“What is the amusement?” asked M de Marigny at about the same time Lucie’s grandmother demanded to know the same.

“Il a fait un jeu de mots en anglais sur l’expression ‘love match’,” she explained to M de Marigny. “English is more full of puns than French. It is quite dangerous to speak at times, for the puns lie in wait.”

“Ils se cachent au coin de chaque phrase,” said George.

“How amusing,” said de Marigny. “C’est un bouffon de cour.”

“Better a court jester than a court bore,” said George, in English.

Lucie stifled a laugh, and yes, that was Oncle Théo hiding his face briefly behind his coffee cup. At least two of them knew enough to have heard that pun. There: George had his revenge for being exiled to the corner of the table.

M de Marigny asked, in French once more, “Is your acquaintance based on bon mots, then? You commenced with being paired for your good looks, but now it is jesting?”

“Acquaintance commences many ways, and it continues in many different ways. Ours commenced with a meeting at a celebratory dinner for our friends, but it continued with laughter.” George considered his coffee cup. “Though now that I think about that first dinner, I recall laughter then as well.”

“It was one of the most warm and cheerful occasions in my memory,” Lucie said. “It was a wonderful evening with friends.”

“Have you not had many recently?” George asked, not precisely feigning pained curiosity.

“Pas depuis que j’ai quitté Londres, non. Pas avant ce soir, my dearest George.”

That was a petard, thrown right into the middle of the salon. It exploded, then the salon fell even more silent than before.

Into the silence, George said, in French, using the familiar pronoun, “What, no one has been making you laugh? Do they know nothing about you?”

“It seems not,” said Mlle Chassagne. “We all know our dear Lucie loves to laugh.”

M de Marigny now had his opportunity to be gracious, and he took it. He glanced at Madame Béranger, whose face was a marvel, and said merely, “I apologise for my misapprehension.” What the misapprehension was, he did not say. George knew well enough what he meant, and so did Lucie.

After that, the evening was peaceful and the conversation far less spiced. The sweat on George’s temples cooled, and his nerves calmed. He stood with Lucie, quite happily, and did his best to keep up with the conversation. The guests were all rather more polite to him than they’d been yesterday. He remained as exquisitely polite as he knew how, though perhaps it was not the best form to gaze at Lucie every so often and smile at her.

Before he left, he found a moment for a quiet word with Lucie, in English.

He asked, “Will she let you leave now?”

“She will. She knows what she needs to know about you, and she now also knows that I will frighten off all other suitors in the way I did this evening.”

George grinned at her. This filly was all heart, and the heart was all his, and they had more than enough staying power for the run home in front of them.

“It’s good that one of us is clever,” he said. He held her hand for a long moment at the door, then kissed it.

He made his way back to his hotel on foot again, as he had yesterday, through a cheerful Parisian evening. Was the evening cheerful or was he? It scarcely mattered. His nose was full of the same scents: food, cigarettes, wood smoke, horses. His ears heard the same things. The silhouette of the city against the night sky was the same as before, so different from London’s. But George was happy now, and he whistled as he walked.

14. The notaire

July 1882

Lucie left Paris three days after George had been to dinner, escorted by Louis once more. Her mother had accepted the inevitable; her grandmother had not quite managed to be gracious, but had conceded. Relations with her uncle were, however, not yet repaired, and this was her regret. She was happy to board the train to Calais and leave the Chassagne women behind, leave the demands behind, leave the congealing amber of a past she did not want behind. Why did she feel it was a past? This was, it seemed, a political opinion that she held despite herself. She thought about this as she sat on the train north to Calais, with a Victor Hugo novel in hand, unread. She had not dared read him openly in her mother’s house, for he was against the priests, but he was much celebrated in all the rest of France, and was she not with her nation in celebrating him?

She wished she did not have to think about the question this way at all. It was enough to have watched George endure their interrogation. He had come through it with dignity and calm intact, and then he had been magnificent at dinner. They were a couple already, and her mother had seen it. When she arrived home in London, she would tell her father he had been a coward, and tell George he had been perfect, and then she would kiss George. He would smile in that way of his and then make some kind of jest to make his feelings seem less important than they were.

She acted upon the first part of her resolution the moment she arrived home. Her father wanted at first to claim the victory for himself, but she let him know with no little anger that he had done nothing, and that she and George had done all the work of silencing her mother. He had flinched from his duty, and she did not know why, but she thought less of him for it. He did not defend himself, but merely sighed at her and told her things were more complicated than she knew, and ended the conversation by reminding her that his condition upon her marriage remained. She did have his consent to the formal engagement, and he would prevent her mother from making further demands. She slept in her own bed with this satisfaction.

She sent a note to George the morning after she arrived, telling him that she had returned, and had informed her father that they were now formally engaged, as her mother had conceded. She asked that he call whenever he could. As she had expected, George rang her father’s bell at teatime, eager to see her and to claim the right to call her his fiancée openly. They sat in the small family sitting room, with the door open, and held hands decorously. Lucie wished to do more, but was aware of that door, and of the servants. But she was entirely willing to tell George everything she’d been holding inside since Paris.

“You were perfect, my dearest George, perfect. Your manners, your self-possession, the way you followed when I gave you a signal!”

“It’s like a horse with a good rider. You shifted your weight and I knew. My darling Lucie. But—”

“But! Do you understand now?”

“Yes, I do. I know what to apologise for. I am so very sorry.”

“What possessed you?”

George looked quite chastened. “When I told you I’d convert, what I meant was, well, I’d do anything at all. Whatever you needed me to do. Only I had to make a joke about it because I am a court jester. Laugh, Grimaldi! I must laugh.”

Lucie considered this. It fitted into the puzzle of George. He never did stop joking. But who was he behind it?

“What happens if you do not laugh?” Lucie asked. “If how you feel is not a joke?”

This seemed to her to be something that mattered, and thus something to hear from him. She tried not to seem too intent on him and his answer, because he was hesitating and his face was no longer chastened, but shy.

“Then I have to tell you how much I feel for you. How much I’ve changed my habits because of you. And admit how awful it would be if we couldn’t marry.”

“You stuffed owl,” Lucie said, and she saw a flicker of a smile on his face. “We were always going to be able to marry. We might have had to wait, but that is all.”

“When you put it that way, I feel silly. But Lucie! I am no stuffed owl. What you should have called me is a goose.”

“Very well. You are a goose.”

George took both of her hands and kissed her knuckles. He was still solemn and unlike himself, but there was a glow of happiness in him that Lucie was relieved to see. Her thoughts turned to the topic of the money, and of how long it would take to secure it.

“George,” she said, thoughtfully. “Would your father contribute to your part of the settlement?”

She saw him think this out. “Perhaps, if he were appealed to in the right way. He’ll want to give me an advantage in business, so long as he can tell himself he’s making a profit on it as well. He won’t simply give it to me. He’ll need to think me reliable.” George gave her a wry smile. “He’ll be suspicious about that, and about you. I’m still worried he’ll have an outburst about the French. I apologise for him, but he’s grumpy about them for reasons I don’t understand.”

“You said he had accepted Irene.”

“She’s an English girl who studied in France. My mother will be on my side, I think. She wants me to marry.” George cast his eyes heavenward, and then he gave her a little grin.

“Could you describe it to your father as an investment?”

“A loan, with interest, perhaps,” George said. “My father will feel better if he gets something from it.”

“Could you pretend that you don’t want it? And coax him into pursuing you?”

“You’re hatching something, Lucie. That will hook him.” George was now smiling at her outright. “I think we can do this.”

“We have a plan, then.”

“We do.” But George did not celebrate this. Instead he looked away from her, and rubbed the cloth of his trousers where it bent over his knees. His face was uneasy to Lucie’s eye.

“What is it, dearest George?”

“I was unhappy while you were in Paris. You left upset with me, and I hadn’t been able to set it right. I simply—”

“Yes?”

“I want to—I mean to say—dash it. Lucie, I do love you awfully.”

“Mon Dieu, George, que je t’aime.” It came out of her before she could stop herself, in French, and George looked almost overwhelmed. He was silent, and held her hands tight in his.

When he spoke, his voice was almost not his own. “Come here and let the goose kiss you,” he said.

George kissed her, and Lucie forgot about the open door. There was always a smile in him somewhere, but he was not laughing at himself in this moment. Lucie could not help but yield to it, to the depth of emotion in him, and they held each other very close. They had done it. They had conquered her mother. Her father had allowed them. They were openly engaged. Lucie let herself sigh and melt into George’s arms.

George brought her to tea at his parents’ home the next day, to announce it to them properly, and to begin to put Lucie’s plan into action. They were shown into his mother’s sitting room, the one for family teas, not the grand room on the first storey for entertaining. The sitting room had French windows opening directly onto a little garden behind the house, which was full of flowers bright in the summer sun. It looked as if it might be lovely to walk in, and Lucie kept stealing glances at it, until she reminded herself why she was there.

George was more stiff and formal than he was ordinarily. He began with re-introductions. “Father, you remember Mademoiselle Lucie Béranger.”

“How d’ye do,” George’s father said, rapidly. He shook Lucie’s hand very briefly.

“And Mother, you remember Lucie as well.”

“Yes, dear, I do. Please do sit down. How do you take your tea?”

Mrs Roger poured for Lucie. She took a cup and said her thanks in her best English. George sat next to her and accepted a cup as well. The tea was very good, as it had also been in Mrs James’s home, and Irene’s. The china was not the same china that she had seen at the musical tea months ago. This was old, by her judgment, and perhaps quite dear to Mrs Roger. It was bone china, apple green with gilding, far more ornate than modern china was.

George’s father was standing, holding his cup on the saucer, watching his son suspiciously.

Into the silence, Lucie said, “This is a wonderfully cheerful room, Mrs Forsyte.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Mrs Roger opened her mouth as if to say more, but was interrupted by a sound from her husband.

“Out with it! Why are you here?” said Roger.

“Father, I wanted to let you know that Lucie and I intend to marry.” George paused, waiting for the explosion he’d told Lucie might happen, but his father was silent. He continued. “We can’t marry yet because I don’t have enough income or capital to settle on her to satisfy her father. But I want you and Mother to know, so we can plan it all properly when the time comes.”

George’s father’s face had reddened somewhat. Lucie glanced at his silent mother: she had begun to beam at George happily.

Roger’s silence ended with an outburst. “Not enough? What does the fellow want?”

George named the sums.

“Fancy money,” said Roger. “Fellow thinks quite highly of his daughter.”

Lucie and George met each other’s eyes for a moment, and George gave her a tiny shrug. He said, “As you would if Francie were marrying.”

“Suppose you have a point there, eh,” said Roger. He looked at Lucie as if surprised to see her there, and made a throat-clearing noise.

“It’s no matter. I’ll have it in another year or so,” said George. “I started working towards it last year and I have a plan. Lucie’s mother tried to get her to pay attention to another suitor, some French aristocrat, who had the money to hand, but she saw him off.” George looked at her; this was her cue.

Lucie spoke up. “Maman will try again, I think, but I am determined that your son is the better man.”

“Hmm,” was all his father said to that, rubbing at his bare chin. Lucie saw him consider her briefly, still suspicious, then turn his attention back to George.

George said, “Takes money to breed money in this business, as you know, Father. I’m a full partner now, but my investment capital is not what Parkes’s is. And I don’t put it all in. I make a range of investments.”

“Not consols,” his father said, and made a sound that was almost a growl.

George gave him a look.

Roger made a different sound, one that was almost a laugh. “Suppose you’re my son after all, unlike that dandy Eustace. That boy had better think twice about asking me to settle his tailor’s bill a second time.”

Lucie saw a smile flash over George’s face then vanish. So far, this discussion was going as she hoped.

He said, “That’s the news, Father, latest edition, and I hope we have your blessing.”

Roger huffed, and there was his growl. “Don’t like long engagements. Don’t like short ones either, but a year is too long.”

George shrugged. “Can’t be helped. It’ll happen as soon as I can manage.”

“That fellow Parkes says you’re working like a dog.” Roger rubbed his bare chin again. “I’ll invest. Let you get married without waiting too long.”

“Invest?” George said, as if the idea were faintly unpleasant to him.

“It’ll be a loan that you can repay, properly. I expect to get interest back on my money, mind.” Roger’s chin was out as he said it, and he sounded irascible.

When George answered, his chin was also out, and there was a note in his voice that was so similar Lucie had to hide her smile. “Wouldn’t accept it on any other terms.” A pause. “How much? Need to know it’s worth my while.”

Roger grinned for an instant, then hid it behind a glower. “It’ll be enough. Whom should I deal with?”

“Soames is acting for me.”

“Good,” Roger said. “First rational thing you’ve said.”

George glanced at Lucie very briefly. Roger loved to complain about Soames, he’d told her once.

Mrs Roger finally spoke up. “Well, that’s settled! I’m so happy for you both. I had quite despaired of George settling down until we heard he had begun calling on you. All Saints is quite close to hand, you know. All of ours were christened there.” Mrs Roger paused, and looked at Lucie again, this time with her gaze resting on the cross at her throat. She said nothing at all about it, however, but told Lucie they were still waiting for their first grandchild.

Lucie asked after the china, curious, and learned it was a wedding present from the Jameses. Mrs Roger was delighted Miss Béranger had asked, for she quite preferred the Worcester style over the modern fashions. What did dear Lucie prefer? May she call her Lucie?

The conversation was warm, Roger having settled down to drink his tea with a son he had decided to gaze over beneficently, in paternal approval. The formality in the room eased somewhat, and little sandwiches were eaten while Lucie told George’s parents about herself in response to their questions.

After tea, George escorted Lucie back to her father’s home. He sat next to her in the cab, her hand resting comfortably on his arm. It was pleasant to be engaged formally, and to be able to touch each other openly. George rested his gloved hand over hers and made a happy sound.

“One pair of parents satisfied,” said Lucie. “And now we will satisfy mine. You will see.”

“They want different things, though.”

“Yes, they do. Soames has it in hand, however, and I believe my parents will be easily satisfied. Trust me.”

“I do trust you.” George leaned over and kissed her cheek.

A fortnight later, Lucie, George, and her father received notes from Soames, summoning them to a meeting at his offices. Her family’s lawyer was to arrive from Paris, sent to London by her mother to discuss the terms of the contract. The size of her dot, the dowry her family sent with her to her husband, would be known at last to her.

Her father indulged in a brief outburst of temper, quickly controlled, when he read the letter from Soames inviting him to the discussion.

“I am summoned to an Englishman’s office to discuss my affairs! Could he not find neutral ground for the negotiation? Has he no manners?”

“Father, he is not a diplomat. I think he is as much summoned as we are by Maman’s lawyer.”

“Ah, yes, this notaire, Delaporte. I believe I know the man. Yes. Your grandmother has employed him for decades. He is the sort to summon men to him.” Lucie watched her father deliberately soothe his own feathers down to their unruffled state. That was a skill to learn.

On the day they were to meet, Lucie and George arrived somewhat early at the offices of Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte, in the Poultry, hard by the Bank of England. They were shown in by a tall, bearded gentleman named Gradman, who introduced himself as Mr Soames’s clerk. Soames was writing something as they entered, and held up a finger to indicate he’d be a moment. Gradman seated them. The office was comfortable, very quietly furnished in a manner that suggested prosperous solidity, with just enough modernity to signal that its occupant was no stick in the mud.

Soames blotted whatever he’d been writing, closed a book, and shifted to indicate that they had his complete attention. “I am happy you arrived before Monsieur Béranger,” he said. “It affords us an opportunity to talk.”

“What are the open questions?” asked George.

“There are two. First is the matter of the undertakings George wrote to me about.”

“Ah,” said George. “I was wondering when we’d get to those.”

“They are about our children,” Lucie said. “And which faith they will be raised in.”

“I thought as much.”

Soames said, “The notaire wishes the contract to include your promise to raise your children in the Catholic faith.”

George shrugged. “It’s all one to me. My father is another matter.”

Soames said, “This requirement is not binding in English law, so nothing you sign has any meaning, but I would prefer you not to have to sign. In practice, the children follow whichever faith the father follows, or whichever faith the more devout of the two follows.”

“Oh,” said Lucie. “My mother will be upset. My grandmother will be beyond words.”

Soames said, “You will certainly upset someone no matter what you choose. I suggest that you not consider that, but instead consult what you both wish. Talk privately about it.”

Soames, Lucie thought, was at times as discreet as a priest, just as quietly folded up into a silent and safe place for one’s secrets.

“You mentioned two obstacles,” she said.

“The second is not so much an obstacle as a negotiation that has not yet happened. The marriage settlement must be agreed upon, and for reasons I find puzzling, this negotiation involves more parties than merely George’s father and your father.”

Soames went on, seeming to warm to his subject.

“I have been engaged in a contest with your family lawyer about the settlement, all by correspondence until today. I do not want to win, precisely, at least not on the traditional terms. I’m George’s lawyer. Ordinarily I would be presumed to be protecting only his interests. But I am protecting the interests of both of you, at his request.”

Lucie looked at George, who was uncharacteristically serious. He nodded to her.

Soames was speaking in a voice Lucie did not associate with him. It was flatter than usual, extremely calm. “The money is not precisely the problem. George has the full six thousand, but only with the aid of a loan from his father. This makes his father an interested party, who must agree to the terms. The dot will also come in, though we do not know the amount yet. The remaining question is what your father proposes to bring in. He will be expected to contribute something to match what George’s father has contributed.”

Soames and George both looked at Lucie.

Lucie paused. She’d never heard a number from her father. She’d only heard his demands of others second-hand. “I do not know,” she said, because she could not dissemble before Soames. He would see through it, she suspected.

“It will come up in the negotiations, quietly if I have my way, so that there need be no question of revealing his finances to unfriendly parties. The notaire is here to explain what your mother and her family would prefer, which is complete transparency.”

“I am surprised he has travelled,” Lucie said.

“But travel he has.” Soames tilted his head. His office was hushed and little sound of conversation from outside could be heard within, but Lucie could make out the jingling of a bell in the hall.

Soames opened his office door, and a moment later Mr Gradman ushered in her father. The expression on her father’s face was composed but not serene; he was still unhappy about the summons. Whether he was more annoyed with Soames or with the notaire Lucie could not be sure.

“The office of an English lawyer,” he said, shaking Soames’s hand briefly. “And now I am privileged to watch an English marriage settlement negotiation.”

“It is unusual to have the bride present in settlement negotiations,” Soames said, his voice dry.

“George has asked me to translate if necessary,” Lucie told her father.

Soames nodded at her and said, quite matter-of-factly, “I think it quite reasonable for you to be here if only so that you know what is being discussed about your money.”

Her father glanced at her, and she saw surprise on his face, quickly masked.

Before any of them could pursue this line of conversation, the notaire arrived and was shown in by Soames’s clerk Mr Gradman. The notaire greeted her father, who then introduced him round: Maître Delaporte, arriving from Paris for this negotiation. He was a carefully dressed man of about sixty, reserved, slightly stooped, with gold-rimmed glasses. He spoke no English.

Lucie could see that her father was not on easy terms with him. Since he was her grandmother’s notaire, and she would have paid his fare here, it was her grandmother he would be representing. She would listen for this in his words.

George sat down on one of Soames’s client chairs, pulled to the side, beside Lucie. He crossed his knees and casually rested a hand across his mouth. Lucie knew this to be his way of reminding himself to stay silent. This had been Soames’s sole instruction to him, George had told her: answer questions if asked directly by Soames, otherwise keep his mouth closed and let Soames speak for him. He’d then joked that it would be easy, because when Soames started talking law it was all Greek to him, and he’d only studied Latin.

Delaporte opened by cautioning that he could not act officially when outside Paris, but he could arrive at understandings with all the parties, and draw up the proper documents to be ready when they arrived in Paris, which he assumed they would for the wedding. Then he looked down the side of his nose, and said, “Vous, les Anglais, vous cachez de l’argent dans des trusts. We do not do this.”

“The English are more discreet than the French,” said Lucie, to Soames.

Soames looked at her a moment, then said, in French, “Discreet is indeed a better word than hiding would imply. We think a man’s business is his own. We also protect money in trusts from those who would misuse it.”

That was a very polite shot, but a shot in kind nonetheless. What surprised her was that his French was adequate; there were even notes in his vowels that sounded Parisian, one minor stumble with grammar aside. He knew more than she’d realised through all those months she’d conversed with Irene in his presence.

This exchange of compliments was but the first pass. The two legal men then drew their swords and clashed in earnest, fencing over Soames’s broad desk with unblunted épées. There was no gap for her to translate in, and no need for it; they understood each other perfectly. They were cautious at first, Lucie thought, sounding each other out. Delaporte wanted everything written out in the deed, all numbers visible, all mutually shared and read to all of the parties whose money was involved, and their witnesses as well.

Soames found this unacceptable and said so. “The terms of a settlement may be hard-fought between groom and father of the bride, but they are private between them. The idea of a man opening his books to a drawing room full of relatives is astonishing.” There was a note in his voice, creeping through the calm, that expressed a sort of horror at the thought of it.

“The contract must say what both bring, or it is rumour not contract,” said Delaporte, immovably. “Further, we must include the usual clause about what religion the children shall be raised in. They must be raised in the faith of their mother.”

Soames repeated his objection, then returned to the topic of the public nature of the transaction and the sums involved. The quarrelling continued, entirely politely, entirely calmly. Then came a moment when the tone changed, and Soames inclined his head to Delaporte.

Soames said, “You have won your points, Maître. The deed must say what the bride brings, and the clause may stand.”

Delaporte made a gesture that to Lucie’s eye indicated respect for his opponent.

“Let us then discuss these numbers,” he said.

Everyone in the room shifted in their chairs slightly. They had finally come to the money, the reason they were all there arguing.

Delaporte then stated the sum that would be her dot, which to the French in the room would be George’s money; Lucie knew it would come into the settlement. George was very still beside her; he would know current exchange figures as well as she. And then Delaporte said, very clearly, “La dot constituée par Madame Chassagne.”

Her father sat up, then very deliberately resettled himself into his previous languid listening posture. Lucie quivered in her seat to see it. They had heard her value stated: they now knew the number of francs her mother’s family thought she was worth.

Soames said, in that flat, calm lawyer voice he used, “This leaves the next sum we must record, for I now understand that all must be written in the open. What is the amount that Monsieur Béranger proposes to bring?”

Delaporte said, “I am instructed—”

Then her father stood and interrupted him, politely. “Alas, I find I am out of time and must hasten to my next appointment. Please do carry on without me.”

He left the room without seeming to be in haste, but quickly enough that Lucie could not speak before he was gone. The two legal men had carefully blank faces, nearly identical in young Englishman and older Frenchman. They looked at each other and said nothing, and seemed to be completely in agreement with each other in this moment, if in no other. George looked at her with a question on his face and Lucie shook her head. Her father was capable of anything. This might have been either a negotiation manoeuvre or genuinely an appointment.

Soames’s blank expression cracked first. “Perhaps I expressed the question badly and gave offence. My French is not the best.”

Lucie heard a rustle from George beside her as he shifted abruptly in his chair.

“You must write your documents without it,” Delaporte said, and there was some acid disapproval in his voice, though not, Lucie thought, for Soames.

“Very well,” said Soames, impassively.

Delaporte rose to depart, and Soames opened the door to admit a hovering Gradman. Neither Delaporte nor Soames had taken notes during the discussion, but Lucie had no doubt that both men had clear memories of what they had agreed to. They would each write their documents, in different languages and addressing different laws, but somehow exactly the same.

When the door had closed behind Gradman again, Lucie spoke. “Soames, you should know that your French was correct. There was no question of offence or misunderstanding.”

“I thought as much,” said George, “but I was keeping my mouth shut as instructed.”

“Well done,” said Soames, absently. To Lucie he said, “Interesting. Thank you. I shall write the drafts with an empty space, it seems.”

Soames was looking at her, and Lucie could see he’d decided to fold himself round a secret. But what? Why had her father refused to answer? Lucie did not see it.

15. The deadlock

George called for her a few days later to join him again at his parents’ home for tea, for his father now had a copy of the agreements drafted by Soames to consider. George told her it had been sent round by messenger earlier in the afternoon, and his father would be sure to have something to say. George was both hopeful and nervous about his father’s reactions.

Irene had described the Forsyte brothers to her. Roger’s older brothers, James and Jolyon, were both quite different. James fretted and was affectionate despite it; Jolyon was philosophical and openly affectionate. Swithin was James’s twin but his opposite in every way. Roger, Irene had said, was enterprising but subject to fits of temper. He was positive in his opinions and judgments. Lucie began to understand why George said his mother had been flattened.

Mrs Roger was there when they arrived, and welcomed them cordially just as she had last time. They sat in the same sitting room as before, with the same lovely garden in view, still unvisited. Mrs Roger poured into the same precious service, the old Worcester wedding present, and then turned to a box she had brought with her to the sitting room.

“Dear Lucie, I wanted to show you this. It has sat quite unused since Thomas, but all of mine wore it.”

She lifted the lid of the box and carefully removed something wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped it, and Lucie saw a christening robe, all white lace, simply lovely. She reached out to touch it. It was a fine thing. It was, she thought, the same practice for the Church of England people as it was for those of her faith: this robe might be worn by an infant in a ceremony in either of their churches.

“It is beautiful,” she said, to George’s mother, and received her pleased smile in reward.

Why was it being shown her? Lucie was uncertain what George’s mother might be trying to say. The message that all of her children had been christened at the Protestant church nearby? Or it might be as simple as the message that she wished for grandchildren, which she had already said, and which did not need saying. All mothers wanted grandchildren. Her own did as well.

Lucie had just asked Mrs Roger about the lacework when there was a brief commotion at the sitting room door and Roger himself appeared through it. He ignored all conversation in progress.

“Well, that whelp Soames has sent me the draft,” he informed George. “I suppose you’ve seen this already? I’ll look it over now. Shan’t be signing my name to anything that isn’t right, no matter what Soames thinks.”

He sat by the tea-table and opened the packet.

“Now, Roger, dear,” said Mrs Roger. “Not in my sitting room.”

“Shan’t take all that long,” said Roger, dismissively. He spread the papers over the tea-table and began reading.

Lucie looked for a place to set her teacup, did not see one under all the disarray, and held it a little nervously. Roger leaned over the spread-out papers and picked out one in particular to read. George’s face went blank as he watched his father, which was quite unlike him. Lucie looked to Roger, and immediately saw why. Clouds roiled across the sky of Roger’s face, lowered and went dark, and in the distance thunder rumbled. At last the storm clouds burst and Roger flung the document onto the table before him.

He glared at Lucie. “Young lady, I don’t know what your father is about, but this won’t do. It won’t do at all.”

“You,” he said to George. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Is there anything between your ears at all? You come here with this and think I’ll sign it?”

“Father—”

“My grandchildren are to be promised to Rome in writing and you want me to sign it!”

“Father, Soames says—”

“That whelp can stay out of it! I’ll lend to a business but I won’t endow a convent.” Roger picked up a second document and shook it at George. “And this, this is an insult! What does that fellow put in? We’ll do it properly and he’ll show me what he’s putting in and I’ll show him what I’ll put in. Nothing from him? Nothing from me and you manage your own affairs.” He crumpled up the paper and tossed it onto the tea-table.

George’s face set itself, and she saw it. His jaw hardened and his chin came out. The father’s expression was mirrored on the son, and it was, Lucie thought, not one the son was comfortable with.

George said, “Right then. I’ll manage.”

Roger stood and left the room, leaving the drafts scattered across the tea-table. George picked up his teacup from under a sheet of foolscap and looked inside it, then drank very carefully. His face was quite red, but he said nothing at all.

George’s mother’s face was quite different: it had a faint empty smile upon it. She folded the tissue round the lovely christening robe again, and hid it away. “I’m sure they will come to some arrangement, dear,” she said to Lucie, as if her husband had not shouted and her son were not in the room. “Will you take some more tea?”

“Please,” said Lucie.

She thought George might need another moment to find his composure. She’d never seen him angry, and she wondered what he would do about it. He drank tea; he ate a cucumber sandwich; he did not speak. Francie appeared some minutes later, all vibrant with industry and her own affairs. She talked at them for some time, extracting a promise from Lucie to play at some forthcoming event that Lucie knew nothing at all about. Francie set her cup down, cheerfully kissed her mother, and was gone.

At this juncture, George stood, and spoke his first words since his father had left the room. He said, “I shall escort Lucie back to her father’s home.”

“I’ll ring for the carriage,” said Mrs Roger, still entirely blank and serene.

As Lucie was putting on her hat, she saw Mrs Roger kiss her son and press his hands briefly, coaxing a little smile from him. It came to her that Roger flattened everyone round him, not only his wife, and George had fought it in his own way.

In the carriage, Lucie slipped her arm through his and pressed it, and he rested his gloved hand on hers.

“My father,” George said, then did not continue. The length of a street later, he said, “I’ll do my best. My fault for being useless before I met you.”

He looked away from her out of the carriage window. Lucie pressed his arm again.

“It is odd that my father did not give Soames a number,” she said. “He ended the discussion when Soames asked. But—”

“Yes?”

“You remember when he said that I had outgrown my violin? He has not given me a new one.”

George grunted. “I thought he was hinting I should buy one for you. Except I can’t until the settlements are signed, because I want to be sure of the money.”

“I wonder,” said Lucie. “The dot is from my mother’s family; the terms are theirs.”

“The dot does carry me past the sum for your father’s terms,” said George. “We can refuse a contract with terms we don’t want, however. Indeed we should, no matter the money. Perhaps more politely than my father did.”

“That… that is wise,” Lucie said, slowly. Both parts of it were wise. She was silent for the rest of the drive home, leaning against George and thinking.

Lucie was alone with her father in his study for once that evening, for he had no business, and she had no social duties to perform. He smoked one of his odd cigarettes and nursed some cognac; Lucie had her violin in hand. She played Kreutzer études for him, because they soothed him and were good for her.

Eventually she set her instrument and bow down and allowed him to pour her a little cognac. He was in a good mood, then.

“Why did you choose this as your profession?” she asked her father.

“Mmm,” he said. He lit another cigarette for himself and thought. “There was something about it that interested me as a student. I read of Talleyrand working to advance the interests of France herself, over the interests of the men who might be leading her at the moment, and there seemed something noble about it to me. It is not all that grandiose in practice, but I have the skills, and the political agility to prosper. Many men have not.”

“You said they make it a matter of examinations now.”

“They do. And before that it was a matter of being born into the aristocracy.”

“Which we were not.”

Her father gestured with his cigarette. “And yet! Here I am, in London, well-placed, highly enough to believe myself useful. No one shall write me into history books, but I do advance the interests of France, sometimes even meaningfully.”

“Is it satisfying?”

Her father considered her carefully. “Yes. It has cost me something, but yes. I am a patriot.”

Lucie thought about this. The cost was her mother, she suspected. Her brother was in the army, and quite cordial with her father when he was able to visit; her younger sister was indifferent to her father. Why it had cost him her mother, she still did not know, and perhaps would never know.

“George and I met with his parents today,” she said.

“Oh?”

“The lawyer—the one married to my friend—has drawn up the papers and George’s father had them in hand. He was unhappy with what he read.”

“Was he then?” Her father set down his cigarette and took his glass of cognac in hand. He swirled it and watched the brandy spin inside.

Lucie said, “I will not repeat what he said, other than to note that he was what they call colourful. He asked questions about your contribution.”

Her father shifted in his chair. “Well, he may continue to ask. I will certainly not open my books to him. I am a servant of the French Republic, and in no way subject to the demands of an English dealer in house property.”

Lucie said, somewhat sharply, “This is George’s profession.”

“I was referring to his father, but I apologise, my dear. Unless I misjudge him, George does seem to understand nuance, and to read what is unsaid. He would make no such demands.”

“Certainly the question will have occurred to him, even if he knows not to ask.”

“Certainly.” Her father stared into his cognac glass, which he had been toying with for most of an hour instead of drinking. “You understand, I hope, that I will not take less than two hundred a year because that is what you are worth. You must be protected.”

Lucie thought about a conversation she had had with Irene about the settlement. She had asked for advice, and Irene had told her what Soames had settled on her. Soames had said the same thing to Irene that her father had just said, that it was about Irene’s protection. And he too had fought with his father about it, for Irene had brought no money at all. Soames had his own money to settle, however, because he had been working since the moment he left school. Then Soames’s father had shown his love the only way Forsytes did, as Irene put it, by settling his money as well. Irene had not been able to guess if Roger would do the same.

Irene was protected, then, and she thought it entirely reasonable that the men round Lucie would choose to protect her by giving her money they could not touch.

Lucie sighed.

Her father heard this, it seemed, and reached out to touch her shoulder briefly. “Lucie, my dearest daughter, there is no dishonour in a long engagement. If George cannot yet meet the price I have set, you must be patient. He is a diligent young man and devoted to you, is he not?”

“Yes, Papa,” Lucie said. “He is. And I believe I quite understand the situation.”

“I am certain you do, my daughter.” Her father was gazing somewhere off beyond the walls of the room.

Lucie opened the case for her violin and set instrument and bow inside. Her skills had indeed outgrown it. Her father’s gaze shifted to her, and she saw the fondness in the way his eyes crinkled, and a little wistfulness.

Irene called upon her the next day, which was Lucie’s at-home day, and by her face Lucie saw that she had news to share.

“What is it?” she said. “Please tell me at once!”

“It has happened,” Irene said to her. “I have only just told Soames, but I have been certain for several weeks now.”

Lucie took her hands. “You look so happy!”

Irene blushed. “We have been seeking it. We agreed it was a good moment for a child, and I decided I was ready, and so—” She looked down and smiled briefly.

Lucie kissed her cheek. “You have been blessed. When?”

“February? If I have guessed right.”

If Irene was to be her support in Paris—Lucie counted weeks. If the disagreements about money and which church owned the children went into October, Irene would perhaps not be able to travel. And then she would not be able to travel for many months after the birth. It was selfish for Lucie to wish for it all to be resolved in time for Irene to be there with her, but she selfishly wished it. Her younger sister would be a poor replacement.

She could not say this to George. He would feel guilty without being able to repair it; the money was not his fault. He was indeed working like a dog, as the English said. She would not say it to Irene, either, because it was selfish.

So instead she kissed her friend again, and asked her to describe what made her feel it, and if she felt the nausées matinales yet or not. They sat together and talked for some time about what the experience was, and whether Irene was nervous or not, and what Soames had said when she had told him.

Later in the day, George called upon her, as she had requested, with his copy of the drafts in a document case. They sat in the little sitting room, door open, and talked seriously, with the case on the table beside them.

“There is something we are missing, George,” Lucie said. “It is to do with my father and his relations with my mother’s family. This cannot be a stalemate; there must be a move we can make.”

George sighed deeply, and she looked at him sharply, for there was something in that sigh that sounded like despair. He said, “I’ll convert, Lucie. Not a joke. I mean it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“George, dearest. You must not. I will not allow it.”

“But it makes your mother happy, and gets their money, and that’s your father’s price. It’ll be done.”

“Your father will never speak to you again.”

George hung his head. “I’ve gone through months at a time when he wouldn’t speak to me without shouting, so I stayed away. Wouldn’t be much of a change.”

“You know you don’t want that. Winning my Maman and losing your Papa is not victory. George, my sweetest. It puts us in the same position we were in, and I will not allow it.”

“But the dowry money is how I meet your father’s terms without my father’s money.”

“My mother controls the terms of the contract because of this. They made Soames concede everything he was fighting against.”

George lifted his head, and he seemed to be thinking again instead of despairing. “I was surprised Soames lost that negotiation.”

“He yielded when he saw he could not win. He is wise, I think. And you are right that we need the dot.”

“Now that my father has exploded like Vesuvius,” George said. He tugged at his hair. “He wouldn’t even let me tell him it’s not legally binding.”

“There must be another way.” Lucie paused. Her fingers tapped on her chin as she thought. Then she understood the board. Her father. Her father was en prise, not she: both the white knight and the white bishop had her next move well-protected. But why? “Please allow me to read these drafts. There is something I am missing here. You brought them?”

“Yes,” George said. He opened his case, and took out a large envelope with a packet of papers covered with neat copperplate writing. He laid them on the table before Lucie. “Here they are. The contract with all the numbers, and the conditions from your mother’s side of the family.”

“I shall do what my father would do, and understand what everyone wants.”

To be continued… Finished at 20 chapters; posting 1 chapter at a time.

Nemesis

2026-04-13T00:51:11+00:00

Nemesis

2026-04-13T00:51:11+00:00

Nemesis

“This house,” said Soames suddenly: “I had hopes when I began it. If they live in it—their children! They say there’s such a thing as Nemesis. Do you believe in it?” “Yes.” “Oh! You do!” —To Let

Soames Forsyte squeezed his daughter’s hand with all that he had left in him, and gazed at her through the growing haze. He could see only one thing: her face; feel only one thing: her hand around his. His head hurt. The rest of his body was distant. He knew it was the end, and he did not mind. She was there. Fleur was there, and she was all he needed.

“Only you,” he tried to say, and was gone.

Part 1

I. Soames wakes on the train

Soames Forsyte awoke with a cry and a flinch from a dream of dying, arms raised to protect his head from a blow that did not come. He froze in place, then shook himself. The dream had been so vivid. He’d been old, in his bed with something terribly wrong. He’d been struck in the head somehow. He’d died. Dream? Some dream! It had felt so much more life-like than a dream, as if he’d been there. There’d been a fire, and his daughter, so reckless, so lost in heartbreak of a kind he knew too well, a fire, and then pain. It had all felt so real to him. But now he was in a train, an ordinary train. It was steaming its way—where? Where was he? What the devil was this? He’d been in his bed, in his home of many years, and now a train? Or had he been on a train dreaming of a life?

Was he waking from a dream or falling into one?

Soames shook himself again and removed his top hat—immaculate, shiny, perfect—and set it beside himself on the seat. He ran a hand over his face, felt it recently shaven. He’d fallen asleep, that was all, and had some sort of nightmare. He was awake enough now, however out of sorts he might feel. Sleeping in the daytime always affected him this way. What time was it? He fumbled for his watch: late morning. Why had he fallen asleep? It didn’t feel as if he’d been asleep.

He staggered to his feet and looked around himself. He was in a first-class compartment, alone, thank Heaven. The train was moving at speed, rocking a little as it went. He raised his eyes and looked out the window, then fell forward with hands braced against the glass.

He might have been dreaming before, but he was not dreaming now.

The train was steaming past countryside, under patches of cloud and bursts of sunshine, past fields and hedges and trees. He knew this view. Forty-five years on, and he knew it. He flung the window down and heaved in air. The air was sweet—spring, it was spring. Good Lord, it was the train to Lymington—he knew this view well from dozens of journeys down, journeys taken years ago when he’d been young and at his most lovesick and aching. A long ride, southward to the coast, but he’d made that journey every weekend for two years, forty-five years ago. He had not taken it once since. What the devil was he doing on it now? What had happened the night of the fire? He’d been struck in the head, and surely he hadn’t imagined that!

He stepped back from the window and stared into the pale mirror of the glass, looking for where he’d been struck. Nothing! But he recognised himself with some horror, sure that this was not right. He touched his face again with a shaking hand. A bare face, no moustache, hair dark and falling over his brow as he had not worn it for decades—he knew this face. It was his but it had not been his since the Eighties. This was himself as a young man, untouched by the years, on the train to Lymington.

He was dreaming, and yet dreaming smelled like coal smoke and spring air and a whiff of eau de cologne. Somehow. Why? Which was dream, which was real? Had he dreamed of dying? Had he died? Surely not. And yet, he remembered holding his daughter’s hand, and he remembered accepting the end.

What was this, then? The afterlife? His final judgement?

Get it right this time, Forsyte.

This thought had formed in his head, his pained head, through the fog as he lay on his deathbed, his hand in his daughter’s. A crystalline certainty that was not his own, crackling through him and charging him with purpose. Get it right, Forsyte. Get it right! He had been sent here with a task. Paradise deferred! The gates were barred for him until he did this.

Soames’s knees failed him, and he collapsed back onto the seat. Get it right. Get what right?

He touched his head, then, where he’d been hit. There was no wound. Something had happened to him. He remembered the blow, the pain, then a fog and an inability to move that he’d struggled against. Fleur’s face and her hand in his were the only clear things he remembered, no matter how he tried. Fleur! She would not be here, not for years yet, if at all. That thought pained him again, and again the crystalline clarity: That was not his concern. He had his task set, his unfinished business to sort before he might move on. He had to get it right this time.

What? What had he to get right? What had he got wrong?

Soames sat on that seat in the train, in perfect comfort, in utter misery. He held his entire life before himself to judge. Where had he fallen short of the mark? There had only been one thing that mattered—He shuddered. Her. Irene.

He had to get it right this time with Irene. No entry into heaven for him while that great error was yet upon him. Heaven, or eternal nothingness, or whatever awaited him: the path forward was through Irene. If this were indeed the afterlife—and it surely seemed to be—then he needs must make amends with her. The one loose string in his life left untied.

He’d made mistakes in his life, but none of them had compared with that mistake, from which the others had flowed. He’d pursued her doggedly, refused to accept her refusal, conquered her at last, and made them both utterly miserable for twenty years. He had never apologised to her for that nor admitted she’d been right: they ought never to have married. He would get that right this time, and leave her be. This verdict was just, and he accepted it. He would set it right with Irene, and he would—would he be able to live again? To see an ending to it all? To move on?

No answer came to him.

Get it right. He knew what, but that left how. What was he to do? He gnawed at his upper lip and was discomfited to find no moustache there. He rubbed at the face of his signet ring with his thumb. That soothed him, always had, and he resorted to it often when there was no one to watch him do it. Calmer, he took stock of what he knew. When was this? How old was he? When had it been? The year he’d first proposed to her? Eighty-one, it was 1881, and that meant—his father—his father would be alive. He would see his father again. The stabbing pain of that made him clutch at his chest for a moment. His father, his mother, all his aunts and uncles—even the ones he’d disliked—yes, he would see them again, speak to them again—

Soames screwed his eyes shut over tears. His father, his father. He would know this time to treasure people while they were alive, because life was a fleeting gift. Even Forsytes who lived to the age of ninety left this life too swiftly. His father had lived that long. He knew he would not, and he was at peace with that. He had been at peace, at the end, with his hand in Fleur’s.

He flinched away from that thought. Too much, too much. Think of easier things, simpler things.

Soames breathed in again, more slowly, calming himself deliberately. He took refuge in method, and reviewed his understanding of the matter. He knew where he was; he knew why he was there, if not how; and he knew what lay ahead. He was on the train to Lymington on a spring day. Spring in the air, a red rosebud in his buttonhole, and his dress as careful as it had ever been. He sat up, and smoothed down his coat, touched his four-in-hand tie, his collar, his watch chain, the fob with his school crest. Nothing out of place. He was dressed to the nines, in fact. He’d travelled to Hampshire only once dressed like this. One last thing to verify: yes, in the breast pocket of his morning coat was the flat case with the ring in it.

He was on his way to Lymington to declare himself to her, to propose for the very first time, and to be rejected by her with the flat assertion that they should never marry.

He remembered those words, that pain. He would never forget it. He’d been so nervous and so certain of himself at the same moment, and so completely wrong about what was about to happen. He’d made a terrible mess of it almost from the instant he’d begun speaking, of course. Years later he’d understood that but his callow younger self had not. How old was he today? Twenty-six? Twenty-five. He was twenty-five, and a child. Irene was only eighteen. Good Lord, he’d been such a fool. He’d said the wrong things to her from the very start, and sulked when she’d refused him, and made it ever worse from that moment on. He’d never found a way to make it go right again. He’d never found a way to express his feelings properly to her, not once in his entire life.

He never would.

Getting it right apparently started now, or started when he got off the train and talked with her step-mother about his prospects. Or perhaps he would not do that. Could he simply turn and get on the next train and never return?

No, that was not done. He had to close the matter out like a gentleman.

When? When was the train due in? He looked at the scenery and tried to remember. What had been the train he usually caught? He could not remember that, but he’d always kept a time-table in a coat pocket. He reached for it, found it there, and checked his watch again. It was the same watch he’d worn for decades, a gift from his father when he’d been admitted. He still wore it forty-five years on when the occasion allowed, remembering James’s pride. It felt new now, edges not worn into smoothness by years of his fingers on it. He opened the back: JF to SF, 78. So recent! He was a stripling even now. He tucked it away again and started going through the rest of his pockets, looking for any clues.

Everything else he expected was there in his pockets: his notecase, a propelling pencil, coins, sovereign case, a small leather-bound notebook. The notebook was somewhat odd, given the occasion. He opened it and found at the marker a neat table in his own handwriting summarising his own assets and income, estimates of what varying household sizes would cost him, how adding a lady’s maid would affect the size of the house he might take, and other evidence of extremely careful thought about what he was about to offer Irene. He’d been a cautious man, exactly as she’d said he was. Cautious and careful and correct: well-armed for his discussion with Irene’s step-mother. Now he would do those estimations with ease in his head, and he supposed even his young self could have, but he’d been nervous.

In the breast pocket opposite where the notebook had rested was the ring, hidden in a flat box. He’d chosen it with a little aid from his sister and the jeweller. It was a solitaire diamond, notable but not flashy, perfect for her hand. He had loved buying her jewellery, and she had hated receiving it from him. Well, that was a mistake he would not make a second time. Flowers, or a night at the opera, or an hour walking in a wood quietly: those were gifts she liked, and might tolerate from him. The engagement ring, though, she would wear, eventually. He’d bought it with perfect confidence she would be wearing it by week’s end, and that he would have kissed her cheek, and perhaps even stolen a kiss from her lips.

The more fool he then. He knew better now. She would never wear that ring this time round. Getting it right meant ending things with her immediately, and not letting it draw out over twenty long miserable years. He would propose today, yes. Irene would refuse him, and he would accept it. This time he would bow his head, accept her answer, and not allow his emotion to escape. He would tell her he understood, though he never had, and then walk away. It would be all the easier because of how long it had been that he’d lived with her loathing, and how long he’d spent schooling himself out of love. The last time he’d seen her, he’d admired her as ever, but he’d known her for what she was: a field of ice cold as death.

Soames put his top hat on again. At least he had dressed like a gentleman for the occasion. He would take the blow with his dignity intact. And he grinned a mirthless grin, charged by seventy years of life and bitterness and lonely wanting.

II. Soames states his position

The train pulled into the station on time, with the familiar steam clouds and screech and huff. Soames had taken no luggage with him, only his umbrella against the chance that the spring sunshine would waver. He hooked it over his arm, opened the door of the compartment, and alit. He gave a coin to the porter that was, by the man’s face, too much. Ah, yes, times had changed, and the Nation after War was—he ought not think about that, lest he mention it. They would think him mad to talk of an impossible future. No. He had to keep these things secret, tucked away with so many other secrets about men, their lives, their money, their wives, their affairs. His cousin George and the woman he’d left his money to. How and when each of his uncles and aunts had died. How his own parents had—

Soames shook himself. No need to think about that now. He had his task ahead of him. He strode with ease along the platform, on his toes, weaving through a mid-day crowd. His body was strange to him. He had a spring in his step, as they said. Age had crept upon him, it seemed, and stolen away his vigour with cold fingers while he slept. Some strange miracle—or some strange madness—had returned it. He could run through the streets if he wished, run towards that house, towards her.

His ticket was in the coat pocket he always kept train tickets in, easy to hand. Method had always been his watchword, discipline and method. Few of his quotidian habits had changed over his life. They allowed him to get through things now, with all this ferment and confusion inside him.

Soames had his return ticket punched, exited the station, and paused on the pavement in the spring sunlight. The sea breeze played on his face. The day was lovely: a perfect English spring day, with the sun in a blue sky clear of clouds for a brief time.

What had he done, that day? He’d walked down to the house that Irene lived in with her step-mother and that fellow Lomax, and found only her step-mother at home. Soames had despised that woman, for Irene’s sake as much as for his own, and they had not spent a single moment with her after the wedding day. He had known his duty, however, and had requested her permission and laid out his prospects exactly as etiquette demanded. For propriety’s sake, that was what he ought to do now: explain his position to that loathsome woman, endure the conversation with her that earned her blessing and approval. What a stiff young ass he’d been! He’d known even then that Irene’s step-mother would never have dreamed of withholding permission. She would have seen as well as Soames did that her husband’s eyes lingered at times.

Well, he might as well get it over with. It had been suffering the first time. It would be suffering the second time, but at least he knew what to say, and how it would end. Soames began to walk, along not the shortest way through Lymington’s streets, but along the path that would give him time to collect himself.

As he walked, he rehearsed what he had to say. He’d been rather wordy originally, if he remembered aright, uncertain of himself and not quite in command of the conversation. He had been nervous. Now he need not be; she would grant him permission without any fuss or putting the screws to him the way James had to Dartie. She would demand no specific sum in settlement; no solid guarantees for Irene. She had nothing to bargain with. Soames had already decided what he would settle on Irene, and written it in that small notebook. It was more generous than James would want, within the bounds of acceptable generosity without attracting comment, not that Irene had known this. He’d wanted to be sure she would be secure if anything happened to him. If he settled too much family would know. They would know every detail. Well, he would promise the proper amount and then it would be moot. She would refuse him and he would slink away, silent, noble in defeat.

He arrived at the door he’d passed through so long ago and paused before it in a stew of nostalgia and misery. He had stood here so many times and rung the bell, so full of hope and eager to see her. This would be the last time he would stand at her door. Well, time to take the die in his hand and cast it.

Soames rang the bell and was admitted almost immediately. He said to the maid, Millie: “Mr Forsyte, calling for Mrs Lomax,” and gave her his card. His formal announcement of himself surprised the maid visibly, at which he felt a twitch of annoyance. He let himself be soothed by the patience he’d learned over the years: the little thing was doing her best. He hung his own coat and set his own hat on the stand: she was indeed short.

“Mrs Lomax is in the drawing room, sir.”

He went through the familiar door and into the room where he’d met her so many years ago, and had learned he was not immune to falling in love. She was not there but he could remember her there, remember many conversations in this room, hear her playing. Unless his senses tricked him, there was honey and rose in the air even now, her spirit in the room. It made his chest feel strange. He hadn’t remembered this scent here.

“Do sit down, Mr Forsyte,” her step-mother said, and Soames was shocked back into the present. Or the past, whichever it was.

He sat on the edge of the first chair he’d ever sat upon in this drawing room, with Mrs Lomax across from him. They engaged in inanities. Mrs Lomax was well; the train journey had been much the same as usual. The weather was commented upon, and he found himself able to agree that it was indeed a lovely spring day, and that the flowers were pleasant. Every word said made his anxiety rise; it didn’t matter that he remembered this. He was a suitor again, presenting himself for her approval, and next he would tell her his most important secrets. She offered him sherry, which he accepted; it was indifferent sherry, which hardly mattered. It gave his hands something to do, or he would surely have begun rubbing at his signet, which he did not want to do in front of her.

There was no more delaying it. He must now cross the Rubicon once more. He’d be denied landing upon the opposite shore! He swallowed, and said the words he must say. “Mrs Lomax, I have come today to ask your permission to request your step-daughter’s hand in marriage,” he said. And that had come out stiff as a poker.

“I have been expecting to have this talk for some time, Mr Forsyte.”

“I have come to feel the deepest attachment to Irene.” And oh! that had not been the half of it, had it? Yet one did not say even as much as the half of it aloud like this.

“Indeed,” she said. “You have been most attentive, particularly of late.”

“Yes. You know, I think, my employment. I am a partner in the firm of Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte. My father is not a young man, and I will succeed him and serve the needs of all the firm’s clients. I—It is a successful firm.” Which was, at this time, an understatement, and would become even more of one before he was done. He would eventually build up a substantial clientele with a particular sort of person. People who took their money and property seriously were told to come to him, and he would take serious care of them.

Mrs Lomax raised her hands as if to forestall him from continuing in this vein. “Mr Lomax and I have been fortunate indeed to benefit from your advice, Mr Forsyte! One has the utmost confidence in your abilities.”

Soames hid his face briefly behind his sherry glass. It was an excruciating business, this. He was prepared to enumerate his assets if he need do so, thanks to his own careful notes, but he dearly wished not to do so. The gap in circumstance was painful, but she had to know it already.

She asked, “How would you intend to live, Mr Forsyte? One is assured of your prospects, but can you provide for my step-daughter today?”

Ah, here it was. He swallowed a little more sherry, then got to it.

“I have fifteen hundred a year at present, and this is rising.” Her face changed, as he thought it might. He pressed onward: “I intend to lease a house in London, with a cook and two servants. Your step-daughter will have a household that gives her every comfort. I am an only son. My eventual prospects are greater than this, given my father’s own position, but this is what I offer for certain, today.”

She was silent in response, and Soames watched the struggle on her face. Irene was about to do better than she by a long way—or would, if Irene wished to accept—and there was envy and calculation and satisfaction present at once. In the end, satisfaction won.

“I am assured,” Mrs Lomax said, “that Irene will have every advantage, Mr Forsyte. What assurances will you offer her beyond this? What are you prepared to bring into settlement?”

This question made him think better of her; she was at least pressing him on this point. She had nothing to bargain with, but it did not matter to him. He was about to be as generous as he could.

“I am prepared to settle five thousand pounds upon her, enough to reach the sum of around one hundred and fifty pounds a year. I will engage my father to enter upon these agreements on my behalf.”

Mrs Lomax’s face changed yet again, and Soames looked into his nearly empty glass of sherry. She had done the best she could for her step-daughter, and secured her an enviable suitor. And she had, Soames thought. She’d manoeuvred things so that he’d walked into her drawing room, seen Irene, and fallen in love. It had been neatly done.

Mrs Lomax said, however, merely: “Of course. And of your father—I trust your family is looking forward to this match?”

“Yes,” he said. “My mother is most eager to meet you both. My father is delighted by the idea of my marriage.” And indeed, he was, if not to his marriage to this woman specifically. And if his father was right to doubt this time round, Soames would—No. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter! She would refuse him. Why was he forgetting this, over and over? He would continue to act as if she might accept him, when he knew what would happen.

The formalities were almost concluded. “I hope I have satisfied you as to my sincerity and my ability to provide for your step-daughter.”

“Indeed you have, Mr Forsyte. I have made my own inquiries about you, and I am most satisfied of your suitability.”

“Quite. I have your permission, then?”

“Indeed you do, Mr Forsyte. Do you intend to speak soon?”

“I will let myself be guided by her, but I hope to speak today.” He felt a moment of anger that she was so eager to rid herself of Irene, but hid it.

“Irene is a good girl, and will be sensible, though of course there is some chance that she might feel obliged to refuse you the first time. A girl almost must. Please do be patient!”

He hadn’t thought of that. Would he be obliged to accept a first refusal? Only if she said what she had said last time. He thought he would know if she were temporising so as not to seem too eager. He felt she would not, however: Irene would either accept him or refuse him definitively. She was not a coquette. However, he said, “I am prepared to wait any time.”

“I am sure I shall be congratulating you both soon enough. Now, I shall fetch her down.”

But Mrs Lomax did not fetch her down: Miss Heron was not at home, and Mrs Lomax was at a loss to explain where she was to poor Mr Forsyte, who had come all this way from London! Her apologies were profuse.

Soames was not dismayed. He knew what her step-mother did not, that Irene was walking in the spring sunshine and would return soon. He reassured Mrs Lomax that he would not leave Lymington without speaking to her step-daughter. However, he would take the opportunity to take his leave of her.

“I was thinking of taking a short walk on the front. May I call later?” he asked. He was a coward, he knew, flinching from the moment he had to accept his rejection, but he could walk, recover his equanimity after this misery, and then endure her refusal.

“Do return for tea, Mr Forsyte. She will surely be here by then.”

“Thank you,” he said, “I shall.”

He left the house with some sense of relief. He’d gone through the first ordeal of two. The second would be easier to bear; he knew the tooth had to come out.

How long had he to wait? An hour? About that much time. He’d walk for an hour along the front, straighten his muddled emotions, then go back to their home to face it. He’d work up his courage to propose to Irene as if it had come to him spontaneously, and hold something of himself back so that she might refuse him less painfully than she had that first time. He reminded himself yet again that he had protected himself by schooling himself out of passion. He no longer loved her, so he could not be hurt. He would have to pretend affection, not stoic endurance. He had lived for years now with a wife who might not love him, but at least was cordial to him. He knew it need not be so cold and loveless and achingly lonely. Irene was wrong for him. There was someone else out there for both of them.

And yet he’d only ever loved her.

Soames turned his face away from the house where his rejection awaited him and walked downward, where the town wanted him to go, towards the sea front.

They were familiar streets. He’d walked them every weekend, or nearly so, for two years, while he’d starved after her and pined and bided his time. There was the florist he’d bought flowers from. There was the inn at the top of the high street where he’d stayed so often the staff had come to know his ways and learned to leave him to his solitude and his morning coffee. When he was not with her he had little to say to anyone else.

He was most certainly not the only person walking this afternoon. It was a beautiful day indeed! Memory had not over-burnished it. The daffodils were out, in flowerbeds outside homes, in squares and parks, everywhere. He leaned against a stone wall overlooking the shingly shore below and the churning waves, felt the wind and the sunshine on his face, and sighed in a way he wouldn’t have in his youth. It was glorious here, in an England untouched by war and grief, by the stain of gas and machine-guns. The day was glorious; the world was glorious! Victoria was on her throne, the Nation was at her zenith, and the sun was out. Soames closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. The scents flooded him with a rising tide of memory he hadn’t realised had ebbed. Horses, and their dung; coal-smoke; wood-smoke from some hearth. No petrol to foul the air! Only spring flowers and the sea.

Soames felt something in himself relax, some tension ease. It would all turn out right in the end. He let himself smile, this time with genuine pleasure—

A voice shocked him then—a voice he knew, light, almost girlish—speaking his name with happiness. “Soames! I didn’t know you were in Lymington today!”

His eyes flew open and so did his mouth. It was her. Irene, as he remembered her, in a light nothing of a flowered hat and a gauzy wrap, all in white with sage green trim, smiling up at him with genuine happiness. Her gold hair escaped out beneath the hat in a few wisps, windblown and carelessly joyous. His mouth was open but he could not speak, for she was smiling at him and the flood that carried him away now was more than mere memory, it was his heart, expanding in his chest, his breath catching, his head dizzy, dizzy in a way he’d not felt since—

“Soames?”

“You’re smiling at me,” he said, and he could not help but smile back at her. Something was in his blood again, making him almost weak in the knees, making his entire chest feel as if he were bathing in sweet-briar and fire at once. She was so beautiful! Her creamy face, her deep gold hair, her dark eyes! He looked deep into those eyes, such lovely dark eyes with that hair pulled back, a few precious strands escaping from their knot in the back. She was exactly as she had been in that photograph he kept of her behind that photograph of Fleur—the one taken at this time, the one where she was smiling, the one he loved so much because it had been taken when she—when she—when she hadn’t hated him.

Irene was smiling at him!

“Soames, are you quite well? You look—”

His manners returned to him, and he snatched his hat off.

“The sun is shining,” he said, saying words he could not help but remember, because of how many times he’d revisited them in the small hours, wondering where he’d gone wrong. “The sun is shining and all the daffodils are out.”

“It’s spring, Soames!” she said, exactly as she had before. The concern on her face vanished and Irene was looking at him again with careless happiness, meeting his gaze. Oh he was drowning in her eyes as he always had, in her nearness to him, in her smile, so many years of that smile lost because he’d—he’d proposed and got it all wrong and upset her and it had never been right for a single moment after that.

He was supposed to propose now. He had to do it now, to get it right, had to do it and accept her refusal, but he could not bear to. Not now! He could not bear to end that smile. He would let himself feel another hour of it, just a little more of it, and then he would do it and be refused.

So Soames said what he wished he’d said that day: “Will you walk with me? We shouldn’t waste this sunshine.”

“I will,” she said, and laughed. “I’ve been walking, but I shouldn’t mind walking more.”

He felt his face brighten even further—he could not help it! She’d laughed! He half-bowed to her, then resumed his hat.

“Where shall we go?” he said. “I can’t think—” His head was swimming and he had no idea which direction was which. She had smiled at him!

She gestured him gently back the way he had come, and he complied. They were walking side by side, as close as propriety might allow, along the pavement up the high street. His shock eased and settled into a quieter joy, and he found himself able to think. And such odd thoughts he was having, as he walked a careful distance apart from her. He might almost be dancing on the pavement with her, his feet felt so light and he felt so strange.

What an innocent place this was, the past! He must walk beside Irene, careful not to touch her unless there was need, patiently waiting for his moment. He wanted to touch her, and he must not touch her, and it made the accidental brush of her gloved hand against his sleeve send shivers through him. It was quaint and it was also marvellous. He had so recently been in a world with no time for this, a world where his daughter might be alone with a suitor like Michael without comment. The past had such luxury of time—no one was in a rush to get through things. Here now, walking with Irene, he let himself enjoy the luxuries of ritual, of restraint, of ceremony that pretended that one had all the time in the world. The War had changed so much! Patience had been stripped away from them all, from everything, as if all the clocks in the world had started ticking faster.

What did he feel about it? Joy. He felt joy. It was sweet to be walking beside Irene waiting for a chance touch, innocent and sweet and agonising at once. They were walking to the tick of the slower clocks, with the slow grace of the dignified past.

He must look a prize fool to be smiling so much. It was bad form to let his happiness show, but he could not find it in himself to care. Had he smiled this much when he’d been this young? He didn’t remember it. He remembered anger, and frustration, and the bafflement that the fellows around him seemed to find everything so easy and talked with each other so freely while he could not. Then the soothing feeling that he found in work, from thinking the problems of his clients through, and making them all money. Taking care of the family as he had for all those years, the satisfaction of knowing it rested upon his shoulders to manage it all for them. The complex flavours of the law that had comforted him for so long, until he spat it out, bitter poison, at his divorce.

Well, that thought dampened his fervour rather. Soames cleared his throat and looked away from the woman beside him.

“You seem unlike yourself,” Irene said, with a touch of concern in her voice.

He said, “It has been an odd day.” Which was the truth so far as it went.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss before today, Soames.”

“No?”

“No. Will you tell me what the matter is?”

“Nothing.”

“And yet something is.”

Soames flushed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“What would you say to any friend who asked?”

Soames was shaken by that. A friend? He glanced sidelong at Irene, who was watching him, not the pavement before them. She thought him a friend. That was—it was good to know that. She did not hate him now, before he had declared himself to her. Well. He must find something to say. Perhaps he might dare to say something like the truth.

“Have you ever felt footsteps on your grave? No, not that. A visitation from a ghost, telling you what things might be if you don’t act?”

“The three ghosts of Christmas?”

“Yes, the Dickens. I had a dream, the sort of dream where one comes face to face with one’s own failings. I, I—saw what might happen if, if I don’t behave better.”

“It’s hard to imagine you having many failings to face.”

“Oh, I did. I do. One in particular, I think, to face.” He grimaced. That, again. The thought of making this woman cry—this happy woman at his side—how had it come to that?

“You’re deeply troubled by the idea of it.”

“Yes. You know how dreams are.”

“Mystifying, elusive, so full of meaning you can’t quite grasp, fading when you reach out for it.”

“It haunts me. It felt so real, so intense, I was convinced it was real, and now I’m not sure. But my dream self made mistakes I wanted to make amends for when I woke.”

“Poor Soames, to feel such guilt over a nightmare,” she murmured. He looked sharply at her to see if she were mocking him, because she would have been, once. But she was not. The expression on her face was pure—it was puzzlement and concern mixed. She said, “Did you come all the way here to tell me about it?”

“I was already on my way here. I had been walking to my office, but on impulse I caught the next train here instead.”

“On impulse?”

“On impulse. The sun is shining—”

“And all the daffodils are out,” she said, repeating his words, her own words.

“And even I feel it,” he said, echoing what she’d said to him, in that past that he remembered that was not what was happening today. What a muddle!

“Yes, even you, cautious Soames. You came to see me because of the daffodils, but to have such a dream you must have fallen asleep on the train.”

She was teasing him, and it was so wonderful that he looked down to hide his blush. “I think I did. It is a long journey.”

Perhaps he had. Perhaps it had been nothing more than his own heart, telling him to change his plans today. And even as he formed that thought, he knew he was wrong. He had been offered a chance to set it right before his final judgement. The heavens had interceded for him, somehow. Why did he deserve it? Perhaps everyone was granted something like this, a second chance, before Nemesis delivered to him his just deserts. Well, he shouldn’t waste it. If it meant bowing his head and accepting what she wanted, he could bear that, couldn’t he? Even after remembering what loving her felt like?

He didn’t have to bear it quite yet. They were side by side, walking slowly but with some purpose Irene held, through a park up a gentle winding path towards a statue. It was surrounded by spring daffodils nodding their heads in the breeze. They paused to read the plaque: some local man had made good in one of the colonial campaigns, won a battle or two, and come home with limbs perhaps intact, perhaps not. This fellow had been a naval sort, several decades before Trafalgar. He’d been memorialised as a bronze and stone figure, a man in tricorne hat with telescope to his eye. Second-rate work, to Soames’s eye, but no doubt the fellow’s family had been delighted to see him here.

He looked to Irene and shrugged. She said, “There’s a lovely view from here, if you wish to sit.”

“I would.”

Soames bowed his head to her, and they sat beside each other on the wood and stone bench at the foot of the statue. It was an almost impossibly beautiful place to sit, graced by a southern view down a grassy green hill, then a drop down to the sea below. Soames was sitting perhaps a shade closer than propriety would dictate. Irene did not seem to notice. He sighed and edged a tiny bit closer. What would it matter? He would enjoy what he could, before he accepted his final rejection.

The blue of the sky was pale, streaked by wispy clouds. The sea was grey-blue at the horizon, a steely green closer to the shore, where the waves dashed themselves ceaselessly against the front. Soames thought about the colours, and about Turner and a handful of other painters who’d captured the English coast and sea. The colours were almost transparent, somehow, grey over green over blue, and the foam over it all. Then there were the daffodils along the path at their feet: so bright, the opposite of the sea, yet equally in motion. It was beautiful, a moment of perfection, shared with her. He’d find a way to have Sargent paint her, this time. That fellow would be able to capture Irene’s skin and hair and that peculiar poise she’d always had.

He screwed his eyes shut. Why was it that he could not seem to accept it? She was smiling at him, yes, but he’d been judged and found wanting and he had to let her go without ever touching her this time.

“Soames?” A very light touch on his arm, and his eyes opened again. “It was only a dream, Soames. I know that you are a good and honourable man in your waking life.”

He breathed out. Was he honourable? What had his cousin George said about him? That he was a dry file, but could be trusted. Whatever that meant. Aloud, he said, “I like to think so, but the dream warned me that I am not always. That I can make mistakes I bitterly regret.”

“I think everyone can.”

“Yes, that is true. Thank you,” he said, because he was indeed grateful. He did feel soothed, though he could not say why. The kindness in her voice, he thought.

Soames had heard her do this a thousand times with other men, had watched her work her soft charm on them so they relaxed and were at peace, cosseted by her. It had never been for him—she’d been so careful never to show this to him—and yet here she was, cosseting him, quite naturally, as if it were purely her nature to do this to whoever was near. He had not been mad, he thought now, to believe she might return his feelings when he’d been courting her. She’d at least thought him a friend. He’d utterly failed his chance the moment he’d opened his mouth, hadn’t he? Said the wrong things, because he hadn’t understood her. Did he understand her now? Could he?

He did not remember as acutely now as he had then her words from the evening they’d listened to the Beethoven Emperor concerto together, but he’d mulled over them often enough since to remember their spirit. She had described what she was feeling as she sat next to him listening to that young Scottish fellow play. He’d heard the admiration in her voice for that boy who at seventeen was already someone Irene knew she’d never match. A love for the thing itself, she’d said, and then described what it felt like to be in love and to give one’s self to it. He hadn’t understood her: how could one give one’s self to music and feel content? What had she meant by that? Perhaps he knew now. Love, she’d said. Giving oneself to feeling, to sensation and emotion, and then feeling content.

She had wondered what he felt about paintings. He knew better now what he felt about them than he had then. Soames thought of hours spent with a loupe in his eye and sometimes not, sprawled on the floor with a painting propped against the wall before him or on an easel, studying it, or simply dreaming. He had always felt something, but it had always been private to him. He’d kept it secret even from Irene. Why?

“Where are you, Soames? You are somewhere else again.”

He flushed, because he was. “I’m thinking about the Beethoven concerto we heard together. What you said to me then, about what touch that fellow d’Albert had, about what he must feel.”

“Oh?” There was amusement in her voice and a little sparkle.

Take a chance, Forsyte. See what Fate has for you. “You asked me how I feel when I look at paintings. You told me not to talk of buying things but—I should like to talk of it, of why, if you will hear me out.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “I—very well. I will hear you out, Soames.”

He had to find the words, never his strength when she was studying him so intently. She made him doubt himself so deeply. He began hesitantly. “I’ve never talked to anyone about this. I don’t think anyone but you has ever asked.”

“No one at all?”

“No. When you asked, I had no answer to hand. But—when one sees a painting in a dealer’s gallery, it’s there for such a short time. When a painting is bought, it’s taken away by its buyer to hang on a wall in their home, for them and no one else to look at. Perhaps not even that, perhaps it sits wrapped in paper in a garret. Wherever it is, I can’t look at it any more. And I might want to see it because—”

He flicked a glance sidelong at her to see if he’d lost her but she was still intent on him, brow furrowed, that lovely face uncharacteristically solemn.

“Because?”

“I look at the colours, the feeling in them, the motion in the brushwork. I let myself be in that place, dreaming over what it might be to be there, looking at that instead of wherever it is that I am.”

He didn’t think he’d ever heard Irene so silent before, or seen her so deeply in thought—at least not without music to listen to.

“I didn’t expect you to say that,” Irene said, eventually.

The words came more easily to him, now that he knew she was listening and truly hearing him. “When I was in Paris, I saw some paintings by a fellow named Cézanne, no one you should know, but I think he’ll be a big name some day. I kept going back to look at them. He’s nobody! His works were at a paint shop, not a gallery, but I kept trying to talk myself into buying them. There was something there. He’d painted the mountains near his home, and the way he caught the light—the brushwork, the colour—I would go and stand there and be somewhere else. I wanted to look at them for hours, to dream over them forever. I knew they were good, but was I right? Were they worth anything? And then one day they were gone. Someone else had bought them and I’d lost my chance. For the rest of my life, I—well, I suspect I shall regret my caution.”

And indeed he had, and though he’d eventually managed to snatch up something from the man’s later watercolour work, it had not been the same. He’d missed what he’d loved best.

Now he had come to it, the moment he told her something deeper. “It’s different to how you feel about music, I know. I should like to show you the paintings I have and tell you how I feel when I look at them, what I think about, and perhaps you could tell me what you feel. I can’t show you that Cézanne because I didn’t buy it, and I so wish I had. I think you might have liked it.”

He glanced very rapidly to the side at her, and took another risk. “I did buy a Monet, a little thing—the dealer had more of them than he wanted—and it’s lovely. I have been thinking, that if I am successful at this, if I can collect the right sort of thing, I might leave them to the Nation some day, and everyone might look at them.” And that was what was happening right now, he presumed. When he woke up from this dream, he’d find himself in his coffin and his paintings wrapped in paper again, packed up to be sent off. But now, today, while he sat on a stone bench with Irene in the spring sunlight, where would they be?

“Today they’re hung on the wall in my chambers, and I have two leaning against the wall by my desk. I haven’t the space to hang them, though I haven’t very many.”

“You look at them and dream.”

“I do. And now you know what I feel when I stand in solemn galleries.”

Having finished revealing himself to her with words, Soames could meet her eyes again. She had been studying him intently the entire time, he knew, focused on him almost alarmingly. She hadn’t ever done this before. He had caught her interest in a way he hadn’t ever before. Had it always been as easy as this? Reveal himself to her, tell her his secrets, and she would feel sympathy with him, would understand him enough not to hate him. Did he understand her? He thought he might, at least a little, better than he had before. Listen to her, take her at her word, don’t behave as if she wanted the same thing that his sister Winifred might want. She wasn’t Winifred. She didn’t want a string of pearls from him. She wanted a walk on a spring day, an evening listening to that boy d’Albert again, or for him to show his heart to her.

It was terrifying to expose his secrets. He was being swept out to sea on a flood tide of emotion. Did it lead on to fortune or his ruin again? He had no notion of what might happen next.

Eventually Irene broke the silence. “I think that is more than you have ever told me about yourself before,” she said.

“I don’t talk of myself.”

“You don’t. Why not?”

Soames opened his mouth to answer then closed it again. Why didn’t he? “I think no one has ever wanted to hear.”

“Nobody knew how much was going on inside you!”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Was there a lot going on inside him? He’d always thought he’d had the usual amount going on, with perhaps the sort of distress that only visits people clever enough to see some things clearly. He’d known cleverer men than he, but there had been times when he’d wished he’d understood less of the world around him. It would have been easier to bear, not understanding how awkward he was amongst his fellows, how uncomfortable he was with anyone outside his family. And even with them!

“And now you are silent once more.” There was a little teasing in Irene’s voice, and a smile in the corner of her mouth that made his heart ache again.

He returned the smile and said, “I am practised with silence.”

“I think I prefer a Soames who talks.”

“Then I shall, perhaps. To you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the only one who—Well. I can’t promise to say all that much.”

She laughed, a lovely sound that he had never heard enough in his life, and hadn’t heard at all after a certain horrible time. He could feel her near enough that he knew her scent. Dried rose petals and honey! What might have been cloyingly sweet on another woman was perfect on Irene. He’d always loved that scent. It had always made his head swim, as it was swimming now.

He still had not proposed. He couldn’t bear to do it.

Church bells, all out of time with each other, rang out up and away from the esplanade. And then one bell, stronger than the rest, rang out clearly over the town, four decisive strokes. Soames reached for his waistcoat and pulled out his watch. It was touching four, and that late church bell had the right time.

He said, “Tea-time. Later than I thought. Shall we return to your step-mother’s home?”

“Must we?”

“I could sit here for hours yet with you and watch the sun set and the moon rise, but I think we must.”

“Hours yet?”

“As long as you will sit with me,” he said. It might have been flirting, if he’d managed to say it with anything other than husky intensity, but he’d never been able to flirt.

Irene had no answer for him, for they were holding each other’s gaze again. It took everything Soames had to break that gaze, but he did so. He broke away painfully, aware that they had been long enough away. Irene’s step-mother did not chaperone them as tightly as a more old-fashioned parent might, but even she had her limits.

He said, “We can talk over tea.”

But they could not talk over tea: both Irene’s step-mother and her husband the blustering Lomax were there, filling the drawing room with chatter and inanities and demands for their attention. Soames was sitting next to Irene, and stealing moments to look at her and see that she shared his frustrations, but there was no opportunity at all to talk. It was interminable misery brightened by moments of sweetness when he caught her eye. He managed to stay polite, and show all the good manners he ought, but he could not help that he could only look at Irene, only notice what she did and said. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time all over again, feeling once again that strange sensation that he’d known her all his life, only this time he had. Did he know her this time? Could he know her?

After tea, he looked at his watch and saw that he had time to make the next train to London, so long as he did not waste too much time in farewells. If he had to make his farewells, he would rather they be swift: if he was to part with her, he would prefer to do so without needing to say anything to those two. To his relief, Mrs Lomax told Irene to see Mr Forsyte to the door—as obvious a stratagem as there was, as if stratagems mattered in the least to Soames’s heart. Perhaps it was Irene that Mrs Lomax was trying to manoeuvre, and perhaps again it might once have been useful. But today! Today after the walk and their conversation, it did not matter what that woman did. Or so he hoped.

Soames shrugged his coat on and donned his top hat, but left his gloves off. She might wish to shake hands! He stood with her in the hall inside the door and lingered for a moment. He said, “May I call again soon?”

“So formal! Will you call tomorrow morning?”

“No, I must return to London tonight.”

“It was truly an impulse, then.”

“One I do not regret.” He flushed, and bent his head to break her gaze. He was in such danger of speaking before he was ready to speak. “When shall I call next?”

“Are you able to come to Lymington this weekend?”

“Yes,” he said, without pausing to think. He looked up and oh! those dark eyes. He was drowning in them again, and she wasn’t looking away. What had happened? Something had happened. And then she was extending her hand, and he was touching it for a long moment, palm to palm, and he knew he was lost. Yes, he was in love again; his heart had been unguarded and she’d stolen it again. But her heart? Had her heart changed? Dared he even think it?

Soames turned, and fled.

III. A family reunion

The three hours of the train up to London passed quickly for Soames. He sat wedged against the window of his compartment, pretending the florid gentleman with the newspaper sitting across from him did not exist, and thought about what had just happened to him. He’d meant to end it today and he hadn’t. He was a suitor again. He’d slipped immediately and without hesitation into the rituals of courtship. He’d even arranged to send flowers to her before catching his train: white roses, and some things the florist told him he ought to send to the young lady. He’d told her that he would wish to send more flowers: every day of the week, if it could be arranged. She’d nodded at him knowingly; he already ran an account with her. He’d forgotten that. The details had rusted in his memory over the years, it seemed, but the mechanisms of his past life ran well-oiled. He’d been a careful man in his youth, a careful suitor, from noting exactly how much he had to spend on a household with her to running exact accounts with florists.

He was a less careful man in his old age. He confessed it. He’d watched his money less carefully, knowing that he had enough, and that he had the ability to be generous. Not that this was of the least importance. What mattered was—was—

He’d fallen in love again. One look at her, one smile from her and he had thrown his cap over the windmill again, despite everything he knew about her. She would be faithless, she would love other men and never him, but he could not stop himself. He was fated to love her. Grand passion. He might warn himself, he might beg himself to remember how much it would hurt, but he would still give his entire heart to her. But she had been warm to him, welcoming—had she truly been different? More than merely polite?

No, he thought. She had been the same. It was he who’d been different. He’d behaved differently towards her and she had responded to that. What had she said in that past that had not repeated itself today? A man shows interest, and something in the woman responds. Had there been a spark, a little flare of something when they’d smiled and held each other’s gaze for so long? He’d suffered and been through the pains of love and heartbreak and loneliness: he was not the same man as the baffled, silent, sulking youth he’d been. Did she feel that difference in him? She was still a girl and he—he’d lived an entire life! If he had indeed lived it, and it hadn’t been a mad dream. Dream or not, it had changed him. He remembered a life, heartbreak, two wives, a daughter, a great war, a son-in-law, a grandson. He’d felt loss and grief. He had felt love, and at the end he’d known his daughter loved him. It had done something to him. The Soames who’d been through the fire might be a Soames who could make love to Irene and perhaps express to her how he felt.

What would he do with this?

Not what he had done before.

He would ask her to marry him, with all his heart and soul in it, with words she might respond to. He did not fear his fate; he’d put it to the touch. All he need do was accept her response. If she refused him he’d find some girl or other his mother flung his way, some nice English girl, and give his father a grandson he could watch grow up, a Young James to fulfil his deepest wish. He would make do, knowing that it was possible to get on with a wife who at least tolerated him. If Irene did not love him, he would find a way forward without her. If she did care for him—that he did not know what to do about. No, he had to plan on being told she felt nothing, and on needing to find another woman to be his wife. It would hurt like the devil again because he’d been a fool again, but that was the punishment he had to bear.

These thoughts made him gloomy, but occupied him through his arrival in London at Waterloo, long after dark had fallen and the weather had turned to cool spring showers. He took a cab to Park Lane, the homing instinct strong in him, knowing himself exhausted after a long day, an eternal day, a day in which he’d died and risen from the dead, or a day in which he’d dreamed years of a life—whichever it was, he had been overwrought for far more time than he could well bear. He wanted to be at home, to be kissed by his mother, to sleep in his boyhood bed in safety. But if he went home, another trial was ahead of him, and he didn’t know how he would bear it or what it would do to him.

When he arrived at his father’s home, he found that he had been looked for. The door opened the moment his foot touched the front step, and he was ushered inside by his father’s butler. Soames had to look at him twice, for Warmson was shockingly young.

“Good evening,” Soames said, controlling himself. He’d seen Warmson recently, had patronised the establishment he ran most admirably with his wife—once his mother’s maid—founded with the money James had left him. Here he was, a young man, already a master of his craft, helping Soames take his coat off.

“Mr Forsyte has been asking for you, sir,” Warmson said, and in his eyes Soames could read the message: his father was in a state.

“Is there a bit of cold supper for me, do you think?”

“I shall inquire of Cook, sir.”

“Thank you. He’s in the drawing room? I’ll go to him directly.” When Warmson had hung his coat and turned to go below stairs, Soames paused and breathed.

Park Lane. His father’s house. Merely standing in the entry moved him: he had been born here; he had held his father’s hand in his when his father had passed away here—Soames flinched away from that thought, which still hurt, all these years later. It was as he remembered it, and yet he had forgotten so much. He had forgotten the smell of gas lamps and the warm flicker of their light, the deep shadows in the corners of the rooms. It was an assault upon his heart, a barrage of light and shadow and scent. And it was about to worsen. Now he had to guard himself. He had to greet his father as if he did not remember his death, did not remember saying goodbye to him, did not remember seeing his coffin put into the family mausoleum in Highgate. Control. Mastery. Hide his emotion.

Soames dug his fingernails into his palms and made his way up to the drawing room, slowly, planning what he was to say.

Bracing himself did nothing for him: it was a blow to his heart to see them both, his mother, his father, in that drawing room, where so much had happened over so many years. They were both so alive, so vibrant. His mother was just fifty, so young yet. She exclaimed when she saw him and came running to him. What was he to do with these feelings? It was all too much, the day had been too long and too full of emotion. He felt his throat close up and his eyes burn. He said nothing at all and wrapped his arms around her quite tightly, as he certainly never had during her life before. He had learned by living what a parent wanted. He would do this properly and express his affection to her as he had wanted Fleur to express her affection to him.

“Mother,” he said, and held on.

“My dear boy, what’s come over you? Where have you been? Your father has been in such a state.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then another. “I spent the day with Miss Heron.”

His mother pulled away from him to look up into his face. “Is there news? Are we to meet her soon?”

“No news,” he said. “I haven’t any news yet.” But his face was burning again, and he could not help his tiny smile when he met his mother’s eye. And that was gratifying, the way his mother’s face lit up with joy for him. Emily had always had a pure love for her children, an uncomplicated partiality that was without a single drop of impurity or wish for anyone else’s failure. If Soames and Winifred were happy, Emily was happy. And she had loved his father steadily throughout their lives together, which was as much as any man could wish for.

Soames released his mother and looked to his father, who was standing by the coal fire with his back turned to them, for all the world like a cat sulking after its owner had left it alone, pretending indifference. Soames ignored this and went to him. He touched his father’s shoulder, diffidently.

James turned, arms already in motion. “Where have you been, my boy? You weren’t in the office! They didn’t tell me you were planning on being away today! Nobody could tell me anything! I—”

He looked Soames full in the face, and—and Soames simply wept. He couldn’t prevent himself. Twenty-five years gone, his father was, and here he was, past his prime but still hale and sharp-witted, still the first name on the brass at the firm they shared with that poor stick of a fellow Bustard: here he was, thin and tall and all angles in Soames’s arms. Soames kissed his father’s cheek, all he could reach, and struggled to regain his composure.

“Soames! What’s come over you? I don’t know, I can’t tell—what’s this all about? What’s happened?”

“Nothing at all,” he said, knowing as he spoke that no one in the room believed him.

“Something’s the matter! What is it?”

What to say? The truth, or some fragment of it. “I spent the day in Lymington.”

James jerked in his arms. “What business have you down there?”

Soames released his father and did his best to find enough cool reserve to look like himself again. “I called on Miss Heron.” As his father knew very well, this was the only thing he ever did down there.

“What? Why would you run off and spend all day down there, vanishing without a word—”

His eyebrow lifted, and he sniffed. “I wanted to call on her.”

“Don’t be foolish! You know she hasn’t got any money.”

Soames’s chin went up. Confound it, he’d forgotten this argument. “I fail to see why that matters.”

“You say that now!”

His chin solidified. “I’ll do what I think best.”

“Have you gone and—”

“Not yet.” Soames saw his father relax, and felt immediately that he ought to tell him that he intended to ask her, that he would marry her if she wanted him. And he would.

“What’s wrong, then? What’s all the to-do?”

What was he to say to this? The truth was unspeakable. “I hope to see Miss Heron again on Saturday.”

“There you go!”

“Soames will do the right thing,” Emily said, with her eternal stout loyalty. There she was taking his arm, and looking up at him as if she saw right through him, which she might well. And at that moment Warmson appeared to announce that there was a bit of cold supper and would Mr Soames care to come to the dining room. He would indeed care to, and he did.

Soames found his equanimity again over what was a most generous cold supper—someone in the kitchen had made a fuss on short notice. There was cold ham and bread with butter, and a bit of hot clear soup, with his father’s entirely drinkable sherry, to feed a man who’d been without a meal for what felt like an eternity and possibly was. His body told him to eat even if his mind was in a tumult and his heart was alternating between sweet joy and pain. He ate, with his mother sitting with him, and his father pacing around until his mother told him in no uncertain terms to leave. Soames loved his father, but felt deep relief to see him leave the dining room.

His mother looked at him meaningfully, and Soames felt the weight of that in a way he could not ignore. “Please don’t tell Father,” he said to her, “but I spoke to Miss Heron’s step-mother today.”

“My dear boy,” she said.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to speak to Irene.”

“You will soon enough, I am sure.”

“I—Yes.” The confusion in him was almost unbearable at that moment. His mother was alive, and looking at him fondly. He wanted to give her good news, to tell her that her silent and difficult son might be marrying at last, but he also knew that he was not going to tell her that. Hope burned in his heart despite his resolution to accept Irene’s refusal.

He finished his dinner and his wine, kissed his mother, and fled once again away from people, upstairs to his boyhood room, seeking solitude. He closed the door of his bedroom against the world with relief.

He leaned his forehead against the closed door, and breathed. He was alone at last. He could think now. But—but there he was, in his boyhood room, kept for him from his birth until the house went under the hammer after his father’s death: forty-six years of his life, spent with this room as a refuge, no matter where it was he had ordinarily hung his hat. He’d slept here, studied here, come home to this room from school, from travel, from work, from heartbreak. At this moment he had his own chambers, which he had better remind himself about—where the deuce had they been? But this room was still home. His father fretted when he wasn’t there at the breakfast table to be a steadying force, so Soames found himself still sleeping here at times, saying nothing about why he was there, merely drinking coffee and eating toast as a solid presence. If his father wanted him at home, Soames would be at home. He had never been able to deny his father anything the man wanted, not when it was in his power. Today had been the closest he’d ever come to saying any words of affection, and he would be at pains never to be so unreserved about his emotions again, but he was certain his father understood him. He himself understood what his father meant when he fussed, and always had.

His bedroom! This was the only place he knew he could find peace, and merely being here unleashed upon him a torrent of emotion he could not bear. What an utterly confusing mess it all was. He spun his signet ring around on his finger and rubbed his thumb against it. He breathed in and out, slowly, again—a long breath, and a pause. He was calmer now. He pushed himself away from the door. Here was his safety: his room, a gas lamp on the wall burning with that hiss and long-forgotten smell, a candle at his bedside already lit, glowing warm. There was only that circle of flickering light at his bedside, shadows in the corners, yet it was safe, known. His boyhood books were on the shelves, alongside the law books he’d studied while doing his articles before sitting for his examinations. He need not feel distressed to see this.

Another stroke of his thumb along the surface of the ring. His initials, in intaglio, his thumb running along it, somehow making him feel better. This was something he’d never tell even Irene, had been at extreme pains to hide from her. So many little shames to hide. He shivered and spun the ring around back into its proper place on his finger.

Time to go to bed now. He was exhausted beyond words.

Soames emptied his pockets into a bowl upon the chest of drawers where he’d always emptied them: pocket watch and double chain, coins, a small box of cachous, handkerchief with his initials in the corner, a silver case with his calling cards advertising his club. No cigarette case; he didn’t smoke often at this age, hadn’t taken up cigars until the War had moved him to it. Irene didn’t like tobacco. He shouldn’t take it up again, he thought.

Soames hung his morning coat and tie neatly on the clothes-horse. The coat he’d worn today was a good one. He rather liked the cut. He’d had a good tailor for years before the War, not showy, but steady. How little had changed while so much had changed! He’d been much the same weight his entire life, though he was thinner than usual just now. He looked at himself in the mirror, just enough light to see, lifted his shirt, and noted that he could almost count his ribs. Much thinner than usual: as thin as he’d been at the worst of the War. He supposed he’d been doing a great deal of pining and not much eating hanging about her. He hadn’t eaten much today, after all. If he remembered aright, it had become worse during the long months of rejection before it got better with his engagement and all the Forsyte family dinners that had followed. But he’d have fitted into these clothes yesterday—yesterday in ’26—nearly as well as he had fitted them today. A lifetime of abstemious habits and self-denial had its effects.

She’d been the same as well, last he had seen her, in June’s gallery, so close before his end. Silver hair instead of gold, thinner in figure, but to his eyes just as beautiful. So unchanged. They would have grandchildren this time, if all went well, and perhaps—Perhaps? Nonsense. He was going to propose on Saturday, perhaps immediately upon meeting her, then she was going to refuse him, and he was going to accept it gracefully this time, go directly home, and be comforted by his mother. No sulky burning anger, no protests, no pressure, no begging on bended knee. No matter that he’d let this flood back on himself, this damned flood, that would hurt him so.

No, not straight home. First he would give Irene his firm’s card and tell her that if she needed assistance in any way she was to call upon him directly, that he cared about her enough that he would be there for her to act on her behalf. And he would do so; he would be her broken-hearted knight, upright and dignified and sad. There was something rather pleasing in that vision, and he could imagine the painting in his head: Leighton, perhaps, something he’d seen once, or that Burne-Jones fellow. Not his thing, but he could appreciate the work.

What if she accepted him?

Don’t even dare wonder, Forsyte.

But she might.

Soames pulled on a warm clean nightshirt. The servants had anticipated that he would stay the night. How had they known? He turned down the lamp and blew out the candle. Beeswax: he hadn’t smelled a beeswax candle in years. Beeswax and coal gas. The past had scents he hadn’t remembered trading away for petrol. Petrol and electric plants and hot water piped upstairs. He slid himself between warm clean sheets, and found himself once again in the perfect comfort of Emily’s home. She’d always had that touch. How he’d missed it! How he’d missed her! Fleur! He had died and what was Fleur doing without him? He turned onto his side, certain he would never be able to sleep with all this going on inside him.

Soames fell asleep almost immediately, and if he dreamed, he remembered nothing of it.

IV. Soames meets his nephew

The next day Soames walked from Park Lane to his chambers off Victoria Street—the address was on his letterhead, and the latchkey in his pocket. When he arrived he found his dusty memory brushed clean. He’d lived here until his marriage. There was the cane chair he’d lain in so many nights when he couldn’t sleep for the want of her. There were his paintings on the wall. There was his bed, his wardrobe, the desk where he worked at night because there was no time he was not working at this time of his life. Correction: no time save when he was hanging about her, pining. It had been an odd span of years for him, the late seventies until his marriage in eighty-three. He’d finished his articles and kept on working just as hard.

There was scant trace of him here beyond the paintings, no decoration he cared about, merely his clothing and the books he used for work. Bachelor’s rooms! They were a place to sleep and change, no more. He bathed, dressed in frock-coat and dark trousers with a blue stripe and walked to his office at the time he always had, a few minutes ahead of his father. There it was in the Poultry: Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte, commissioners for oaths. If he was to live his life as he supposed he’d been instructed to, to work he must go—not that he minded! The Law had changed over the forty-five years that had passed, but the changes were well within his grasp even now. This was his métier. He had studied and crammed before his examinations, but he had passed them without any doubt about the results. He had done more than well at them, in fact. He had mastered the Law then, and he’d retained his mastery through his life.

Soames had not thought twice about following his father into the Law. They’d all assumed he would, and he hadn’t questioned it in the least. It had suited him; he’d done better than his father had. He had no regrets. And so he returned to work as a solicitor in this second life, a little wiser than he’d been, a little cannier. The long-headed chap would now also be a sage, drawing wisdom from a mysteriously deep well. It was rather pleasing to contemplate.

The immediate details that had faded from his memory were restored to it by the meticulous records he’d always kept of his work, and by the assistance of his clerk Gradman. Gradman always had to hand what he did not. Had he appreciated Gradman enough through the years? He felt he had perhaps not quite paid the man fully what he was worth, and he would make amends for that after his father was out of the way to object. Gradman had driven him to school when he was a boy, and was in harness in Cuthcott, Kingson, and Forsyte, still tending to Forsyte matters, when Soames had, well, died. That was faithful service. Soames would take steps now. He would likely gain a reputation for sentimentality and being a soft touch if he were not careful, but confound that. He would do what he thought best.

There were feelings rising in his chest even here. No place was safe from these feelings! His father was in the next room, fussing about and doing his own work. James had begun his slow withdrawal from active partnership a few years after this time, and did not take on many new clients. He mostly attended to Forsyte matters and to important clients, a duty that had fallen to Soames in his turn, but there was enough of this work to bring him to the office daily. It would not last forever, this time of being a junior partner to his father, but he would savour it this time round. Last time he’d been eager to make his own mark, ambitious, and more energetic than his father had been. It had been age, he suspected now. James perhaps felt he’d made enough money and had done enough. Certainly Soames had eventually reached that point in his own life. Making money was not everything—not that he would ever admit this to a roomful of his family.

He made certain other visits to tradesmen in London that day, including a shop where sheet music was sold. There he consulted over several purchases.

Soames wrote to Mrs Lomax Tuesday morning, informing her he should be in Lymington on the Saturday, and begging to know if he might call on them. He also asked her to express his well-wishes to Irene, and asked if she might enjoy the trifle he was sending under separate cover.

It tweaked his nerves to take this risk: it was not chocolates or flowers or the other safe things he’d given her. But he was doing things right this time, and that meant doing things differently from how he had the first time. Irene was who she was, and not someone else. Why had it taken him so long to understand that? To understand her? What she wanted was not a mystery. She’d told him all along, with every word she’d spoken to him during their courtship.

She’d stopped speaking to him during their marriage. He was unsure even now whose fault that was. He’d wanted her to continue talking, but she hadn’t.

He received a reply Thursday morning at his chambers: they were delighted to learn this, and Mrs Lomax suggested that perhaps they might attend the assembly ball. It was the end of the season, and this was their last opportunity. This was not something he had done with Irene before, they having restricted themselves to concerts and other less active musical performances. Mrs Lomax concluded with a jest, asking if he knew how to dance, which of course he did, having been sent to the usual lessons at the usual academy at the appropriate age. The jest was likely passed along from Irene, teasing him not being something Mrs Lomax would do.

There was a pressed daffodil tucked into the folded paper—it had to have been from Irene. It made him smile rather absurdly as he sat in his rooms with note and flower in hand. Soames did not know how to respond to either the jest or the flower in kind. So he did not, but instead wrote a note saying simply that he would be honoured, and he looked forward to escorting Miss Heron.

He tucked both away into the pocket-book where he kept his keepsakes of her, secreted away in his handkerchief drawer. He still had his keepsakes of her forty-five years on, and someone would be discovering them and wondering at the old man and asking who the girl was. Well, he wasn’t alive to be embarrassed. And what an odd thought that was to have.

Here he was in his office later in the morning, the smell of ink in his nose, listening to the murmur of the clerks and the scratch of his stylographic pen on paper as he wrote out a brief for a case. His client wanted to bring suit; possession was nine points of the law and there was a contract here besides. Soames was of the opinion this was obvious, and was writing as much in economical prose. He felt alive enough, but somewhere he was dead. Morbid! Perhaps it had been a dream, a warning shot across his bow: there he might go if he did not take care. Soames was no philosopher, and found himself unable to make anything of it other than what he had first thought: that the deity was giving him a second chance of going to his rest without unfinished business. Or Nemesis had visited him, and this was her justice: that he have the burden of setting it right.

He spent a quiet hour with his books reviewing his assets. He’d made his notes in that little notebook about total values, and reasonable expenditures, but he needed to know what he was managing just now. Time had blurred the details in his own head; a look at his books refreshed them. Now he had what he needed to hold up his end of the settlement, if it should happen.

A second pressed daffodil arrived in his post Friday morning, with a brief note from Irene herself expressing her wish that he would allow her to thank him by performing his kind gift for him on the Saturday. He made no reply to this, but tucked it away with the other keepsakes of her. That flame of hope within him burned brighter.

Soames called on Winifred in Green Street later that afternoon. She was only now out of her lying-in period, entirely vigorous and bored. He was admitted to the nursery upstairs, trusted brother he, and found her sitting quite at ease in an armchair, comfortable in a tea gown, lending-library novel in her lap. A handsome bassinet with her infant son was close at hand beside her: his own gift to the nursery furnishings, if he recalled correctly.

“Winifred, you look well,” he said, and reached down to embrace her carefully.

“Thank you, dear.”

He kissed Winifred’s forehead and rose to look down at her. She did look well, quite radiant, a little plump yet after the birth. He felt relieved to see her, the same Winifred as ever, a fixed point in his life. He had cared for Winifred more than for anyone but Irene and Fleur. She’d been his rock and his ally for years, through a long lonely life, and he keenly appreciated her. She knew that, though. He had no unpaid debts on his account here.

Soames pulled the nearby chair closer to her armchair and sat. He leaned over the bassinet to take a good look at his new nephew. He dimly remembered visiting shortly after the birth with his parents to be shown the new addition to the family. The infant had been squalling fit to deafen. Now he was quiet, eyes open, looking entirely harmless all wrapped in white blankets. Soames remembered Fleur at this age, a tiny thing, dark cloudy eyes not yet the grey they would become, and a button of a nose. He smiled down and touched his new nephew’s fat pink hand.

“I am to be his godfather, am I?”

“It’s you or Cousin George.”

“That chap.”

“Oh, George is a droll. I enjoy him. I don’t suppose it matters much.”

“Not likely to get much Christian education out of either of us. He’ll get a rather better present out of me.”

“George is a bit scattered, I do admit,” Winifred said. “But Soames! Mama came by yesterday to tell me all about the state Papa is in, all about you.”

“He’s always in a state,” Soames said, truthfully enough. He straightened up and began to rock the bassinet, gently. He caught the day nurse in the corner making some motion with her knitting.

“Mama told me you were quite unlike yourself, and now that you’re here, I can see it for myself.”

“How so?”

“Look at you!”

“What do you mean?”

“The last time you called you were quite obviously pretending to like Publius. Nurse told me you said something about the racket and escaped quick as you could. And now you’re smiling and rocking him. I wasn’t aware you knew how.”

“Publius?” Soames said. “What sort of name is Publius?”

“Latin. Publius Valerius.”

“The lesser Publicola. Still time to change it.”

“Don’t you try to distract me, brother. You’re behaving in a way the Soames I know never has. And Mama told me you lifted Papa off his feet when you came home after so mysteriously disappearing all day.”

He ought to glare at her and intimidate her into backing away from questioning his behaviour, as was his habit. One withering look, and people would shrink away. But this was Winifred. He could not bring himself to do it.

“I asked for her step-mother’s permission,” he said, and felt his cheeks burn yet again. Winifred was safe, surely; she wouldn’t make a guy of him, and she’d always known how he felt about Irene. He’d told her before he’d told anyone, and asked her advice when he would not have asked any one else’s. “I think she might—that is, I think I have a chance.”

“Oh, Soames!” Winifred reached out and took his hand. “Oh, I’m so glad for you.”

“Now, let’s not anticipate. I haven’t asked her yet. But, she was happy to see me when I—that is—perhaps—I’m going to see her again tomorrow.”

“You have the ring, then?”

“I have,” he said, and flushed deeper still.

“Well, you’ll have to ask her now, dear.” Winifred was teasing him, of course, but the die was cast, rather.

Did he have a chance? He was not supposed to. She was supposed to feel nothing for him, yet a corner of his heart felt differently. A corner of his heart knew hope for the first time in all the long years since he’d met her. He was uncertain of himself, afraid, braced for the pain, but he hoped. And oh what sweet pain that was!

The infant made a sound at him, no meaning in it, a squall and a flail of a hand. Spit bubbled from his mouth, and a little trail led away into the blankets.

“Has he eaten?” Soames asked.

“I fed him a few minutes before you called.”

He took a cloth and carefully wiped the infant’s face clean. In the corner of his eye he saw the child’s nurse start up, then settle back down, as she had when he’d started rocking the bassinet. Such nonsense, fretting. He’d done this for young Kit, the sweet duty of a grandfather, but it had been so long since he’d done it for Fleur! He remembered sitting with Annette on their bed and watching her nurse Fleur, and how utterly overwhelmed he’d been at that moment. No doubt it was “chic” to nurse babies one’s self just now, which was why Winifred was doing it. Soames approved, without regard to fashion. Mothers ought to nurse their own children. It was the best for the child and it made for wonderful paintings. And watching Annette with Fleur had fed that deep glow of happiness in him: he was a father at last! Never mind that he’d lost his own father, never mind his new awareness that he and Annette would never be close. They’d been united over Fleur at that moment, and the second love of his life had begun. He was glad Winifred had this now.

Would he and Irene unite over, over—Would there be a Fleur for them? Stop thinking about that, Forsyte! There was no profit to it. It would happen or not, and his duty was to accept it.

He returned to rocking the bassinet absently. “And where is Dartie?”

“At his club, I think.”

Soames could not look at her as he asked this, but instead concentrated on the bassinet, and his drowsing nephew. “He should be here doing this. You’ll tell me if the fellow misbehaves, won’t you?”

“What on earth—”

“Never mind, never mind. I’m only fussing. But if he turns flighty on you, I should like to know. The man’s a father now.”

“I haven’t the least worry about him, Soames, unlike you! You should keep your mind on your young lady and asking her properly. I am so looking forward to meeting her.”

“Hmm,” Soames said. “You won’t much like her step-mother. Irene, however—” He was aware he was smiling fatuously again. He concentrated on the infant to distract himself. “He’s asleep. Winifred, Publius Valerius, really?”

“Monty suggested it, and I think it quite chic.”

Soames cast up his eyes. “It’s not chic in the least. I shan’t try to talk you out of it, but I predict you’ll regret it.”

“You have no idea what’s chic and what’s not, dear brother.”

“And why would I? I pay no attention to such things.”

“My brother has returned. The world is right again.”

Soames said something acerbic to her, knowing she saw right through him, and took his leave.

V. Irene plays Mozart

Soames went down to Lymington on the Saturday morning express, Gladstone bag in hand. He would be staying the night and returning to London after tea-time Sunday. The town was large enough to have a quite grand hotel for the tourist season, but Soames stayed in the Angel Inn at the top of the high street, beside which the assembly hall had been built. He was well-known by the landlord. He might have preferred not to be, but it was inevitable given how often he was there, and he needs must endure being known by the staff and fussed over. He suspected they knew why he was in Lymington as well, but he dared not say anything about it lest he discover he was right.

He left the inn directly after depositing his bag and washing up. His first stop was his florist: there were flowers to be sent to Irene for her to wear to the assembly ball, and then there were flowers to be delivered tomorrow morning, in thanks for the ball. The florist had opinions about those, and Soames yielded to them. Finally, there was a flower to be worn in his buttonhole. These necessities settled, he made his way down the high street and off to the Lomax home to pay his respects. He could hear Irene playing inside and felt a thrill of anticipation. The maid was still absurdly short; he still had to put his own coat on the hook and set his own hat on the stand. He pretended to be grumpy because it was once his habit, but he found himself feeling sympathy for her underneath it. It wasn’t her fault she was short!

Soames made his own way into the drawing room, opening the door as quietly as he could, hoping to catch Irene playing without interrupting her, and was rewarded. She glanced up at him and met his eye, but did not pause. She was intent on the music before her, playing something a bit sparkling and light that she seemed not to know as well as the things she usually played. He hovered in the doorway, watching her. He’d stood in this spot all those years ago, when he’d seen her for the first time, like this, watching her play, her face concentrating on what she was doing, her shoulders and head in motion as she played. Now as then, he was caught by her, by the look on her face of pure absorption, of joy in what she was doing. Was that what had drawn him in, in that first moment? Was that why he’d fallen in love at first sight with her?

Millie the maid came in quietly with a glass of sherry on a tray. He took it and gave her a smile that discomfited her, but he had already forgotten her and turned back to Irene. He tasted his sherry; it was the same as it had been earlier in the week. He drank it only to calm his nerves. The music was so cheerful, though, that being nervous seemed absurd. It was making him want to smile all by itself, and he didn’t know what to make of that.

The music changed, and went into a slower, quieter bit that was still obviously the same piece. Soames finished his sherry and set his glass down. He reached into his coat pocket and took out his gift, then paced noiselessly closer, until he could rest a hand on the closed piano lid and gaze down at her. She was wearing a gown he’d seen before; he knew all of her gowns. She did not have many. The colour of this one suited her; the colours always suited her. She had an eye, and he appreciated that. Why was she so beautiful? She simply was, perhaps. She was what she was.

Soames held himself self-contained, with his left hand behind his back, watching her play.

The music changed again, and returned to something faster and cheerful again. He thought it was perhaps a little bit showy. Irene’s expression shifted and she looked more concentrated than she had been before, even though the music was still light. Was it because it was faster? There were so many things going on, and her fingers were moving uncommonly quickly at some moments; Soames had no idea how she knew how to read the music on the page and turn it into finger movements so seemingly easily. It was possibly like painters knowing how to mix paint, or he himself knowing where in the law and in precedent to look for the reasoning he needed for a brief. It was what she did, her training, her métier as the Law was his. Her expertise.

She concluded, and held her right hand up, flexing the fingers gently. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. He said, “What was that? I haven’t heard you play it before.”

“That was a Mozart sonata, number 13. He’s not my usual, but I felt today called for Mozart.”

“I enjoyed it.” And to his surprise he had: she had not been solemn while playing it, but instead bright and clear-eyed.

He looked at Irene and found her gazing at him, and then he found himself caught in that little smile again. It was ridiculous and wonderful! He looked down, because if he kept looking into her eyes he didn’t know what would happen to him.

“What makes a day a Mozart day?” he asked. He himself had no earthly idea. The question was the right one, however, for her face lit with delight.

“Ah! It must be a light and airy sort of day. There is nothing romantic or dramatic about Mozart. He is cheerful and sparkling, full of joy. He is charming, but not passionate. Well, he can be passionate, but that piece is not.”

“Champagne to Beethoven’s claret?”

“Mmm, that’s good. I felt today wanted a lightness and sparkle, and Mozart is perfect for that. Unfortunately, I haven’t very much of his music here. I relied on the Conservatoire’s copies.”

“Oh!” he said. That was something to note, and he indeed noted it. But— “Speaking of music. I happened on this and thought it might interest you.” He took his left hand out from behind his back and presented what he’d been concealing from her: a slim sheaf of sheet music rolled up and tied with a ribbon.

She took it from him cautiously, puzzled, and untied the ribbon. If he thought the question about Mozart had made her happy, it was nothing to her reaction to this. The ribbon fluttered to the floor as she hastily shuffled through the sheets.

“Brahms? The Brahms rhapsodies? Soames, I have not been able to thank you for the Grieg, and here you are giving me Brahms? Where did you—”

Soames shrugged, unwilling to answer, but she was paying him no mind: the music was already before her on the piano. The fellow at Augener’s had told him the Grieg was delightful, sure to please the young lady, but perhaps she would seek more challenging work next. Soames had accepted the guidance, and observed the comment about challenge, and asked the man for a second gift to follow up the Grieg. And now he revelled in the rewards of his forethought: bringing her the Brahms had transported her to joy he had not seen her express in his presence before—or ever, that he could remember.

Irene was reading through the music, apparently completely engaged by whatever she was seeing, reacting to something he hadn’t the least idea how to read. It was so much Greek to him, but to her a language she spoke fluently. He wasn’t sure what was involved in learning a new piece of music—it had always seemed like a great deal of work to his cousins—but for Irene it was apparently no more than setting it before herself on the piano and beginning to play it. She began working her way through the first piece: it was strange to him, baffling. It felt prickly somehow, but it gave Irene some pleasure he found satisfying to see on her face. She played; he watched her play. This was enough for him. He had been given sound advice, it seemed. He would remember this, and find that fellow again at Augener’s to learn what else he suggested. Further, he would write in his little notebook, next to the other lists of things she played, that she had little Mozart.

He had been an odd young man. He supposed he was an odd man still. There was no helping it: he was who he was.

He leaned closer over the piano, arms resting upon the lid, and Irene continued playing. Apparently the Brahms was not easily played. He had not seen her learn anything difficult before, and this was just difficult enough to be the challenge the fellow had promised. Her face was quite serious, and she played some things several times in a row, as far as his ear could discern. She looked up at him and smiled. “Brahms is so intense and passionate,” she said, “and I shall need to spend more time with it to do your gift justice.” She paused. “Soames, may I ask a favour of you? Would you turn pages for me? I am concentrating on the piece, and it helps not to have to worry about that.”

“Of course! But how will I know?”

“I’ll tell you. You will want to bring that little bench nearer, I think.”

Soames did so, and found himself seated quite close to her, close enough to smell her honey and roses and feel himself affected by it as he always had been. She resumed playing the Brahms, and he watched her, this time from a position at her side, and tried to understand what she was about. He didn’t understand the music at all, but he could see Irene was completely focused on it and that this was what she wanted to be doing with her afternoon. She played it once through, twice, and he was beginning to understand when to turn the pages just from listening, not that it made any sense to him.

Irene was playing the piece more smoothly now, and he could hear that there was emotion starting to make itself known. He could hear that there was emotion, yes, but it was more difficult to make out what it was about than most of what she’d played. He’d known what that Mozart had been about the instant he’d heard it, even though he’d known nothing about what the piece was supposed to be. Cheerful and sparkling, yes, he could believe that. This? What was a rhapsody? What was he supposed to feel? Passion about what?

He was sitting near her, and no one else was in the room, and she smiled at him when she finished the piece, so he had no complaints at all. It was his usual experience of concert-going with her.

At last Irene stopped playing and stretched her arms with fingers interlaced. “That was quite a long practice session,” she said to him. “Thank you for indulging me, Soames.”

“It was a pleasure.”

“What do you feel about the Brahms?”

“I don’t know what I think,” he said.

She laughed at him, but he did not feel insulted, for she laid a hand on his coat sleeve briefly and said, “Clara Schumann loved Brahms immediately, and celebrated his genius as a composer, but it took years for anyone else to understand him. I don’t think this piece is easy to understand.”

“I can’t make head or tail of it.”

He opened his mouth to say more, but at that moment the drawing room door opened. He stepped back from the piano hastily. But it was only Mrs Lomax, exclaiming with pleasure to see him. Soames flushed but was able to keep his face otherwise under control, and Irene herself seemed not even to notice. She merely began gathering up the music on the piano before her. It was absurd, what all this emotion was doing to him! He was behaving as if he were a stripling instead of the man he was, a man who’d lived a long life. He was behaving as if, as if—as if he were his younger self, Soames at twenty-five, in love and bewildered by it.

Soames did his best to feign pleasure to Mrs Lomax in return, and was as cordial as his years had taught him how to be. It was still difficult for him. He did not have the gift of it: he did not like her; he did not feel close to her; he had no idea what to say that was honest and straightforward. Discussion about the weather only took one so far.

It was tea-time, apparently: they’d been absorbed with the Brahms for hours and he hadn’t realised it. The maid Millie came in with a tray full of china and tea-things, and then there was the business with tea-making to occupy them. Soames was saved from having to make more conversation for a while as they drank their tea. Irene could instead tell her step-mother how kind Soames was to have brought her more music, and such wonderful music from the continent that she had been most eager to play! Mrs Lomax was most impressed by his thoughtful gift, and quite pleased that Irene had reacted positively to it; she seemed to have expected the opposite.

Soames drank tea and wondered what drama had gone on in the past with Irene and suitors, and wondered further why he had never asked her about this. Had she any stories to tell? Unpleasant ones, perhaps?

Irene abandoned the tea conversation, returned to the piano, and began assaying the second rhapsody.

Mrs Lomax appeared to care nothing at all for music, even less than Soames himself ever had, because she did not hesitate to speak to him while Irene was playing. He was faintly offended by this, but it did give him a moment to confess that he had not yet found the right opportunity to propose, but that he surely would that day or on the morrow. She nodded to him and touched his arm in a conspiratorial gesture. He disliked whatever scent it was she wore. It was a lady’s scent, but he disliked it. It was sharp and too strong for his nose, and it did not mix well with honeyed roses.

Millie appeared to take the tea things away. Soames was again hovering by the piano watching Irene play. He barely noticed Mrs Lomax also leaving the room.

Mrs Lomax re-entered the room some time later, he knew not how long after. She swept over to him and said, somewhat chiding, “You will of course dine with us, Mr Forsyte, and then I will accompany you both to the assembly hall. You will want to go and change now, I think.”

“Thank you,” Soames said. “I should very much enjoy dining with you all.” The hint was clear: he was to depart and come back at dinner-time. He was abashed to have needed the hint, because he ought to have been more aware of the time. But he’d so been enjoying Irene’s company! Then he realised that he’d disappointed Mrs Lomax by not having proposed, and felt reproved. He ought to have. It was absurd that he’d completely failed to remember that he ought to have. He’d been so intent on watching her play that he’d lost sight of everything else.

That was quite strange.

VI. Soames and Irene waltz

Dinner had been a matter of endurance: could he endure the Lomaxes’ conversation with each other? Could he endure the ineptitude of the unfortunate Millie, who was surely doing her inadequate best without help? Could he endure his distance from Irene across the table, whom he could not touch? The answer was yes, because he had no choice but to endure it. At least he’d been able to bring her in to dinner.

Soames attempted to find humour in what was going on around him, and mostly succeeded. Mostly. He was able to compliment the roast, which was done just so, the cook’s speciality, and make Mrs Lomax happy. For some things, there was no help. Lomax’s port was only barely drinkable, but Soames knew better than to show this. He drank it with good grace and pretended amusement at Lomax’s man-of-the-world jokes. His comment about the beauty of his step-daughter and Soames’s motives for hanging about put Soames’s back up, but there was no profit in being angry about it; Soames did have a motive, and he played along with a lift of his glass.

It was all a deep strain on his ability to perform his role at a social occasion. He knew the rules, knew what he was to do, but had always found it so much more difficult than the men around him seemed to. He had to stay on his guard at all times, to always think about what he had to say and how he ought to react. He preferred to be silent but he could not when there were only four people at the table. At least Lomax had no interest in the ball; Mrs Lomax was going to chaperone them with every intention of having a long gossip with the other town matrons.

After the trial of dinner ended, the trio walked together from the Lomaxes’ house up towards the assembly hall, where the balls took place, hard by the Angel Inn. It was a walk just long enough to settle the digestion and establish a clear separation in Soames’s mind between dinner and the ball: before one was in that house, enduring; after one would be under public scrutiny in the assembly hall. It was a lovely clear spring evening: the stars were visible in a sky behind scudding clouds. Soames breathed in fresh sea air and felt himself ease into relaxation. He was ready for what lay ahead: dancing, and more dancing, with Irene as often as she would allow him. He resolved to ask her for the supper-dance if she would have him.

And indeed, once they were inside, coats and hats off, he asked, and she graciously assented. Soames wrote his name on Irene’s dance card three times in total. He wanted to claim more dances than that, but even as many as three was on the edge of bad form. Besotted as he was, being seen to practise bad form was beyond him. He would have to endure watching her dance with other men, and would most certainly distract himself by dancing with other girls. Indeed, the Master of Ceremonies pounced upon him immediately—that young gentleman from London who’d been calling on Professor Heron’s orphaned daughter. He introduced Soames to a succession of single young ladies who wanted partners for dances, and to whom Soames was immediately committed. He was, of course, delighted to be so introduced, and said so to each of his prospective partners with a gallant fixed smile. When each had retired, he made a quick note on his programme of their dress colour next to the dance, so that he might have some hope of finding them again, for he had forgotten their names immediately. Why did only women get dance cards? It was unfair. The Master of Ceremonies seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of young ladies for him, and he was committed to every dance of the evening in short order.

A full evening of dancing lay ahead. Thank heavens for the body of youth!

The couples were assembling on the dance floor, and he made his way to Irene as rapidly as he could, for the first dance was theirs together. It was a waltz, and he remembered what waltzing with her felt like. Would he remember how well enough? Irene told him as they took their position together that she had not danced in some time, and she was so very much looking forward to it. He had better remember.

To his immense relief, his feet and his hands remembered what to do. He touched her waist, oh so gently, took her hand, and they were in motion. The repeated drilling in his childhood had remained with him even now, and the youthful spring in his limbs made it joy to move with Irene. He looked down into her eyes, and oh, she was smiling up at him as she never had. No averted glances from the side, no shrinking away, no sense that she would rather be anywhere else than with him, in his arms, waltzing. She danced well, much better than he, but it didn’t matter to him so long as he could drown in her eyes and her scent and in the warmth of her so close to him. His hand was on her waist, and they were spinning gracefully. He must be as worthy of her dancing as he could be. Good God, when had he last waltzed? It had been with her, and it had been before their marriage, as far as he could remember, and it must have made him as drunk on her scent and dizzy from her touch then as now.

It was good to be young, and to find himself unchallenged by even a faster waltz, and to find his blood quickened only a little by the exercise. Good to stand face to face with her afterwards, tingling all over. Did she feel this way too? They stood for a long moment, looking at each other, and then the moment was over, and the couples were leaving the floor. Soames escorted Irene back over to Mrs Lomax and to her seat. Would she like refreshment? She would. He left her with a pang. When he returned with glasses of lemonade for the three of them, he found a handsome chestnut-haired youth with an extravagant moustache talking to her. The youth was, it seemed, written down for the next. Soames’s chest twinged as he watched, but she was doing no more than good behaviour required, and he must do the same.

Irene smiled when she saw him, a man obviously returning from an errand bearing refreshments for her, and the youth retreated from the battlefield of hearts. Soames sat with Irene and tasted his lemonade; it was cloyingly sweet and not quite drinkable. He made a face and saw her laughing at him for it.

Talk was impossible seated at that table, with the din of conversation around them. He remembered all the rituals of an assembly dance but from a distance. The War had changed so much. Young people after the War had had no more time for the rules of signing dance cards and fetching lemonade. He’d despised assembly dances when he’d been young, and had put up with them only for the pleasure of being with Irene. Private balls were a different matter; one was not in a crowd, and the wine was better. But now, given this second chance at youth, he could let himself enjoy what he hadn’t known the Nation would lose, what he hadn’t thought mattered. Now he could let himself simply dance. And at least they could sit together in the midst of all this, quietly happy, and he need not find words when he was in this state. He could smile at Irene and see her smile back at him, and enjoy it without complication.

The chestnut moustache reappeared. Soames rose with Irene and handed her off with good grace, and went to find his next partner: cadmium yellow dress, pink flowers. She was a good-looking-enough slender thing with dark hair. She was light on her feet and had few words to say to him, so he enjoyed the dance, though he was aware of Irene on the dance floor with them, sometimes passing nearby, sometimes looking towards him. He caught her eye once and his face burned.

He remained gracious with his partner, whose name he had already forgotten, handing her off to her chaperone and what appeared to be an alarming number of sisters gazing at him expectantly. The next young lady was in green something like viridian, and the dance was a lancers, and conversation was expected of him. He did his best, made somewhat easier when the young lady turned out to want descriptions of some of London’s landmarks. Fortunately he could provide accurate, if somewhat terse, descriptions of what they looked like, particularly at sunrise when the light caught them just so. She seemed slightly surprised by his choice of the time of day, but she had asked for his opinion, and he’d once seen light after a summer sunrise that he had dreamed over for years afterwards.

The next young lady was in cornflower blue with yet more flowers on it, according to his colour list. He found himself discomfited by how many of them were in similar blues and was in serious fear that he would stand someone up. He was rescued by the Master of Ceremonies, who pointed out precisely that pattern waiting anxiously at the side of the dance floor. He was at least making a good account of himself, however much he might be resenting that this was another waltz and he was not dancing it with Irene.

He stood in a dark corner after that dance ended, and drank watered-down lemonade: it was hot in the room, with the lamps and not enough open windows for that many people. His buttonhole had already begun to wilt. He watched Irene with her step-mother while he drank: she was also drinking water.

Soames reflected with more than a little satisfaction that Irene was by far the most beautiful woman in sight. She was not as beautiful as she would yet become—her face still had an air of girlishness, and her figure was not as full as he remembered it. Her gown was the gown of a girl who had only one for formal occasions, and it was not the finest fashion to be seen. Soames cared nothing for that; he was aware only that she was the Irene he had fallen in love with, the girl who’d so earnestly told him the day he met her that he was quite wrong to say she should give up her ambition simply because she could not be Clara Schumann. This had touched something in him. And Irene as ever had challenged him and said things to him he’d never heard or thought before. However little he might have understood them at the time, they had stayed with him, and some of them he’d been able to make more of as time passed. She’d been unique in his life, unknown to him though he’d sought desperately to know her, burning a trail across his life like a firework and vanishing as completely. And here she was sitting in a ball gown, happy, carefree. This woman had lost her father, which happened to everyone in the end, but heartbreak and the loss of a love and the years of loneliness had not scarred her heart. He hadn’t scarred her heart. He hadn’t spoken harsh words to her. He hadn’t ruined a man to strike at her.

How had he ever hurt this woman? How had it become so bad between them that she hated him and he lashed back?

He saw her look at her dance card, then smile, and look around the room in search of him. He was summoned. Soames set his glass down and hastily made his way out of his corner to appear at her side. “I have the honour of the next, I believe,” he said.

“You believe?” she said.

“Yes. The pale gold gown follows the cornflower blue gown on my list. I believe that is you.”

“I do seem to be wearing a pale gold gown.”

“I can see no other pale gold gowns in the room.”

“I am obliged to dance with you, then,” Irene said, and stood.

He offered her his hand, and she took it, and he tried not to show how much this delighted him.

It was a polka, a trifle vigorous, and though his hand was pleasantly on her waist and hers on his shoulder, there was no opportunity to look into her eyes. Afterwards he was even warmer. So much dancing! It was past the half-way mark, and at least he would have the supper-dance. That was something to look forward to, if he did not burn up beforehand.

A breeze came over his face, from Irene’s moving fan. “It is warm in this hall,” she said. She was watching him curiously over the fan, dark eyes, slightly flushed face, gold hair with white and yellow flowers in it, a drop of moisture on her temple. He watched it bead and slide down her cheek. His head swam, and not from the heat: his blood was running hot with something else. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed. Steady, steady. He opened his eyes again and this time watched the fan, not her face. He found his voice.

“Too many people in too small a space, I think.”

“At least there is enough room to dance!”

“I am reminded that it is time for me to find my next partner.”

“What colour is her gown?” she asked, and there was a jest in her eyes.

“Blue again, with figuring. It’s quite a lovely transparent blue, and the figuring is almost watery green. It reminds me of the sea in a Boudin painting I saw once. I take my leave of you both.” He made a tiny bow to Irene and Mrs Lomax and was off, on light feet. Youth was a pleasure to have once again, even if it did come with moments of his body reminding him that youth had its passions. He could manage those moments now. In the main.

When the supper dance came, Soames had been away from Irene for far longer than he liked, but he was satisfied that he had done what was required of him, and danced with five girls who had wanted partners, and made at least one of them happy with a careful compliment of her skill. Now he could enjoy his reward, the dance that mattered. Now was the dance before supper, before the quiet and intimate time they could spend talking together, with their gloves off, alone in the throng.

And this dance would be a waltz, the most intimate of dances. They would be as close as they could possibly be in public, touching as intimately as they were allowed to touch in public. He would look into her eyes and try to guess what she felt for him from what he saw there. What would he see?

Soames walked over to Irene, and offered her his arm. He could not smile, despite his inner joy: it was all too overwhelming. Irene took his arm and they walked from the side room to the ballroom floor slowly, amid the crowd of couples doing the same. They found a clear place on the dance floor. They stood looking at each other, unmoving, both solemn. The flowers in her hair had wilted; he could see perspiration on her face, on her temples, wetting her hair. He knew his own buttonhole had browned and wilted, that his own collar had softened, that sweat streaked his own face. She was beautiful, so very beautiful to him. He wanted nothing more than to tell her this, but he could not.

The music began. He offered her his hand palm up. She accepted and they began. This waltz was slower than the first, and he dared to call it pretty. He had no words for what it felt like. Flower petals? Rose petals, soft and rippling and perfect under his hand. He was drawing her down the ballroom floor, gliding in a musical rapture that even he could understand, he endlessly moving forward, she endlessly turning back, and yet moving as one. They were touching ever so lightly, and yet every tiny contact was warm and alive. He could feel her breathing under his fingers, light though his touch on her waist was.

His courtship of her commenced now, he thought, now in this dance. Everything that had come before was cowardice, not caution. He would make it unmistakable to her from this moment on, so that when he at last spoke those three words to her she would already know. If she refused him after this moment he would believe it.

An eternity of gliding with her, holding her gaze, unaware of anything else around them. The music and her. Never may it end.

It was an eternity of unity, and yet it ended. They were standing again, looking into each other’s faces while they breathed: a pause in which Soames heard nothing and saw nothing but her. He felt as if he were only partly present in the room. The rest of him was somewhere hovering far above them out of his body altogether. And then it collapsed around them into the announcement of supper: whatever had transported him was fading and he was easing down into reality. He could hear murmuring, louder talking, some laughter; feel sweat trickling along his ribs. She was close enough to him that he knew her scent for the first time in the evening: roses and honey.

The couples around them were moving away, off the dance floor. Irene touched his gloved hand and he found his feet were on solid ground again. He offered her his arm: she took it. Her hand inside his elbow was heat that he could feel all the way through his coat. His entire soul was hers now. Whatever happened next, she owned him completely.

He led her gently into the throng of couples making their way slowly to the supper-room. They walked in silence, not quite the last among the crowd, but near it. He said, with a voice that was almost not behaving itself, “What was that?”

“Strauss, Roses from the South,” she said, quietly. “I have the sheet music, but I’ve not heard it danced to.”

“I liked that.” He felt her looking at him.

“That is twice today you’ve told me you’ve enjoyed a piece of music, Soames. First the Mozart sonata, and now this waltz. I am astonished.”

“Can a man spend time with you and not learn?”

“I had doubted it, but now I am proven wrong. You have been listening.”

She had been right to doubt. He’d never expressed any appreciation of the music itself. And in truth, it had always been difficult for him. He had missed it when she stopped playing in his presence, but he’d never been able to explain why to himself. Her face was so different, so giving when she was playing. She was somewhere else as he was when he looked at a painting that meant something to him, did something with light and colour that caught him. This time—he had learned something, only a shred of something, but enough to catch his interest.

They made their way into the supper room, behind the last of the crowd, and found seats near the wall, where a breath of sea air seeped through old windows. Irene sat, and adjusted the candlestick lighting their table. Soames asked if she preferred lemonade or claret cup, and was unsurprised to be told the claret. The lemonade had been intolerable. He came back with claret and a plate of light things that he knew she would prefer at a moment like this, in a stuffy room after exercise. There were no ices, but there was cold chicken, bread and butter, and fruit. He served her and asked if she wanted anything else. She did not. He returned with his own plate, and at last sat beside her. He tasted his own claret cup: cold, thank goodness.

They sat in their own pool of candlelight, in a room full of couples in their own warm splashes of light, murmuring together. His gloves were off. Her gloves were unbuttoned and her hands bare. He’d seen them bare so many times—had watched her playing piano that afternoon—but here, now, it was another thing. She was vulnerable before him, and so was he. They were as alone as they would be all evening, in this crowd, with couples beside them talking but ignoring them, alone in their own pocket of quiet conversation in the din, with no one paying them the least mind. He could say what he wished to her now, and she to him.

And what would he say? What could he say? There was so much he wanted to say, and so much he did not dare. Well, he might as well make the obvious opening.

He asked, “Did you like the Grieg lyric pieces?” And again, it was a question that caught her attention: he’d done the right thing.

“I spent yesterday playing through all eight pieces, several times over. They’re not technically difficult, but they are so charming and varied. Have you heard them performed?”

Soames shook his head. “I should like to hear you play them. Tell me about them?”

“Oh, they were fun, easy enough that I might use them to teach pupils. Grieg is so light and delightful at times, then serious. I knew about him, but I’d never explored his works. He isn’t taught where I studied—he’s quite young, I think. How did you find him?”

“I asked.”

“Whoever you asked has excellent taste. You should ask this person for more names that I might look for.”

“I shall do so, and if I happen on something I shall mention it.” He would do more; he would bring her more music. This was the way to her heart: not jewellery, not gowns, not country houses. He would give her this instead. Soames knew that he would have to restrain himself even with this. He wanted to give her everything. The yearning was made worse in him by what she said next.

“I wish I could visit London and haunt the music publishers for new work.” She sighed. “I loved Paris, but I have not seen much of London yet.”

“It has far more for someone like you than Lymington does.” Someone like her! Someone who deserved everything London had. He ate bread and butter and tried not to think about what she deserved, which was everything he could give her.

“So you say! Someday I shall see it.”

“I wish I could take you to concerts there. But—”

“My step-father lives here in Lymington, and I am told he has business in Bradford that will take us there.”

“Bradford?” said Soames. “When will you be going there?”

“I am told when the lease on the house in Lymington is up, early next year.” Irene did not seem happy about this, and Soames found it understandable. Yorkshire was even further away from where Irene wished to be

He said, “I would come to visit you in Bradford, but I would rather—I would rather you were in London.”

“Thank you. You are a rock. It can be lonely, sometimes, and it has been more so since losing Papa.”

Soames understood that. “When did your father die?”

“Three years ago.”

“You miss him.”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry you have been lonely.”

“I have not been so lonely recently.”

Soames was silent. Did she mean him? She had to mean him, that he cared for her and she knew it. “Perhaps,” he said, cautiously, “we might keep each other company.”

“Perhaps we might.”

“It would give me great happiness.”

“I have very much appreciated the new Soames,” Irene said to him softly. “He’s someone I’ve enjoyed talking with. He’s not closed away from everyone the way the old Soames was.”

“Oh,” Soames said. Closed away? It was bad form to show emotion in public, yes, but surely he’d shown himself to Irene? Or not. He’d always been so silent when she’d most moved him. Perhaps it had never shown even on his face. Had that been his mistake?

He said, “I don’t wish to be closed away. At least not from you.”

“You must talk more of yourself to me. I have told you about myself, and now it is your turn. You have hours of talking about yourself to do to catch up with me.”

“You ask a great deal,” he said. “I can’t possibly talk that much. And certainly not here.”

“Perhaps you might tell me more of your paintings, and what you look for and what you see. Have you ever painted?”

“I have not. A tutor once tried to teach me draughtsmanship, but it did not go well. If I have any talent at all, it is for the Law. For finding a path from where my client is to where he wishes to be. It’s a particular sort of skill, I think.”

“You are a clever lawyer despite what you say.”

“Not clever so much as careful, I think. And methodical. There is satisfaction in knowing that I’ve done things properly, and managed a matter as well as it could possibly be managed. If I have to be clever to do it, well, I shall be clever.”

“You like to be reliable and relied upon?”

The question surprised him. He hadn’t thought of that as something he enjoyed; merely something one did. “I suppose I do. I do enjoy being useful for the people around me.”

“That is an admirable thing to enjoy,” Irene murmured, and drank. Her glass was empty, and Soames immediately offered to fetch her more, which she declined. One glass was enough, she said, which was just as well, because the supper hour was over. There was more dancing yet: three more dances, with three more girls of whom he noticed nothing, and Sir Roger de Coverley to end it all. Quaint, but he remembered it, and it was his last chance to touch her as they changed places around each other. It was a pleasure he had not remembered, dancing like this, hooking arms and spinning and returning and bowing: a thing of a past that was more fragile than the people around him knew, more precious. He let himself enjoy it more than he ever would have before, holding this awareness close and secret.

It was bad form to dance with one’s wife. He’d thought about that more than once in his previous life, and never dared violate the prohibition to do what he had secretly wanted to do all along. Would he do so if he could this time? Perhaps he would ask her if she wished for it, and if she did, he would dance with her. If she accepted him.

And then the ball was over. People were clustering around the door. Soames fetched Irene’s cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders—a first time for him performing this service: pausing a moment behind her, gazing down at the nape of her neck, at the pale down along it, at the knot of golden hair above it, the flowers he’d sent her that morning bound into the coils, white sparks in the gold. Why was she so beautiful? he thought again, and again with no answer other than that she simply was.

He accompanied Irene and her step-mother out into the night air, mercifully cool and breezy. People were leaving, some via the handful of cabs, most on foot.

“I shall call tomorrow, if I may,” he said, to them both, and received a significant look from Irene’s step-mother. He had yet to propose, and she was waiting for him to do so. In his own time, in his own time. But he thought tomorrow would have to be the day: he could put it off no longer. Tomorrow. He’d propose tomorrow. There was a strange mix of terror and delight in his heart.

Soames gave a coin to a boy, who scurried off to secure a cab for them. Soames handed Irene and her step-mother into it and watched it clop away from the hall. He would know his fate tomorrow. What would Nemesis do with him? He could not guess.

VII. A night alone

Soames walked not towards the inn but away at first, hoping to clear his head and cool his body. He was absurdly happy as he had rarely felt in his life, and sick to his stomach with fear. He’d spent his evening dancing with her! She’d smiled at him, and looked into his eyes as deeply as he’d looked into hers. They’d waltzed. They’d talked. They had seemed to understand each other, to be in sympathy with each other. They’d talked of personal things, and promised to talk further.

He would ask her to marry him tomorrow. He knew what he would do if she refused. What was he to do if she accepted?

It was one in the morning, and Lymington grew quieter the further he walked from the assembly hall. When he reached the front he turned round and walked back up, cooled and calmed. When he reached the inn, he was greeted by a porter who knew him from many previous visits, and treated him with the deference of a frequent and easily-pleased guest. On impulse, he asked that they send brandy up to him. This was not a common request he made, but there were times when he sat and imbibed something slowly, and thought over his evening with Irene. He wanted to do so now. If he’d had cigars, he might have smoked one, simply for the mood it would put him in; at least his older self would have.

Soames made his way up to his room, his usual on the southwest corner, with a view of the sea. He turned down the gas lamp to a tolerable level and lit the candle. Gas! He’d had an electric plant at Mapledurham for three decades and more. Here he was with gas and candles and horses in the street, a chamberpot under the bed. He opened his window to the night air: cool, damp, with the scent of the ocean. The evening was hushed around him, save for the sound of waves, but in his head it was cacophony. Irene might accept him. She might want him. Tomorrow at this time, he might find himself engaged to be married to her again, in this his inexplicable second life.

He washed his face in the washstand and looked at himself in the glass. He looked as he felt: strained, with a line between his brows, and a hollow in his cheeks. The last few days had been an uncommon trial for him, and his nerves were stretched near the breaking point.

The maid brought him his brandy and closed the door quietly behind herself. Soames sighed with relief. The trials of the evening were over. Coat, tie, collar, cuffs, and boots off. Braces pushed off his shoulders, and the top button of his trousers opened: he was out of his evening dress and no longer armoured against the world.

Soames sprawled into the armchair beside the candle and cupped the brandy glass in his hand. He was alone and could think now. He tasted the brandy; it was good, but his mind was not on it. It was on that waltz.

That waltz! He would give anything to be back in those eternal minutes again. Did she feel the same? He’d been somewhere completely strange during it, having feelings he’d never had before in his life. He’d loved her before. He’d waltzed with her before. But never before had she looked at him like that while in his arms. What would happen once he knew what she decided? If he got it right, would it all end? Would he go to his eternal rest? Or would he—would he be able to taste what his life ought to have been if he’d been worthy the first time? He wished, he longed, he might almost go to his knees and pray for it.

If she loved him, what might it be like? Might she say the words? Or take his hand? Stroke his hair, perhaps. Spend a moment adjusting his tie and collar even if they did not need it. Call him over to hook her gown. Touch a hand against his cheek. Kiss him of her own accord. Allow him to pin a brooch to her gown over her breast, and then kiss the bare skin above it, a promise of how he might kiss her later. Allow him to unhook her gown, to remove the pins from her hair. Oh, he could imagine so much, so many tiny things he’d longed for, seen other wives give their husbands but never been given by her.

Why never him?

He knew his marriages had not been happy, not in the way people usually meant. His marriage to Annette had not been unhappy either, but neither of them had loved the other. They had been used to each other, and Soames had enjoyed Annette’s bed and her matter-of-fact attention there if not her conversation. With Irene, though, with Irene it had been all heat and burned hearts and two lives left in ashes. He had burned for Irene. He’d hurt her, though he hadn’t set out to do so, hadn’t meant to. It had just been so… difficult. Things had never gone the way he’d intended.

Where had he gone wrong? He’d said the wrong things when proposing to her that first time, yes, but he’d had a steady faith he could win her love right up until the moment she’d told him she loathed the sight of him. He winced, remembering it, remembering how he’d sat on the stairs in the dark outside her locked door. He’d tried to imagine other women, while sitting there and when he’d been most lonely over the years after. He’d never had much interest in that. Yes, it felt good; yes, it was better to have someone to embrace than not to have anyone. But he’d only wanted her since the moment he’d met her. When he’d sat on those stairs he’d been unable to imagine finding peace with anyone else, and that locked door told him she would never give him peace again.

He had certainly gone wrong on his wedding night. Even then, he’d known that. After he’d rolled away from Irene and wiped the sweat from his face, she’d cried, and nothing he’d done had comforted her. What had he done wrong? He’d never understood. She’d never told him, though he had tried to ask. He’d tried, though finding the words had been difficult, and coaxing answers from her impossible. She’d never accepted him but grudgingly after that, and only after being begged or pressured or—

He shuddered and had another taste of brandy.

He’d suffered, yes. He’d been so sulkily angry for so long through it, suffering through her rigid care to avoid showing him the least warmth or kindness, lest he mistake it for affection. Why had she made him suffer? He would have done anything for her! He had done everything he could think of for her, and she’d spurned all of it, taken his money, worn the jewellery and the dresses he’d bought for her, and eventually lived in the house he’d built for her, but with another man. The bitterness he’d felt over that! And yet he’d have leapt to her side if she had crooked a finger at him, even at the humiliating end when his cousin had stolen her away. She’d hurt him, over and over.

He had another gulp of the brandy. He was not a man given to strong drink. He’d been drunk perhaps twice in his life. It helped a little tonight, though, made it easier to think about what he was about to do, and decide if he could trust himself not to hurt her this time, even if she loved another.

Had he meant to hurt her?

He’d been angry, yes. He’d sulked, yes. But he had never treated her badly, or stopped her pin money, or beaten her, or deprived her of anything. He’d never used cruel words to her, save on that very last night when Bosinney lay dead in the morgue, when he’d known he had lost it all. He had spoken cruelly then, yes, he admitted it. He’d sulked and fumed, but he’d done nothing, except—

He had done one thing. One unforgivable thing. That had been enough to earn him a lifetime of hatred, and the look he’d seen in his Cousin Jolyon’s eyes, for surely he had known.

No one else knew, he prayed. Only Irene and the man she’d married after him. No one else need ever know.

He hadn’t thought about that deed in decades, not since those horrible few days. She’d thrown it in his face once, and he hadn’t let himself think about it even then.

Why? Why had it happened? It seared his heart too much to think about. Being rejected had hurt, yes. Being told she hated him, yes, even more so. But knowing there was someone else—that had been beyond him.

The jealousy had been unbearable. Even now, from the distance of decades, he remembered how he’d felt when he stepped close to her in that hall and caught the scent of sex on her and known that she had come directly from another man, that she was looking like that, so abandoned and joyous, hair escaping from its pins, because another man had, had—Something in him had broken. He’d been transported outside himself, completely outside himself, and it had been as if he’d been watching himself do those things to her.

Those things. Face it, Forsyte. This is why you’re barred from paradise. This is the wrong.

Soames drank deeply, and faced it. It hadn’t happened: he had done it.

It was his right, he’d told himself. He was allowed this in law, and it was her duty to him, and it was the first step to reconciliation. Reconciliation! He’d had no such thing in mind. Punishment, yes. She was his wife, and she’d denied him, and since she’d given herself to another man, she was a loose woman, and he could have her too. And he’d taken her. Irene had struggled beneath him. She’d begged him to stop. He’d torn her blouse away, and then her underthings, and forced her legs apart and he’d—He’d taken her unwilling. He’d spent himself, yes, and that was when it had passed from him and he’d realised that she was sobbing. He’d known he’d broken her heart. He’d sinned against her, he’d sinned against the woman he loved. He remembered trying to comfort her and how impossible it had been. If she had any shred of regard left for him, it was gone after that. He was a damned fool and a villain.

He’d heard her sobbing through the wall when he had lain awake in his little camp bed that night, his body released but his mind bound up in what he’d done. He’d felt shame even then, and despite the shame a sulky anger that she’d driven him to it, forced him to wrest from her what she owed him, and through all that the guilty awareness that he ought to have kept control of himself. This is what came of losing control.

Another drink.

A man ought not do that to the woman he loved.

A man ought not do that at all.

The next evening, he’d learned from Bilson that she’d left, and he’d found her letter, and the sulking anger had turned into pure shame and grief. He would have given anything to take it back but it was too late. He’d done it. Then it was simple agony when she’d come back after that fellow was dead, and wouldn’t stay. Of course she wouldn’t stay. He might have done that again. He knew he wouldn’t, but he’d never said anything to her that would tell her so, and so she’d fled. His heart had never been the same after.

“She was right to leave me,” he said to the dark room. That was the first time he’d ever formed that thought, and it hurt and yet was the first moment of relief he felt.

What was a man to do when he admitted that he’d done wrong and he could no longer set it right?

Get it right, Forsyte. Try it again, and this time don’t make such a devil of a mess of it. She’d said to him once that she believed in Nemesis. He did now too. Nemesis had visited him and delivered vengeance: broken his daughter’s heart and barred him from eternal rest. He was guilty.

This Irene was innocent of it all. This Irene knew nothing of his guilt, did not know that he did not deserve her. This Irene did not know that he had this in his heart, that he’d done it once to her and therefore might do it again, might sin against the only woman he’d ever loved in a fit of jealous rage.

He hadn’t known he was capable of it until he’d done it. He’d known he was angry, frustrated, thwarted, and unbearably hungry for her, but he had borne it, patient, waiting for her to come round to him. Until he had broken.

Would he? Would he do it again?

He would not swear on his honour before her and be proven false again; his honour was worthless. But—

“I will not hurt her again,” he said. He drained the brandy glass. “I haven’t anything to swear on. But I won’t. I’ll let her go instead.”

The brandy burned in his throat. He hadn’t deserved her kindness earlier. He deserved nothing. The only thing he could do was not repeat the past.

“Irene, I’m sorry,” he said, to the ceiling of his dark room, and drew in a ragged breath. His throat was closed up. “I’ll pass this test. Do whatever you must with me afterwards. If I fail, do what you must. I accept your justice, Nemesis, or whatever you are.”

One last crystalline certainty: Forsyte, it is on your shoulders now.

And upon this, he knew what was on his shoulders. Treat Irene well. Offer her his love and gracefully accept her refusal if she gave it. If she asked to leave, help her to leave. Never take what was not his to take, but only hers to offer. God, but it hurt, thinking about accepting defeat again, but he would do it.

He sat for a time, then, thinking of her, and then of what his life might have been had he never met her. Did he wish for that? Would he have felt this for someone else? He doubted it. He’d never felt even a flicker of this emotion for anyone else, never looked twice at another woman with anything other than the most shallow desire. It had only ever been Irene. And he’d hurt her so badly he had deserved nothing from her.

Did he deserve her love? Did anyone ever deserve anything? Was he unforgivable?

He spun his signet around on his ring finger and rubbed his thumb against the face absently, soothing himself. Was he unforgivable? Unloved. Unlovable. Never once had a woman said it to him.

Loving Fleur had changed it all. His daughter! He had seen her, so tiny and helpless, needing him, and given his heart to her without holding anything back. She was the last thing he could remember from that life before. He remembered now what had happened that night—the night he had been so worried about her and she so desperate from heartbreak. There had been a fire in his gallery, somehow, and he’d tried to save the paintings, and been dragged out by his chauffeur. And Fleur had been reckless, standing below the window. He’d seen something falling and had moved without thinking, pushed her aside—and then pain. Her hand around his. That was how he had died. He had given himself in Fleur’s place. Was that why he had been granted this second chance?

A moment again of that certainty: this was why he deserved anything at all, after what he had done. But even so—He had to prove he understood it.

Did he? He knew he loved her, but it was too much for him. It overwhelmed him.

“She’s my grand passion,” he said, to the empty room. “The least likely man in all London to have one.”

Soames stood up, slightly unsteadily, and carried the empty brandy glass to the bedside table. He shed the rest of his clothing and heaped it untidily over the dressing table. He stepped over to the basin to splash water onto his red-eyed face. This is what came of strong drink taken alone: useless emotion. But he felt better somehow, as if facing it at last had done him good. He could approach Irene tomorrow knowing he’d at least admitted it to himself. He would never tell her a word of this, never let her know what those footsteps on his grave were about. He’d tell her something to the side of it, with enough truth in it that his conscience would be appeased, but not so much that he would seem like a madman to her. Or that she would hate him for being able to even imagine such a thing, such a dreadful evil thing.

Some lover he was, utterly incapable of telling the object of his grand passion the least thing about how he felt. Well. She seemed to have noticed him, this time. She’d felt his regard, and perhaps he’d ignited that spark of response inside her. Perhaps! And now he lived with this terrifying hope.

He didn’t bother pulling on his nightshirt, but fell into bed in only his linens. He was exhausted in mind and body and soul. He couldn’t bear much more of this, he thought. It was good he’d find out one way or another tomorrow. She’d accept him, and his heart would be utterly healed, or she would refuse him, and he would make good on his oath. It would be so wonderful if she accepted him. Perhaps she would let him kiss her. He thought of that, and how he might kiss her that first time, to ensure she got as much pleasure from it as he could manage. There were so many ways he might kiss her!

Soames slid gently into sleep, dreaming of her as he always did.

VIII. Soames hears Grieg

Soames woke in the morning with a clear head and a refreshed body: he’d slept well. He knew his heart. He’d understood what he was setting right, and admitted his sin. He knew what he was going to do today. He didn’t know what would happen, but he would try his fate anyway. He would put it to the touch.

He pulled his shaving kit from his bag and unrolled it beside the washstand. He shaved himself carefully, keeping his hand steady, taking more time than usual to get it right. He looked at his oddly bare upper lip in the mirror and once again wished for his moustache back; he would perhaps ask her if she liked moustaches. If she accepted him, that was. If she did not, he could do what he liked, not that this would be any comfort. He brushed his hair. It was longer than he’d worn it in the Twenties. He’d kept with the fashion at least a little even as an old man. Did he look his best? Better dress and find out.

Clean shirt and cuffs, yesterday’s day trousers, braces buttoned on. The mark of a gentleman was being able to change for dinner in ten minutes; he could still do it even at the age of seventy. Now a young man, with steady hands once again, Soames had no interest in dressing rapidly. He wanted perfection. Tie knotted carefully, then reknotted. Pin, nothing gaudy. Waistcoat on, watchchain threaded. He checked his watch, wound it carefully for twenty seconds. Into the pocket it went. Morning coat on. Handkerchief scented with the little bottle of eau de cologne in his shaving kit, then folded and tucked into his coat pocket. Bric-a-brac distributed carefully into its customary pockets. The flat case with the engagement ring went into the breast pocket of his morning coat. Soames touched it through the coat. Would she wear it? Or would he return it to the jeweller and endure the careful politeness of an assistant who understood he’d been refused?

He looked in the glass and checked his collar, his tie, his hair. Acceptable.

He packed up the heap of clothing he’d made the night before, when he’d been such an emotional mess. Well, he had had to face it; it had been forty years waiting for him, and he’d deserved to take it on the chin. Shaving kit tidied and rolled up again. He’d still had this kit when he’d died—he’d never get used to thinking that—but he’d never got used to safety razors either.

He breakfasted in the inn’s coffee room, reading the Observer fresh from the earliest express train. Nothing of note; no news that would make the stocks he was following for his clients move in any manner beyond what he expected. Politics was what it ever was; he knew already that it would not matter in the least for another thirty years. Society gossip was as tedious as ever; he’d never cared for that, and it did not touch business matters.

He ate eggs and toast with meagre appetite, more with the knowledge that he ought to eat something. No wonder he was so thin! He drank his coffee with more pleasure. He was but filling time with the newspaper, finding himself some occupation until it was a reasonable hour to call upon her. She and her step-mother went to church on Sunday mornings, and he would need to wait for them to return from it. There were some simple errands he could run before he called upon her, though. He didn’t have to sit here uselessly.

He sent his bag on to the station to wait for his train home in the early evening, and settled his bill with the inn. They were delighted as ever to hear that Mr Forsyte had found the accommodation pleasant, and hoped he would return soon. He veered from his usual habit by accidentally expressing his own wish to return soon, and got an effusive response from the proprietor that moved him to swear never to say any such thing again.

Soames then took a walk along the front, resplendent in spring sunshine, tide high along the shore, and tried his best to think about nothing. He did not succeed. He never succeeded at this. His school friend Parkes had once ribbed him about it, saying that it was impossible for the gears in Forsyte’s head to stop turning; they whirred any time he was awake. It was his version of his father’s fretting, perhaps. He thought about love, and his failure ever to find it; he thought about his daughter, and how pure that love had been; about how beautiful the world was sometimes, about wanting to share it with someone he could talk to; how he’d never found anyone to talk to; about how he’d never told anyone but Irene what he thought about when he looked at paintings, and why that was.

When he heard church bells, he turned and made his way back into the centre of town, slowly, so as not to reach her home too quickly. No matter how slowly he walked, he found himself at her door sooner than he was ready to be there. He touched the case with the ring through his coat again, to be sure; it had not vanished. He stood by this ring: it was good work, and would hold its value, not that Irene cared about such things. It would look well on her finger, which mattered more, and it symbolised his commitment to her. He would plight his troth, whatever that was.

He rang.

“Mr Forsyte to see Miss Heron,” he said to the little maid, and smiled at her kindly. “I’ll hang my own coat.”

Soames paced the drawing room while he waited for Irene to come down, back and forth, from piano through the doorway out into the conservatory, and back. It was today. It was now. In minutes he would know. How was he supposed to bear this? Another trip to the conservatory with silent steps, another trip back. He touched his tie, his collar, his hair. His palms were damp. Feet on the staircase: he froze, turned to the door, unable to pretend he was cool and uninterested.

Irene appeared carrying the flowers he’d caused the florist to deliver that morning, with a bemused look on her face. She wasted no words on greeting him, but said, “Come, Soames, help me put these in water so they keep. It would be a pity to let them wilt too quickly.”

Perversely, this calmed him more than anything else she might have said. Soames stood beside her, holding the flowers while she found a vase and water. White roses, paper-white narcissus, lily of the valley, a little more emphatic than usual, but still safely pale in colour.

“Your flowers are usually so modest,” she said to him.

“The florist seemed to have an opinion.”

“Oh!” Irene said. She turned and studied the flowers again as if reconsidering them, then looked at him thoughtfully. He braced himself for questioning, but she said merely, “How shall we occupy ourselves this afternoon?”

“However you wish. I should like to hear the Grieg, if you are in the mood. And I should like a private talk with you.” His pulse raced; he had just given himself away, if she knew to read the signs.

Irene looked him full in the face for a second long moment, then said, “Shall we talk as I play?”

“If we may.”

“I think we may.”

Soames stood in the curve of the piano and leaned against it, where he could watch her face. He had enjoyed turning pages for her yesterday, and wondered if she would ask him to do so again. He would be able to sit near her and enjoy her smile in thanks.

Irene shuffled through the music sheets and set the first pages upon the piano. “Do you know much about these?”

“Eight lyric pieces, on various themes, some of them folk songs.” That was verbatim from what the assistant at Augener’s had said. He didn’t know what this meant for the music.

“Each one is quite different. I shall play one for you, you shall tell me what you think, and then we’ll pause and talk about whatever it is that you wish to talk to me about.”

Soames assented, with some trepidation.

“This one is called Arietta.”

Irene played something that wasn’t as dramatic as what she often played, he could tell that, but why he wasn’t sure. He felt nervous and uncertain. He was not musical! He was not supposed to think about anything when he heard music. But—where did he go? If he tried to imagine himself somewhere? He gazed at her face and tried to relax enough to let himself go where she was going. It seemed to hang at the end, and that was interesting to him. It was definite about whatever it was saying.

Irene raised her brows at him. “What does this make you think about?”

“It’s not dramatic,” he said, cautiously. “But not sparkling either like Mozart. It’s beautiful but it isn’t grasping my sleeve and demanding something from me the way the Brahms did yesterday. Neither claret nor champagne. Hock?”

Irene gave him a slow thoughtful look, and nodded. “Yes, that feels right. A light hock.”

“Delicate.”

“Good,” she said, and that was her praising him as if he were an awkward student. Somehow he didn’t mind. “The second piece is called simply Waltz.” Even Soames could tell this was indeed a waltz: he could count three as well as anyone.

“Grace,” he said to her afterwards. “Your dancing, what it feels like to waltz with you.”

And that was Irene’s cheeks colouring, for once, not his. Had he ever made her blush from a compliment before? No. Hope rose in him, like bubbles in a glass, making his entire body tingle.

She said, “Surprise after surprise. You have been so very mysterious.”

“Hardly.”

“After this week, perhaps not.”

“No?”

“Now I know your secrets. You are not silent and stand-offish, despite how you have seemed these last months, calling on me. You are silent, yes, but only because you are hiding a great fountain of feeling inside.”

She was teasing him, but there was no malice in it. “I am sorry I seemed stand-offish,” he said.

“It was a natural thing to think of a man who never talked of himself, and who could go entire evenings without saying a word. One might have thought you cold. At least, until this week.”

“At no moment did I feel cold towards you. But—yes. I’ve been called that before. A cold fish, an unsociable devil, worse things.” Soames looked down at his hands on the piano lid. “I haven’t got the gift of charm. Or witty conversation.”

“You speak when you have something to say. You don’t make small talk.”

“No. I don’t know how. Other men seem to know, but I don’t.”

“You seemed so different on Monday.”

“I—you smiled at me. And I could not help but smile back.” And there he went again, face burning from the way she was smiling at him. It felt as if he’d spent the week red-faced with emotion. And yet!

“You’re smiling even now.”

“And so I shall so long as you smile at me.” His voice was so rough he could barely get the words out, he was so moved. Yet he’d said it, and he was proud of himself for having managed to do so.

There was silence between them for longer than Soames knew what to do with. Then Irene was shuffling the sheets of music and setting them out again. “The third piece,” she said. “Watchman’s song, after Macbeth.”

“That seems ominous,” Soames murmured.

“I will tell you what I make of this one,” Irene said to him. She played it: it was quite different from the first two, to his ear, much more square somehow, and solemn. When she was done, he tilted his head and looked his question at her.

“This piece is dignity personified,” she said. “It goes into the minor and then comes to a very traditional resolution. This is you, Soames, upright, alone, yet dignified.”

“Dignified?”

“Yes. There is honour in your dignity, and a little loneliness.”

“I… Very well.” He was completely puzzled by this, but unwilling to argue. She felt it was like him; he would accept it, and think about what it meant later. “The fourth?” he asked.

“Ah! A fairy dance!” Irene played it, and he could hear it. He could feel the waltz in it, and feel that it was a little sparkling, like moonlight on snow. It ended with a little flourish that made them both laugh.

“You begin to understand,” Irene said to him. “Music is many things to many people, but it isn’t solemn or serious all of the time. It can be quiet and intimate sometimes, or light.”

“Like champagne bubbles,” he murmured.

“Or heavy like one of your ports.”

“Would that be a symphony sort of thing?”

“Yes, one of the more Romantic ones. We haven’t heard many together, because Bournemouth does not often attract conductors of note, but there are some I would recommend to you.”

“Please,” he said. “And if I can at all find a way to bring you to London—”

Irene looked down at the piano keys. “Perhaps we might convince my step-parents.”

“We—we may find it easier than you think.”

She looked a soft and deep question at him. He nodded, and they held each other’s gaze.

Irene said, slowly, “Fifth piece. A popular melody.” She looked away from him for a long moment, studying the score in front of her, then looked back.

He knew now he was not imagining this. There was something between them, something that he’d never felt between them before. He felt its presence now as acutely as he’d felt its absence before. She was warm to him, not merely politely warm, but very specifically warm to him, to Soames Forsyte, to the man she’d loathed once.

“Irene,” he said, and now it was time to do it, time to put it to the touch. No talk of position, of income, of what he could offer her. Lay his heart bare, and see if she accepted it or spurned it.

Her fingers were on the keys, playing the first phrase of the fifth Grieg piece.

“Irene,” he said again.

She paused, and the notes rang out, undamped. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

A long moment, while the piano faded, then was silent. “I know,” she said.

“You know?”

“On Monday I thought it might be true. When we waltzed together last night, I was certain.”

Soames was silent. It had not been only him; she too had felt that waltz. She too had floated on candlelight and roses and whatever else had covered that dance floor. And she’d known he loved her. She’d said before, that horrible first time, she’d said—she’d said she had no idea. And now?

He stepped closer to her and touched his fingers to the wood of the piano. She hadn’t said she loved him in return. Did that mean she didn’t? But she hadn’t said that either. Surely it wasn’t difficult to resolve. All she had to do was say that she loved him, or not.

“Irene.” He swallowed, and struggled to go on. “I don’t have the words. I never have. I wish I did. But it’s been since the very first moment I saw you.”

“I know.”

He screwed his eyes shut, afraid to look at her now that it came to it. His fate was in her hands. He concentrated on his breathing. In, out. His right thumb sought his signet ring and spun it around without his volition, rubbed against it. He was a wreck before her right now, and felt helpless to regain control of himself.

“Soames.”

He opened his eyes. She was no longer on the piano bench but was standing near him. He could smell that scent of roses and honey that was hers alone. She was looking at him expectantly. Dark eyes under gold hair, a serious, almost fierce face, demanding that he be present and pay attention to her.

“Yes?” he said, and shivered. She was so very close to him.

“I never thought to say this to you. I didn’t think much about the nice young man I met that first day. You seemed kind hearted—that’s what I told my step-mother—but she was so busy trying to make a match between us that I took against you.”

“Oh!”

“I didn’t mind your visits, but I read nothing much into them. You were so quiet! You were kind, yes, but not warm. You gave me no sign. But when you came earlier this week, something was different.”

“You smiled at me,” he said.

“I’ve smiled at you before.”

“This time—I felt struck by lightning again. Like the first moment I saw you. Only this time I was—I was shaken.”

“You were so unlike yourself. Will you tell me what happened to upset you so?”

Don’t lie, Forsyte. Get it right. Tell her what you can. He breathed deliberately, in, out. His signet ring, yes, there it was, under his thumb, one stroke, two, against the engraved face, then back into place.

“I cannot. I had a bad dream, and I faced some things in myself that I would rather not have found. I made some decisions. That is all I can say.” He met her eyes. “Forgive me.”

Irene held his eyes, and seemed to see through him entirely. “If I refuse you now, will you accept it?”

Soames breathed in; now he had to be honest, no matter what. He breathed out again through gritted teeth.

“I won’t want to. I’ll want to tell you that I will persist, and ask again. Your step-mother told me to expect you to refuse me the first time. But—after that dream, any refusal, any at all, I will accept it. I’ll bow my head to you and go away quietly. But on Monday I thought if I didn’t propose just yet, I might enjoy your smile a little longer. And so I’ve been holding off. Now I am ready.”

“Ready?”

“Yes. I have found my courage. But, please—please tell me you won’t refuse me because your step-mother tried to match-make. I beg you.”

“I won’t refuse you because of that.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Refuse me because you don’t love me, or because I am the wrong man for you. I’ll accept it. I’ll accept whatever you say.”

“Soames!”

“Irene.” He looked at her again. She was not angry with him, but she was quite serious and as fierce and demanding as before.

“You seem to assume I will refuse you. Perhaps you will allow me to decide for myself, even to accept you if I wish. But you have not yet asked me.”

He paused to collect himself. He had indeed not asked her yet. And she had not already refused him. That meant she might accept him. He felt like a fool, spelling it out to himself like this. He had to defer to her. He stepped back from the piano and hid his face behind his hand for a moment. Accept her decision. She might accept him. Well, it was time to speak.

He knelt before her, head bowed. This was old-fashioned, had been old-fashioned for decades before this, but he felt the impulse. She deserved it from him, as did the woman he had known before, in that first life.

“Miss Heron. Irene.”

“Yes, Soames?”

“You know I love you. Will you marry me?”

Time was motionless, one crystalline shimmer of suspense. All the possibilities of his life hung before him. He knew at this moment that if she accepted him now, he would never know Fleur. This was the price. In some other life, Fleur was mourning him, Michael Mont was comforting her. In this life, Fleur would never be. Fleur! He’d given his life for hers. She was the other owner of his heart. And he would never know her again, if he and Irene were united now.

“I understand,” he said, to Nemesis. Grief stabbed him, pierced his heart, seared him, and he was suspended for an eternal moment in loss, knowing what was and what would never be. And then it was gone. Time moved again. He was on his knee in a Lymington drawing room before Irene, awaiting her answer.

“Soames.”

“Yes?”

“You have been so thoughtful. No one else has given me what you have. When the lyric pieces arrived in the post I—I was overwhelmed. No one understood enough to do this for me before. I’ve had other suitors, but—”

Soames opened his eyes and looked up at her, surprised.

“None of them have ever thought to do something like that. I’m not sure but I think—I think this week—I think I’m falling in love with you.”

If he hadn’t been on his knees he might have fallen. No one had ever said this to him, never come even this close to telling him he was loved. Not ever. This was beyond him, so far beyond him that all he could do was gaze at her face to see if she were serious. She was. She meant it. She might be falling in love with him. He felt strange, so strange. There was something flooding through him, centred on his heart and radiating out from it, something warm and light, something he’d never felt before. Hope, taking flight.

“I’ll wait. I can wait for you to know,” he said, with that light shining from somewhere inside.

“And if I love you?” she said.

“Then I am yours.”

“You don’t need to wait. I know you are a good and loving man, however silent you are. I will marry you.”

He could say nothing. He bent his head and breathed for a moment, fighting for composure. Then he took her hand in his and kissed it, as he had longed to do so many times. He could touch her now. Something was happening now that he had dreamed of and longed for and wished for—she was reaching out with her free hand to him and caressing him, pushing the hair back from his forehead and stroking his temple. He looked up, and she smoothed his hair back with a gentle touch. He knew his face was saying everything for him now, tears and joy at once.

“I have a ring for you,” he said. “May I give it you?”

“You may.”

He fumbled the case out of his coat pocket. Why were his hands shaking? Surely this ought to be something a man could manage without his nerves being this over-wrought. He got the case open and the ring out. She let him take her left hand in his. He slid the ring onto her finger, and kissed her fingertips once it was in place. He was still shaking. Was that a tremor in her hand as well? It was. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm, the inside of her wrist, then released it reluctantly. She touched his cheek, ever so gently. It felt so good to be touched like that.

“Soames, stand up, please. I can’t bear you kneeling like this.”

He stood. She took his hands, of her own accord, and they stepped close to each other. He bent and kissed her cheek, and dared bring his lips to her ear. “May I kiss you?” he whispered to her.

“You may.”

He kissed her lips gently, carefully, making it as tender as a first kiss ought to be. The temptation to keep going was there, as ever, to kiss with all the passion there was flooding through him, but not so fast, not so much so quickly. Even just this had him breathing fast and unable to look away from her eyes, so dark, gazing at him so intensely. If he kissed her again he would be lost, so he must not. He stepped away ever so slightly and simply held her hands in his.

He was afraid to move, lest he wake up again and find that this was another dream, lest he wake up, and find himself on his deathbed after all, dreaming the desperate dreams of dying men. But no—he was alive, here with Irene, and she was not shrinking away from him. He was alive, and his body was almost unbearably alive as well, from her scent and her fingers entwined with his. All his senses were tingling. His heart was pounding—he’d thought that was poet’s nonsense, but it was not.

“Irene,” he said. “I love you.” Every time he said it, the feeling deepened within him, the joy of having found the words at last. Three words, obvious words, but they were enough if he said them with all his heart. Had it always been that easy?

She said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me just now.”

“It’ll be all right,” he whispered. And it would be. He knew how to do it now. He could love her now.

They stood together for he wasn’t sure how long, quietly, holding hands chastely, silent. It was comforting, peaceful, even, to stand like this with no demands made upon each other or anything at all, merely being together. After some time, he heard movement in the household above them, and shifted. He kissed her forehead.

“We should tell your step-parents.”

“Not just yet, please.”

“I think they shall interrupt us soon whether we want it or not. Your step-mother has nearly lost patience with me.”

“Has she?”

“She expected me to propose to you on Monday.”

“Has she been waiting to find she’s rid of me?”

Soames could hear a note of pain in her voice, and felt anger in himself for her sake. In response he said merely, “I believe so. Her folly is my blessing.” He kissed her forehead again.

“Who knew that you were like this?”

“Not I,” said Soames.

“Very well. I shall face the beast and let them know.”

Before she could move away Soames leaned down and stole a fast chaste kiss. He then released her hands and let her go to the drawing room door. She vanished out into the hall.

“Mama?” he heard her say. Then indistinct voices upstairs, then footsteps, more voices. Soames made his way out to the conservatory so he didn’t have to hear it. Delight and triumph and joy made his heart beat faster, warmed his chest, made him want to fling open a window and shout to anyone who could hear that she cared for him, that he had at last touched her heart and found warmth there. But he did no such thing, merely bounced ever so lightly on his toes and smiled to himself.

And then the drawing room door was open again, and Irene entered. Soames moved immediately to meet her there and take her hand.

“They’re coming down,” she said. She turned to him, reached up, and kissed him—on the corner of his mouth, timidly, but Soames leaned down into it and let her do as she wished. It was the first time she had kissed him of her own accord, ever, and it was perfect. She kissed him a second time, less timidly, and it was equally perfect.

“Oh! Look at you two! Such a marvellous couple!”

Soames started—his heart was in his throat. He hadn’t heard them enter. But there was no dismay on Mrs Lomax’s face, only that triumph he’d seen on her face earlier in the week. Irene, cooler than he, said, “Indeed, Mama, Soames has asked me to marry him and I have agreed.”

“Oh! So delightful! I am so happy for you both!”

“Thank you,” Soames said.

“And has he given you a ring?”

“What? Oh! Yes.”

Mrs Lomax was immediately there, taking Irene’s hand and holding it up to admire the ring. Irene seemed to be surprised by this—Soames had been braced for it, but he’d forgotten to warn her.

“A solitaire! So modern! One has heard that these are what fashionable girls are wearing! Oh, you are a lucky girl, Irene! So very lucky.”

“Most lucky,” she said, but she was looking at him, not at her hand. He realised at that moment that Irene had not even looked at the ring when he’d put it on her finger, and was not certain if he wanted to laugh aloud or weep. He had to give her a ring, of course, and had carefully selected exactly the right ring from exactly the right jeweller. He’d spent hours thinking over it, and considerable time consulting the jeweller, because he’d wanted it to be perfect for her. What had she been paying attention to instead? Him? She never had cared for jewels. Well, he had satisfied the gods of propriety and Forsytes and his own wish to give her pretty things to wear, and that was enough.

Lomax looked at the ring as well, taking Irene’s hand in his, and Soames could see her shrink away from him as he raised her hand up to get a better look at it. Something was odd there.

“That must have cost a pretty penny,” Lomax said.

Soames’s nose lifted despite his wish to remain polite. Irene looked at him, and he cast up his eyes ever so slightly for her to see. Then he stepped towards her to take her hand and rescue her from Lomax’s touch. She clung to him more closely than he’d expected. Something was definitely wrong, and he would certainly not let it go unexamined.

“Congratulations, Forsyte,” Lomax said, and Soames replied with a tight thank-you. He accepted the handshake because one had to. “I have been expecting it for some time!”

“Yes,” Soames said. Lomax seemed to have expected more, but Soames gave him nothing more.

Mrs Lomax was as yet unsatisfied. “Will you be able to stay to dinner tonight, Mr Forsyte—dear Soames?”

“I cannot,” he said. “I have my work in the morning, so I must catch the six o’clock at the latest. My mother shall write to you directly, however. I hope that I shall see you all in London quite soon.”

“Such a pity! Well, at least you will stay through tea.”

“Thank you, I should be delighted.”

Lunch was a light meal, of which Soames ate little. He drank nothing. The side effect of love was, apparently, an inability to contemplate food.

Irene played for him most of the afternoon, starting with the rest of the lyric pieces. She offered to play the Brahms for him again, and he confessed he didn’t understand them at all.

She thought for a moment, then said, “Grieg learned the form of his short pieces from Mendelssohn; would you like to hear where his inspiration came?”

Soames nodded. “Please.”

Irene’s face shone at him. “I love Mendelssohn, and these in particular. I’m going to play some of his Songs Without Words for you. I learned these before I could read music properly. I still play them because I love them so much. I hope you do too.”

Irene apparently did not need to read the music for these, for she took everything away from the piano before she began playing. They were sweet and lovely, these songs. Soames sat on a cushioned stool by the piano watching her play, trying to listen and make sense of it. He was beginning to understand the feeling in it, how things ebbed and flowed and came like rushing waves sometimes, though those weren’t quite the right words. He thought about what colour the sea might be if painted in the same mood as the music, and whether it would be a calm sea or one that capsized boats. Though sometimes that felt too literal. Sometimes it was pure colour, or just a mood he felt.

The Mendelssohn songs weren’t angry seas at all. The one she said was called “Duetto” was most definitely warm colours, reds and oranges, a sea lit by a sunset, not a sunrise. Though again, that was too literal. Duetto. Was the name meaningful? Two people singing? That was what the title meant, and he thought he could hear it.

Irene’s face when she played fascinated him. It wasn’t that it mirrored the music, because it often did not. It was that she was smiling gently to herself as she played. She enjoyed doing it. There was focus there, as well—it made sense to him now that she had not noticed him arrive in the drawing room that day he’d first met her. She was elsewhere. She was thinking about the music. He wondered if he looked like that when he was studying a painting he was interested in.

She would stop between pieces and he would fetch her water or a glass of sherry, or simply ask her to tell him about the piece she’d just played. He committed the names of the pieces to memory; he would write them down in his notebook when he was on the train, in a list with all the others. His younger self had kept the list and never done anything with it, too proud or too angry about her coldness to turn his knowledge into generosity. What a fool he’d been.

The afternoon had been heaven. The entire day had been heaven. He could not imagine anything more wonderful. Though no, there was something not right: tea could have been sweeter without Lomax there, being somewhat coarse and making them both wince. There was most definitely something he would ask Irene about. But she was next to him, not Lomax, and he could distract her with brief touches and looks, and that was enough to keep the mood light. Soames drank his tea with some pleasure.

He left immediately afterwards, as he must do if he wanted to be in good time for the express. Irene saw him to the door, and they had privacy for a proper kiss.

“I’ll write to you tonight,” he said. “My mother will need to write to your step-mother. It’ll all be—it’ll be out of our hands the moment I tell them.”

“I hope they approve of me.”

“They will, once they meet you.”

“I look forward to meeting your sister,” Irene said. “You are so clearly fond of her.”

She straightened his collar and adjusted his tie a tiny bit. Soames knew there was nothing to tidy about his dress: she was fussing over him! Moved, he bent to kiss her again, and she rose to meet him. Her eyes were closed. Oh, such a gentle kiss it was.

“I must catch my train,” he murmured. One more chaste kiss, then he pulled himself away and made his way to the station.

Part 2

IX. Soames sits still

Soames caught his train without difficulty. He found a seat on the left side of the carriage, back to the engine, and settled in for the three-hour journey back to London. The carriage was full of weekending businessmen on their way back to the City; he was by no means alone and had to control every flicker of expression on his face. He wished dearly to be unobserved, but he was not.

He sat motionless as the train eased out of the station.

He was engaged to be married to her.

He’d kissed her.

She hadn’t said the words to him, but neither had she said that she did not and never would. She’d said that she was falling in love, and that was so close to saying that she loved him that he was floating above his seat in the compartment.

He’d sent her red roses before he caught his train. The florist had understood the message immediately and suggested some subtle additions to make the arrangement more aesthetic. He had approved of the result, and asked her to send a second, with some variation, on the following morning. She hadn’t offered congratulations, at least. He was about to hear that far more often than he could endure.

He hadn’t thought he’d want to marry, that first time round. He’d known he would, of course. All men married eventually. He’d believed that in due course he’d find the right time to think of romance and wives and children and whatnot, and would seek to find someone. He hadn’t known that the moment would choose him, that he would walk through a drawing room door and find that love’s arrow could pierce his heart too. A mere slip of a girl, she’d been! Still something youthful in her face, as there was still now.

Why had it been her? He’d seen many pretty girls before, and many beautiful women. He had looked, seen that they were beautiful, perhaps felt a moment of desire, and then forgotten them. What had it been about Irene in that moment? She’d been playing the piano, and Irene when playing was someone different from Irene poised and guarded against the world. She’d been playing a love song—by Robert for Clara Schumann, she’d said. There had been something on her face. He’d never been able to say what it was. It simply had been. From that moment on, his heart had belonged to her.

He was going to be married to Irene. Again.

He looked out of the window. They were well out of Lymington, past Brockenhurst, out of the Forest, and into open country. The sun was setting over green fields and hedges, over sheep and cows. England! His England. His country, in his youth. Impossible, but somehow he was here again, living his youth again.

Would the disaster play out again? Would he once again watch her fall in love with her best friend’s fiancé? Would she hate him again? Would he again have his heart broken? He’d once asked her what the matter was with him, why it was never him, why there was nothing he could do. Nerves, she’d said. What were nerves? Why had she never been able to enjoy his kiss before, when this afternoon she had? Was it that he knew how to kiss a woman now? He certainly hadn’t then. He’d been clumsy and awkward and overwhelmed. But he himself did not mind that she hadn’t known how to kiss him today. Any touch was enough, even a shy kiss that brushed the corner of his mouth with closed lips.

No, he knew that was not it. It was that she had decided that she might love him, and her heart was open to it. Her heart was not already closed off. He had bared himself to her, and she had understood how much that meant for him, how difficult it was for him, somehow, and that had been enough for her to let him in. He had sometimes in his most bitter moments thought that she had decided not to love him and had then made it so by practising hating him until it stuck. But today—today she had touched him simply to show affection.

He sat and dreamed over that moment for a time. Moments like that had been so rare in his life, vanishingly rare. His parents, his sister, his daughter. Never a lover, not until today. He had so longed for that touch from a lover, wondered for so long why it was never for him despite all his attempts to find it. She’d brushed the hair away from his face!

It would be months yet before they could go to bed. Months of engagement, of being chaperoned—though less than they had been—of tedious ceremony until the one ceremony that mattered. There was so much ahead of them.

The work would commence the moment he told his parents. The well-oiled machinery of a family wedding would begin to move: letters would be sent, invitations to at-homes and dinners, visits to the stores, consultations with a decorator. He would find a house to lease for them, somewhere they could live for a few years, that would keep his capital free. Not Montpellier Square this time, he thought, and shuddered. A rising neighbourhood, where they could start a family. Somewhere Irene liked. He would start inquiring immediately. There was so much to do now. He knew what he could afford, thanks to those careful calculations. He knew he would keep improving his position steadily with careful, thoughtful diligence. He would advance and build up his capital and when the time was right, when Irene was ready, they would move to the country. Some place with a river, where he could punt and fish. Keep horses for the children. And cows; he’d rather liked keeping cows at Mapledurham. Who could have known he was a born yeoman farmer?

Children! A son. A grandson for his father. A daughter. A daughter.

He would name a daughter Fleur, so that he would never forget.

He was getting ahead of himself. Find the right house, obtain her approval, decorate it with her. She could tell him what she wanted, and he would cause it to happen for her, in perfect order, exactly as she wished. He would arrange it all. It needed light and air. A flower garden, however small. A drawing room for her piano. The piano! She needed the best piano he could manage. He would need to consult her before he committed to anything, and ensure that whatever house they chose was right for her piano. Yes, that was the proper way to approach the thing. Let her select the piano. Then choose the house to fit the piano and the lease budget, and decorate with the piano as the centre. He would have room for far more paintings than he had now: the Turner, the Monet, and the Corot for certain. He would make sure they had the breathing room on the walls and the quiet backdrop that they wanted. The Watteau he would hang if he had room, even if it was a mere bargaining chip on the way up. The Millet, yes—good old haystacks. Michael had said that once, of the Mauve he’d owned in that other life. Soames had appreciated the fellow for saying it. He wouldn’t know Michael again, would he? Or Michael’s father, whom he’d rather liked. A moment of pain: justice. He touched his chest, where it hurt, and let himself mourn for a moment.

But the sweetness of what was ahead of him won out, as it would continue to do, and Soames found himself thinking again of where they would live, and where he might hang his paintings, so that he could share them with her. He would not keep them secret this time. He would tell her about them. Perhaps he would rotate the paintings he displayed, and keep his current favourite in his study, for only the two of them to talk about.

He hoped Irene would not mind too much that he didn’t want ornate papers or dark colours on the walls. He’d have to ask. What did she like to look at? What colours did she prefer? He knew what colours he found restful, and what he preferred to gaze at in the evenings when he was taking his ease after a long day of work. She’d never told him. They would have to find a way to have both in a single place, in her drawing room. An armchair where he could sit with a glass in his hand, watching her play the piano. Perhaps a chaise for her nearby, so they could be near enough to touch when reading of an evening.

The bedroom—and here his heart beat faster—the bedroom was hers to furnish, in the main, but he would insist on a good brass bed. The rest of the bedroom he would leave to her, but he wanted a bed they could share. He’d have a dressing room, yes, somewhere to shave, and something to sleep on when she needed him elsewhere, but he wanted to be with her every night she would have him. He didn’t have to embrace her every night—not unless she wanted him—but he wanted to be near her. To wake with her.

He cupped his hand around his face to block out the gaslight and looked out the window. The sun had set, and the sky was orange and red, streaked with clouds above the horizon. Above that, dark green shading up to deeper blue and black. His engagement day was coming to a close. What was Irene doing? Was she playing the piano? Thinking of him as he was thinking of her? He’d given her his address and promised to write. They could write now, freely, and he would. What would he tell her? How he felt; that was the important thing. He’d send her more music. He needed to go back to Augener’s now that he knew she’d liked both choices, and ask the fellow to suggest more. More Brahms? She needed new things, and she had no Mozart. Did she have enough Liszt? Perhaps.

The house was going to take a deal of thought and planning to perfect for her. What else was there that was his to manage? The wedding date was hers to choose. She would have to talk to his mother—not her step-mother—and work out frocks and all the rest of what she would wear. There was going to be an embarrassment about who paid for it all. He wasn’t going to have her wearing anything less than the best he could manage, so it would have to be got over. Settlement, pin money—there was going to be a fuss about that, too. Soames sighed, sitting there on the train, surrounded by businessmen heading back to the City after a weekend at the sea. Money was going to be a fuss for his father and for that Lomax fellow. If Lomax had the good manners to stop his mouth about it, it wouldn’t be so bad. His father would fuss, and that couldn’t be helped.

Over Soames’s face crept a fond expression that he’d lost the ability to suppress.

Engagements were such a tedious business. Weddings were at least over quickly. After the wedding came the honeymoon. His heart beat faster again for a moment, and he breathed carefully. It wouldn’t do, not in a full train compartment, to dwell on that thought too long. When would it be? Six months, say, October or early November.

The south of France did not interest him. Paris, though, she loved Paris, and taking her there and showing her Paris at leisure, Paris with money instead of a student’s living—she would like that. And he would like another chance to wander Rue Laffitte and look. The Louvre, yes, he had more to learn from the Louvre. He would stand and study and think. Colour. Shape. Light. The things he loved to think about. No doubt she would tell him what music there was to listen to. He would suggest Paris, and she would smile at him and perhaps kiss him and he would ask her what she especially wished to do. And then she would squeeze his hand.

Italy, though—Rome would be lovely to see again, so beautiful and ancient. She hadn’t seen it yet. Italy in the autumn would be stunning. They could take a house in Rome. It would be warmer, and the nights would be lovelier than those in Paris, he felt. They would eat good food, drink Italian wine, listen to good music, look at art, walk about the city arm in arm, and go to bed together every night. It would be heaven.

Soames leaned back in his seat and was caught in perfect, pleasurable indecision. Whichever city they went to, he would indulge her in whatever she wanted. That was his role. She would wish for something, and he would arrange it. He would delight her during the days and during the nights—during the nights, they would, they would—Soames swallowed. He could not decide; she would have to. He would write to her and ask for her opinion in the morning. It was rather cart before horse, to start with the honeymoon, but confound it all, he would give her everything.

The wedding—He needed a best man. He had too many cousins, but there was a general dislike in the air separating each branch of the family, each brother’s sons from the other’s. He got on with the Nicholases well despite this. Beyond the family—he had acquaintances from school, and business acquaintances. Some men he dined with more often than others. He saw Parkes often at the Connoisseurs, and did a considerable business with him. They’d been thick as thieves at school; he’d had rather a moment blacking the eye of a boy who’d insulted Parkes once. He wasn’t intimate with Parkes in any way. They shared no confidences, unless one counted Parkes’s business dealings as confidences, but they were easy with each other. And Parkes had called on Soames for aid in a pinch over that shipping insurance confusion. Soames had provided it without hesitation, and Parkes had been warm to him in the months since. That was friendship, he supposed, and had an odd moment thinking it. He hadn’t many friends, no matter what he imagined a friend to be, but he was not friendless. Parkes was a friend.

He had to rethink everything he was experiencing. His life hadn’t been as bleak as he had felt it to be. He hadn’t been as alone. Or—he need not be as alone as he had the first time. He wouldn’t know Fleur, but he would know other people. Other children. Would it be enough of a comfort? Irene would be enough. If she loved him. If he continued to get it right.

His thumb sought his signet ring and comfort, but his glove was in the way. Soames shifted uneasily in his seat. How much longer had he to endure? The sun had fully set, and he could no longer make out anything outside the window. He reached with his left hand for his watch, opened it, checked the time. Half an hour, then maybe another twenty to reach his chambers.

He leaned back again in his seat, aware of the people around him, and set himself to wait patient and still until the train reached Waterloo.

X. Emily makes plans

Soames went to his club, not his chambers, to eat a late dinner. He found himself able to eat more than he had the last few days, but he was still not entirely settled and at ease. At least the wine was good; this had always been the strong point of the Connoisseurs.

After dinner he walked to his chambers, bag in hand, to tire his body out enough that he could sleep. He’d sat rather too long on the train, and was feeling restless. The streets were damp from rain earlier in the day and London smelled foul. He’d forgotten this as well. It was the heart of the Nation, and it was grey and gloomy and acrid and miserable. It was London, and he had a good deal of money to make here yet. He’d be in London for a few years more.

The porter let him into his chambers with a tip of the cap and a cheerful quiet greeting. Soames was cordial in return, and made his way up to his rooms. The fire was lit, and the room was warm. He sat at his desk, stylographic pen in hand, and set himself to write his first letter to Irene. He was unsure what to say to her that he had not already said: was there any novelty in saying again what she must already know? Surely he ought to say it, because he himself would be comforted to hear it from her. But what words to use? Baffled, he wrote what came to mind, straightforwardly. He hoped it would do.

Victoria Street, London My dear Irene— I write this from my chambers. I spent my time on the train thinking of you and where we might go on our honeymoon. I will take you anywhere you wish to go. Rome in autumn would be beautiful, but I should love you to show me Paris. Please do tell me what you prefer. Tomorrow I shall tell my family the news and my mother shall write to your step-mother, immediately I hope. There shall be a great unavoidable fuss to endure. I am, yours most sincerely, S. Forsyte

He ran down to post the letter in time for the night mail, then back up to his chambers. He wasted no time undressing, changing into his nightshirt, and wrapping himself in his dressing gown. He poured himself a whisky from the tantalus, splashed in soda, then sat on his armchair with his feet drawn up and an arm around his knees. He stared at the glowing coals. Sleep was, apparently, still not ready to grace him with its presence.

Well, the die was cast, he’d crossed the Rubicon, and landed on the other side. He was now on his way to Rome. A huge tension was gone from him, such a burden rolled from him. The grief was there, and would always be there, the reminder of what he had lost, but it would fade as grief always did. That was the thing: you thought you would never get past it, but then you did. Its sharp edges would be blunted by time, and one day you would realise that a week had passed and you hadn’t thought of your father, or your mother. And a day would come when he hadn’t thought of Fleur for a week, a month. It wouldn’t ever amount to a year, but the tears would end. He could remember his aunts and uncles and how it felt to be at Timothy’s and drink tea with them all, but he couldn’t remember their voices, not precisely. Would a day come when he could not remember Fleur’s voice, what it sounded like when she called him Daddy? It hurt even to think of it.

He’d accepted his punishment. It was done.

The week ahead would be the calm before the storm of work for the engagement. He would have social burdens to endure. He might rather stay quietly in his chambers reading, or be in Lymington with Irene, but it would all be an endless calendar of dinners and afternoon calls and at-homes and fittings for clothing. The business of decorating a house would be pleasant. They’d do that together. He’d be able to let her tell him what she liked, what she wanted things to look like, what make of piano she wanted instead of whatever it was she played in Lymington.

Soames picked up the poker and rearranged the coals. The spring evening was not the warmest, and the damp had chilled the corners of his chambers away from the fire. He drank more of his whisky and felt himself relax further. He’d been near the breaking point until the afternoon, until Irene had kissed him. So much strain had left him at that moment, decades of fretting and loneliness, and the last few days of complete gnawing worry, all easing in a moment of touch. When he thought about that, it all felt wonderful and entirely worthwhile—the engagement and all those family dinners were a mere nothing, if he’d be kissing her every day and at the end of it all, marrying her.

He slowly absorbed the rest of his whisky dreaming over the day in deep contentment, thinking about those kisses, about the way she’d smiled at him, about her caress of his face. He banked the fire and went to bed in the closest thing he’d felt to peace in a very long time.

Soames went to the office next day feeling calmer at last. He knew who he was: a solicitor, the son of James, soon to be the husband of Irene; he knew what he was about. He worked hard all day long on nothing particularly difficult or interesting. He had forgotten until now what it had been like when he was an ambitious up-and-coming man, but now he was reminded, and he found it was not objectionable. He took smaller clients, the fry his father was not interested in—this was, after all, why he had pursued Mrs Heron’s query when his father had felt there was no money to be had there. Well, he had to prove himself, and meanwhile he would quietly do the work of two men, because he could. And with the extra income, he would do a bit of canny investing and start accumulating capital. He could be well on his way to that country house sooner than expected if he kept his head and thought things through properly.

He worked through lunch without thinking about it, but was jarred back to reality and the demands of his body when his father came into his office in the late afternoon.

“You’ve had your nose to the grindstone all day,” James said.

“Rather a lot to do.”

“Better that than not. Your mother says she wants you to come to dinner tonight. She has some idea that you’re not eating enough. I dare say you look a bit thin.”

Soames would ordinarily have cast up his eyes and complained about his mother being ridiculous, but he could not deny the truth of it. “Anybody else coming?” he asked, while looking down at a brief.

“Just the three of us. Why do you want to know?”

“Hmm? Don’t feel like having to make conversation.”

James sniffed. “Can’t say I blame you.”

And that was convenient; he did not have to call at tea-time to break the news. Instead he could go talk to Winifred and get her advice on—well, he didn’t know what he needed her advice on. He simply wanted to tell Winifred and be congratulated by her. He left the Poultry before tea-time and made his way to Mayfair to call on Winifred and tell her the news.

When he called, Winifred was in her drawing room, with yet another lending-library novel, and more than delighted to see him.

“Well?”

Soames gave her no reply, but sat next to her on the sofa. She took both his hands in hers.

“Well?” she said again, insistently.

“I am engaged to be married,” Soames said. He thought his happiness might have been bright enough to shine through every window in Winifred’s drawing room like a little sun. So was Winifred’s, and the brother and sister sat together beaming at each other.

“Oh, my dear boy, I am so happy for you!”

“Thank you.”

“You are in love with her, I can see it on your face.”

Soames flushed. “You may say that.”

“Does she love you?”

“I believe so. She—she let me kiss her. Winifred, she is marvellous.”

Winifred embraced him, and Soames held her in return, and was reminded once more of how she had always been there for him, and he for her. This time, he hoped, she need not be there for him when he was at his lowest and most despairing, when he had nearly given up on life itself and had wanted merely to hide himself away. This time, he would share joy with his sister. And he would be there to prevent Dartie from doing the worst of what he’d done, now that he knew what to watch for.

She made tea for him, put exactly the right amount of milk into it, just a bit of sugar, and he drank with pleasure. He wasn’t making a fuss about it, he wasn’t a different man entirely, but he would let himself show his feelings now and then to people he could trust with them. Enjoying tea was surely not a dangerous thing to share with Winifred. He ate bread and butter and drank tea and life was, at that moment, perfect. Winifred quizzed him about Irene, and he was more than happy to answer.

When he stood to leave, he said, “Listen, Winifred, you must promise me not to tell anyone until tomorrow. I want to tell Father myself. If you tell Dartie it’ll be all over London by midnight.”

“Of course, dear. I understand perfectly well.”

Winifred kissed his cheek and pressed his hands with more than her usual warmth, and Soames felt it was good to have family.

He went from Green Street to his chambers, to rest a little and change for dinner. Irene’s response to his letter arrived in the evening post while he was changing; the Post was a marvel. He hastily sliced open the envelope: an entire sheet of paper with writing on both sides! He felt abashed that he had written so little in comparison and delighted that she had written so much. He sat down by a window to read.

Lymington My dear Soames, Paris, I think, if I may be selfish. I would indeed like to show you the places I loved best and have you show me what you loved in return. I long for you to listen to music I love with me, and for you to show me paintings that you love. The sea has been heavy and the winds steady since you left. Lymington is not at its best when it is damp and grey like this. Perhaps a different way to think of the spring rain is to think of Schumann’s “Einsame Blumen”—or perhaps only one lonely flower, in my mind—a dark purple flower under a grey sky, raindrops upon it, dancing a little in the wind but unbowed. I told you that the Grieg “Watchman” piece reminded me of you: upright, alone, dignified, my protector. This solemn silent man who visited every weekend and took me to concerts I would never have been able to hear without him: this man loved me. When I came to see him for who he was, I found he might be stealing my heart. Tell me, do you like purple flowers? Are there paintings that you wish to tell me about? Affectionately, IH

He was stealing her heart? How? His hand was shaking so hard the paper rattled. It was the first love letter he had received in his life—in either life. He took in a long breath, let it out, and sat at his desk to write his response.

Victoria St, London My dear Irene, Paris it is. We have one detail settled, at least. The prospect makes me most happy. I would guard and cherish a purple flower were I to find one lonely in the spring rain. I would not pluck it. It would be too precious. I have always loved Turner’s watercolours but also his earlier oil paintings of the sea, in calm or in storm. There is something about the colour and the beauty of what is either stillness or great violence in the waves that captivates me. There is one in particular of Venice that I can show you when you visit London, which I hope you shall soon. In the absence of other plans from our families, I should like to see you on Saturday. That is not said strongly enough—I will go no longer than Saturday without seeing you. I shall be in Lymington at noon. I am, yours most sincerely, S. Forsyte P.S.: How do you feel about moustaches? I was thinking of growing a short one.

Soames stood and went to his chest of drawers, slid open a drawer, and found his pocket-book where he kept the fragments of his courtship: handbills, concert programmes, dance cards, train tickets, her step-mother’s notes to him, two pressed daffodils, and now her first letter to him.

He finished dressing for dinner and made his way to Park Lane, posting his reply on the way.

He arrived at Park Lane steely-eyed and over-controlled after his emotional display the last time he had visited. He was braced to be cool and reserved, wary of what they might be watching for in him. He congratulated himself that he was keeping his face well under control, but one baleful, doubtful, accusing look from his father told him that perhaps he was not as cool a customer as he intended to be. His mother was playing with her jewellery rather more than usual and she did have an eye on him, but it was more affectionate than suspicious. They both knew something was up, simply by whatever was on his face. Well, he was their son. They knew him better than anyone else did. Here he sat, in the home where he had grown up, eating dinner with them as he had so many times before. It was so familiar and so strange and he’d missed it so very much and not known he’d missed it. His heart ached and was fulfilled in the same moment.

It was a small family dinner, just the three of them at one end of the rectangular table, with Soames across from his mother. The room was warm from the candles burning, their light dancing and flickering on the table. Beeswax candles again, faintly sweet. Everything in the room looked richer and warmer in the candle-light: the wine in the glasses shone, the silver glowed, his parents’ faces were warmed. It was, to his eye, strangely beautiful in a way he’d never recognised before. Soames drank his father’s sherry and found himself taking his soup with more than usual interest. His mother’s household, his mother’s tastes, his mother’s cook—they were not his taste, but they were comforting. Simple, English, satisfying.

His father talked about the business of the day, which had been ordinary—that is to say, good—and about a case Roger wanted to bring against a tenant.

Soames set down his spoon long enough to say that he thought it a mistake.

“Roger’s a stubborn chap,” James said. “I can’t reason with him. Well, the fee’s the same for us either way.”

“Still, I’d rather it’s known we gave him the right advice.”

“You have a good head on you,” James said, and his eye on his son was sharper than usual.

Warmson cleared the soup, served the fish. He silently refilled Soames’s sherry glass. Soames ate his fish steadily, listening to his father talk about Roger’s ill-advised suit, making monosyllabic responses when it seemed necessary.

The fish was taken away. On to the main: lamb tonight. Soames was surprised to find himself hungry at last. The claret was decent as well. His father’s claret had always been a respectable solid thing. The lamb was not what would have been on the table at Mapledurham, not with that sauce—having had a French wife for years did affect one’s palate—but it was solid and filling and delicious nonetheless. Comfortable, that was the word, as it was for everything in Emily’s home. He had never known a place more restful or more perfectly attuned to bodily comforts, from the warm sheets to the cake with tea to the generosity of her menus.

“Tell me, dear,” Emily said, “how was your weekend in Lymington?”

James made a movement and his fork clattered to the floor. Warmson appeared and silently, smoothly, replaced it. Ah. Now they came to the reason he was here. Soames had another mouthful of claret, to buy himself a moment of time. He cast about for a way to describe it that wouldn’t immediately give everything away, but could not find one. Might as well say it immediately.

He set his wine glass down and looked at his mother. “Miss Heron has agreed to marry me.”

“My dear boy! I am so happy for you!” Emily was out of her seat and before he could slip out of his own to stand for her she had her arms around him and was kissing his forehead. Soames put an arm around her waist.

“Why didn’t you tell us straight away when you arrived? Well, never mind that. Is she pretty?” Emily asked, still petting him. He decided not to mind, but instead leaned into her.

“Irene is beautiful,” he said, and there was such certainty in his voice that his father made a distressed sound. Soames chose to ignore it. He craned up and received another warm kiss from his mother, then kissed her cheek in turn.

His father burst out: “She’s got no money!”

Soames closed his eyes and with all his self-control said, “She doesn’t need any. I have more than enough for us both.”

“It’s not that! It’s that she’s not bringing anything into the marriage! You could make a much better match—”

“I’m marrying her,” Soames said, and the finality of those words was such a shock that his father fell silent. He went on, determined to end this once and for all: “I care for her and she cares for me. I need no more from her than that.”

He flushed dark red at how much he’d shown of himself to them both, how clearly he’d revealed his feelings. His mother kissed him again, rather predictably, then returned to her seat, as if to say that it was decided.

“I shall write to her step-mother so we can get acquainted nicely. What is her name now? She’s married somebody else, you said.”

“Her step-father is named Lomax. Her step-mother is now Mrs Lomax.” Soames kept his face as cool as he could, but he could not help the twitch of distaste; his mother saw it. Soames looked at her, studiously ignoring his father. “I’ll give you their address, Mother.”

“Of course, dear. We shall have them up to London to visit as soon as possible. And if dear Irene wishes to stay here for a time—”

“I think she would like that.” Irene in Park Lane, in his parents’ home? To be able to see her without travelling for hours first? He could dine with her every evening, send her flowers every day, ensure that she had new music to play every morning when she woke up. He of course would be banished to his chambers for the duration, but this hardly mattered.

“The gentlemen will want to work out the financial arrangements, I suppose.”

James made a distressed sound, through a mouthful of lamb.

“There won’t be much to work out, I suspect,” said Soames. He immediately set to work again on his own lamb so as to prevent James from attempting to ask him anything about what that meant.

The remainder of the main course was eaten in silence, though not an unhappy one: Emily was beaming and even James had moved past distress to some kind of grim acceptance that his son was beyond his control. Soames himself was content, having got his news out and eaten the first good meal he’d had since awakening on that train.

Warmson served the sweet—treacle tarts—and was beckoned over by James midway. They had some kind of quiet conference, and Warmson left. Soames found himself unable to eat his tart after a single bite to taste it; he had no appetite for sweets and never had. James ate his, then chased the last bite around his plate with a spoon.

Warmson appeared with a crusty bottle of something and presented it to James. Soames could not see it properly, but Emily raised her brows and looked at James. Soames saw something on her face that he’d never seen there before, a private look that made him embarrassed to have seen, because of how much it revealed about what his parents felt about each other. She betrayed nothing of this in any other way at all, but it was enough for him to have new awareness.

The three of them watched Warmson as he opened the bottle, and decanted it carefully through a square of muslin. He poured a thimble-full into a glass and handed it to James. James tasted and then made a satisfied sound. Warmson filled the glass, then filled a second and presented it rather ceremoniously to Soames, with the words, “I congratulate you, sir.” Then he vanished definitively.

Soames, puzzled, tasted what he’d been given to drink. He paused with an eyebrow up, then drank a mouthful more.

“That’s rather good,” he said. It was possibly the best port he’d ever tasted from his father’s cellar.

“It ought to be,” said James, doubtfully. “Your uncle Swithin gave me a dozen bottles when I married your mother. Only two left. Was waiting for you to have a very special occasion for the last of them.”

“Thank you, Father.” He lifted his glass to his father, and had a second taste. He couldn’t remember his father taking this port out before, and he would have remembered this. It was special indeed: a scant dozen bottles, kept from even before he’d been born. For some reason his father had opened a valuable bottle tonight, with no one else to notice. Soames smiled down into his glass, and had a little more. It was, for James, an extravagant gesture, and perhaps an apology.

James looked down into his own glass and sniffed. “I don’t know, I can’t tell. You seem so sure of yourself.”

He had been last time as well, so disastrously. Was he sure of himself this time?

Soames considered his father. He was tempted, briefly, to say something to James, to reveal his uncertainties and worries and how he fretted about his ability to love his wife properly and care for her with all the consideration she deserved, even if things were to go wrong. But he and his father did not talk about the deeper matters of life. They were unshakable allies, now and forever, and he was certain his father knew this, but to talk of it was another matter. He would have been moved had Fleur asked for his advice about love, for guidance about that fellow’s son or about Michael—a good chap, a solid man, and entirely worthy of Fleur. But Fleur hadn’t asked, so he hadn’t offered, and he could not ask his own father now.

“I’m sure about Irene,” he said, in the end.

“You know your own mind,” James said, gruffly. “I suppose I must congratulate you.”

“Thank you.”

They drank their port together, and Soames thought he saw satisfaction on his father’s face, despite all the fretting.

“You’ll see,” he said to his father again, quietly. “You’ll meet her and understand.”

James said absolutely nothing, but sat in his chair, uncharacteristically quiet, drinking the port his twin had given him.

“Swithin has a palate,” James said, eventually.

“Yes.”

“He’s an odd chap. Never have understood him.”

Soames had nothing to say to this, and so said nothing. They emptied their glasses, silently. The three of them moved out to the drawing room, where coffee awaited. James stood, back to the fire, eyes on his son.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“It’ll be all right,” Soames said. He set his coffee down and stood, and drifted over beside his father, and as if by accident found himself close enough to touch a hand to his father’s shoulder. “Pater,” he said, using the name he and Winifred had used as children.

James looked at him sidelong, doleful and doubtful and fretful as he ever was.

“I should like to give you a grandson,” Soames said, very quietly. He saw his mother turn her head towards him abruptly, then control herself. He swallowed hard, but he’d said it. He was at pains not to accidentally meet his father’s eyes. His last words to James, the last words he’d shared with his father on his deathbed, had been a lie about his child. A son, he’d said. It had been Fleur instead, and Soames hadn’t minded, but his father would have, if he’d lived. This time he would do his best. He wouldn’t wait. He and Irene would—would—if it were truly a love match, then it would happen.

“I hope you will approve of Irene once you meet her.”

“We trust you,” Emily said. “You have always done the right thing.”

“I try,” said Soames. “I can be wrong at times. But with her—”

“You’re in love with her,” said James, unexpectedly.

“I am.” And Soames was surprised at himself for saying that.

James went to his armchair and sat down heavily for such a scarecrow of a man. He looked up at his son with worried, anxious eyes. “And she?”

“And she.”

“Then there it is.”

Soames sat down again to finish his coffee peacefully. He rather doubted that his father would leave it at that: he might have accepted that his son was making a love match, but he had years of fussing about the money ahead of him. He would enjoy the fussing, no doubt, and invent many novel manners of expressing it. And speaking of which, he had better get some things out, and set the fussing in motion straight away.

“She’ll need a dressmaker,” he said to his mother. “She has none at present.”

“We shall send her to mine, dear. I’ll take care of it all.”

“And mother—”

“Yes, my dear boy?”

“The Lomaxes won’t have the—that is, I shall want to pay for what she needs, discreetly.”

Emily was all seriousness suddenly. “Is it as bad as that?”

“For Irene, yes. I’m not sure her step-father feels the obligation.” Soames shook his head. “Her step-mother does, but she does not have the means for what the family expects. We shall need to manage it quietly.”

“Manage what quietly?” said James.

Emily closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them with some newly-formed plan. “Miss Heron is at a disadvantage, in that her step-father is insensitive to her needs. Soames was telling me he wishes to pay for her trousseau without her being the wiser, because her step-parents cannot manage it for her.”

“What! Soames hasn’t got the money for that sort of thing! He’s just getting started!”

“And she’ll need the household linens arranged, which her step-father is also unwilling to act upon.”

“You women seem to think a man is made of money! Soames can’t possibly spare that kind of capital at his age!”

“It’s all right, Father,” Soames said. “I can spare it.” He felt that stubborn frustration heating inside himself. He’d avoided this argument the first time round by means of talking to Mrs Lomax directly, which had been somewhat excruciating, but the bills had gone directly to him and no one had been the wiser. He thought Irene hadn’t liked the results of the dressmaking, however, and neither had his mother, so he had tried another approach this time. Now he regretted it.

“Nonsense! You shan’t do any such thing. I’ll arrange with this Lomack fellow to take care of it all without anyone being the wiser. You’ve got the house to pay for. See! This is what comes of marrying a woman without any money! I told you how it would be.”

“You will not. I can manage on my own,” Soames said again, doggedly.

“I won’t have it!” James said, and that was that.

Soames saw what his mother had done, and resolved never to be that much trouble in his old age. Then he shivered. He was beginning to forget. He remembered and yet he forgot. He had the wisdom of his years and yet—he had been an old man. Had Annette managed him? At times, and he’d known it, and let her do it. He looked down into his coffee cup, hiding his urge to laugh. And so may we all live to be managed by our wives, he thought. And our mothers, for Emily had managed him just as neatly, and he knew it.

He set his empty cup down, and rose to leave.

“Thank you,” Soames said to his father. He went to him and leaned down to kiss his forehead. Then he stepped quietly over to his mother. “Mrs Lomax’s address,” he said, and gave her a card. “She is expecting you to write.” He leaned down and kissed her as well. She gave him the comfort of her embrace and kiss in response.

It would once have been formality for him, the gesture of kissing one’s parents, the performance of affection, but for Soames now, it was heartfelt and he thought it would ever be so. He would never forget what it was like to be without family, what it was like to be the head of the family, alone at the top, presumed the wisest whether he felt so or not, the most responsible, taking care of them all and advising them all when they were in need. He had done that for thirty years, more, after Old Jolyon had abandoned his post and James after him had retired. He had succeeded to the role far younger than anyone had expected, and shouldered the family burden. For now, he could kiss his father and mother, and know himself not yet called to serve. He could kiss them, so he would kiss them out of love.

There was another relief in him tonight: the machinery was in motion: the engagement was official, and it would proceed now inevitably no matter what he or Irene thought of it. If asked, he would admit himself grateful for the aid of his family in making it all happen without unnecessary fuss, but no one would ask such an obvious thing of him. It was merely how things were.

Soames made his way out to the hall, where Warmson appeared without sound to help him into his coat and hand him his top hat.

And so to his chambers; and so to his bed.

XI. Soames and Parkes smoke

The next evening, Soames returned to his chambers from a day of work hoping to find a letter waiting for him, but did not. He was disappointed and upset with himself for feeling so. He washed, changed into evening dress, and walked across the city in the darkening night, hoping to give himself an appetite. His destination was his club, where he wanted to find some dinner, and maybe talk to Parkes if he were there.

He’d been a member of the Connoisseurs his entire adult life, and a member of the Remove after his uncle Nicholas had put him up for it in the Nineties. He’d never felt truly at ease in his clubs, though of course one had to have one. It was a place to dine, or get a cup of tea in the afternoon, or to collect his post when he didn’t have an address in the city any more. But he’d always felt uncomfortable listening to his fellows talking to each other. They didn’t say things he understood or liked much of the time. He’d never forgotten listening to them at the start of the War, eager for blood to be shed and young men to die, convinced that the war would be over by Christmas. The fools.

But now it was disturbing in a way he hadn’t expected. Now, listening to men talk, he came to understand he had changed over the years more than he’d thought. The men around him had attitudes about things he wasn’t sure about any more, and this was a surprise to him. He was no radical; he changed cautiously, when change became clearly rational. If civilisation progressed forward, then surely he had progressed with it naturally. The past was therefore backward. This was a strange thing to think, for a man who was not normally philosophical.

Being Fleur’s father had altered him. It wasn’t merely that having her in his life had made him happier, though it had. She had spun his attitudes around. Would he be content to think that anyone Fleur married would immediately claim all her property? No. He had not worked as hard as he had for all those years so some fellow could run off with his wealth, which ought to be hers. It would be hers now. He had taken pains even before his death to ensure Fleur had her own money and could be entirely independent if Michael turned out to be rotten, another Dartie or worse. He hadn’t—Michael was a good sort, and would be taking care of Fleur now that he was in his grave below the crab-apple tree. It was a matter of considering all the contingencies. Soames had indeed considered them. Someone ought to consider them now for Irene. He hadn’t considered them last time, and Irene had been penniless the moment she’d left his home for the last time. He hadn’t thought ahead for her properly. He’d botched it.

Soames ate thoughtfully and drank wine. It was odd that he who had a horror of bad form and of being perceived to be out of step with what was expected of him, should now be so wholly disconnected from what was expected of him. He’d spent his life trying not to be noticed lest anyone discover how ill-at-ease he was, and how much he struggled to get on, and now he was in danger of being noticed, by his family if by no one else. He couldn’t be the man he’d been in ’81 the first time. He’d lived a mere week in the past, and he already knew himself to be a man who fit in nowhere.

At least the club dinners and wine were good. At least he could sit here and not talk to anybody if he didn’t want to.

After he’d eaten and relaxed enough to feel himself eased, and mostly stopped his mind from spinning in pointless circles, he asked the waiter if Parkes were in the club. He was, the waiter said, and thought Mr Forsyte would find Mr Parkes in the smoking room.

Parkes was indeed in the smoking room, in his usual quiet corner, feet up and a folding map in his hand. A cigarette burned in the tray next to his elbow, forgotten, while he considered the map. Soames stole over to him and paused beside his footstool, hands behind his back. Parkes looked up and smiled. He gestured to the neighbouring armchair and Soames sat.

“Join me in a drink?” Soames said.

“Thanks, yes.” Parkes took his cigarette case out of his coat pocket and flicked it open. “Cigarette?”

“No, thanks. Looking out for what’s next?”

“I think I have something interesting to pursue. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

“Of course.”

Soames sat with his whisky and soda and contemplated Parkes. He was unmarried, almost exactly Soames’s age, but rather better-looking, with a tawny flowing moustache and a great deal of hair. He was also far more graceful and easy with people, and had a way with ladies and business clients alike. Soames would ordinarily say that he had no use for charm, but he could see how Parkes made use of it. Parkes was doing well for himself, and was doing a steady bit of speculation in house properties east of London, and solid re-investment of the resulting spare capital guided by Soames’s own canny advice. This endeavour had been profitable for the both of them, and they were therefore always satisfied to see each other, and always had something mutually pleasant to say.

To add to this, the bond between them over the eye-blacking incident had not wavered. Soames had no idea how it had been he who had risen to the occasion, but he did recall being rather offended about the whole affair. The insult had been factually wrong, and the other boy had attempted to strike Parkes from behind. Soames had delivered his response to that—a left upper-cut—neatly and honourably from in front. The resulting punishment from the headmaster—a rare event for Soames—had been worth the act, and Soames had borne it stoically. The friendship was silently unbreakable from that moment on. Even now Parkes was considerably warmer to him than the rest of his school acquaintances. They rarely talked of anything particularly deep.

Soames crossed his knees. He drank a little; it was better whisky than he kept at home. Parkes stretched his feet out closer to the fire and lit another cigarette. He held it between two fingers in a hand dangling over the arm of his chair. The smoke, curling up blue between them, was pleasant to Soames; Parkes had a good tobacconist.

They were quiet, and this was another reason the friendship soothed him. Parkes had always let him be silent, even when they’d been at school. Whatever had happened to Parkes? Oh. He’d lost track of him in the first couple of years after Irene had left him, when he’d taken to not speaking to anyone at all about anything other than work. He’d lost track of quite a few people during that time. For the first time, he wondered what might have happened if he’d gone to Parkes and sat with him like this, and told him a little about it. Well. Water under the bridge.

The whisky had warmed him enough: he had the courage to tell Parkes something rather more pleasant.

“I wanted to let you know,” Soames said, “that I’m engaged to be married.”

Parkes sat up straight and looked him over. “Congratulations, old man. I had no idea you were even looking to be married.”

“I wasn’t, until—” Soames made a gesture with his fingers, as if to downplay it all. “Would you stand by me?” That diffidently, uncertain of his welcome.

But Parkes seemed well-pleased, and clapped him on the shoulder, as he always did. Soames flinched to be touched, as he always did, but felt himself uncoil a little bit inside anyway.

Parkes said, “Of course, Forsyte. Of course. Honoured to be asked.”

“Thanks,” Soames said, and it was heartfelt.

Parkes leaned back and blew a long stream of smoke out into the air. “It’s been an odd year here, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Saturday afternoons—no more Forsyte sitting in the corner barricaded behind the Times. Thought you’d changed clubs or found some scandalous habit.”

“Not scandalous, but I suppose I did.”

“Bainbridge told me, eventually. One of your cousins told him you’d been calling on a young lady near Bournemouth.” Parkes flicked another ash. “I didn’t press. Thought you’d speak when you had something to say. And here we are.”

Soames felt his face warm in a way that had nothing to do with the whisky. It had not occurred to him that his absences had been noticed, still less that they had been allowed to be private. He’d thought no one was looking. He’d never imagined anyone would.

“Thank you,” he said, unsure what he was thanking Parkes for.

“Don’t mention it, old man.”

They sat quietly for a bit. Soames held his whisky more than drank it; Parkes smoked.

“So,” Parkes said, after a while, “tell me about this woman who’s managed to distract you from the science of making money.”

Soames had just finished explaining how beautiful she was, and what a talented pianist she was, when Parkes laughed. “What?” he said, indignantly.

“Thought you didn’t care for music, but here you are telling me all about some dashed Norwegian composer.” Parkes signalled one of the club waiters for another round of whisky.

Soames flushed. “She has a way of luring one in.”

“She must be beautiful indeed to have melted your icy soul.”

Had he an icy soul? Soames objected to the idea. “I’m not as bad as all that,” he said.

“I’m afraid you are, Forsyte.” But Parkes was smiling at him. “You kept that quiet, didn’t you? A year of dancing attendance on her and you breathed not a word to me.”

“I didn’t mean—I had no idea what to say. What if she didn’t—”

Parkes let out a long stream of smoke from his lips. “Don’t fret, Forsyte. Whatever’s churning on inside that complicated head of yours, let it rest. I’m your man.”

The waiter quietly delivered two more glasses and vanished. Soames lifted his glass to Parkes and drank to him. Why hadn’t he said anything? He’d been afraid of revealing how much he felt before he was sure of her. He would have looked a fool to be refused and to have had his friend know it. Soames bit his lip, gently, and thought about this. If Parkes had been thrown over he’d have bought Parkes a drink and been sympathetic, and not thought him a fool in the least. He had to rethink his entire life, every friendship, every family bond, never mind his love for Irene. He’d mucked them all up badly, it seemed.

Parkes lit his third cigarette. The smell of good tobacco had finally tempted him too much, and Soames said, “Here, if you’re smoking another I’ll have one.”

He leaned forward and let Parkes light it for him: the scratch and smell of a vesta, Parkes’s hand steadying his, the first puff with the match against the end of the cigarette. It had been years since he’d smoked anything but the occasional contemplative cigar. The smoke smelled fine and it tasted good, but it made him cough if he inhaled too deeply. He restricted himself to shallow puffs and a couple of attempts to blow smoke rings. He’d learned the trick of it for a time, towards the end. Irene had never liked tobacco, and he ought not, but it did give him something to do with his hands, and that was soothing.

Parkes settled his feet on the footstool again and said, “What changed your mind? About women. You seemed uninterested.”

“I was interested! Not with any of the ones I’d met.”

“What about her caught you? And don’t tell me how pretty she is.”

Soames tried another smoke ring and managed it for once. He watched it float away and thought about this. She’d caught his attention before he’d spoken with her, but their conversation had solidified it. What about it?

“She told me I was wrong to say she should give up her ambition because she thought she couldn’t reach the top. She was going to keep trying.”

“Sounds a bit like you.”

“I shouldn’t say that.”

“She can’t reach the top of what, being a concert pianist? Five men in the world reach that, and I can name only one woman. She’s as determined as you are.”

“Hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Why is she marrying you if she’s so determined?”

Soames smiled to himself, thinking of her letters. Then he thought about the question more seriously. “I suspect I’m the first man who’s understood it matters to her.”

Parkes made a satisfied sound. “There it is. I should like to meet her.”

“They’re coming up to London before too long, I think, and there’ll be dinners. I’ll have my mother invite you for an evening or two if you’re free.”

“Shan’t miss the chance to talk to the woman who discovered the heart frozen inside the Forsyte glacier.”

Soames cast up his eyes and sighed. “At least my mother puts on a good dinner.”

“She does indeed.”

“She’ll want to know if there’s anyone to invite for your sake,” he said, and he would once have cast up his eyes again upon saying it. No more! All men ought to be engaged to be married to women they loved.

Parkes shrugged. “No one woman, really. I’ve three of them on my hands at the moment, but they aren’t making my heart beat faster in the right sort of way. I’m not ready to be held captive yet, I suppose. It’s either that or I’m a confirmed bachelor.”

Soames drank his whisky and shook his head. It was baffling. “Three women. How do you do it? What is the secret?”

Parkes laughed softly. “The secret is to genuinely like them and tell them so.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You tell them what you feel, that’s all. When they’re lovely and make your head spin and your heart beat faster, you say it.”

“How do you find the words?”

“You open your mouth and say them.”

It was beyond him, how Parkes could think it was so effortless. Parkes had no difficulties finding someone to love him, no trouble at all finding people who’d defend him with a punch or let him call on them or receive him late at night. Unlike Soames himself, who’d gone more than half his life before meeting someone who tolerated him. Until now, that was. A little smile crept onto his face. Perhaps he’d learned something. Irene had written him a love letter!

He said, “I suppose. Well. However many women you’ve got, my mother will invite you and make up the number with some cousin or other.”

“Not going to try to talk me into marriage? Every one of you does as you fall victim. It’s inevitable.”

“No,” said Soames, and he was sincere. If he was himself a Benedick reformed, he would not mock Parkes for being a Benedick still; the appetite did indeed alter, and he would not be the one to break quirks and remnants of wit on his friend either before or after.

He smoked with Parkes for a while in silence, and they were both content. They parted at the club door with another of those hearty shoulder claps from Parkes. If Parkes hadn’t done it, he’d have worried. Some day perhaps he wouldn’t twitch, but Parkes seemed never to mind. That was friendship, he supposed. He had a friend. He’d always had.

XII. Dog at Timothy’s

Irene’s reply reached Soames the next morning, on the Wednesday. The porter handed it to him on his way out for his walk east to the City and his office. It was Soames’s perverse pleasure at that moment to hold off from reading it despite his anxious desire to read it, and instead to speculate on what she might have written. He carried it in his coat pocket unopened, all his nerves alight. What had Irene written to him? He ought to have simply gone back into his chambers to read it, but he was restless and in need of the walk, too anxious and jangled to sit still.

He set himself into motion and walked with his head up, briskly, making his way through the City of his youth. It was still a wondrous thing to him to see it like this, full of horses and hansom cabs and gas lamps, no electricity at all. There was no particular order to the streets: there was no need for it, because everything moved slowly. Cabs and people crossing where they wanted, boys running errands, men hawking newspapers and girls selling flowers—London!

It was in this mood that he entered the offices in the Poultry. There he found that his news had filtered through his acquaintance like a splash of watercolour spreading through wet paper. The clerks knew it already, and seemed also to know that his betrothed was a great beauty and that he was to be envied. They congratulated him quietly. Gradman offered his dry congratulations then disappeared mercifully quickly into his father’s office. Soames went into his own office, hung top hat and coat, and settled himself at his desk with Irene’s letter before him. Her usual stationery, her usual handwriting. He took out his letter opener.

His father appeared in his doorway and attempted to get his attention on the matter of New Colliery v Jones, but Soames waved him off. “I’ll come look in ten minutes.”

“What are you up to that you are too busy for this?”

“Irene has written to me, and I should like to read her letter,” said Soames, simply.

His father cast up his eyes and disappeared back into his office without closing the door. Soames slid the letter opener along the edge of the envelope delicately. He was barely aware of Gradman coming by and closing the door as he read. Irene opened as she had before. Her step-mother, she wrote, had been on an excursion to visit a friend in Bournemouth on Monday afternoon, so she’d gone for a walk to get out of the house and take some exercise. It had been a long walk along the coast, and she’d eaten lunch seated on the rocks at the edge of a shingled beach, leading down into a grey and restless sea. She’d seen a skua, which had delighted her. She thought she had mastered the second Brahms rhapsody, which was rather her favourite, and wished to play it for him now that she could bring meaningful interpretation to it. She finished by saying how much she looked forward to seeing him on Saturday so she could do so. Affectionately his, her initials.

And then she added a postscript in which she asked if she might delay until the weekend to answer his question: she wished to consider his face and imagine it with a moustache. Well, that was a reasonable answer. He would continue shaving.

Soames tapped the empty envelope against the desk blotter, thinking. She seemed well. It continued to comfort him to read her handwriting, to hear that she looked forward to seeing him. She spent her time either walking near the sea or playing the piano. He hoped what London offered would compensate for the loss of the sea. It was only Wednesday, but he almost couldn’t bear waiting until Saturday to see her. He had found a good edition of the Mozart piano sonatas, which he hoped would please her, since she had said she had little Mozart. Was that enough of an excuse to travel down immediately? No. He tucked the letter back into its envelope, and the envelope into a pocket of his frock-coat.

Soames went out to talk to his father about whatever it was he wanted. It was a legal case from an important client; nothing of any particular difficulty. Soames gave his advice calmly along with the reasoning he’d include in the brief. He was at a loss trying to remember the barristers of the day to advise engaging, but Gradman rescued him with the suggestion of a name he remembered, which produced a second name from the dusty recesses of his memory. James disagreed with them both. Soames declined to argue about that, so long as the legal argument stood.

“I dare say you’re right on that point, Mr Soames,” said Gradman.

“He often is,” James said. “But I doubt him on this one. Oh! I called round at Timothy’s yesterday, my boy.”

Gradman slipped out the door. Soames made no reply.

James continued. “They’ve heard all about it already, can’t say I know how, somebody will have told them, maybe your mother.”

“I know how it went,” said Soames. “Winifred told Dartie, Dartie told George, and now London knows.”

“You ought to call on them yourself. Get it over with.”

“I suppose I’d better.”

“I shouldn’t talk about the money if I were you.”

Soames looked at the ceiling. “I see no reason why I would talk about money at Timothy’s.”

“It’ll get out.”

“Not because I’ll have told them.”

“They do seem to learn everything somehow. The servants talk, I suppose.”

The servants, and the family, the aunts and the uncles and innumerable cousins: all gravitated towards the drawing room on the Bayswater Road to contribute their information to the family stock exchange and have it weighed and valued and traded around. They had been doing it for as long as Soames had been alive, and they would do it in Winifred’s drawing room on Green Street and in his own home at Mapledurham after the aunts had all passed on. The family business and opinion had its own currency, and there was its nerve centre.

Soames might describe it as an ordeal, but he could not avoid it, and when he was feeling most sentimental would not avoid it: he would miss it when it was gone. He decided to take his father’s advice and endure the first stage of the ordeal straight away. He’d have to repeat it all when Irene joined them in town, but there was no helping it. His family was what it was.

He called round at Timothy’s at tea-time, ready for the questioning in some ways, and not in others: this would be his first time seeing his aunts and uncles since their deaths, and he was not entirely sure what this would do to him. He’d always been closer to his uncle Nicholas than the rest of them, but he had not disliked any of them save Uncle Jolyon. It had more been a matter of distant well-wishes, an awareness that they mattered to his father and that therefore they mattered to him. He’d read his aunt Hester’s diary after her death, and he knew things about her that he would need to pretend not to know now, but these facts made him rather fonder of her than before, rather more sad about what her life might have been.

The only one of them he had to be on guard about his feelings with was Uncle Jolyon, and perhaps this time round they could both keep their tempers and not cause a family rift about nothing at all meaningful in the end, about some house property that he would not build this time. Or perhaps his uncle would continue to dislike him and there would be a row anyway. He couldn’t help that. He would reserve judgement, or at least do his best to hide his judgement. He’d manage so long as he didn’t have to pretend to be civil with Cousin Jo.

In this state of partial unease he stood in the hall in the Bayswater Road, handing his hat and coat to Smither. Everyone in the drawing room upstairs would know his news in advance but would be pretending not to know, and he would have to tell them as if it were news. Further, he would be asked to account for a series of failings imagined and real of his wife-to-be, whom they had not yet met. What a misery this would be! Then he remembered something that made him smile at the maid Smither, which surprised her more than a little.

“Is the dog doing well?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr Soames!” she said, bobbing before him, now smiling back at him. “She’s settled in most happily! She’s with Mrs Small in the drawing room now.”

“Thank you,” he said, and turned to mount the stairs to the drawing room. What had the dog’s name been? He couldn’t remember. Well, surely someone would mention it.

In the drawing room were his three aunts, his uncles Swithin and Jolyon, his cousins Francie and Young Roger, and Mrs Nicholas along with a number of younger Nicholas daughters. Soames greeted them all cordially, including Uncle Jolyon, and with good grace played the part of a young nephew with news that he was holding as a badly-kept secret. He’d never got on with Young Roger, but he could overlook that today.

“What’s this I hear about you, young man?” said his uncle Jolyon.

Swithin chimed in: “Yes, you young rascal, what have you been about?”

“Nothing at all noteworthy,” he said to his father’s twin, with cool detachment. “I am no kind of rascal.” He accepted a cup of tea from his aunt Ann and sat where she indicated, in the seat to her right.

She gave him an arch look, to which he responded with a raised eyebrow. “Soames, dear, we have heard a rumour about you. I should like to discover the truth of it.”

“What rumour is that, Aunt?”

“That you are engaged to be married to a young lady from a quite distant seaside town.”

Soames drank some tea carefully, expressed his pleasure with it without words to Aunt Ann, then said, “I may as well tell you that it is true. I am engaged to be married.”

There was a minor sensation in the room. There had been, if he recalled correctly, wagers that he would remain a bachelor for some years yet, he having been so very uninterested in his mother’s attempts to match-make for him. George had gone in heavily on bachelorhood until the age of thirty, and Soames had been maliciously delighted to find he’d been in debt to Dartie of all people when the news had broken. He supposed George would be out of pocket again. One side of his mouth quirked up.

“Ah! I am delighted to hear the rumour is true!” said Aunt Ann, and tapped him with her fan. “You must tell us all about her.”

“Miss Heron is delightful. She is a most excellent pianist, Conservatoire-trained. And she is quite beautiful.” And at that he flushed in a way that made Uncle Jolyon look at him sharply. So did Aunt Ann; they were the only two in the room perspicacious enough to see past his careful façade of indifference.

Aunt Juley immediately set the little dog down on the floor, and she ran over to sniff Soames’s boots. He’d had dogs in his past life, and he knew what to do with them. He ruffled her ears, and ran his hand along her flank with a gentle pat, and the little Yorkshire Terrier waggled her entire body with pleasure in making his acquaintance. He settled into a gentle scratching along her jaw that had her sneezing out her joy and then snuffling him again. He eyed his aunt Juley with caution. There was no telling what she would say.

“I had heard that you have been most devoted to this young lady,” Aunt Juley said, “taking the train for hours every weekend to see her!”

Soames gave this no answer, but instead rubbed the belly of a pleased and somewhat plump dog.

“I am so very happy for you, Soames,” said Aunt Ann.

“Thank you,” he murmured, to the dog. Then he sat up and resumed drinking his tea before it went cold. It was good tea; the aunts always had good tea, thanks to the attentions of Uncle Jolyon.

Aunt Juley said, “We did hear that she has no money at all, of course, and that your father is—”

“When shall we meet her?” Aunt Ann said, interrupting sharply.

“It is in the hands of my mother and her step-mother,” said Soames, as if butter would not melt in his mouth. “I am looking forward to introducing her to you all.”

“She was trained in France, you said?”

“Yes, Aunt. She spent some time at the Paris Conservatoire, earning her medal.”

“Paris?”

“She speaks French quite fluently.”

This caused a minor flurry, the French being somewhat controversial among the older generation, and generally considered fashionable among the younger. Conversation blew into little side snow-swirls, then gusted onward, to something one of the Nicholas daughters had to say to Aunt Ann. Soames vacated the seat next to his aunt to make way for her, and found himself standing next to his uncles and Young Roger, rather unfortunately. Roger liked Soames about as much as his younger brother George did, only he had none of the wit.

“I hear she’s a pretty little thing,” said Swithin, not that any of them had seen her yet.

Old Jolyon said, “They do say that. You are a most lucky young man if she is as pretty as rumour has it.”

“Rumour is correct,” said Soames. “I scarcely deserve her.”

“Why wouldn’t you deserve her?” Old Jolyon asked, not angrily, but forcefully enough that Soames wanted to take a step back. He did not, however, but stood his ground.

“She is talented and beautiful. She could have found somebody much better than I.”

“I hear she’s got no money,” Young Roger said.

“I hear her father was a professor of some kind,” said Swithin.

“Yes,” said Soames. “Of literature.”

“No money in that,” said Swithin.

“A talented pianist, fine-looking? No money? And she’s to marry you? Let’s hope you haven’t paid too much for her,” Young Roger said. “Can’t be for your charm.”

Soames found his left hand curling into a fist. The memory of what punching felt like came to him. A hand on his arm fell heavy—Uncle Jolyon’s.

“She is musically inclined,” Old Jolyon said. “If she is Conservatoire-trained she must be skilled indeed.”

Soames drew in a careful breath. “Yes, sir, she is. She had ambitions of playing at the concert level,” Soames said between his teeth. The hand remained on his arm. Soames uncurled his fist, and the hand went away. That had been a near thing, nearly a shocking loss of control.

“I am very happy for you, then,” his uncle said. “Congratulations to you, young man.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Soames, and he looked at his uncle Jolyon with some puzzlement. His uncle didn’t entirely hate him, or he’d have let him punch Roger. Perhaps punching George would be more satisfying, not that George had done anything to him this time or was even present. Soames had always been annoyed by Young Roger even more than George until later in life, come to think of it. And his uncle had been—his uncle had prevented him from causing a ruckus and a family mess just now, for surely Young Roger’s offence would have been overlooked if Soames had transgressed by striking him in Aunt Ann’s drawing room. Uncle Jolyon had prevented it. Did Soames have to re-estimate him, too?

Old Jolyon had not yet offended Soames. The man had nothing to do with his grand-daughter’s future choices, and less still with his son’s behaviour after his death. His uncle’s behaviour in leaving money to Irene, in that past that would never be, now—that Soames could understand, and therefore not condemn. Why let the family have a rift again? Why risk this man reconciling with that fellow again? And at that his conscience tweaked him. If Irene genuinely loved him, he need fear nothing. And if she loved that fellow instead, he had his oath to live up to.

Uncle Jolyon put a hand on his shoulder—Soames winced and then steadied—and turned him away from Young Roger and Swithin for a word.

“Come, tell me about her,” said his uncle, and drew him further away. Soames let it happen. He could feel the echoes of the anger in his blood, and knew he needed to let himself cool for a moment.

“That’s right, steady,” Old Jolyon said, in a low voice. “Don’t give him the satisfaction. You seem to think highly of her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jolyon’s fierce gaze held him for a long moment, and Soames could not look away. At last his uncle said, “Very well, then. Ignore that young fool. You’re a better man than he.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t let your temper get the better of you. You sulk too much, boy. Your young lady won’t appreciate that.”

Soames felt his temper flare and then subside again, tamped by the wisdom of years. He had sulked too much. He would indeed have benefited from keeping it in check. “I should like you to meet her,” was all he said in reply. What was he supposed to feel in this moment?

His uncle gave him a sidelong look, then nodded in some kind of approval. “You were good with Juley’s dog.”

“I like dogs.” Soames looked back to see the little dog, whose name he still had not learned, running about, snuffling at the feet of various guests.

“You’re not as bad as I thought you,” Jolyon said. “You have a heart after all, when you’re not being a lawyer.”

“When I am a man.” Soames looked at the floor.

“A bad business, the one you’re in, that requires you not to have a heart.”

Soames opened his mouth to object to this, then closed it again. He knew what his uncle was talking about without seeming to talk about it. There was no explaining it to people on the opposite side of an action. There never would be. If one party wanted a divorce and the other didn’t, there was only pain. If one side was flaunting infidelity and the other wanted an end because of it, there was only pain. He understood. The pain was something he had lived.

He said, “Divorces are difficult to handle. I’d rather not. But better to keep them in the family than let them out.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

That fellow’s first wife Frances was dead, now, and he would not be betraying any confidences by saying this. “Uncle Jolyon, she was bitter. She wanted to punish him. The wisdom of the action did not matter to her.”

His uncle looked at him extremely sharply. Soames met his gaze and held his ground—he too had the gravity of years to bring to this contest. Old Jolyon said, “I dare say you are right there. You were only acting as your client wished.”

“Sometimes my advice goes unheeded. Sometimes I am wrong.”

“And in this case?”

Soames continued to hold his uncle’s gaze, unyielding. “She was very clear about what she wanted. My advice was not at issue.”

“Humph. What are we to make of it all?”

Soames shook his head. “I can’t say. It was a bad business. At least your granddaughter is with you now.” Not that he’d ever liked June or she him, even when she was a child, but it did not matter: she was not with her father, who was an immoral influence. He had nothing good to say about this man’s son and never would, not that he would say it to his uncle’s face.

Uncle Jolyon lifted his impressive chin, appraising him, then nodded. “Come round to Stanhope Gate some evening, when you’ve the time. Tell me about this young lady of yours without all this lot listening. I should like to hear you talk. And when she’s in town, I will have you both to dinner.”

“Thank you, sir. I shall call.”

His uncle offered him a hand. Soames took it and the handshake was over before he quite understood it had begun. And then his uncle had moved beside the aunts and was saying his farewells to them.

Soames didn’t know what to make of this. The invitation was unprecedented to him. His uncle had always been disgruntled with him for reasons he hadn’t fully understood, at least until the hostilities had burst into the open. He could not object; his father had been hurt by the feud, which he had not understood. Soames himself would do nothing to cause it to flare into being this time round. And he could at least find some kind of fellow-feeling for his uncle in their shared experiences as family head, as keeper of the family soul and burdens. He’d been the one to give the advice to the third and fourth generations, when they’d needed it and had the wisdom to ask. He understood his uncle in a way few did. Was this the source of the dislike? Had his uncle hoped his own son would do this? But Young Jolyon had always had an ironic mocking distance from the family. He’d never cared for them the way Soames had. So why?

It was a puzzle.

Soames left soon afterwards with his duty call done but his feelings uneasy. He’d enjoyed seeing Aunt Ann, but his encounter with his uncle Jolyon had disturbed him. How many family relationships would he end up re-assessing? How many friendships? Would the strain never end?

He hadn’t thought about Frances in years. At the time he had approved of her decision not to divorce Jolyon: it kept property in the family. The upshot was that his uncle Jolyon had what his father had not: a grandson of his name, but the boy was disowned. If Soames had philandered and fathered a son out of wedlock, would his parents have accepted the boy? He, of course, could not have done it unless in extremis, and they would have known that. Had Young Jolyon been in extremis? Frances had seemed to hate him. Soames hadn’t considered this motive at the time.

Well, he would do things properly this time and not put himself into the position he’d been in before, so trapped and desperate that he’d thought of that option himself. He would give his father everything he wanted while he was alive to enjoy it. He and Irene would have the son he’d so longed for. The thought made him feel a secret happiness, and he returned to his chambers eager to write to her.

Soames wrote to her that he’d been round to break the news to his aunts. He dithered about trying to describe it to her: ought he? Was it the kind of thing she’d want to read about? Or should he stay with safer topics like how he’d looked at a Corot painting of Fontainebleau at a dealer’s that had moved him and made him want to show it to her? In the end he decided to write about both the painting and his tea at Timothy’s. He tried to find words for what it felt like to be quizzed by his family about his engagement—so many aunts and uncles and cousins, all gossiping about each other’s lives, with almost nothing left undiscussed or unexamined. It was both comforting, in that uncles and aunts were there to sympathise and advise, and suffocating, in that nothing that one did was unknown. They all wanted to meet her, of course, and that would be a trial.

He then did his best to find words to describe how he felt about being so far away from her. It was easier to find them when he was not next to her, aware of her presence in ways that made his pulse race. It was easier to say that he missed her and wished for her smile and her conversation, and easier to write that he was anxious to learn when she and her step-parents would be in London. He concluded by telling her that he’d asked his friend Parkes to be his groomsman, and had been humbled when Parkes accepted. He looked forward to introducing her to him.

He posted the letter on his way to his club for dinner. He was trying to eat normally, or whatever normally had been for himself at this age. He did rather more walking at twenty-five than he had been doing at seventy, no matter how active a man he’d been, punting about and fishing and whatnot. It took far more to tire himself out, so he ought to be hungrier than he was. Love! Love had made him thin. He had to try to feed himself up again on club dinners. He wasn’t likely to hide his ribs rapidly, but he’d slowly go back up to his ordinary weight, eleven stone. He hadn’t risen above that in his life, but he’d been below it several times, because of love and heartbreak and war.

Soames went to the smoking room after and had a drink, but Parkes wasn’t there. Soames sat peacefully enough, for solitude was not uncomfortable to him, and absorbed his drink slowly, thinking over the strange week since his death, or his dream of death if that was what it had been, or since the moment Fate had nudged him to choose differently. Whatever it was, he felt that he could imagine happiness ahead of himself. He could imagine Irene saying those three words to him straight out, the ones he so longed to hear from her. She was so close to saying them. He needs must keep listening to her and give her what she wanted, not what some other woman might want. Arrange everything perfectly for her, as always, because that was what he was good at, what satisfied him. The right house, decorated as she wished. The trousseau she deserved. The gifts she wanted, not the ones other women might prize. Everything perfectly managed.

And that reminded him, he ought to find out where his mother was on arranging their visit to London. Had she written yet? He needed to call round and talk to her tomorrow, perhaps dine with them again if they were at home. An anxiety seized him, an urgency he could do nothing with. He wanted everything to move faster than it was moving. He reassured himself he’d see her again in three days, and the thought soothed him. He’d see her. He’d hold her hand. All would be well.

XIII. Soames buys a Corot

In the morning, Soames found his father in his office at the first moment he could, and broached the topic of the settlement. James pushed his chair back from his desk and paced in a way Soames might have recognised if he had ever watched himself pace in a mirror. Soames composed himself to be his calmest and most solid, hands behind his back, and merely watched his father pacing, himself unmoved and unmoving.

James came to a halt eventually, rubbed his nose, and sniffed. He said, “Well, we might as well have done with it. Do you know what they’re likely to bring in?”

“I do not. We’ll have to ask. I expect it to be a token amount.”

“I told you how it—”

“Father.”

James resumed pacing back and forth along the window behind his desk, tugging at his whiskers. Soames waited for him to decide what he would fret about.

James eventually came to rest again—this time beside his swivel-chair—and sighed the sigh of a much put-upon man. “What is it you’re thinking?”

“Five thousand. I can manage that without difficulty. It’ll put her around one-fifty, and she has another fifty in an annuity from her father. I’ve committed to this amount with her step-mother.”

“You need only match what they put in.” His father was genuinely ill at ease, not fretting for the sake of fretting. Soames’s heart twinged, but he could not relent.

He said, “I am not doing that. I’ve already told you what I’ve committed to, and I expect you to live up to it for me. I want her to be cared for.”

“What if she—”

“She won’t. It’s a reasonable amount of money, and I don’t want to look like I can’t afford to give her anything. Or that I’m a miser.”

That was an argument James would yield to, and indeed he yielded. He shook his head and folded himself up into his swivel-chair like a stork folding itself into its nest. “Well, I’d better start drafting it, so I have something to show him. The usual language, I suppose. Will he know the first thing about what it means?”

“Not unless he’s thought to engage his own solicitor. I’ll send him to Chalmers if he hasn’t.”

“That’s a bit—”

“He won’t know to object, and Chalmers will take care of him even if he knows nothing.”

“Trustees?”

“Uncle Nicholas and Bustard,” said Soames, promptly.

“That stick in the mud?” James meant their partner in the firm, not his younger brother.

“Safe as houses.”

“True enough. She has an annuity, you say?”

“Yes. I suppose that’ll come in, won’t it. I’ll want that money included.” And at the expression on his father’s face, “Look, I won’t have them saying I took her money and then wasn’t generous with her. You’ll feel differently once you meet her.”

“So you keep saying. They don’t have to know anything.”

“This family ends up learning everything.”

“They shan’t learn it from me.”

Soames shook his head. They always ended up learning it somehow. “Well. It’s all decided, then.”

And to put punctuation at the end of the conversation he turned. He walked to the office door, determined to give his father no room to argue about the amount.

“Soames, my boy.”

Soames stopped with his hand on the door, and when his father did not speak, turned to look at him. James was serious, and Soames knew to take him seriously. To signal as much, he came all the way back into the room and sat down in the client’s chair in front of his father’s desk.

It was a comfortable chair, solid, oak and leather, reassuringly stable. His father’s desk and indeed all of the furnishings in this room were the same. You may trust us, they said. We are money and security incarnate; we know what you are, the soul of propertied England; we will safeguard what matters most to you. A touch behind the times, to Soames’s eye; he would refresh his own office in another year or two so that he himself would signal energy as well as solidity. But here he sat, now, in the chair before his father’s desk, waiting for him to speak. He hadn’t felt a need to soothe himself earlier, but he did now; he clasped his hands together and touched thumb to the surface of his signet ring. What was the matter?

James said, “I don’t want you overcommitting yourself.”

Oh. This again. “I’m doing well enough, Father.”

“You’ve certainly been working hard. Gradman says you’re like a man possessed.”

Soames raised his eyes heavenward. “Gradman exaggerates.”

“I’m not committing you until I’ve had a word with the fellow and seen what he’s about. I know what you’re putting in for her sake. I shan’t write a single word of this until I’ve seen where he is. Usually I have to put it to the groom to put things into settlement, but this time—”

“He has no obligation. She’s not his daughter. He might demand something from us in return for anything he puts in.”

James was thinking seriously. He often did not appear to be a serious man, or a thinker, but he had not reached his position without being capable of both and also of the needed discretion. James ruffled both whiskers at once, and made a sound Soames knew to mean assent. “Legal services?”

“I’d rather see the back of him.”

James gave him a piercing look. “You really dislike the chap.”

“I do. No amount of capital is worth it. I’ll make more in a year.”

“You’re usually right about these things.”

“The sooner Mother invites them up, the sooner you’ll see for yourself.”

“You don’t have to keep saying it. You’ve made your point. Well, come round for dinner. Your mother feels better when she sees you.”

“Of course,” Soames murmured. What his father meant was that he felt better, but it hardly mattered. Soames would have come anyway. He stood up again. He was going to get what he wanted, but his father would need to see for himself first.

James rubbed at his nose and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m trying to talk you out of it. You know your own mind. You always have. Stubborn boy, but level-headed. Always two steps ahead of where everyone else is.”

Soames said nothing to this, for anything he said would bring him into impossible territory. He would likely be three steps ahead now, thanks to the patience of unnatural experience, the eerie hand of Nemesis. His father, however, had only begun his jeremiad, for he had got his running start and showed no sign of stopping.

“And here you are now, cap over the windmill for this girl. Well, I suppose it’s good you’re settling down. Your mother was beginning to worry about you. You wouldn’t look twice at any of the girls she introduced you to. Wouldn’t look once at most of them, she said. Wouldn’t talk at dinner parties, wouldn’t call on anyone—”

Soames stared at the ceiling. He remembered this phase of his mother’s campaign. Those girls had all been stale and flat in comparison with Irene, no ambition, no spark. She’d fenced with him on that first meeting, told him he was wrong and made her point stick, and he’d had to concede she was right. How many of those girls his mother introduced to him had done that? None of them. This was, to his surprise, why he hadn’t looked twice. And why Annette, for all her beauty, had not heated anything other than his body. He’d been half-aware of this, but it hadn’t struck home fully until he’d talked to Parkes how important it had been.

He came back to the present to find his father staring at him. “Well. You certainly weren’t listening to a word I said.”

“Sorry, Father, something you said reminded me of a letter I need to write to Fortescue, that fellow in Brighton with the four daughters.”

James blew out a breath. “Oh, that chap. Well, don’t let me detain you. There’s a good fee waiting for you there.” James made a face that indicated a worried kind of satisfaction.

“Before I go—has Mother written to Irene’s step-parents yet?” Soames said.

“How should I know?”

Soames sighed and cast up his eyes. “She’ll have told you.”

“She said something about writing earlier.”

“Right. I’ll ask her at dinner.”

“In a tearing hurry, I take it.”

“Merely making sure it all goes properly. As you know I always do.”

James waved him off, and Soames went back into his office to work. Around lunchtime he left and went to the dealer where he’d seen the Corot—not Dumetrius, his long-time cordial enemy, but another dealer—and looked at it again. There was something about that gnarled tree at the centre of it, the girl reclining with the book. The brushwork pleased him, the muddy banks of the stream below the trees, the restraint of the colours. He pulled out his loupe and looked more closely at the brushwork, the pigments, the canvas: it was genuine, though he had not doubted that from his first glance at it. This was the advantage of having had a lifetime of studying the work of the real Corot already. He put the loupe back in his pocket, made two mental calculations, then went to greet the dealer and engage in a pleasurable contest of wills. He came out rather better than he’d expected. The dealer had, he thought, underestimated him because of his apparent youth. Whatever the reason, he wrote a cheque and his second Corot was on the way to his rooms, to lean against the wall and be gazed at longingly in his free moments, and be shown to Irene some day after their marriage.

She’d like it, he thought. He’d enjoy telling her about it, hanging it on the wall and showing her his taste. She perhaps would not care that part of his reputation was choosing work that appreciated in value. He chose good work, work that outlasted mere trends, work that had something timeless even if he’d selected it when it had been deeply unfashionable. It was all for her, everything he did, from making money to buying beautiful things. Well, not all of it. He’d always liked having beautiful things around him to look at. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, they said. He was a very specific beholder, with very specific taste.

He returned to the office without lunch but with a sense of deep satisfaction, and buckled down to the work of making money for his upcoming marriage.

When asked that evening, Emily reassured Soames immediately that he was worrying about nonsense, though with some amused exasperation.

“I’m sure I don’t know what the fuss is about,” she said. “I wrote to her step-mother yesterday. I’ve asked when it’ll be most convenient for them to visit us up here, and told her I know a most darling hotel for them, just the thing.”

Soames had known that his mother certainly would write to Mrs Lomax, because it would be a serious breach of manners not to, and that she would certainly do so promptly, but nonetheless his relief on hearing this was enormous. She’d done it. Why was he fretting so? There was no good reason at all.

Dining with his parents made him feel better as much as it did them, he did confess. No need to chivvy them or deliver news to them this time. He could simply sit and hear the news from his mother about the family, or what somebody had said about his engagement, or exactly how much money George was said to have lost to Dartie in the bet, and how much George claimed to have gained from Eustace. Apparently George had been playing both sides, and Eustace had bet against Soames marrying at all. The more fool he. Soames was amused to learn George had not been out of pocket after all. James disapproved of the entire business, but Emily had a mischievous side that enjoyed it, especially since her son was marrying at a good, respectable age for a young man to marry. She did spend more of the dinner questioning him about Irene than he was quite comfortable with, but at least he had all the answers ready to hand: what she liked best at dinner, which flowers she preferred, what colours she looked well in, and another dozen questions about things that he suspected Irene would find slightly absurd. Not that he minded his mother asking. She wanted to know so that she might make Irene comfortable during her stay. Emily did so want everyone around her to be comfortable.

Soames wondered rather how his parents had managed to produce him. Winifred he understood; she was clearly a Forsyte and a Golding at the same time, both sensible and a martyr to fashion. How had they raised him, though, this uncomfortable, unsociable son of theirs? He’d never managed to work out what was wrong with him, not through his whole life. At least now he had the self-command to hide it better; he’d only got through his youth by keeping the world at a safe distance with his calculated sneer. It had cost him. Sneering less and masking himself better was a less lonely path.

Despite this moment of gloomy self-reflection, dinner left him contented and soothed. He went to his chambers afterwards to discover a fresh letter from Irene, arrived with the last post. The Corot had also been delivered while he was out. He unwrapped it and propped it up against the wall to look at it. He did love it. He decided to replace the Watteau with it, just for the change. One painting down, the other painting up. The Watteau had been on the wall over his writing desk where he could see it when he sat and thought, and he liked that the Corot was there now.

He poured himself whisky and soda and sat at his desk to read Irene’s latest letter to him, Corot before him, and to think about how to reply. Was he replying too hastily to her letters? Was there any such thing as too hastily? She seemed happy to get his letters, and happy to write to him.

Irene wrote that she had been practising the Brahms rhapsodies every day, and felt they were different enough from her previous repertoire that they had improved her technique. They were wonderful pieces: Clara Schumann had recognised Brahms’s genius immediately, and now she understood why.

Soames had begun to understand how important Schumann was to Irene. It was odd to him to realise that he had lived four years with her in his first go at life, and never known this at all, never discussed Clara Schumann with her even once after their first meeting when she’d been playing that love song and he’d walked in on her.

He read on. Irene had enjoyed his descriptions of his tea with his aunts, and even more what he wrote about the Corot. She was most grateful for his most recent gift of music, and only wished she were able to find something for him that pleased him as deeply as this pleased her. She wanted to return his generosity somehow, but did not know how. She had walked in the same direction again, and seen what she thought might be the same skua again, hunting gulls, but it was difficult to be sure.

Oh, if only she understood that anything she did at all was enough. Writing to him was enough.

He took out pen and paper. How to say what he wanted? There were so many things he might write, but he didn’t know what she would think of him if he wrote them.

My dear Irene, The Corot now hangs on the wall before me. I shall be able to show it you some day, and you shall tell me what you think when you see it. I have not yet had the opportunity to show you the paintings I like, but I hope to do so when you visit London with your step-parents, which I am told is quite soon. The gift I should like most is that you play for me whatever music I have brought you and tell me what you think of it, and help me understand it, perhaps. I cannot promise I will, but I promise to try. I had to consult a bird-book to learn about the skua. I can imagine you on your rock delighted by so fierce and solitary a bird. Do you often watch for birds on your walks? I am happy to learn that varying your repertoire is beneficial to your technique, for I have more sheet music to bring you then, including something I am told is quite new that you might enjoy. I shall not spoil the surprise. Most sincerely yours, SF

Perhaps she would tell him more about herself. He’d clearly known nothing at all about her before.

XIV. Irene looks at Turner

A little over a week later, on a Tuesday in late April, Soames stood on a platform at Waterloo station watching the express train from Bournemouth arrive, carrying passengers from various surrounding seaside towns, Lymington included. Irene and her step-parents were due on this train, and he wanted to be sure they found their way through this maze of a station. His upper lip was still bare: Irene had pronounced herself uncertain about a moustache on his specific face, after an enjoyable period of close inspection.

He stood at the way out, watching for them in the small crowd, and spotted Irene almost immediately, smiling at a porter doffing his cap to her. He greeted the Lomaxes with cool courtesy and gave Irene a little smile. The porter who’d doffed his cap had their luggage, following behind. Soames gave the man instructions and a generous tip, and they made their way through the station to the street and a growler. The cabbie strapped their luggage on top and they clambered inside to make their way north, to the Bayswater Road and their hotel in a square just off it.

Irene gazed out the streaky cab window at the city as the cab wound its way slowly through crowded streets. Soames sat next to her inside the cab, pleasurably close enough to her to feel her warmth. He watched her with a secret smile. She hadn’t seen enough of London yet; he had a list of things to show her immediately, and a much longer list of things to show her slowly over time.

“Was the train tolerable?” Soames asked the three of them, but looked for Irene’s answer.

Irene said, “I have just learned what you have endured every weekend coming down to see me. I hadn’t realised the journey was so long.”

“You didn’t?” Soames said. He cast a glance at Mrs Lomax sitting across from him, who might have been able to tell Irene, but hadn’t.

Mrs Lomax said merely, “Soames dear has been quite a dedicated suitor, hasn’t he, Irene? Seven hours in a train every weekend to see you!”

Soames’s finger sought his ring under his glove, but of course could not find it. He set his jaw.

Irene said, “He told me he would have endured the trip to Bradford for me, but I think I should prefer a shorter trip.” She was looking at him when she said it, and he realised that she was not mocking him at all, but was instead newly aware that his feelings had been deep indeed for some time. There were times when he still braced for her former cold treatment; he supposed he would eventually learn that warmth was what she offered him naturally now.

He said merely, “Well, I am glad you are in town for a bit, and neither of us need travel that length of time.”

“It is most kind of your mother to offer her hospitality to Irene like this,” said Mrs Lomax.

“My mother is looking forward to meeting you all.”

“And we her, aren’t we, Willy?”

“Oh yes, certainly, what?” Lomax was being jovial, if somewhat distracted by a notebook he was jotting in for some reason. He had business of some kind, Soames had been told.

Soames changed the subject. He turned to Irene. “Did you bring any music to play?” he said.

“I have! An entire valise full of sheet music along with my Conservatoire books.”

“The tuner has been round to make sure my parents’ piano is in good condition for you. I don’t know anything about pianos, but it is playable and in good tune. Or so the fellow said.”

“What’s its make?”

“Broadwood. My father saw me fussing over it and he assured me it’s good English workmanship.”

“It is,” said Irene.

Soames made a deep, thoughtful sound at the way she’d said that. It wasn’t entirely approving, he thought, but he had no idea why. Wasn’t one piano the same as any other? Some of them seemed absurdly over-decorated, but otherwise there were two sorts: the upright kind, and the grand pianos that his parents and Irene herself had.

Irene said nothing further about it, though, and soon enough they were at the Bayswater Road, and turning off onto the little square where their hotel was. Emily had directed them to one of the many small respectable family hotels in the area, modest, entirely within their means, and hard by Park Lane. Thoughtful as ever, his mother was. Soames was beginning to appreciate her quiet scheming in a manner he never had before.

He alit from the cab and helped the ladies out. The porter saw to the luggage and Soames waited downstairs while the Lomaxes settled their things. A few minutes later the four of them came back down to the pavement.

Mrs Lomax said, “Irene, dear, we are off to meet Soames’s parents. We shall leave you two to amuse yourselves until tea-time.”

They watched her step-parents set off along the pavement eastward. It was an easy walk from the hotel to his parents’ home, and the spring weather was cooperating. Soames and Irene looked at each other, and Soames found himself shy in the moment. There was so much to show her! Where ought he to start?

“What would you like to do?” he asked.

“Perhaps we could walk in Hyde Park, or go to a gallery?” Irene said to him.

“Or both,” said Soames. “It’s clear just now. We can walk in the Park, and then take a cab to the National Gallery.”

“That sounds wonderful. I have not been in the Park since I was a little girl.”

He offered his arm to her, and they set off.

She was on his arm perfectly, hand just inside his elbow, not clinging, but he could feel gentle pressure now and then which meant she was thinking about him. They did not talk. Soames couldn’t think of anything to say: he was walking in the Park with Irene on his arm on a sunny spring day, in London at its grubbiest, on its way up towards its wealthiest, with all his aunts and uncles alive, his parents alive. She’d agreed to marry him willingly, had told him she was falling in love with him, had written affectionate letters to him. He was walking through the Park with the loveliest woman in London on his arm. His heart was going to burst if anything happened to make him happier than this.

The air was fresh, a little cool. Sheep wandered through the open fields, grazing. The grass was quite green; rainwater had pooled in muddy low spots. They stuck to the gravel paths, to avoid the mud. London in spring was both lovely and damp.

“Are you minding the walk?” he said.

“No, I need it after that time on the train. You did that every weekend!”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think about what it meant that you were coming down from London. I thought you were staying on the weekends because you liked the sea air.”

“I went down for you.”

“And took me to concerts, which you didn’t care for in the least.”

“And endured your mockery when you accused me of falling asleep.”

“Which you did not, did you. You were thinking the entire time. Watching me and thinking.”

“Dreaming.”

“What of?”

“Very simple things, usually. You turning to smile at me. Holding hands with you stealthily, right there at the concert. What might happen if I confessed my love at that moment. Sometimes small things like sitting at night with you fireside, reading together. Sometimes—”

“Sometimes what?”

“Kissing you. Or our wedding day.”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” Irene said. “Or even when it will be.”

“Six months? More? We need time to take and decorate a house to live in for the first few years.”

“Where, do you think?”

“Undoubtedly somewhere around the Park, likely south of it, though where exactly I don’t know yet. I must find some place where the houses are good, the leases are affordable for us, and you approve of the location. I have taken stock of my position, and I know what I can manage while giving you a cook and two servants. I don’t think I can manage a lady’s maid for you, I’m afraid.”

“I hadn’t dreamed of having any of that, never mind a lady’s maid.”

“There are things you won’t have to do on your own any more. Dresses. Your hair.”

He remembered learning what a business women’s hair was early in his marriage with Irene, in that first life. He also remembered what it was like seeing her for the first time with her hair down, wearing nothing, and he immediately tucked that memory far back into the corner of his mind until he was completely alone and could savour it safely.

“My step-mother seems to have her hands quite full managing a cook and one maid.”

“Her servants are not very good. You and my mother will interview for our servants after the house is ready, a few weeks before the wedding.”

“I can manage engaging them on my own.”

Soames said, very gently, “Irene, my mother knows far more about this business than you or I do. I would seek her advice if I were doing it on my own. She has been wanting to see me married for a long time. She’ll want any excuse to fuss and make things easy for us.”

“Oh, that’s—I am sorry. I don’t mean to let my pride get in the way.”

“The next few months will be madness, I think. We’ll be at our limit. Finding a house, furnishing it, decorating it—”

Irene said, tentatively, “Would we be able to have a piano?”

Soames came to a dead stop on the path and turned towards her. “I would never dream of depriving you of a piano. Never! Do you hear?”

Irene would not meet his eyes.

Soames got his voice under control, but he was still heated. “Anything you want that is in my power you may have. I know you need a piano to live. Of course we shall have one!”

“Soames. I meant only to ask if we could afford it.”

Soames hid his face behind his hand for a moment. “Irene. My apologies. That was said far too strongly.”

“Soames, I am the one to apologise. Since my father died it’s been—I haven’t had anyone who paid the least attention, and it’s so strange to suddenly have you. You’re so much the opposite of my step-mama. She tried to stop me going to the Conservatoire because of the cost. This is so strange, to have you already thinking of what I should want.”

“There is nothing to apologise for, save me raising my voice.”

“I feel at a disadvantage. I want to give you gifts as you give me and I can’t. I don’t know what you like, except paintings, and I can’t buy those.”

Soames breathed, letting that strange spike of feeling ease inside himself. He felt like an utter fool, having lost his control over himself over something so absurd. Such a foolish thing to get hot over. His emotions were so strong, from passion to anger to love. His body kept betraying him. But—there was something else here. Irene didn’t understand how her financial position was about to change. Should he tell her? He had always avoided telling his wives anything about how much money he had. He’d merely spent money on them. Buy the dresses, he’d said. Get the summer frocks.

No. That was not what he wanted to tell Irene now. What did he want from her?

He said, very quietly, “I liked the pressed daffodils. And your letters. I re-read them nearly every night.”

“You do?” He nodded, almost shamefacedly, but she smiled at him. “I can write letters.”

“As often as you like.”

“Should I write from the hotel?”

“Please. And—I like you playing for me.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“But Irene—”

“Yes?”

“The thing I wish for most is you. Your company. Your conversation. Your affection.” That last word was difficult to say, but he said it.

“You may have that as well,” Irene said, very softly. “Now, shall we continue on to this gallery? I would like you to show me paintings and tell me what they mean to you. I should like you to tell me everything, the way I talk to you about music.”

“I think I can do that.”

She took his arm gently. Soames touched her fingers where they curled around his elbow. They would be indoors without gloves later, and he would be able to touch her, and he would apologise again. Irene smiled up at him. “Dear Soames, how much further is it?”

“We’re nearly to Hyde Park Corner.” She’d called him dear!

With that spinning in his head, Soames led her down towards the corner, and the end of Park Lane, where they could hail a cab and head to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Turner had left the Nation his paintings when he’d died, and quite a number of them were on display in rooms specially built for them. Soames had spent hours here looking at them when the fancy took him, as well as whatever else was on display when it changed. There was one particular collection of watercolours he wanted to show her. He led her directly to it, bypassing many other national treasures. Were the paintings he’d left to the Nation here, in that future he’d never see, where Fleur and Michael were mourning him? He hoped they were. More people ought to look at them.

He led Irene directly to the Barry Rooms, and then to a particular painting of Venice in the early morning that he wanted her to see. He loved Turner, especially his watercolours. He had seen this painting perhaps a dozen times before and never tired of it. He stopped, and looked at her.

“You’ve led me past many paintings,” she said.

“Yes. I want to start by showing you this one. Stand about here. I should like you to simply look at it. The colours. The shapes. What do you see? What do you think about?”

He stepped back himself alongside her and looked once again. He hadn’t stood in this specific space, looking at this painting, since before the War. He smiled to himself. It was as he had remembered it.

After some minutes, Irene spoke quietly. “Tell me what you see.”

Soames stared at the painting through narrowed eyes and thought for a moment. How to begin? “There are two ways I look at paintings. One way is to look at its technique. How did the painter accomplish it?”

He beckoned her closer, so she could look at the paper itself.

“Watercolours are difficult, because time matters. The paint doesn’t stay wet for very long. Turner would layer on the pigment in washes, one colour into another, wet into wet, to get the sky and that water. Then he’d lift the pigment off again with a clean brush or a rag, to get that transparency, and those sharp edges. Sometimes he would use his fingers. He’d overpaint sometimes, with lighter colours, like the white in the highlights of the water. The masts of the boats might be last, with a smaller brush with less water in it, or the edge of a larger one.”

He pointed carefully, without touching. “There.”

Irene leaned in and looked at where he was pointing, with concentration. “I see. The pigment looks thicker. Is that the word?”

“It’s a fine word. What he did for any particular watercolour depends on when he painted it. He changed over time. And techniques with oils are another thing altogether. The brushwork can leave a much more visible trace in oils, and this is itself part of the work.”

Soames looked at Irene anxiously to see if he’d said too much, because he could go on about this topic, but she was now looking very carefully at the reflections in the water under the tower.

She turned to him. “You said two ways.”

“My other way is to look at its composition: colours, shapes. Does it please my eye? I can’t explain it very well. I’m not the sort of man who writes essays about art.”

“Could you explain this one painting, perhaps?”

Soames touched gloved fingers to his lips, and considered the question.

“It’s the colours for this, and the contrasts. Look at the water, rose and blue and so perfectly still. The sky is in contrast, yellow with dawn. Then there are those dark spikes of masts against it, the buildings catching the light. It’s so delicate and perfectly observed. Sea, morning, sailboats. The reflection of sky on water. I can almost hear it, seagulls and water. Salt in the air. It’s a moment in time that likely never was, and certainly will never be again. A Venice I can never know, caught for all time in this painting, one man’s eye and skill capturing something of this moment forever lost yet forever preserved. So beautiful. So untouchable.”

“I think I begin to understand,” she said, quietly. “It is about observation.”

“Ruskin said Turner didn’t paint things as they were, but painted their true nature.”

“A moment in time, in spirit if not reality.”

He nodded at her, genuinely pleased. Perhaps they might find a way to speak to each other through this. They stood together a little longer, looking at a Venice that was yet never was.

Irene stirred. “When are we to meet them at the hotel?” she said.

He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. “Bother,” he murmured. “We need to return immediately.” They made their way out of the gallery and to the street, where he hailed a cab. He handed her into it, and sat next to her, arm in arm, perhaps a little improperly but not scandalously. That had been a lovely walk, and a lovely time in the gallery.

“I should like to do that again,” Irene said to him. “Another painter you like, perhaps. You mentioned John Crome?”

“One of the English school. We might go to the National Gallery again and walk through until we see something I want to talk about.”

“That would be marvellous.” She pressed his arm and smiled at him. That was sincere. He felt a flood of warmth rush through him. It was truly pleasant to share what he thought about paintings with her. Why had he never done it before?

The cab made its slow way north up Park Lane to the Bayswater Road, and then to the little square where their hotel was.

“I am truly sorry about raising my voice earlier,” he said.

“Soames, I have accepted your apology. Please don’t let this continue to trouble you.”

“Thank you. I—well. I will see you at dinner.”

He told the cab to wait, saw her to the door of her hotel, and then climbed back in for his club. He wanted tea, and he wanted not to talk to anybody. His mother probably wanted him at home to talk over meeting her step-parents, but he was too overwhelmed by the day to manage it.

He sat in a window for tea and cake and solitary comfort. Parkes was not in the club just then. He’d seen Parkes several times since their evening smoking together, but he was usually in the club later than tea-time. Soames was relieved not to have to talk to Parkes, if he were honest. He wanted to mull this over. He’d made only the one mistake all day, he thought. He’d been upset not with her, but by the idea of depriving her of something; he’d told her how much her letters mattered to him; he’d shown her Turner. On the whole, it was a good start to her visit. He would need to stay in closer control of himself, and remember that she didn’t know how much her circumstances were about to change.

At seven-twenty he was at Park Lane, the first to arrive for dinner. His father drew him aside in the entry hall and gave him a grim look.

“Don’t say you told me so, but you did. This fellow fancies himself a businessman but he’s weak. Isn’t even aware he’s negotiating for her. At least his wife knows. She’s the one who’ll put him up to something.”

“I shouldn’t try to get anything from him.”

“No, I shan’t. You’re right about seeing the back of him.”

That was the end of the conversation: the others arrived in quick succession—Winifred and Dartie, then the Lomaxes on time to the minute. Irene was introduced to everyone, while Soames stood back and watched, hands behind his back where no one could see his thumb fidgeting with his signet ring. Irene was, of course, charming to them all.

Emily took Irene’s arm and led her into the drawing-room, with the rest of them following behind. “Now, dear, tell me what Soames showed you this afternoon. A whole afternoon at the National Gallery—it must have been lovely.”

Irene said, “We looked at one painting.”

“My goodness, only one?” That was Mrs Lomax.

“Only one, and we spent quite a long time looking at it and talking about it.”

“That sounds exactly like Soames,” said Emily.

There was amusement all around; Soames was immune to it. It was his odd hobby, and he could not expect his family to understand why he did what he did. Irene however, seemed not to have minded at all, but instead to have had exactly the experience she expected. That was good.

The dinner-bell rang, and the couples assembled in the order Emily had arranged for them, with quiet words to them all while they were conversing. The trouble with formal dinners was that he could not take Irene in to dinner for a single one, nor would he ever be close enough to speak to her during them; the advantage was that he could look at her in evening dress and watch her smiling. He would, on the whole, rather have been allowed to take her in. Alas, his mother was not one to violate rules, nor one to allow them to relax when there were visitors who needed to be treated to as impressive and correct a dinner as could be given eight people without tipping over into the ridiculous.

James, all anxious angles and white whiskers, led the procession with Mrs Lomax, who was correct yet subtly wrong, on his right arm. She was looking up at him with an ingratiating expression on her face, saying something that seemed to make him even more anxious than usual. Soames felt sympathy for his father, but was unable to rescue him.

Next, Dartie with Irene on his arm. Dartie was being every bit as charming as that man of the world knew how to be: he was not quite in his cups yet, uplifted but not unduly exalted, dripping with compliments, and letting his eyes linger a shade too long on Irene’s décolletage.

Soames had Winifred on his arm and walked behind, watching. He saw Irene’s gloved hand on Dartie’s coat sleeve, white against its black, and noted how Irene was holding herself at a careful distance while smiling and seemingly enjoying his compliments. He glanced to his side to see how Winifred was taking it: she seemed not even to notice. Did she know yet what sort of man her husband was? She knew he hadn’t paid for those pearls round her neck, but she hadn’t yet seen the drinking, the nights out, the infidelities, or felt him twist her arm to get her to do what he wanted. And it would be nearly twenty years more before Dartie would do what he eventually would with those pearls.

Soames watched Dartie smile his brilliant smile at Irene, knowing Irene was immune to it, and knowing that Winifred was still in love with the man. She would have her heart broken as thoroughly as he’d had his the first time round. Could he do anything about it? He would spare her if he could. He laid his hand over his sister’s on his arm and said, “Winifred, I—”

“What is it, dear boy?”

“Nothing. Just remember I’m here for you.” He couldn’t say anything to her, not here, not now. Could he ever?

Winifred said, puzzled, “Soames, dear, of course. You always are.”

They went in, Soames’s hand still over his sister’s as if he’d forgotten it were there. Behind them were Lomax and their mother, and Soames could hear his mother making her usual comfortable conversation about food, with Lomax making somewhat over-enthusiastic replies. She did fuss over what her guests preferred, and Lomax was being congenial if unsubtle.

They sat, and Warmson began his smooth rounds, aided by a footman. Soup, sherry. Soames watched Irene, seated as far away from him as the table allowed, and drank a spoonful of thick soup. Why was she so far away? Just then she looked up and caught his eye, and they smiled at each other.

Winifred leaned close to him. “I can see how she’s looking at you, Soames. She is indeed as gorgeous as you said.”

Soames flushed. “I don’t know why everyone is so surprised.”

“We all expected exaggeration, I suppose, but we ought to have known better with you. Even if you are in love, you describe things as they are.”

“I should hope so,” muttered Soames. He buried his face in his sherry glass rather than have to give any better account of himself, or explain exactly how much in love he was. Likely Winifred could read him as well as his mother could.

He put down the sherry glass and did his best to get through his soup. It wasn’t all that hard, to his surprise: she was here; he could see she was safe and happy; he would be able to touch her later. This thought soothed him enough that he contentedly drank his soup, ate his fish, and drank enough wine with each that Winifred commented on his appetite. He glowered at her, and she laughed at him.

The meal went all eight courses, and the wines were good and plentiful, and at least two of the gentlemen at the table took full advantage of them. By the time they were cracking nuts, Lomax and Dartie were both red in the face. James had a word with Warmson, and the port that appeared as the ladies withdrew was not the port that had been laid down for Soames at his birth, but instead a far more ordinary port. The two men were in no condition to appreciate what they were drinking, and it would have upset Soames as well as his father to waste good port on them.

Lomax and Dartie lit cigars; James and Soames abstained. James’s cigars were good, but unpleasant to Soames’s nose; his younger self was incapable of tolerating them, apparently. Dartie and Lomax puffed away, cheerfully trading lewd jokes, the sort of joke that had been told at dinner-parties by men of the world for a century. Soames looked at his father, who looked right back at him, united at that moment in distaste and impatience. James made an imperceptible head gesture at Warmson, who took the port away without seeming to have done anything at all. Soames finished his own drink with little interest in it. He’d known the man was ill-bred, but he hadn’t quite realised how ill-bred until that moment.

“Well,” said James, setting his half-empty glass down, “let’s see how they’re getting on out there.”

Soames gave him a grateful look and made his way out and up to the drawing room with more rapidity than was perhaps polite. The ladies were seated on sofa and chairs seemingly making cheerful conversation. Irene and Winifred were sitting with their heads together, deep in discussion about something. Soames wondered if he ought to be alarmed or not; they both looked up, saw him, and then whispered to each other, and he decided he was most certainly alarmed. Winifred was going to tease him about something.

The other men appeared behind him, and there was a general noise of greeting and conversation.

Irene stood and immediately went over to Soames, who took her hand and kissed it with simple intensity. He kept hold of it and drew her over to stand near the fire with him. He held her gaze for a moment and raised an eyebrow. She smiled and nodded at him; he wasn’t sure what she meant. “You have been talking to my sister.”

“Yes, and she has told me stories of you as a boy.”

Soames made a deep sound and glared across the room at Winifred, who was looking at Mrs Lomax, not at him, so it was wasted.

“She says you have always been a most protective brother, and that you have excellent taste. Oh, and that my engagement ring is very chic.”

“Not the word I’d have used.”

“Your mother called it modern.”

“A better word.”

“Come, let us go take our coffee and make conversation properly.” Irene stroked his arm as she said this, so as to soothe the sting of having to return to the dinner party, so he followed her and took a seat at the edge of the group, in the back, where he wouldn’t have to make conversation. Irene returned to the sofa, between his sister and his mother. Winifred took her hands and gathered her in immediately.

Soames accepted a coffee cup from his mother and listened to them all talk, watching Irene quietly as he always had at these things. She was setting them all straight about where she had studied, the Conservatoire de Paris, about how few women had been there and how old they had variously been, how she had had to audition for her place in the school. She had been granted a scholarship from an English musical institution once she had been admitted. Soames found himself wanting his moustache again, simply so he could gnaw it in misery. How had he never asked her these questions?

Emily was saying, “When I was admiring that most lovely ring Soames gave you, I noticed how short your nails are kept. Is that for your instrument?”

“Indeed, yes.”

Winifred then said, “How tedious is it to be asked to play in every drawing room you visit?”

Irene laughed. “It depends on the drawing room, what they want to hear, and how happy they are to hear it.”

Winifred then said, “Well, we shan’t ask you unless you wish to, to give you a bit of a rest from it. But do tell, was it disappointing to return to Lymington after Paris?”

“Yes and no. I do miss the music of Paris, and how much was happening at the conservatoire. But I did meet a true friend in Lymington. He is the person I play for most often now.”

Everyone looked at him, and Soames hid his face behind his coffee-cup, though it was already empty. Then he realised that this was a cue for him. He set cup and saucer down, and said, “I should like to hear something now, if you would. Surprise me, please. I shall turn pages for you.”

He stood and offered his hand to her. She rose gracefully and took it. He led her over to the piano. She raised the top slightly, enough that it could be heard without being loud, and then sat down and adjusted the bench. She rested her fingers on the keys for a moment with her eyes closed.

“Is all well?”

“Quite well. Dinner was wonderful. The wine was excellent, but I fear there might have been more of it than my step-father is quite used to.”

“Quite a lot more,” said Soames. “Will it be all right?”

“My step-mama knows how to manage him.”

Irene opened her eyes and began to play. He wasn’t sure what it was; not the Brahms, not Mendelssohn, at least not that he could tell. He didn’t know much yet, he had to admit. It had of course been absurd to think about turning pages for her; she was playing this from memory. It had a lovely melody, almost singing over something deeper murmuring below it. It had a composition like Corot’s, he thought, with contrasts. A serene meadow with that girl reading quietly, and a shaded brook running beside it and darker forest. Not that he had words for it!

He stood watching Irene’s face as she played, trying to work it out. It ended quietly before he had a chance to decide what it was about. But did it have to be about something?

A polite applause came from the other side of the drawing room, followed by the buzz of conversation resuming.

He looked his question at her.

“Schubert,” Irene said. “One of his impromptus. Opus 90 number 3, in G-flat.”

He took out his notebook and propelling pencil, laid the notebook on the piano, and wrote something carefully.

Irene cried out: “Aha! You are discovered! That is how you remember what I play.”

He nodded. “I am methodical. Or I try to be.” He tucked his notebook away into his coat pocket. She smiled fondly at him. He wanted to kiss her, but bit his lip instead. He asked, “What is an impromptu?”

“An excellent question, my dearest pupil. It’s a piece meant to sound as if it’s improvised in the moment, flowing, without any specific structure. Sonatas have quite strict form.”

“I shall take you at your word,” Soames said, bemused.

“Would you like to hear another?”

“Please.”

The next one was faster and more full of fancy little figures on top, with a melody underneath that Soames liked; it felt quite easy to like, he thought, even when it went into a section he’d recently learned to call minor key. When she finished, she told him it was the fourth in opus 90, in A-flat major, and he wrote that down carefully as well.

At that moment, Lomax came over to them. He put his hands over her bare arms and held her more closely than Soames felt was quite necessary. Irene’s face was completely still, and her smile was gone. Lomax rocked her back and forth, smiling cheerfully. “Is my lovely step-daughter entertaining you? She is so talented, isn’t she? Such a wonder!”

Soames gave him a smile that exposed one tooth. “Quite,” he said.

Lomax shifted his hands up and fondled Irene’s shoulders. “Such a love,” he said. “I’m going to miss her so much when she flies the nest.”

Irene slipped out from under Lomax’s hands and gracefully moved over to Soames without seeming to be fleeing, but Soames felt a tremble in her hand as he took it. He bowed over it and kissed it in an obvious manner, so as to give her an excuse for coming over to him.

“I am honoured Irene has flown to me,” he said to Lomax, with a voice that ought to have sent him running. “Now. Shall we return to the rest of the party?”

He held Irene back a step behind Lomax to look his question at her. She shook her head at him, and sighed. He pressed her hand between his to reassure her. They sat down with the rest of the group, and made conversation. Or Soames did; Irene was silent for some minutes. The after-dinner conversation did not last long, however, for neither Dartie and Lomax was pleasing their wives.

“Come along, Willy,” said Mrs Lomax, in a voice nearly as cool as Soames’s. Ah, there would be hell to pay if he continued misbehaving. Dartie and Lomax exchanged commiserating looks, those two would-be men of the world, and the Jameses saw the Lomaxes to the door.

Dartie made a showy, charming farewell to both Mrs Lomax and her beautiful step-daughter. Soames drew Irene to the side to make his own quieter farewell, for doing so in front of anyone else was unbearable. He could kiss her hands and her cheek but not her lips. At least he could whisper a reminder to her to write to him before he had to step back and release her. She went off back to the hotel with her step-parents, handed into a cab by one of the male servants. He watched it head off, hoping Lomax wouldn’t dare repeat himself in front of his wife.

“Monty, dear, we ought to be going too,” said Winifred. “We need to be back for Publius quite soon.”

“Right right! Mustn’t keep the boy waiting!” Dartie said, with the tipsy good cheer of a man who had a son to perpetuate his name.

And with that the front door of Park Lane closed behind their visitors. Warmson vanished in the way he always vanished.

“Well,” said Emily.

“Yes,” said Soames.

Emily wound her arm through his and drew him into the drawing room and stood him before the fire. “My dear boy,” she said.

Soames looked into her face with concern, afraid she was about tell him something awful. But there was a look of deep affection in her eyes, and she went on: “My dear boy, she is perfectly lovely, and has excellent manners and grace in all the ways that her step-parents do not. I have never seen you so happy as when you are looking at her.”

Soames flushed. Had he showed his feelings this clearly the first time? He had not. He had kept his face unruffled and calm, and lived to regret it.

“What’s more, she is indeed beautiful, and it is clear to anyone with eyes that she thinks the world of you. My boy!” And that was a warm embrace from his mother indeed.

“She’s a taking thing,” said James, gruffly. Soames gave him a look. James grumbled under his breath about how nobody’d told him how pretty she was. That was the most he’d get from his father in the way of an admission that he’d been right about Irene, and it would do.

“Her step-mother and I have agreed she’ll stay a fortnight. She had feared we might not want her so long, but I’ve set her quite straight on that. We’ll get a good start on her dresses immediately, so she’ll have something to wear when we introduce her to the family.”

Soames knew he had that look on his face again, but it was completely beyond his control. Emily looked entirely pleased to see it. “My dear boy, I knew you would find somebody who was right for you. Dear Irene is a wonderful match.”

James gave them a long lugubrious sniff. “Can’t say the same for her relations. That Lomack fellow shan’t drink any more of my port if I’ve got anything to do with it.”

“Now, James, there’s no use blaming the girl for her step-parents. We needn’t know them after the wedding.”

“Thank goodness,” muttered Soames.

“We’ll have to have them to dinner tomorrow night, and that’ll be it until the wedding.”

“They’re coming by again tomorrow in the afternoon to wrap up a few last things. At least the fellow won’t dare try for anything more from you after that performance.”

Soames nodded in sharp agreement. That had to be half of Mrs Lomax’s annoyance.

Emily said, “Well, anyway, that’ll be over soon enough. Soames, dear. Your friend Gregory, Mr Parkes—I have invited him round to dinner the night after they leave. I do wish we could find someone to make up the number.”

“I’ll go without,” Soames said.

“A pity,” said Emily.

“I promised Parkes he would get to enjoy your dinners. He said he had specially fond memories of your menus.”

“Well, that was kind of him, dear. I do hope we won’t disappoint him.”

The compliment had pleased Emily greatly, Soames saw. That was the magic of Parkes, the magic Soames never had himself. With plans for the morrow made, he kissed his mother goodnight, and took his own leave. He made his own way home on foot, feeling he needed to take some exercise.

In the morning the housekeeper brought him hot water and his post. He washed and shaved, carefully. It wouldn’t do to nick himself with Irene in town to see it. His hand was steady and he was feeling rather happy to know he’d be seeing her at tea at Park Lane and again at dinner, and then every day for another two weeks. He started dressing: linens, white shirt, the usual grey trousers and braces. He started idly sorting through his post, still only half-dressed. A letter from an acquaintance, one from an important client, a letter from Irene! She’d written to him already. He opened it hastily.

Soames, My step-father continues to trouble me now we have returned to the hotel. My step-mother has gone to bed with a nervous headache. I am in my bedroom with the door locked writing this. He was calling to me through the door to come out, saying he knew how to have a good time in London and I ought to join him. I’ll give this to the boots when he falls asleep. I don’t know what to do. Yours, IH

Soames stood frozen for a moment, while even colder anger ran through his blood, then he seized control of himself and thought it through. He’d known the man was not quite sober when they’d left. The thing to do was go there as quickly as possible. Then he would know what needed to be done next. What did he still need to do? Oh. Stockings, boots, that order. Cuffs, collar, tie, knotted as rapidly as possible. Waistcoat, watch-chain threaded. Frock-coat. Pockets filled with what he needed for the day, while his hands trembled with anxiety and the need to move even faster than he was moving.

Coat on, out the door, her letter in his pocket. He ran to Victoria Street and hailed a hansom on the curb. He was at their family hotel in Sussex Gardens shortly before nine. The porter admitted him. Soames gave him his card and asked for Mrs Lomax. He then stood waiting with carefully concealed impatience to hear if he would be received.

Five minutes later, he was ushered upward to the first floor, to a little sitting room; Irene was to his right at a writing desk, turning and catching his eye for a moment. He took note of the two doors opening off from the room, the sofa, the armchair, the table in the centre. Mrs Lomax was standing up from a chair to greet him. Soames advanced to shake her hand.

“Dear Soames! Such an early visit!”

“Yes, forgive me. I wanted to assure myself you were settling in well.”

“We are. This neighbourhood is charming, and we are most grateful to your mother for having suggested this hotel to us.”

“My mother had your comfort in mind.”

“It’s a pity we’re only staying for the two days!”

“There will be other visits,” Soames said.

“Irene is settling in comfortably also, though of course she has a rather longer stay ahead of her.”

“Yes. Good morning, Irene.” He took a step towards Irene, gloves in left hand, and reached out to shake her hand. She looked tired, he thought: she must have had a sleepless night. On the desk before her was a dip pen, a bottle of ink, and a square of her stationery half-filled. Whatever she had been writing, she had not quite finished. He caught her eye again, and raised his eyebrows. She raised her hand to her lips. He would give her enough time to finish. He turned back to Mrs Lomax, who invited him to sit. He set his gloves on the little table and placed himself where Mrs Lomax’s back was to Irene. He could watch Irene from here while he made whatever conversation he could manage to make.

“Will you be joining my parents for dinner at Park Lane tonight?” he asked, knowing the answer in advance.

“Indeed we will be, and we will be calling on them later today to discuss more about the arrangements for you two.”

“My mother seemed most interested in discussing wedding dates.”

“Yes, we have so much to discuss! Though she did seem to think the date was quite obvious to her. The gentlemen had worked out some satisfactory arrangement about the trousseau, and we had only begun to discuss that.”

“I do hope you will spare me the details,” Soames said, because it was something he thought she might expect him to say, and indeed he got the response he wanted, at some cost to his dignity. “But what date have you agreed upon?”

“Oh, I shan’t speak out of turn. It will be a lovely autumn wedding, however.”

“I had guessed mid-October, given what I expect it will take to furnish a house.”

“Have you chosen anything yet?”

“No. I have some idea of neighbourhoods, but have not yet considered anything seriously.”

“There is so much to be done! I’m sure you are most grateful Irene is to stay.”

“Indeed, yes. I regret I am not available to escort Irene to more galleries today; I have two important client meetings at my office that I cannot avoid.”

“Of course you do, Mr Forsyte. Such a clever man. Irene, what are you doing writing while Soames is here to visit you?”

“My apologies, Mama, two of my friends from the Conservatoire are here in London, and I did so wish to write to see if I might call on them while we are visiting.”

“Oh!” Soames said, quite eagerly so as to attract Mrs Lomax’s attention away from Irene. “Please do let us know if we may invite them to dinner tomorrow. My mother was fretting that we need someone to make up the number. My groomsman will be there tomorrow night, and she’s short one lady. To hear her talk, this is a disaster worse than anything she has encountered in years. She would be delighted to have more around her table to enjoy her hospitality, and we can always find more gentlemen if both wish to join us.”

Mrs Lomax tittered. “Your mother is such a gracious host.”

“She is. My mother’s door is always open.” And he glanced at Irene.

“How thoughtful of her,” Irene said. “I shall do so, though it is short notice.” She had turned away from the writing desk, he noted, and the paper in front of her was clean.

Soames checked his watch. “Ah. I must be on my way to my office.” He stood and picked up his gloves. “I trust I shall see you both for tea at Park Lane?”

“Of course, Soames!” said Mrs Lomax, and he gritted his teeth as always to hear her use his first name. He shook her hand.

Irene stood as well and advanced to shake his hand. Soames took her hand, and leaned down to kiss her cheek gently. In her palm was a square of tight-folded paper, which he slipped between his fingers. He traded his gloves into his right hand, then made a brief fuss with them. The note went into a glove safely.

“Soames, dear, a moment, please.” Irene reached up and straightened his collar and readjusted his four-in-hand knot slightly. “That looks better,” she said. She smiled up at him, seemingly unaware of what an utter tumult she’d caused inside him with that tiny gesture.

He opened his mouth then closed it again, unable to find anything at all to say. He held Irene’s hand again for a long silent moment, then took his leave of them. He rattled down the stairs, to the porter, who gave him his hat and umbrella. Soames tipped the man absent-mindedly, and touched the note in the palm of his glove. Read it here or in a cab? Here, or he would surely lose his mind.

Soames, There were angry words spoken in the next room this morning. I could not hear them well enough to know what was said. My step-father was quite apologetic to my step-mama afterwards, and he ignored me. He left to do some brief business in the City. It was only the wine, I hope. I look at what I have written and find it an absurd hope. I shall go to your parents’ house for the day to be sure. I think about what life was like when my father was alive and it is difficult to think about without mourning him again. I might wish—You have come. Your face says everything you are feeling to me now that I know how to hear it. Thank you. I know where to find you today. IH

Soames tucked the note into his breast pocket and made his way out to the Bayswater Road to hail a cab. Lomax was a problem when he was drunk, just as Dartie was, and held in tight rein by his wife when he was sober. It was perhaps no worse than that, though that was bad enough. It could be managed for the time that Irene had left with them, and Soames would be on the watch.

That evening Lomax himself was on his best behaviour. Warmson, uninstructed, never filled his glass above the half, and Lomax never marked it. Soames, seated at his mother’s right, watched her and saw that she was coolly pleased. She said a word to Lomax, encouraging him to have another croquette, then smoothly turned back to Mrs Lomax and continued the conversation about hats. His mother had her own techniques, honed over years, now on quiet display. A father, a son, a dinner party: she managed them all deftly, without them even noticing, leaving them all pleased to have been managed.

He kept his smile to himself, because he would have hated to explain it, but it was pure admiration.

XV. George is surprised

Early Thursday morning the Lomaxes caught the train from Waterloo station, leaving Irene established in Park Lane under Emily’s delighted management. Soames found himself smiling quietly all day while he worked. Irene would be in London for two weeks. He would see her every day, dine with her every night, and be able to call on her whenever she wished him to. He could send her flowers every day! He had indeed already commenced doing so, by means of a florist who would send restrained but aesthetic arrangements every morning.

He called round at Park Lane at tea to hear how things had gone with Irene and the various members of the family who’d appeared and been introduced. He found his cousin George installed in an armchair drinking tea, with Irene not yet down. He shook George’s hand warily and sat, braced for wit at his expense.

George was in hot water with Uncle Roger for some reason that George certainly was not speaking about. Young Roger was alleging it was about a woman and the only thing George would say was that it certainly was not: he had better sense than that. Whatever it was, George was being diligent about attending family functions outside of the presence of any members of his immediate family until the storm had blown over. He had called on the aunts with assiduous attention, and had made his duty call on his favourite Aunt Emily to beg for her assistance in avoiding his family. Or so he was explaining; Soames had his doubts.

“Dear Aunt, you must rescue me,” George said. “My brother Roger is haunting my club, on the warpath to lecture me about my supposed transgressions, and I must hide from him. I don’t dare dine there. Dartie has failed me. He claims that fatherhood has interfered with the duties of friendship, if you can imagine.”

Emily said, “Well, this is providential, because we were looking for a fourth man to make up the number tonight.”

“Am I crashing a dinner party, Aunt?”

“Only a small one, I’m afraid. Miss Heron has invited two friends to dine with us, and we are joined by Soames’s groomsman.”

“Miss Heron?” said George. “Oh! Miss Heron!”

At that moment, Irene entered the drawing room, and Soames rose and went to her.

“Here she is now!” said Emily. “Irene, please do allow me to introduce my nephew George Forsyte. George, Miss Irene Heron.”

George sprang to his feet as well. He reached out to take her hand and kiss it. He said, “Miss Heron! I have heard your name whispered behind the closed doors of shadowy drawing rooms across London. The tea pots steam with mysterious brews as the Forsytes speak in hushed voices one to the next of the exotic beauty of this Miss Heron, who has stolen the heart of the cold and formidable Soames, he who stood frozen and untouchable for so long. And here you stand before me!”

“George,” said Emily. “Are you drunk?”

“No, Aunt, simply stunned. Charmed, Miss Heron. I shall not miss dinner for anything now.”

Soames made a sort of growling sound, and Irene looked at him oddly before looking back at George and saying something gracious to him that Soames completely missed.

“Aunt, I will hide myself away until the dinner hour, and present myself at half-past seven on the dot, a well-behaved nephew, diligent about family matters, not at all a reprobate.”

“Goodness, George, I should think not.”

“Thank you, Aunt. You are among the few. Miss Heron, I am delighted to make your acquaintance, and glad of the chance for your company later this evening. Adieu!”

And George left.

“Well,” said Emily, “he’s certainly in an odd mood. I do wonder what he’s done.”

Soames, who had no idea what it was about, said merely that he thought Uncle Roger was making a fuss over nothing. If his own father fretted over nothing, Roger often explosively raged over nothing. George was capable of anything, mind, but Soames rather doubted he’d done anything noteworthy this time other than gamble his bank account dry.

Soames crossed one knee over the other and drank his tea with his mother and his fiancée. He watched Irene stealthily over his cup, once again peacefully left to enjoy merely being near her.

“Well, you have your number made up,” he said to his mother.

“Indeed, I won’t need to go without a partner, now. Irene, both of your friends sent notes around accepting, so we shall have a lovely full table tonight.”

Irene’s face lit with uncomplicated joy. Soames felt his heart squeeze with matching happiness. She would be happy to see her friends; he would therefore be happy to meet them. His mother would certainly invite them to the wedding so they could sit on Irene’s side of the aisle and fill it out somewhat.

“We have had quite a collection of people calling today,” Emily said.

“I have met nearly all of the younger cousins, I think,” Irene said.

“Sunday is for Timothy’s and the aunts and uncles,” said Soames. “The true ordeal.”

“You are quite cynical, my dear boy. You’ll give Irene the wrong idea about them all.”

“To the contrary,” he murmured.

“How many of them are there?” Irene said. “I get the sense there are more than I originally thought.”

“Ten in the Forsyte family proper,” Emily told her, “but you won’t see two of them.” She then counted them off. “Dear Aunt Ann, the oldest of them all. Then Uncle Jolyon, the third of the name, the head of the family. He has a son, but—”

“The less said the better,” said Soames.

“The boy did behave badly, making his father so unhappy. Well. Next is our own dear James, and his twin Swithin, though they look nothing alike. Then Roger—”

“George’s father,” said Irene.

“His older brother is called Young Roger when you’re at Timothy’s,” Soames said.

“Does Young Roger have a son?” asked Irene.

“No, but if he did he would be called Very Young Roger, of course.”

“Of course.” Irene smiled at him and Soames smiled back. Their first son would be Young James, and she’d probably guessed that already.

Emily continued, “Then Aunt Juley, Mrs Septimus Small. Her husband passed away very young. She does say the oddest things.”

“Usually what everyone is most hoping she won’t say,” murmured Soames.

“Then Aunt Hester, who never married, then Uncle Nicholas.”

Irene said, “Soames has mentioned his uncle Nicholas. What about Timothy himself?”

“It’s his house, but you shall almost never see him,” said Soames. “He hides in his study. He’s the youngest of the aunts and uncles.”

Emily rounded it off. “Finally Aunt Susan, the next-youngest. She lives on Campden Hill and visits rarely. And that’s all ten. Then there are all the wives, cousins, husbands and wives of cousins, their children, family connections, and so on. You’ve met only about half the cousins today.”

“Oh dear,” Irene said. She set her tea cup down and looked dismayed for a moment.

Soames said, “As I said, an ordeal.”

Emily sighed at Soames and turned to Irene. “You’ll do marvellously, my dear. You were wonderful with them all earlier today.”

Irene touched Emily’s hand in gratitude. Soames had to look away to hide his moment of emotion. He didn’t remember the two of them being this close in his previous life; he didn’t remember them being close at all. Irene had maintained a cool distance from all of the Forsytes, save perhaps from June, a chilly politeness that had devolved to pure passive ice with him. She had not been graceful with him, the way she had with everyone else, even when cool and distant with them. He had been so miserable at the time, wishing for warmth from her, starving for any scrap of affection, that it hadn’t occurred to him to ask what she felt like: what had it been like to hold everyone around her at such a distance? Why had she done it? What had been so frightening that she hadn’t dared let anyone get close, not even his warm mother?

He didn’t know, and possibly would never know, except that it had likely been something he had done. Every difference this time round was because he was a different man, a man who had lived through the fire once, and was striving to do better and make amends for his failures. He was the difference. He clenched his fist and released it. Well, he was doing his best. He was getting it right so far. Irene was so much happier now, sitting and talking with his mother, than she had ever been before.

Partly soothed by this thought, Soames stood. “I’ll be back in time for dinner, Mother.”

“Why don’t you see Soames to the door, dear,” Emily said to Irene, completely unaware of any distress in her son.

Irene accompanied him to the door. Soames was aware of Warmson appearing briefly then vanishing again, out of Irene’s sight. Perfect discretion, perfect awareness of what was wanted. He shrugged on his coat, turned to Irene, and took her hands in his.

“Well,” he said.

“You are distressed by your family, but you do have a family,” Irene said.

“True. Too much of one, perhaps, but—”

“But some of them seem quite interesting. And I shall meet your friend Mr Parkes tonight.”

“Yes.” A moment of silence, then he said. “May I beg a kiss?”

“A brief one.”

“Irene.” He smiled then, and she rewarded him with a sweetly long kiss, still chaste, with their hands clasped between them keeping them at a modest distance, but it was full of affection regardless. He felt soothed; they were both having such a better time this time round, for that was happiness on her face. He left the house content.

Soames returned early for the dinner with a morocco case in his pocket. He asked Warmson to let Miss Heron know he was here, and would like a word in private if she were available. Irene came down to the drawing room in her green evening gown, her best one, with a quizzical look on her face.

Soames had the case hidden behind his back. He said, “I suspect that this is not—that is, it’s not as meaningful to you as music is, but—”

“Soames, I’m not certain what you mean. Please say it straight out.”

“I have a gift for you.”

He opened the case and offered it to her. It was a piece of the new aesthetic work—silver-set, not the heavy gold of his aunts’ generation, but instead a brooch with an emerald at its heart and small leaves of green enamel around it. Modern, in a lovely shape that was unlike anything else. He had seen her look at her step-mother’s old-fashioned jewellery without lingering; he had seen her fail to react to Winifred’s pearls; he hoped she would prefer this. If she cared for jewellery at all, that was.

She took it from him and looked at it wide-eyed. “Oh!” She touched it in its velvet nest. “This is lovely! Is this from Liberty’s? Did you choose this?”

“It is indeed, and yes. I thought you might like it.”

“I do! One moment while I take this one off.”

She deftly removed the one she had already pinned on, and exchanged it for his gift in the case. Apparently she felt differently about this sort of gift than the Irene he remembered did. Or perhaps he hadn’t worn out his welcome with jewellery? It was his first gift of it to her, if one did not count the engagement ring.

“May I?” he said, leaning forward. That was a daring offer, but she consented, and then blushed when she realised where his fingers were about to be. So did he, but he had offered, and there it was: he was touching her dress just over her breast, finding the right place for the brooch. He pinned it on very gently and carefully, and then took her hands. “May I kiss you?”

She smiled up at him. “Ah, giving me things is a scheme to earn kisses, then.”

“If I wanted the most kisses, I would give you one sheet of music for each kiss.”

“That is an extortionate rate.”

“I must collect.”

“I shall pay what I owe, then. Come and claim your kiss.”

He leaned down to kiss her, and lingered, eyes closed. So sweet! Their kisses were still chaste, still soft shy things, but also things Soames could lose himself in, it seemed, for the moment lasted long enough that they were both startled by Emily’s voice kindly reminding them that guests would be here soon. They stepped apart, Soames’s cheeks reddened. His mother spotted the brooch immediately, of course, and made appropriate sounds of admiration and praise. She also noted how well it suited the dress, and how well the colour of the dress suited Irene. She then mentioned that she and Irene were to go to their first fitting at a dressmaker on the morrow, and suggested Irene bring this dress for alterations to make it suit the latest fashions.

Irene smiled at his mother and expressed her gratitude for the assistance, saying she would otherwise be embarrassed to find herself without options, and Emily was comfortably affectionate in response. Soames was relieved that this relationship appeared to be going well enough. Irene tucked the case away into her dress pocket and gave him a secret smile of affection that left him glowing with happiness.

The guests began trickling in a few minutes later, starting with George on time as promised, at half-past seven. Shortly afterwards, Irene’s two Conservatoire friends arrived on each other’s heels. They were around her age, neither of them married. They seemed pleasant enough, pretty enough, dark-haired both, vivacious both, and to have fond memories of being at the Conservatoire together. Lucie Béranger, the slightly younger one, was a daughter of a French diplomat stationed in London, and had earned a certificate in violin. Rosalyn Whitford, like Irene, was an Englishwoman who had studied piano. She was older than Irene by a year or two. Miss Béranger had brought her instrument, and she and Miss Whitford were soon cajoled by George into playing a duet. Soames found himself liking George more than he ever had: he was exerting himself to be pleasant, and especially to make Irene laugh.

Parkes arrived just as the duet commenced, and was introduced to Irene quietly, so as not to interrupt the music.

“Ah,” he said, “I am delighted to meet the woman who has made Forsyte happy. He has told me so much.” He bowed and kissed her hand.

“The feeling is mutual,” Irene said. “He has told me you have been a most steady friend to him, and how happy he was that you agreed to stand up with him.”

They both looked at Soames with expressions on their faces that made him beat a hasty retreat lest he be forced to endure anyone paying attention to him while he had to notice it. Attention made him miserable. Birthdays were always a trial for him; he was aware that the coming rounds of dinners and the wedding itself would be equally miserable. He could not bear the thought of enduring more of it. He made his way back to the duetting pair by the piano in time to join in the quiet applause.

Soames made conversation with the pianist, Miss Whitford, asking her how she had come to attend the Conservatoire, casting about for anything at all to talk about. He found Miss Whitford pleasant and quite willing to talk. Soames was honestly happy to meet someone who’d known Irene in her Paris days; he could ask questions and learn about her from people who knew her well.

His mother was winding her way through the guests and having a quiet word with each of the men, no doubt telling them whom they were taking in to dinner. She came to him last of all and told him that Miss Whitford was his, which disappointed him and yet he knew that he would never take in Irene if anybody other than the family were present. It was his father’s honour to take Irene in tonight, so that she might have a chance to get to know him and he might have his fears allayed by getting to know her. It was sensible; his mother was always sensible about these things.

The procession began, so much more relaxed and jovial than the one with the Lomaxes had been. James led them in with Irene on his arm. Soames was much more at ease watching this: Irene was genuinely happy to be on his father’s arm, and his father looked as if he had begun to warm to her. George was next, with the young French violinist; he was making animated conversation with her, half in English and half in French. Soames came behind with Miss Whitford, whom he had decided he would learn all he could from during dinner. Behind them all, Parkes with his mother, from the tone Soames could hear also mutually complimentary.

The grand rectangular table had been exchanged for the circular one, signalling his mother’s wish for a less formal sort of dinner. They took their seats around it anti-clockwise from James back to Emily.

The menu was as pleasant a menu as Emily had ever invented, written in her lovely ornamented hand at each placecard. The menu was more extravagant than it ought to have been, in fact. Soames was again enough used to the presence of his parents in his life that he felt entirely able to cast up his eyes at this, but there was a little fond smile on his face even so: it was what his mother did.

The dinner opened with oysters, the last of the Whitstables that season, Emily said, raw with brown bread, butter, and lemon. George began reciting Lewis Carroll and Irene traded verses with him. Parkes and Miss Whitford both found this amusing. Soames merely ate his oysters and drank his chablis. He knew the poem; he did not need to recite with them. The oysters were delicious.

The table was cleared and there was an interlude of quieter conversation. Soup arrived. Soames watched Warmson moving from person to person, looked at the smiling faces around the table, saw that everyone looked expectant and interested in their partner. He caught his mother’s eye and nodded at her: all was well.

The flowers at the centre of the table were lovely. The gas was turned low so that the warmth of the candlelight might set the mood of the evening, with its sweet smell of beeswax, its flickers and reflections in wine glasses. Candle-lit dinners were things he had not known he missed so keenly; he had not remembered how beautiful they were. Soames felt, looking at the soup he had not yet touched, holding the glass of sherry he had not yet tasted, that his heart was once again in danger of bursting with happiness. He had seldom felt this in his life. It was a gift to feel it now.

He turned to Miss Whitford and said, “I’m glad you could come on such short notice. Irene is so happy to see you.”

“I am quite grateful for your mother’s kind invitation. It’s a delight to see Irene again. I’m so looking forward to playing with her again this evening.”

“Oh?”

“She’s very good. Always held up to the rest of us as the goal to strive for.”

“She never mentioned. The only thing I’ve ever heard from her is that she’s not good enough.”

Miss Whitford looked at him seriously. “She did leave disappointed, it’s true. She was the best of us, but she didn’t have the means to stay in Paris and continue studying. Her letters were unhappy until she met you.”

“She never mentioned it.” He looked at Miss Whitford, uncertain how to react to this.

“Mr Forsyte, you ought to try your soup. It is quite good.”

“Oh! I suppose I ought.”

He looked down at his bowl: it was a thick soup made of something or other—what hardly mattered—with a flower shape at the centre. Some kind of vegetable, he thought, watercress, and it did taste good, though it was a pity to disturb the decoration. He ought to eat; there was plenty of time to make conversation while he ate. He did so, and found himself enjoying both conversation and food. The sherry was good, and Miss Whitford had amusing stories of Paris. She, like Irene, had been charmed by how they had been guarded as they moved about the city.

The fish course arrived. His mother had not turned the table; the rules were informal tonight. Soames continued learning what he could from his dinner partner over sole and chablis. Miss Whitford’s parents had sent her to the Conservatoire on her insistence; she had wanted to pursue her own ambitions but like Irene, had found that she was unlikely to go very far.

“There are few places for women in musical performance,” Miss Whitford told him. “We are either prodigies or members of small community orchestras, and most of us at best teachers. Irene might have found different prospects had she been a man.”

Soames found this dismaying; no wonder Irene had challenged him when he had asked her why she kept trying if she knew she was not going to reach the top. She was not all that far from it, and pushing might have got her there. Or she might have hoped so. Ought women to be performing in orchestras and on stages? He supposed there’d be no choruses or operas without the fairer sex singing. Did he care one way or the other about women staying at home instead of in orchestras? They hadn’t stayed at home during the War or afterwards. Fleur hadn’t. Women certainly painted and always had.

“Now you have become very thoughtful and silent,” Miss Whitford said, “exactly as Irene described you.”

“Sorry! I was wondering what she might have wanted instead of this. Or you—what you might have wanted.”

“I should have liked to perform, but I did not have the skill. Or one might more truthfully say, the willingness to practise nearly as much as I ought. There came a moment when I found I wanted to do other things as well. This particular ambition is somewhat all-consuming.”

“I see.” Soames drank his chablis, and considered the fish before him. He had better eat something of it or Miss Whitford would comment, so he did. The fish was like the rest of his mother’s food, comfortably English, extravagant without eccentricity. One might eat safely.

Soames sat back and watched lamb cutlets arrive, along with burgundy. Conversation at the table was now quite lively. Miss Whitford was engaged in bantering with Parkes about something, no doubt being charmed by him into becoming his fourth young lady, she being more than eligible and exactly the sort of girl his mother would normally have tried to coax him into meeting. Well, Parkes beware!

Soames turned to the Frenchwoman to his left to make his polite addresses to her. He found her still giggling about something George had said, which once again made him feel rather well-disposed towards George. George was speaking to Irene about something that Irene was answering quite seriously; Soames could not hear what, so he decided to pay no mind to it. Instead, he asked Miss Béranger how long she’d been in London and if she’d visited before. She answered half in French, and Soames did his best to reply in the same, apologising for both his accent—Annette’s Parisian overlaid upon his public school French—and his infelicity with grammar. They understood each other well enough, and Soames learned a little about the travails of being a diplomat’s child in an era of continental strife and governmental uncertainty. The last decade had been more stable, at least.

He caught his mother’s eye at one point: she was looking at him oddly, smiling but holding some emotion back. Well, he’d learned somewhere along the line to make conversation at dinner parties with people who weren’t Winifred, even if he’d never be as comfortable as Parkes was.

Laughter broke out across the table from him, and he recognised the voice: it was Irene, completely helpless over something George had said, with George himself looking innocently pleased about whatever it had been, gesturing to James as if to ask for support. Even James seemed amused. Soames had missed it, but it scarcely mattered to him: Irene looked so happy in that moment that he could not possibly have wished for anything else. He smiled down at his plate.

Miss Whitford was looking at him again. “Your cousin seems quite charming,” she said.

“George is a wit, they say.”

“I see,” she said. “How does he occupy himself?”

Soames tilted his head and considered George. “Food, wine, and racehorses, not necessarily in that order. And he has an eye for sporting prints.”

“I am not entirely certain you approve of him.”

“I’m not entirely certain either. But on the whole I think I do. Why do you ask?”

“Because he is flirting with Lucie and I wish to enquire. See how he is looking at her now?”

“Ah. I do. That surprises me. I don’t think I would take it seriously.”

“If you say so.” Soames looked at her quizzically, but she changed the subject immediately to the question of how he had met Irene.

The sweet was handed round, along with sweet wine. Soames ordinarily did not touch this, but he found himself in a mood for it, and ate his meringue for once. It was a bit much for him, but once in a while was surely not too self-indulgent? Then the savoury, and then one came to the nuts.

He noticed his mother catching Irene’s eye, then the eyes of the two younger women, and in a small synchronised movement the ladies rose. The men stood with them. Irene gave Soames a private look as she passed, a moment of eyes meeting; a moment of reassurance that always made him feel soothed. The drawing-room door closed softly behind them all: his mother, Irene, Miss Whitford, Miss Béranger; and the dining room settled into its quieter register.

Warmson brought the decanters. Tonight the good port came out, for it was an occasion. Cigars were offered; Soames declined them, as he always did. He took his port instead and stood with glass in hand, turning it around in his fingers.

James seemed to be in a wonderful mood, which made Soames happy. Parkes and George were smoking, talking nineteen to the dozen, and trying to convince James of something that made the old man smile.

Soames stood just at the edge of the candle-light and drank his port. His port—it was his port in more senses than one. Not as good as that bottle from Swithin’s precious gift, but good nonetheless, and one of the bottles his father had laid down for him at his birth. It was intended for him—every drop that was drunk, was drunk with him present. Nearly twenty-six years this bottle had lain in the cellar, waiting for him to find a woman to marry. If he had a son he would do the same: lay down port for his coming of age, for his professional moments, for his marriage, for his own firstborn son. A grandson of his name? His own name was not worth perpetuating. James was a solid English name. If he had a son—the Fates willing—he would be named James. If he had a daughter, she would be named Fleur in honour of the Fleur he would never meet again, and he would not deign to explain it to anybody. He hoped Irene would understand.

Emotion threatened to make itself known. Soames drank more rapidly than the port deserved and changed his line of thought immediately.

He looked over at the other three men, standing in the pool of candlelight, cigar smoke curling over them. His father was in the middle of some lugubrious anecdote that he was inflicting upon George while the expression on George’s face said that every word out of his mouth was a jest at Soames’s expense. Parkes looked amused.

Soames made his way over to Parkes and beckoned him aside. Parkes allowed himself to be drawn away. “Forsyte,” he said.

Soames raised an eyebrow.

“She’d melt a mountain of glaciers.”

“Ah, you understand now.”

“What the devil is she doing with you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“She’s enough to melt me. I shall steal her from you and elope to the south of France forthwith.”

Soames felt the blood drain from his face. He opened his mouth to say something he would regret. Then in the next moment Parkes’s arm was around his shoulders, and Parkes was speaking quietly in his ear. “Look, you juggins, I’m not serious. You’re the one man in the world I wouldn’t do that to. And besides, she’s mad about you.”

Soames shut his mouth again. He wasn’t sure what to do about Parkes’s arm around him, but decided to try leaning against him and returning the gesture. It was oddly comforting. Was this what friendship felt like for most men? “Sorry, Parkes, sorry. Ought to have known better. It’s just so—I can’t believe it most days.”

Parkes released him and smiled at him; this was the charm in action. “I know where you ought to look to lease,” he said.

Soames perked up immediately. “Where?”

“We shall conspire with the lovely Miss Heron after we finish our port.”

“Right,” he said. He picked up his glass again: if he finished his port, he could be near Irene again.

Parkes said, “Your cousin George either loathes you or is endlessly amused by you. Not sure which.”

Soames gave this careful thought, going over the arc of George’s life in his mind. “Amused, I think. I don’t believe he loathes anyone. Also—he’s wiser than he looks. Perhaps the most philosophical of the lot of us.”

Parkes made a doubtful sound and looked over George again. “Don’t see it in him. I think he’s as deep as a worn Turkey carpet. But he is amusing, I’ll give him that.”

“Come, let’s allow him to be amused by us.” They both made their way over to George, who was very politely enduring the tail end of the anecdote from James. George made a face at them both, looked at James, and then had a drink.

“Cousin George,” Soames said, almost cautiously.

“Cousin Soames! Come to gloat, have you? To parade about before me, boasting of your conquest of what is surely the loveliest woman in London?”

Soames raised his eyebrow, and ventured a daring salvo. “To do so would be to imply she did not conquer me. Perhaps I am the prize.”

“Ah,” said Parkes, grinning. “She the French frigate, snatching up the English merchantman after a fierce battle, carrying him away with all his worldly goods on board.”

George looked stunned for a moment, then laughed. “Very good. I shall never think of you again but as a helpless captive, carried off by the lovely Miss Heron.”

Parkes laughed aloud. “He lies awake dreaming of this every night, and who wouldn’t?”

George put a hand against his brow. “Pax, pax. I am bested. I beg you, tell me no more.”

Soames quirked up one side of his mouth, and yielded to a sudden impulse. “Now that I have you at my mercy, I do have one request of you, if I may, cousin George. Parkes has agreed to stand up with me at my wedding. I should be very glad if you would too.”

George went stock still, his port half-way to his lips. He blinked rapidly. He moved again to raise his port to take a swallow, and returned the glass to a safe position against his waistcoat. “Me?” he said, and looked as if someone had struck him in his forehead, directly between the eyes.

“You,” said Soames.

“I wasn’t under the impression we got on.”

“I believe in keeping my enemies close,” Soames said to him, shrugging. Then, quite casually, “You needn’t if you don’t want to.”

George stared at him for a long moment, and said, “Your mother does put on a most excellent do, as I told my friend Partridge on the occasion of your sister’s wedding. I shall be honoured to mock you every step of the way.”

“Thank you,” Soames said, and gave George a slight bow that was in fact deeply felt. Well, that had been a surprising and perhaps regrettable impulse. Where and when had George found that painting of the monkey? Perhaps he would never learn. All he knew was that he had never truly known who George was, and he suspected no one had.

The man himself said, “What the dickens has come over you anyway? Is this what love does to a man?”

“You shall have to try it and see.”

“Oh, no, not I. I shall ensure that nothing ever happens to me and that I continue blissfully unyoked. I shall at the age of a hundred and two be a jolly groomsman for myriad Forsyte cousins yet unborn. A bachelor forever!”

“Ah, let us agree to that,” said Parkes. “A toast to bachelorhood!” The pair of them tossed off the last of their port to each other, toasting each other in cheerful unity. Soames cast up his eyes at them. So much for flirting with French girls at the dinner table.

Upstairs in the drawing room, a piano was being played, and a violin along with it.

“The ladies are enjoying themselves more than we are,” said Parkes. “We can’t have that.” And with this pronouncement he linked his arm with George’s and the two of them marched out of the dining room to join the ladies over their coffee.

His father looked askance at Soames on their way out. “Are you sure about that? George is a rackety chap.”

“He makes Irene laugh,” said Soames.

“If she weren’t as devoted to you as you are to her I’d be worried, my boy. You’re not yourself. I don’t know. I can’t tell. Never seen you like this before.” James looked at him sidelong. “Not sure I’m easy in my mind.”

Soames didn’t know what to say to this; he wasn’t himself, not precisely. The last time he’d been here, newly-engaged to Irene, he’d reassured his worried father, and been entirely wrong. His father had not thrown it in his face. Well, not really. He’d said he’d known how it would be, but had forborne to rub it in on his son, who’d been completely shattered. This time—this time he felt he was right. This time everything felt different. He’d never attended a dinner like this before, never sat to dinner with so many people he felt were there simply to be happy with him.

Once in the drawing room, Soames made his way straight towards Irene, who was standing at the edge of the pool of light around the piano, watching her two friends play a duet. Miss Whitford sat at the piano. Miss Béranger stood in the curve of the piano reading music set on top, violin under her chin. Irene reached out her ungloved hand to him. He stood by her side, stealthily holding her hand, watching and listening to them play. He didn’t know what it was or if they were good at it or not, but he could see Irene’s gaze intent on Miss Whitford. She made tiny gestures with her fingers against his, and at one point she shook her head very subtly. From this he suspected she was wanting to improve the performance, but was keeping her comments to herself as best she might.

Parkes came over to the pair of them. He stole her hand from Soames so that he might kiss it himself with an extravagant gesture. Irene gave him an arch look. “To what do we owe this visit?” she said.

“I have come to tell you where you shall live.”

“And where is that?”

“South Kensington for the pair of you, quite near the station or a bit west of it. It’s an up-and-coming neighbourhood, walking distance to many interesting things.”

Soames said, “I thought you were looking eastward these days.”

“I am, I am! But eastward is where I am developing new property and where I am purchasing terribly run-down property, not the sort of place for the pair of you. South Kensington in contrast! South Kensington is cheap just now and despite the bad market, has some lovely houses. And the music, and the museums.”

“I see,” Irene said. “The music, you said?”

Parkes raised his eyebrows to her and bowed. “St James’s is in Piccadilly, but so much is closer to Kensington. Take my advice.”

“We shall,” said Soames, and he meant it. This was indeed advice from Parkes, who would be canny about property value and what Irene wanted both.

“Come with me Sunday, if you both have the time. I shall show you round the neighbourhoods, and tell you what I know about them, and where I have invested, and where not.” At Soames’s look, he said, “You backed me on these, if you’ll recall.”

“Ah, yes.”

“The neighbourhoods I’ll be suggesting to you are unrelated to those, lest you fear.”

“I shouldn’t mind,” said Soames.

“Let us not even come near it.”

“If you prefer.”

“Right. That is therefore the plan.”

Soames looked at Irene.

“It sounds perfectly wonderful to me,” she said. “I should like to see more of London.”

“I shall call round after lunch and show you specifically what I have in mind for you. And now, let us enjoy our private concert. I demand that you grace us with your performance as well, Miss Heron. I will not be satisfied until you do.”

“A command performance for you, Mr Parkes,” Irene said. She smiled at them both as she said it, and Soames’s heart ached in that sweet way he’d only recently learned was possible.

After the duet ended, Irene drew the two of them over to the piano, and asked if she might play something especially for Mr Parkes, who had commanded her to perform. Miss Whitford graciously stood and ceded the piano, and came to stand at Soames’s elbow. Irene sat, adjusted the bench, and smiled in a way Soames thought was impish, which gave him a thrill to see. She was happy enough to be teasing someone!

“I shall play Mendelssohn for you, Mr Parkes. Mendelssohn is always safe for a drawing room, I think.”

She began to play. It started slowly, but Miss Whitford touched his arm and said, very quietly to him, “Now you shall see.”

The piece was to Soames’s ear sweet, as the other Mendelssohn she’d played was. There was a lovely slow melody on top, and Irene had a mysterious look on her face. There was no sheet music on the piano stand; she’d said she learned these pieces as a child, though. Soames did like it. Then it took a surprising turn and became loud and forceful, then very quiet indeed. Soames found himself holding his breath, wondering what would happen next. It burst into motion and he nearly jumped—Irene’s fingers sprinted in trills up and then stomped up and down and then suddenly eased up, lightened in touch, and began racing along again, so fast, with so many little decorations. Then it ended very definitively, the sort of ending that even Soames knew was heavy-handed. It was all so breathless and showy.

Miss Whitford applauded along with the others, then ran over to embrace Irene.

“Well,” said Parkes. “She said command performance, and she gave one. You said she was good. I need to remember that Forsyte always tells the truth, the literal truth. He is incapable of doing otherwise.”

“It’s dishonest to do otherwise.” He was, of course, quite capable of lying when necessary, but better to keep them all thinking otherwise.

“You are the oddest fellow I know, but also the most deserving of this woman. I congratulate you once more.” Parkes rested a hand on his shoulder, and Soames held himself in place despite his urge to flinch away.

Next Miss Whitford and Irene sat on the bench together, each with different sheets of music before them, and began playing a four-handed piece. Soames understood for the first time tonight that she had downplayed the level of her skill to him: she might not be able to reach the top, but she was above where her friends were. How he was able to discern that he was not certain, beyond that yes, that Mendelssohn piece had been a showpiece. She was more relaxed in her playing, perhaps, and was he finally hearing what she called subtlety of phrasing? He doubted his ability to hear anything. Still, there was something he was noticing. Whatever was happening, the three of them were delighted by the opportunity to be together again, and took turns in duets. The drawing room was unusually cheerful; even James seemed to have his mood brightened and anxiety soothed by listening to the three of them.

Soames stood back and watched them quietly, unobtrusively. George joined him. Soames looked at him sidelong, bracing himself for whatever George was about to say.

“She’s very good,” George said.

Soames raised his brow. “Didn’t know you knew anything.”

“Didn’t know you did either. But I can tell when a jockey has a good seat.”

“Hmm.”

“They’re all worried about her, you know.” By this, George meant the family, the ever-watching, ever-looming, ever-judging Forsytes.

Soames said, for the hundredth time, “They haven’t met her yet.”

“Half of them will be even more worried when they do. I am looking forward to seeing it. Stir them up, Cousin Soames. It’ll do them good to rouse their blood and make them fear another artist in the family. They drove Cousin Jo out, and they’ve been too comfortable since.”

George grinned at him. He had to have known that Young Jolyon and Soames had not got on at all. He poked Soames in the upper arm with a forefinger and stuck it high into the air and declaimed. “I’ll pay good money to be watching when they meet her. Half of them in love, the other half convinced she’ll steal all their capital. Anyway, congratulations, Cousin Soames. I shall drink your port and your champagne, take your white gloves, and eat your wedding cake.”

“Thank you,” Soames said, rubbing his arm.

“I haven’t had this much sport in years. Carry on.” And with this, George went over to stand next to Parkes, who was making Miss Béranger laugh about something. And yes, that was George flirting again, heavens knew why, given that he’d just declared eternal bachelorhood again.

The dinner party went later than most, for everyone was quite happy to keep playing and listening to music for some time, but eventually Irene’s friends declared their need to leave, and Parkes and George declared their determination to fetch a cab for them and the Béranger footman who had accompanied them, and Park Lane settled down. James vanished upstairs.

Soames returned to the quiet drawing room, where he found Irene standing at the piano, fingers on the keys. Soames went to her and stood nearby, saying nothing.

After a moment she came over to him.

“Is all well?” he asked.

“Yes. I have been thinking.”

“Oh?”

“I haven’t played the Rondo Capriccioso for myself in so very long.”

That was the Mendelssohn, Soames presumed. Irene leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of roses and honey. Her scent was different from how it had been before. Had she changed it? It was richer now, deeper, and the honey was a stronger note. It was heady. He found himself sighing with satisfaction.

Irene found his hand and held it, and Soames could not think of a single thing about the day he would change.

XVI. Brick and mortar

Parkes, Irene, and Soames strolled in a leisurely way along the pavements of Pelham Street, heading north-east towards the crescent. It had been a frustrating day. One house had been too small; one too narrow; one too dark. Another that they had all three liked had disappointed them by having plumbing too bad to consider. They had at least learned what to look for, or Irene had. Soames himself had a keen sense of what he liked and did not like, but less of a sense of what he could achieve with what capital he had now, compared to what he’d had when considering homes for Fleur in nineteen-twenty.

At least he had learned he liked the crescents in South Kensington. They faced south, in the main, and caught the sunlight, and would be warmly lit even in winter. They were pleasing to his eye, brighter and less closed-in than the small squares could be. Montpellier Square could be dark and shadowed even in summer, because of the trees at its heart.

This particular arc of housefronts, Pelham Crescent, was perhaps more attractive than most. The sunlight caught the white housefronts in a lovely way. White paint, black doors, stucco. There were flowers in the garden at the centre of the crescent. The three of them crossed the road—no traffic, for it was a quiet Sunday afternoon—and walked the gravelled path through the flowers. Irene stopped to look around. Soames and Parkes paused with her. Soames leaned on his umbrella and considered the sweep of the street around them, and its calm elegance. He rather liked it. It was peaceful and quiet on a Sunday. Parkes took a lunar with his own stick at the street leading out of the middle of the sweep, and at the ends of the crescent behind them.

“I like the way these houses look in the sunlight,” Irene said. “They look different.”

“Basevi,” said Parkes. “A good architect. Designed these and some of Belgrave Square. Need to watch out for your architects. They can be ruinous. Had one design a house with a tower just now.”

“A tower?” said Soames, somewhat aghast.

“Insists it’s the thing.” Parkes shrugged. “I’m letting him build it. It’ll sell. The location is near enough to a station that it’ll be built up over the next decade.”

“You take the long view, then, Mr Parkes,” said Irene.

“That’s the short view. I put the money I don’t want to speculate with into Forsyte’s hands, here.”

Soames gave him a sidelong smile. “And I give Parkes my speculation money.”

Irene gave Soames a quizzical look, then said, “May we go inside any of these houses?”

“There are two to let. Number 18 is nearest. The agent should be inside—I let him know we would be calling.”

They rang the bell at number 18, which was two to the left of Pelham Place, and the agent answered immediately. He had his hat on, and tipped it to Parkes. The two of them had a brief exchange; they seemed to be on good terms. Soames himself had had similar relationships with agents for properties and leases; he understood the dynamics. Parkes seemed well-liked for his ability to bring buyers in. Soames and Irene were the buyers, and they would also be treated well.

Now to see if either of these houses would be tolerable, and if Irene liked either. Parkes had looked frustrated by the discovery that the previous house had such ruinous drainage, and a cistern that needed replacing, and had said as much to the agent for the property. Even his easy temper might be tried by a similar discovery here.

They walked into the front hall, and Parkes opened the door to the left of the staircase. “Dining room,” Parkes said, unnecessarily. “Narrow frontage, but it’s deep.”

They walked around the bare oak planks of the ground floor. The boards creaked slightly under their feet. Wallpapers had been partially removed from the walls, revealing white plaster underneath dark flocked papers that were several thoughts behind the current fashion. Soames wished he could see the room without any paper at all. It was a pleasant enough room, with two windows overlooking the crescent behind them.

He went out into the hall and opened the door to the room behind. This much smaller room overlooked the garden.

“Study,” Soames said, to Irene, who had followed him. “North light.” He looked around the room, as he had at each of the rooms that might have been studies, and imagined a writing desk in a corner, his paintings hung on the walls. The light was right for them. It would do.

They returned to the hall, and opened the door to the back garden. Three steps down took them into a long narrow space, walled, with lilac bushes and spring flowers growing in half-tended beds. A flag-stoned square lay empty at the foot of the steps. Irene walked to the end of the garden, studying the beds, the brick walls, the back gate, and came back to them.

“The garden is charming,” she said. “It’s narrow, as you say, but there is enough garden that we may have flowers and a place to sit when it is sunny.”

They returned to the hall, where the agent awaited them. He handed Parkes a ring of keys.

“You know where to find me, Mr Parkes,” he said, and vanished back along the hall towards the front door.

“Let’s look at the drawing room,” Parkes said, and he ran lightly upstairs.

Irene followed more slowly, and Soames close behind her. No warning signs yet, but then, they hadn’t looked at the drains. The stairs were, as always in these terrace houses, narrower than one might want. The door to the drawing room was at the back of the house, at the end of the hall. The drawing room apparently ran the whole length of the house. They stepped inside.

Windows along the front; a fireplace at the back. A great sweep of open space where they might put sofas, a tea table, armchairs. There was a great deal of space for paintings on the long walls to the left and right.

“Would we have enough room for a piano?” Irene asked. “It is so narrow.”

Parkes had a measuring tape in his coat pocket. He unrolled it and marked off the feet across the windows: twenty-two feet. Soames took one end and walked to the back, while Parkes held the other. They verified the length: forty feet deep. Parkes rolled up the tape and tucked it back into his pocket.

“You’ll want the long end along one of the side walls,” Soames said. “Your decision if your back is to the windows or the fireplace.”

“The fireplace, I think, so along the wall by the staircase.”

Parkes paced out from the wall. “It’ll come out to about here. You’ll want to leave room around the door.”

“No difficulty at all, I think,” Soames said. “Unless you want something quite surprisingly large, in which case we must go back to the previous house.”

“No,” Irene said, “Mr Parkes was unhappy with the plumbing in that house.”

Parkes said, “Ah. Speaking of which. I’m going to go down and look at the plumbing here, and tell you whether you’ll need alterations. Or if we have to move to the next.”

Soames said, “I’ll come along. I hope it’s merely a question of expansion. Only one water-closet and I suspect there’s nothing piped up to the second floor.”

“Don’t tell me you want a geyser.”

“I do.”

“Madman.”

“I am going to look upstairs,” Irene said.

Soames and Parkes rattled their way down the staircase to the very bottom to look at where the water came in to the house, to examine the drains. There followed some exploration that Soames could only watch and learn from, as Parkes rapped on pipes and turned valves and listened to things he knew little about. He could judge property value based on some qualities, but Parkes had a specific expertise that he keenly appreciated. He would not have spotted the trouble at the last house, and would have ended up out of pocket on repairs, or possibly having an angry conversation with the agent while making alterations.

Parkes pronounced the plumbing sound, needing only the expansions Soames was contemplating, which the owner of the lease would likely consider an improvement to the property. Soames would do that negotiation, of course, it being something he was known to be good at. One lifted eyebrow from Forsyte could intimidate any man attempting a negotiation into taking a flat five per cent off the price, or so Parkes said. Soames had not found himself so clearly successful.

Parkes led him back upstairs then went outside to talk to the agent about the cistern on the roof.

Soames ascended the stairs all the way to the second floor, to look at the principal bedroom and what would be his dressing room. There was room for a bath, he thought. Then he went up another flight to look at the arrangement of the rooms there. A spare bedroom, a nursery, a sewing room—whatever it was they would need. They would not furnish a nursery until they needed one. That secret glow of happiness warmed his chest once again as he thought of this, then he tucked it away and moved up the stairs to look at the servants’ rooms in the attic. Adequate; they’d need a third water-closet built on the half-landing. It was a great deal larger than the house in Montpellier Square had been. That had only been valuable for its location near the Park. He’d taken that house for the resale value of the lease. Well, he’d made good on that, hadn’t he, if on nothing else.

That house. He’d taken it; they’d decorated it—together, he’d thought. He’d tried to give her a beautiful place to live, and he’d thought he had. It had been lovely and perfect and she’d thought it a prison. “In heaven—out of this house!” Her words, just before—just before he’d—Had it been the house? Had it been that he’d lived in it with her? He’d built a house for her, had commissioned and built Robin Hill for her, and she’d thought that a prison too. Had he meant it to be one?

He shivered, and turned towards the staircase again, seeking to find her and reassure himself that whatever he was doing, it was not that again. He ran down the steps to the first floor to the open door of the drawing room. He peeked in through the half-opened door to see if she were there.

She was indeed in the drawing room, poised near the wall close to him, looking south through the windows. She raised her hands and seemed to be considering something: the light? the shadows? what the space around herself would be when she played? Soames watched her, staying as still as he could so as not to attract attention. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? Did she like the room?

Irene nodded to herself and her whole body shifted. Soames let a breath out. That was satisfaction in her shoulders: he could see it. Soames stepped all the way into the room then. She heard him and turned. Her face changed when she saw him: she brightened.

“What do you think?” he said, softly.

“This is a good place for a piano, and there will be light during the day. I like the garden.”

“It is very near the station,” he said.

“You are thinking of St James’s.”

“And of my office.”

“I can walk to many interesting things without needing to get on a train.”

Soames took the four steps towards her and took her hands. “The agent is downstairs talking to Parkes. I can arrange it today, if you wish.”

“If I wish?”

“I would live here happily. If you would, then we are agreed.”

Irene’s face changed again, and she went distant and thoughtful. She spoke slowly. “It’s odd. So many changes, so rapidly. I walk along that beach, practise in that drawing room, and think I am trapped there forever, and then you come, so quiet, so unobtrusive. So unlikely a man to overturn everything. But you have.”

Soames didn’t know what to say to that. He’d tried to consider her wishes, but he had thought he’d been doing so last time as well. Had he trapped her again? He didn’t think so, but then, he hadn’t last time. Perhaps he was being absurd. He touched her arm. “Is it better than it was?” he asked, tentatively.

“Yes. I’m bewildered by it, but yes.”

Soames stayed silent, watching her.

“I can imagine living here with you. I can see what it would become with us here.”

“And is that something good?”

“Yes,” she said, and he could hear the decision in her voice. “I would live here happily.”

“Then we are agreed.” Soames gave her a little smile and she returned it.

He offered her his arm and escorted her down the stairs to the ground floor, where they found Parkes talking to the agent. He released Irene, who continued on outside the house. He touched Parkes’s arm.

“We’ll take it,” he said. “But only if the terms are reasonable. I’ll talk to the agent now. Irene’s outside if you’d like to keep her company.”

Parkes nodded to him, and handed the keys back to the agent. Soames heard him head outside, and turned to the agent with some pleasure to begin discussing the terms of the lease.

When he emerged from the house some time later, he found Parkes and Irene sitting on a wall, talking happily about something that required Parkes to gesture wildly. As he came down the steps, they both turned and looked at him expectantly.

Soames said, “An easy bargain, given the market. Terms were more than reasonable. We have shaken hands, and will conclude our business tomorrow.” Irene came over to him and took his arm. He smiled down at her.

Parkes said, “Right. I could do with tea.”

“Capital idea.”

Parkes ran with some energy to hail a growler; Soames and Irene caught up with him and climbed inside. They sat across from him, hands joined stealthily under Irene’s cloak. Soames tried to catch Parkes’s eye, but he was looking away, out the cab window. So he squeezed Irene’s hand instead, and looked into her eyes, and returned her smile. It was a little further away from his office than he might have liked, but it was near the Park, it was near the things she loved, and it was near a station that would take her to more of what London offered her. She was happy.

When they arrived at Park Lane, his mother was there in the hall to greet them, anxious for news.

“We found it,” said Irene. Emily embraced her.

XVII. On Forsyte ’Change

On the first Sunday in May, James’s barouche and pair trotted its way across the Park in windblown sunshine. Soames sat facing forward in the barouche next to Irene, one hand on his top hat, with James and Emily across from them. He was pleasurably close to Irene, who had slipped her arm through his. The Park was bursting with the burgeoning life of spring; the sheep dotted across the green grass were white; the grand elms had begun to leaf out. There were many reasons the Forsytes chose to live around the Park, and one was the simple appreciation of leaf, root, and bough that lurked in the hearts of a family not so far removed from their origins as Dorsetshire farmers. Soames was well aware of this in himself; he had eventually found his heart’s ease in the country, with cows of his own, and why not sheep this time as well?

He rode across the Park with his family in mingled contentment and trepidation, for they were on their way to Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road for tea and Irene’s ordeal: her assessment by his family.

They would all be there, on this Sunday, all the aunts and uncles, ready to meet the woman Aunt Ann’s favourite nephew was to marry. Was she as beautiful as she was said to be? Well, they would know soon enough. Soames’s lip curled as he thought about this, and about how precisely Irene would be weighed in their scales. He had prepared her as well as he might. The boudoir grand piano, he’d said, needed a warning. Every single one of them knew she had no money and was worried about this. Uncle Jolyon disliked him; Uncle Nicholas liked him; his father’s twin she would know what to do with. Aunt Juley would do something more or less disastrous. Irene had made no reply to him, but had given him a long thoughtful look. He hadn’t dared offer her any advice about what to do about any of it. She was on her own.

When they arrived, Soames alit first, handed his mother out, then Irene, then his father.

The drawing room was utterly packed, filled to the brim with Forsytes on that Sunday, all come to meet the woman engaged to marry him. Had it been like this the first time round? He thought it had, perhaps, been worse. Then the story had been that she’d refused him five times, and he’d been half-cracked about her. Soames had heard that whispered by Aunt Juley, if he recalled correctly. They’d thought it odd that he’d been in love. They had forgotten what it was like to be in love, he suspected, or had never been in love. Though grand passion was perhaps beyond the ordinary; not everyone seemed to experience it in their lives. The intensity of his feelings for Irene had seemed far beyond what his sister had felt for Dartie. They’d talked about that once, the first time round, on an evening when he and Winifred had both had a touch more to drink than usual. She’d been surprised by what he’d said he felt. Half-cracked? His family might describe grand passion that way, for it was un-Forsytean in its extremes.

He kept many things hidden inside, he supposed, lest his family comment.

Introductions began, managed smoothly by his mother. Aunt Ann first, the oldest of them all, a child of the last century. Soames, who’d seen a good way into the next, wondered what his aunts would have made of aeroplanes and poison gas, and decided to be content they hadn’t lived to see them. Irene gave Aunt Ann a brilliant smile and said that her dear Soames had advised her to speak to Aunt Ann specially, and say that she had made her wish for him come true. This set her off on the right foot with Aunt Ann, which set her off on the right foot with the room.

Uncle Jolyon reacted as he had the first time, with easy gallantry about her beauty and a question about her playing. He asked if she preferred Beethoven or Schubert, to which she replied that the question was unfair, and if she had to choose one she would simply baffle his game by choosing Liszt. This reply pleased him greatly.

There was Aunt Juley whispering to Aunt Hester about something, and Hester hushing her. There was Swithin admiring her with frank and bold eyes, so openly carnal as to be almost amusing, and being charmed by an Irene who did not choose to be offended by the old man in the least. There was Roger standing next to Nicholas, glaring at Irene suspiciously, as if he were considering turning her over the authorities as an agent provocateur. What they were saying to each other he could not guess at, nor could he rescue Irene from whatever conversation she was engaged in with their wives. They had all been introduced now by his mother, and Irene had smiled at all of them and said something graceful or witty or both, and the family information brokers were now weighing her every word and negotiating its value and attempting to decide what to make of her. Her dress was not quite the thing, not the fashion, and not the best fabric, but the colour was in perfect taste, and her hair was just so and her manners were most excellent. Inconclusive, they said. They’d need to see her at a dinner.

Her gloves were good, he heard Mrs Roger say, from somewhere behind him, and another woman noted that this would be Emily’s doing, then Francie said that it didn’t matter, she’d look good no matter what she wore, even nothing, at which he heard Young Roger bark out a laugh. He turned round to glare and caught George doing the same. They exchanged a sardonic look with each other and Soames turned back to the room. He would leave Roger to George’s tender mercies.

Soames went over to Aunt Ann and crouched next to her, so he could speak quietly. He said, “You told me at my sister’s wedding you wished you could someday see me as happy.”

She tapped him with her fan. “Indeed I did, and as your dear Miss Heron said, it seems I have had my wish granted. Soames, you were such a solemn boy, and here you are quite transformed. She is delightful.”

“She is,” he said.

“She is a pianist, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps we might persuade her to play for us.”

Soames glanced aside at the piano at the side of the drawing room, about which he had warned Irene, and said to his aunt, “I’m sure all you need do is ask.”

He kissed his aunt’s hand and ended their tête-à-tête, and indeed in the next moment Aunt Ann was calling for dear Miss Heron to play something for them.

She advanced to the piano and began removing her gloves. Soames received them from her and retreated a few steps. Irene sat. “I think Uncle Jolyon will know what I am about to play, and can tell you all about it.”

She then began to play something Soames had not heard before, but thought was perhaps Beethoven by process of elimination only. It was lovely—lyrical, singing, warm, sweet. It was speaking to him, to his surprise. He stood perfectly still and watched her face and strove to hear what he could and feel what he could.

Uncle Jolyon stepped up next to him silently and stood equally still, listening intently. Someone spoke behind them and Soames felt a moment of pure rage that they would interrupt. His uncle looked at him sidelong. Soames did not react. He knew what Old Jolyon was thinking. There was nothing to be done about it while she was playing.

The piece reached its conclusion, and the room applauded politely, Old Jolyon and Francie particularly loudly.

“Another, please,” said Francie.

“Very well,” Irene said.

She looked towards Uncle Jolyon and smiled. After what she had done with Parkes there was no telling what she would play, but she did not stray from safety. Instead she played something Soames knew quite well by this point: a Schubert impromptu. Easy to play; easy to like. Nothing difficult for a crowd of Forsytes. Uncle Jolyon also knew the piece, and the expression on his face said that he recognized her skill in playing it.

When she was done, Soames took her hand for a moment and raised it to his lips. She smiled at him, and that was a sparkle in her eyes he would never tire of. That was something he’d earned only in this life, that he’d longed for and never seen in his previous life, not from a single woman ever. But this time! She gave it to him any time they looked at each other, even in public like this. Soames returned her gloves to her.

Here came his uncle, beaming with pleasure. While her expression was still warm, it did not have that special sparkle that was only ever for him. He stood watching her talk to his uncle, her hands once more hidden by gloves. He was not so much listening to their words as feeling the hum of warmth between them. His uncle already liked her, and she him. He swam in that warmth, unthinking, unworried, dreaming of holding her hand.

“I thought you were going to choose Liszt!”

“At the last moment I decided I would give you both Beethoven and Schubert. Did I decide well?”

“That you did, Miss Heron, that you did.”

“Soames is particularly fond of the Schubert,” Irene said, touching his arm, and he was forced to wake from his daydream.

“I am,” he said, “but Irene has not played the Beethoven for me before.”

Old Jolyon harrumphed. “Didn’t think you cared for music at all.”

“Listening to Irene play has taught me a great deal.”

“First I see you kind to dogs, and next I see you enjoying Beethoven and Schubert. What have you done to this boy, Miss Heron? He’s unrecognisable.”

The word “boy” rankled, for in his own head Soames was not all that much younger than his uncle, but he bit his tongue and sat on his temper, lest he deserve it. What would it profit him to speak sharply to his uncle? Nothing at all, particularly since Irene seemed once again to be taking a liking to him. His uncle then went on to quiz Irene about opera. She had only heard French opera, she said, and he immediately made a case for German, which she was open to hearing if she had the chance. His uncle then declared that if Soames would not take her to the opera then he would, at which Soames protested that he had not yet had a single opportunity to do so. Irene replied that she would be delighted to attend the opera with both of them, provided they swore to be courteous to each other in her presence, at which the two men ruefully promised to do so.

This was his punishment for telling her they didn’t get on, he supposed.

Irene excused herself to speak to Uncle Nicholas, who was beckoning her over. Soames watched her listen to Nicholas and answer a question, then listen to something Roger was telling her.

“Not following her around?” said Old Jolyon.

“She’s doing well enough without me,” Soames said.

“You look pleased as punch.”

“Should I not be?”

“I suppose you should,” Old Jolyon said. “See you treat her properly. A woman who can play Schubert like that is a woman who deserves to be cared for.”

“On this we agree, Uncle.”

Old Jolyon gave him that sharp look again. “She’s changed you a great deal, and all for the better if I may say so.”

Soames clenched his jaw briefly, and formulated then bit back five cutting retorts, before finally merely thanking his uncle. He stepped back into a corner, away from the fray, and continued watching quietly.

In the barouche on the way back to Park Lane, he leaned close to Irene and said, “You did well.”

“Thank you. And thank you for the warning about the piano.”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d want to know.”

“Saying you needed to warn me was enough.” She smiled at him, and he was relieved.

“The Beethoven?”

“Ah. The second movement of his opus 13, the one called Pathétique. Shall I play it again for you when we are home?”

“Please.”

Emily Forsyte sat at her writing desk the next morning. She selected a clean sheet of octavo paper of the palest lavender and set it down just so. She owed a letter to Fanny—Mrs Nicholas—and needed to write it this morning. She could hear from downstairs her future daughter-in-law practising the piano, as she did every morning. Irene had apologised for this, saying that it could be tedious to listen to, but Emily had reassured her immediately that she was not to worry about it, but instead to practise all she liked. The sound was, to Emily’s ear, comforting. It was like having Winifred at home as a girl, practising her pieces. It was almost like having children in the house again. Though Irene was not a child, mind. She was a young lady going to marry her son, her odd, awkward, prickly, completely reliable Soames.

It was rather delightful having Irene visit. It had the advantage of bringing Soames home every night they dined at home, and every day for tea. They hadn’t seen much of him since he’d moved out into his own rooms, shortly after Winifred’s marriage. James was soothed by seeing both of them, and Emily herself by the look on Soames’s face when he thought nobody was watching him.

Emily dipped her pen into ink. She started off by writing that she thought that Irene’s introduction at Timothy’s had gone quite well, though her clothes were not ready yet and wouldn’t be for another few weeks. The dear girl had lovely manners, and had looked well in all her fittings. She would make a splash once she was dressed properly.

The change in Soames, she wrote, was remarkable—he seemed happy for once, and to be interested in something other than work.

Emily touched her hand to her chest for a moment, thinking of the moment she’d walked in on them holding hands and kissing each other before dinner. Soames had obviously just given her that lovely brooch, and Irene was just as obviously thanking him sweetly. It was so satisfying to see him in love like this. She’d been hoping for so long he would find somebody, and at last he had.

Another dip of pen into ink. Emily continued writing: It was such a relief to finally meet the girl after Soames had spent all those months courting her, and discover she was so lovely and graceful. He’d started speaking to strangers at dinner parties, which was another relief. One did so fret over one’s children, only to find that they were doing perfectly well all along.

Speaking of difficult sons, she’d heard that Archibald was thinking of joining the Militia—surely not? His father would never have it. Was there not a profession he had in mind?

They were down to breakfast in the dining room at Timothy’s, quite alone because Smither had taken a tray up to Ann. Hester served herself eggs and bacon and sat down next to Juley. They put their heads together though there was no need to.

“What did you make of her?” Hester whispered.

Juley reached for the sugar bowl. “Well, of course she has no money at all—not a penny—but the poor girl cannot help that.”

Hester shook her head. “James is quite worried and I can’t blame him. He says Soames has thrown his cap over the windmill.”

Juley poured milk into her breakfast tea. “So pretty, though, one can hardly blame him. He has such an eye for that sort of thing, such a collector. What did Francie say about her hair? Couleur de feuille morte.”

“And then to say that she would have looked good no matter what she wore, even nothing.” Hester pressed a hand against her shocked breast.

“Young Roger was quite rude about that. And so was Eustace. Francie would not tell me what they said, only that it was ungentlemanly of them.”

Hester took her hand off her breast and took a generous forkful of eggs. “George was most upset. He thinks very highly of her. Taken quite a liking to her, they say.”

“George to be a groomsman—such a turn of events. I thought he and Soames didn’t get on.”

“Oh, George is so unpredictable. But Miss Heron is quite a skilled musician, such an excellent performance she gave, so tasteful. Jolyon was most impressed.”

“I do hope she doesn’t embarrass Soames by playing in public or giving concerts in France. One never knows what the French are going to do.”

“True, so true.” Hester absorbed some devilled kidneys and shook her head solemnly.

George Forsyte sat in the smoking room of the Hotch Potch with a glass of whisky and an unlit cigar. He wasn’t much in the mood for smoking. He wanted to sit and contemplate in a mellow way the fortunes of his day. His father had been angry about the gambling again, and sent his older brother to shout it out of him again, so he’d immediately gone racing again. He had won a tenner on a race in the early afternoon, and then doubled the tenner in the following race, and for once tucked the money away instead of immediately betting it into oblivion. He wasn’t sure why. It had been an odd week. He crossed and recrossed his knees.

Sitting in a chair in the opposite corner of the room was his cousin Jolyon, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. He looked elegant and good-looking as ever in evening dress. The fellow had a position at Lloyd’s and was making his own way, they said, completely without an allowance from his father. Cut out. Disowned. A damned fool about women, he was, falling in love and then abandoning his wife. Married again, two families started.

The Forsytes stuck together. That was what was so odd about Uncle Jolyon casting his son out. For a moment George was tempted to go ask his cousin how he was doing, if wife and son were well, if he could take any scrap of news back to Aunt Ann, from whence it would reach Uncle Jolyon. It wasn’t done, so he did not do it. Instead he chewed on the end of his cigar.

George himself did nothing with his time. Did he know how to do anything at all? He’d tried farming, but had quit that on account of a broken heart courtesy of the married woman in the neighbouring house, not to mention complete indifference to agriculture. Now he suspected he might need to find an occupation. He’d called on a young lady twice during the week, and this was the origin of a revelation in outlook that he simply had not expected. What would he do if he had to produce an income suddenly the way Cousin Jo had? He rather wished a fellow could make a living arranging the wines and menus of a club; he had rather more fun doing that for the Hotch Potch informally than he had even from going to the races.

If he stopped betting on horses and started putting away capital, could he improve his income?

Cousin Soames seemed to have had a plan the whole time for what he would do to provide for Miss Heron, and who could blame the man? She was lovely and deuced inspiring.

Cousin Soames was pure distilled essence of Forsyte, bottled and corked. So odd that he was the one who’d imported the wild artist back into the family’s heart. George understood fully why he’d fallen for her. She had worked hard to be where she was, and Soames was the sort of man who’d appreciate that. And she was warm, and beautiful, and kind to her friends, who both adored her. George had now heard from Miss Béranger two panegyrics about Irene. He would cheerfully hear another twenty, or anything at all she cared to say, really. He did so wish that his father did not suspect and fear the French quite as much as he did.

George took the cigar out of his mouth and contemplated the soggy chewed end. He had been eating them nervously more than smoking them this week. Maybe he’d call on his cousin and ask for advice. He’d taken a facer here.

Montague Dartie, man of the world, drew on his cigar and puffed out smoke expansively. He leaned on his cue, watching a club friend at the Iseeum knock the balls around with casual skill, tempered by a mere two brandies. Dartie himself was two and a half brandies in, and therefore ready to broach his main topic for the evening, which was a frank discussion of the girl his brother-in-law had been chasing after for months.

“We all knew he’d been chasing some girl down there, and we had no idea why. Freddie’s father kept saying she had no money, so what’s the attraction? Let me tell you, Tolly, we found out. The girl’s a stunner.”

Tolly looked at the cue ball, considered a shot, then reconsidered and chalked. “They’re all good-looking when they’re seventeen,” he said.

“No, you have no concept of it. This one is beyond that, a girl who’ll be a looker all her life. Dark eyes, gold hair, creamy skin, artist’s curves. Perfection. You can’t find girls with her looks in town because every fellow in the world has beaten you to it.”

“Made a conquest of you, anyway.” The balls clicked, and another one went into the pocket nearest where Dartie was standing.

“Not ashamed to say it, either. Freddie’s brother has an eye, got to hand it to him. What she sees in him, I’ll never know. He’s as stiff as a poker. Not the sort of man you want to drink with.”

“You mean he won’t lend you money.” Tolly lined up another shot.

Dartie showed no signs of noticing this cut; his eyes were closed and his face lifted in fleshly rapture. “Her waist! Her bare shoulders! Her bosom in an evening dress! God, Tolly.”

“Language, Dartie, careful now.” Tolly’s shot missed. “Damn. Well, can’t wait to get an eyeful of her.”

Dartie grinned a white-toothed grin at his friend, who grinned back. “I’ll get you a wedding invitation. Plenty of room on her side of the aisle, I dare say. Bright side is, she’ll tire of him soon enough.”

Winifred unwrapped her tea gown and held little Publius to her breast. He looked up at her as he nursed, and she looked down at him, gazing deep into his blue-grey eyes. He was her son, and she did love him so. He was doing quite well, according to nurse, growing just as he ought. Winifred herself was relieved that feedings were now spaced out enough that she was almost sleeping through the night. The first anxieties of motherhood had settled into comfortable routine. She could cradle Publius in her arms with ease, now, where she’d once been afraid of dropping him, or of not knowing what to do.

She was almost bored, in fact.

She’d got through quite a few novels in the last two months. Beside her chair was her current one from Mudie’s, bookmarked with a strip of ribbon. They’d sent her the second volume of Moths, and she was reading with enjoyment under which ran a deep, unspoken current of unease. Ouida was usually quite fun, full of adventure and jewels and exotic places, not quite believable, but then, who read novels for believability? The heroine of this one was married to a dissolute Russian prince who drank, gambled, and kept mistresses, so she was unhappy and sought love outside the marriage. Quite exotic.

It was good to be able to get out of the house now and then. She had been able to dine at Park Lane to meet Soames’s fiancée, which had been delightful: delightful to be able to leave the house, delightful to sit down to one of her mother’s dinners, delightful to have a good long talk with Irene. It had been so wonderful to see how Soames looked at her, and how she looked at him. Her brother deserved someone to care for him. He was an awkward, silent man, and always had been, but he was thoughtful and careful and a good brother. He was quietly generous when he thought nobody was looking at him. She was very solidly on Soames’s side.

Irene was gorgeous, just as Soames had said. Winifred remembered what she’d looked like on Monty’s arm on the way in to dinner, smiling at him graciously, accepting his compliments, keeping herself at a polite distance. Monty’s eyes had been roving, and Winifred knew it. On the one hand, it was understandable. Men would want to look at a woman like that. On the other, it was a bit much to stare at a woman’s bosom while walking just in front of her fiancé and your own wife.

Was that what Soames had meant when he’d made that odd comment? He didn’t miss much. Monty had drunk too much that night. So had Irene’s step-father, and she’d seen Soames’s face when the fellow had gone over to the piano and fondled Irene. The other thing about her brother was that when he was angry, he could be frightening. Monty did drink too much sometimes. And he gambled. And he hadn’t paid for her pearls.

Publius was done feeding and was now content. He lay in her arms making babbling sounds and smiling at her. Winifred smiled down at him. The nursemaid came over to check and take Publius from her arms. She did so dislike releasing him to the nursemaid sometimes. He was her beloved boy.

Winifred sighed and buttoned up her tea gown. There was no point fretting. Monty came home every night. He called her Freddie, kissed her, and talked about Publius with pride. He’d merely looked at the most beautiful woman Winifred herself had ever seen and appreciated her.

She picked up volume two of Moths to find out what happened to Vere next.

Old Jolyon sat by the fireside in Stanhope Gate, all on his own. June was at school, learning what a lady ought to learn, or rather, what June herself thought she ought to learn, for June had most decided opinions of her own. Where she got it, he had no idea.

He had in his hand a glass of sherry, good sherry, for he would have nothing else in his house. He was in a contemplative mood, thinking over the week. That boy, James’s son, had grown up. He’d brought his fiancée to Timothy’s and she’d been a wonderful young woman, warm and talented. That jest about Liszt had been affectionate: she loved all three of the composers and would play all three of them if he asked, he knew it, and Schumann besides.

He drank some sherry, and smiled a little to himself, thinking of Irene and Schubert. Such a lovely woman, and such a touch in her playing. The boy had seemed to understand this and appreciate it as he ought, and for once have his tendency to sulk under control. It still rankled that the son of James, that rattling collection of nerves, should be so obviously on the path of success, while his son was the blackest of black sheep. But it was hardly Soames’s fault, was it? It was his son who was to blame for his own failures. Soames had at least been respectful the last two times they had spoken.

Irene had been simply lovely. He would take her to the opera, and she would appreciate it properly, and that lad would as well, apparently. He needed to have them to dinner. It would keep him busy while June was away.

In the train, 2nd May Dear Soames, I write from the train, as you can perhaps tell from my handwriting. I am so sorry to be leaving London, and your mother’s gracious hospitality. I am so sorry to be travelling away from you. Every mile south the train steams is a mile I feel in my heart. It was such a pleasure to meet your family. So many of them! So many personalities! I loved best the dinner with your two groomsmen, Mr Parkes and your cousin George, and my two friends from the Conservatoire. It was such a joyous night. Lucie has written to me to say that George has called on her since, which I think is quite sweet; he has been a surprising and affectionate acquaintance to make. Your sister is so loyal to you. Your family seems to think you the best sort of young man imaginable, especially Aunt Ann. She is a force of nature, and I’m not sure who is the head of the family: she or your uncle Jolyon. Speaking of which, he was charming and wonderful as well. I hope we shall be able to take him up on the offer of hearing the opera. Please do ensure you know the schedule so we can plan for what is to be performed this summer. I am also deeply happy we have found a house to live in. It felt right to me. Please tell me all about the renovation work as it proceeds. I have a catalogue from Liberty’s and another with papers from Mr Morris that I think are most lovely. Perhaps we might be able to consider these? What happens next? It was a revelation to see you with your close family instead of visiting mine. You are relaxed with them in a way you never are with my step-parents. You look at them with such love when you kiss them goodbye. I suspect you think you are hiding it, but I have learned to read your face. Please write to me often. I miss your voice already. Affectionately yours, Irene

XVIII. Correspondence

It was the beginning of May, and spring was in its fullest flower, but Soames was bereft and morose, for Irene had returned to Lymington. He occupied himself with arranging alterations to the house: two more water-closets, a bathroom with a gas geyser, anything he could do to modernise it and give it more of the comforts he had begun to miss keenly from his past, or his future, whichever it was. These would be finished by the end of the month, and they would need to have the decorations in motion by then. Irene would have to be in London again soon to consult with him about those. Not soon enough for him: he missed her daily, and it was tempting to write to her daily and tell her so.

Two days without her and he was quite certain he would not last out the month. He returned to his chambers on the Tuesday evening fully ready to feel sorry for himself. He poured a drink and sat down by the fire to sort his correspondence, and found two letters from her. Two! Both dated the second—one written on the train, and the second written when she was back home.

Lymington, 2nd May Dear Soames, The train journey was uneventful. I thought once again about how you took that trip every weekend to see me, saying nothing about how long it was, giving me no sign of what you were willing to do to see me. It was odd to return home to meet my step-mama again. She was almost happy to see me, and I almost to see her, until I heard her voice raised. Your mother is so comforting in comparison. I cannot imagine her voice raised. Nor can I imagine your father standing over me while I practise. When my mama was alive, we lived in London, near enough to the neighbourhood we are to live in that I walked often in Kensington Gardens. There is a bench near the Round Pond where I sat one afternoon after her death, and felt that I would be all right, as though nothing had changed. I should like to walk there with you some day. I thought of this when I walked this afternoon along the beach to take exercise after the time on the train. The sea is so restless and wild, and the Round Pond so quietly safe. I have picked up a Beethoven sonata again as a project—the Appassionata. I have an edition of his sonatas from my Conservatoire days, all covered with my own notes and my teacher’s notes on top of those, so much writing that I can barely read the music itself! Reading the notes makes me remember that time with so much affection. I wish to live up to my teacher’s hope for me, that we might find that spark and ignite that volcano, and that I should find in myself both the technique and the interpretation. Affectionately yours, Irene

What ought he to write back? He felt it would be ridiculous to tell her simply that he missed her every time he wrote, so he searched for other things to tell her, things she might not think to ask about, or odd things he encountered during the day, the sort of thing he might tell her about if they were together and talking over dinner or sitting beside the fire. He did not write back immediately, but waited until the next evening, when he’d been to the house to inspect the progress.

Victoria Street, 4th May My dear Irene, I visited the house today. The walls are stripped bare. The oak plank floors are pale with dust. All is white: the plaster, the dust, the heavy canvas draped over the stair rails. The morning light streams in from the street to the south and warms the rooms. Dust floats in the light shafts. I almost want to leave it like this, undecorated, and hang paintings against the white, so they can be seen as they are, without distraction. Or perhaps we could do as the Italians did, and paint the plaster itself. I walked to my office this morning, east from Westminster to the Poultry. There is a moment when, if I am walking north from the Thames, the dome of St Paul’s comes into sight gilded by morning sunlight. We are busy building up all around it, but this city has moments of beauty remaining and this is one. I wonder what it looked like forty years ago, and forty years before that. Paintings are the only hope we have of remembering now. Our posterity has photographs, I suppose. Your letters arrived. I can imagine your voice speaking the words to me, and miss you a little less. I look forward to visiting Liberty’s with you. It will be a delight. Of course we may consider the Morris papers, if you think them suitable. I am, yours most sincerely, S. Forsyte

He sent with this letter the complete edition of the Mozart piano sonatas he’d found for her when she had mentioned she had little Mozart.

Irene’s reply was all about Mozart, and his life. He had died young, like Schubert had. The world had been denied so much music because of that death, she felt. He remembered she’d said Mozart was like champagne for her: bubbles in the glass, sweet and joyous. She told him that she had been playing the thirteenth sonata when he’d first heard Mozart, and it was quite famous. There were at least two others she wanted to play for him. She concluded with another story about a walk, this one away from the coast and into countryside and farmland, into the green hedgerows and little gardens of the smaller towns in from the seaside resorts.

His reply included a clean copy of the Beethoven Appassionata, fresh from Augener’s, which edition the now-familiar assistant assured him was the edition Clara Schumann had played. This was the rhythm of their correspondence: he would send her music early in the week, so that she might have it learned if he was able to visit on the weekend, or if she were able to visit his parents in London instead, escorted by her step-mother. She would write to him when she had received it, to tell him what she had played first, or what her reactions were if the music were new, how her morning practising went. She would tell him about her walks, the seabirds she’d seen, about the sea or the town. He would write about his own walks through the city, or a painting he had seen and thought about, whether he liked it or disliked it. He wrote to her about warning Dumetrius against a fake Constable; Dumetrius argued at first then ruefully agreed he’d been fooled. She sent him pressed flowers. He sent her a Fauré nocturne recommended by the assistant at Augener’s. He worked, he walked, he sat in his chambers at night reading or working or simply thinking, he looked through his correspondence in hope every morning.

Later in the month, this letter arrived in his morning correspondence:

Lymington, 22nd May Dear Soames, The Beethoven clean print was a most wonderful gift. I have been working on the first movement diligently; a measure at a time it unlocks itself to me. I was lonely today. I walked east this afternoon hoping to ease my heart, but found nothing. I always return to a quiet house. There is no conversation, no laughter. I thought about your hands on your notebook, fingers splayed holding it flat on the piano while you write, learning the name of a new piece, then your little smile when you look at me afterwards, so delighted. Yours, Irene

Soames read this and his heart hurt. He couldn’t eat; he could barely choke down his tea. He walked to his office automatically, thinking about her, wondering what to do. Ought he to get on a train south? He ought not, but he wanted to do it, to sit with her, saying nothing at all, simply being with her.

He sat in his office completely distracted and distressed. He couldn’t work. What was he to do? He returned to his chambers again, because he was useless. Why did he let her be so far away?

He pulled out pen and paper and pushed his fear aside to write.

Victoria Street, 24th May My dear Irene, The first time I saw you, you were playing what you said was a love song by Robert Schumann for Clara, the version for the piano by Liszt. I remember both you and the music so intensely. I fell in love with you at that moment. I looked it up later, in Augener’s, and learned its title. I read the poem; it is passionate indeed. I feel it deeply. Could you tell me what “Widmung” means to you? And could you tell me about Clara Schumann? I know that she is one of the greatest pianists alive, but I do not know anything more. Could you tell me of any music you wish for especially that I might find for you? It gives me great pleasure to do this. Yours, S.

He received her reply Thursday evening, and tore it open with a finger, unable to wait to find his paper-knife. It was the longest letter he’d yet received from her.

Lymington, 25th May My dear Soames, We do belong to each other now, dear heart. Clara Wieck is the daughter of a piano teacher who taught her most strictly from childhood on. She was a child prodigy who played throughout Europe. Her performance of the Appassionata at eighteen was said to be stunning. She impressed Chopin and Liszt, and Schumann himself so much he stopped studying law to concentrate on the piano only. He also studied under Clara’s father. They were married despite her father’s opposition. They had eight children, and Clara did not tour while raising them. She and Brahms are said to be great friends, after the Schumanns discovered him. Robert died young, and Clara never remarried. She tours Europe once again, and sometimes comes to London in the spring. I should so very much like to hear her play next time she comes. When I learned of Clara Schumann as a little girl, I began practising even harder than I had before, trying to be like her. It was thrilling to think of, to play such gorgeous music with deep understanding and love, to be able to share it with others. It’s so rare to be able to hear music like the Appassionata sonata. One either attends a concert in a city like London or Paris or Vienna, or one is lucky enough to have a friend with rare talent. I believe that if you are someone with that ability inside you, it is a duty to try to awaken it, so that the beauty of music might be shared. I know that I don’t have her skill. I am eighteen, and I cannot play the Appassionata through. Instead I still work to earn its first movement. I think I have it in me to earn it, and so I shall persist. The “Widmung” is a particularly lovely piece. It has its difficult passages, but is rewarding. The lied is more romantic, sweeter. Liszt turns it into something dramatic and intense, truly passionate. And the words, yes, the poem is intensity itself and the song matches it. Clara gave up touring for Robert, and must have loved him as much as he loved her. I am afraid to tell you how much music I want. You will think me greedy, for the answer is all of it. But in truth, not jest: I wish for what Brahms you can find. Then do please look for whatever Liszt has made of Wagner’s Ring. These operas have not been performed in London, but I should like to play them on piano and hear for myself what the fuss is about. I miss you so much. Your letter was a comfort. I look forward to talking to you in person this weekend about something that is making me uneasy. Yours, Irene

Soames’s thumb moved for his ring unconsciously. This letter made him feel even more unhappy than the previous one had. Something was wrong. She was clear about it. The weekend, she said. He was instructed to come for the weekend, but not before. He wanted to go immediately. He could go immediately: there was a night train, and he could be at her door at first light in the morning. But she had said the weekend, and meant it.

He went to bed, restless and unhappy, and slept badly. In the morning he went to Augener’s to look for what she’d requested.

Victoria Street, 27th May My dear Irene, I shall be there Saturday by the earliest express, and I shall offer a steady arm for you to hold. I am your solemn watchman, after all. I shall bring you new music. I also intend to write to your step-mother to propose a celebratory dinner at the Angel Inn on Saturday, to return their kind hospitality over this last year. I will watch the concert schedules for Clara Schumann and for Wagner. It is your conversation I miss most during the week. I want to turn to you to ask a question or point out something I saw to learn what you think of it, and I cannot. It took so little time to feel that your company every day is the natural order of things; I should like it to be so again. Yours, S.

He then wrote a mechanical letter to her step-mother proposing dinner, and posted both letters from his office. The letters should arrive in Lymington before him, but only just.

XIX. Irene plays Chopin

Soames indeed caught the first express to Lymington on the Saturday, which got him down there coincident with the morning edition of the Times, far earlier than he ever had arrived normally. And so it was that mid-morning on Saturday, long before luncheon, Soames called at the home the Lomaxes leased, top hat in hand, and smiled without reservation to see the somewhat surprised little maid Millie before him.

“I think Miss Heron is expecting me,” he said.

“Yes, sir, she is in the drawing room.”

“Thank you. Don’t try to hang my coat. I have it.”

Soames went into the drawing room eagerly, for he could hear her playing there. He didn’t know what she was playing; he didn’t think he’d heard it before. He had a bundle of music in his hand to give to her, because he would never make the trip to Lymington without music in his hand again. He shut the door behind himself carefully, quietly, and stole forward on silent footsteps. He saw her look up briefly and then down again. She was focused on whatever it was that she was reading in front of her: she did not know it nearly as well as anything else she normally played, and it was difficult enough to require concentration. He saw her lift her right hand and turn the page and miss something in the notes.

In the next moment he had come round behind her on her left, watching where she was looking. There were at least two more page turns, he thought. The trick was figuring out when the moment came. The printing on this page was so dense! It was like mathematical notation only more cramped. There was some reason to it, though. He could see that there were groups of things at the top that matched groups of keys she pressed with her right hand. It was not rapid, however, because of how much ink was on the page. How long had it taken her to learn to read all this? And there, she was at the bottom of the page, and—

“Now,” Irene said.

He turned the page, and Irene continued playing smoothly. Soames felt extremely pleased with himself. When the next turn came, he was ready and poised for her signal.

When she was finished, he said, “I need to do this for you every time you play.”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask until recently. You can’t read music.”

“Indeed I can’t. I can look where you’re looking, though.”

“It’s true, you can,” she said. “You may turn pages for me any time you wish.”

“It would be an honour. This is the Appassionata, I see.”

“Yes! The first movement. I have been working at it, thanks to your gift. This week I felt a new passage open up under my hands—technique and meaning both. It was a revelation! I thought about writing to you about it, and then I decided to save it for you when you came.”

Soames looked down and swallowed. “I’m glad I arrived in time to hear it. Thank you.”

“Thank you so much for that clean copy of the score. It has been such a help.”

“You are most welcome.”

He could see the happiness on her face and he felt a warm glow inside himself that could not be matched by anything else in his experience. He had given Irene what she longed for most, what she needed, not what he wanted, and his reward was this expression on her face. Then it came to him: he’d forgotten something. He scrambled for the little packet of sheet music he’d dropped upon the floor when leaping to her side to turn pages. He handed it over to her shyly.

“You said you wanted this.”

“Liszt’s Walhall—Soames! You found it! And this after sending me Fauré! How on earth did you know I would like the Fauré at all?”

“The fellow at Augener’s again, the shop that has all the latest things from the Continent. I told him everything you’d ever mentioned to me and asked him what you’d want to play next.”

“You have written down everything I’ve—”

“I’ve been keeping notes a long time.”

“Soames!”

He had been writing it all down in his little notebook from his first time round. Why he’d done that, he couldn’t remember now, because he’d done nothing at all with the notes, but his older, wiser, more thoughtful self had put it to good use. He’d been an odd chap, his younger self had, a rum fellow, or whatever George had called him. He supposed he was still one now, just one softened by somebody having loved him a little bit.

He said, “The fellow at Augener’s is the one who suggested the Grieg and the Brahms. After that I decided he knew what he was about, and told him more about what you liked. He suggested the Fauré after that.” He smiled with real pleasure at the thought of giving her more music, of getting that response from her again. It was everything he had wanted when he’d given her brooches before.

“Soames, I am moved that you go to such lengths to find things for me.”

“It’s nothing at all.”

“I can’t believe that you would say that. Surely it was time out of your day—”

“It was nothing.” He stepped closer to Irene. “What’s a nocturne?”

Irene gave him a look, as if to say she knew how clumsily he was changing the subject. “Nothing more than a composition inspired by the night. They can vary from each other greatly, but they are often lyrical. Some of my favourite pieces are nocturnes.”

“Ah,” Soames said. “I hope it is good. The fellow in the shop had not played it.”

“I know of Fauré, of course, but I have not played much of his work. And the Liszt transcriptions of Wagner—Soames, I’ve had more new music to play in the last two months than in the entire time since I left the Conservatoire.”

He smiled and bounced on his toes a little bit, quite proud of himself. He’d chosen all the right things, and pulled it off. He could adapt; he could learn from his mistakes. He could do better this time round.

“What should I play for you?” she asked.

He turned serious then, reminding himself of why he had come so early in the day, by the very first express. He said, “Where are your step-parents?”

“Doing business in town. They know you are to visit today, so please do not think your presence is unexpected.”

Soames touched her arm. “Irene. Now I must ask you. What is it that is better said in person?”

Her smile died, and she did not answer him.

“Irene, please tell me. I know that something is wrong.”

She sighed deeply. “You are right. Something is wrong.”

“Tell me. Please. I wish to help.”

Irene turned away from him and faced the keys of the piano. She placed her fingers on them and moved them without playing any notes. He’d seen her do that before. Her version of a nervous gesture, perhaps? She sighed, then said, “My step-father has been… giving me unwanted attention for some time now. I thought I was imagining it at first. I might still be imagining it. He does these things in front of my step-mama, and she doesn’t complain.”

“What does he do?” he said, very softly.

“At first it was embraces. Kisses on the cheek. Things a step-father might do, things that I found comforting and warm, things that made me feel better because they reminded me of my own papa when he was alive. But it took a turn. He has started holding me closer than I want, longer than I want. I thought he was just being blustery and insensitive and had no ill intent.”

Very carefully, speaking as calmly and quietly as he could, he said, “When did this start? The touching?”

“Before he and my step-mama were married.”

He’d known it. He’d seen she was unhappy about the marriage from the start, but he hadn’t seen why. “When did it take a turn?”

“The night I came home from staying with your parents. He came into my bedroom just as I was starting to change for bed. He asked me if I was quite certain I wanted to marry you. He said he wanted to be sure I was making the right decision—you were a cold legal sort, and maybe not the man for me. It would have seemed very kind of him, but he was, he was—holding me more closely than I wanted. And after that night in the city, I—”

He felt that disconnection from his body for a moment, that anger that knew no bounds or limits. He attempted to haul himself back in. It would do Irene no good. He would keep his head. Anger was not the thing for this. He uncurled his fist and winced. His fingernails had bitten into his palm and drawn blood. He ignored it.

“What did you do?” he said, quite calmly.

“I went out into the hall and into their room, and started brushing my step-mama’s hair. She was happy to have the attention and he wouldn’t dare touch me in front of her.”

Soames felt his hand clench again, but he still felt quite controlled and icy. “Clever.”

“He left me alone the next night, but then my step-mama was out of the house and he came by while I was practising in the morning. I got ahead of him, and told him I was quite certain you were the right man for me. He told me it was a pity, because he could tell I was hot-blooded and needed a man who understood that. And then he left. He’s said nothing since, but I don’t—he’s still looking at me.”

“You’ve said enough,” Soames said, and took her hand, very gently. “I shall talk to my mother. When you come up to London for your next long visit, you won’t come back down here again.”

“But where will I live?”

“With my parents. You’ll stay with them until the wedding. He’ll be down here with your step-mother. He’ll come up to give you away for the wedding and that’ll be the last you have to see of him. Unless there’s anybody else who could do that. Do you have an uncle?”

“No. There is no one else.”

“Damn,” he said, and that was his entire chest aching for her sake. He kissed her hand then held it over his heart. “Is there a lock on your door?”

“No.”

Soames’s chest felt as if it had been struck, but his face did not move. “Leave your window open,” he said, calmly. “You must be ready to scream.”

“I understand.”

“He won’t risk your step-mother knowing. He’ll try you if he thinks you will yield easily to him. So do not.”

“I think I can do this. But Soames—”

“Yes?”

“What if my step-mother is not home?”

“Get out of the house. Immediately. Get on the next train to London.”

“I can’t—I don’t have—”

“Here.” Soames reached into his pockets and extracted six sovereigns from his sovereign case, and a handful of other coins. He had enough left for his own needs for the two days he’d be in Lymington. He pressed the coins into her hand.

“I couldn’t—”

“Yes, you can. This will get you to London and get you on a cab to Park Lane. You can send a telegram to me on the way if you have time to spare at the station. You have my card? No? Here. My firm. I’ll write my parents’ address on it so you cannot forget. Either of those will reach me.” He pulled out his stylographic pen and wrote, then gave her the card.

“Pack a bag now,” he said. “Keep the money somewhere safe and on your person, even when you sleep. The train fare is a pound first class. Don’t take second, do you hear? Two shillings for a cab to my parents’ house. I’ve given you more in case something goes wrong, in case you need lodgings. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Irene tucked card and coins into a pocket of her dress. “I have a purse I can wear around my neck.”

“Repeat to me.”

“A pound for the train, two shillings for the cab to your parents’ home. There’ll be tips?”

“Tuppence, four if the fellow takes extra care of you.”

“I’ve travelled on my own, but not in London. Is there anything else?”

“The timetable. My copy is in my coat pocket hanging in the hall. You will take it before I leave. You should be safe once you’re on the train.” He paused and touched his fingers to his lips. Was there anything else to arrange for her? He thought better of something. “No, you are going to take the timetable now, lest we not have the chance later. I’m going to bring a telegram form for you tomorrow already filled out save for the arrival time of the train. It’ll take less time to send.”

He led her into the hall and found it in his outer coat pocket, exactly where it always was. He’d get another copy on his way home. “Repeat again.”

“Timetable,” she said. “A pound for the train, two shillings for the cab, send a telegram with my arrival time if I get the chance. Money on my person, pack a bag now. I’ll do something so the coins don’t jingle.”

“Clever again.”

“I’m going to take all this to my room.”

“I’ll be in the conservatory.”

Irene ran upstairs with the timetable. Soames paced noiselessly back into the drawing room, leaving the door open so he could hear her return. The anger was still there, simmering in him, but it was managed. What else ought he to do? He had given her the means to get on the train, and once there she would be secure. The danger would be if Lomax prevented her bodily, which he would not dare do. Would he? He might. His mind ran over the possibilities, ran over the remedies. He would speak to Lomax very briefly this evening, after dinner but not before, to let the fellow know what would happen to him if he touched Irene again.

Irene came back down the stairs and into the drawing room. “My bag is partly packed. I’ll finish it tonight, with the excuse that I’m preparing for my next visit.”

“Take only the things you cannot replace. Clothing and books don’t matter,” he said. There was something very cold and hard ruling his thinking at that moment. Irene needed protection; how would he arrange that? That was all that mattered to him. If at that moment Lomax had shown himself to him, Soames might simply have leapt for his throat. It was not undirected or indiscriminate; it was precise. He knew exactly what Irene ought to do. He knew exactly what had to happen.

Irene said, “Soames. You are frightening just now.”

“Frightening?”

“Your face. It’s nothing I’ve seen before from you. You are completely cold.”

Soames opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Was he cold just now? Yes. He was. He reached inside and found his gentlest voice for her. “Am I frightening you?”

“Yes. You are so very angry—I don’t know what you are about to do.”

“I won’t allow anyone to hurt you.”

She took his hand, and he pressed hers gently. She said, “This is a side of you I’ve never seen before. I’ve heard you speak heatedly before, but this anger is so controlled. As if your lawyer self were the one angry.”

Soames looked down at her hand in his. He was angry. He hadn’t been able to hide it. He would not insult her by denying it.

Soames released her hand, began pacing across the drawing room and back. He tried to keep himself steady. He could feel the after-effects of anger in himself, that queasy feeling and that tremor in his hands. He paced into the conservatory and back, head down, trying to breathe. He found himself fidgeting with his signet ring again, reaching for that inexplicable soothing he got from rubbing his thumb over its face. Calm down. Anger would not help. She needed his love, not his anger.

She was young. He found himself thinking that for the first time. He had thought her ineffable, unknowable before, but now he had begun to know her, and she was eighteen. She was set on doing things the way she wanted, because she was brave and determined, but she did not know men as he did. And as for him, he knew the world, but he was in a body that had the passions of a young man, and he was feeling them now. Anger, fear, an almost overwhelming desire to sweep her away and keep her safe, all coursing in his blood. He gnawed at a moustache that was not there, swore inwardly briefly, and found his signet ring again. He wanted to sit stroking it and thinking, but he could not.

He came to a halt before her in a calmer state, but still in need of his thumb on the ring. He forced himself to get that under control, and to put his hands at his sides.

“Irene,” he began, uncertain of what he meant to say. “This is—” He stopped, began again. “You needn’t endure this a moment longer. You will return with me to London today. Now.”

“I cannot. That would be a scandal.”

“I can summon my mother.”

“Soames, we must not. We will not. I cannot simply move into your parents’ home so easily. He might not do anything again, and we will have made a fuss for nothing. I will speak firmly to him and tell him he is not to repeat that behaviour.”

Soames could see that she had made up her mind, and was determined to face it on her own terms, and he could not help but admire that in her despite his fear. He would defer. He had seen tears in her eyes when she’d spoken of feeling trapped by Lomax, but she’d kept command of herself. It would be hard for her behind that brave front. He opened his arms and offered to hold her, and she moved into them immediately. He kissed her forehead, and whispered, “I love you.”

“Dearest Soames,” she said.

His throat closed up. Nobody said that sort of thing to him. He held her until she stirred in his arms and laid her hands on his chest. He looked down at her and hoped she couldn’t see how affected he was by all of this.

Irene said, “Sit beside me, and let me play some Chopin for you. I know it’s not any of the new music, but I want to play some of my favourite things just now.”

Soames let her lead him over to the piano again. He sat down on a chair beside the piano and rubbed his thumb on his ring a few times, soothing himself again. He found mastery over his feelings once more. So much emotion! He’d spent so long hoping she would say words of love to him, and no time imagining how he would react if she ever did, or that he would be sick with worry about her at the moment she said them.

Irene was kneeling at an over-full set of bookshelves, sorting through her collection of sheet music. She returned with a battered and worn paper-bound music book and set it open upon the piano. There were pencil marks and scribbled words in various places. She sat on the bench and adjusted it into position. “I don’t need to read the score to play these, I have known them so long, but I thought you might like to see it. This was the copy I studied as a young girl.”

“You’ve played these since you were a child?”

“I was so young I almost can’t remember learning them.”

Then she began to play. He listened with deep concentration on both the music and Irene. The piece didn’t seem very difficult for her, because her eyes were half-closed as she played, and she was playing with ease, swaying a little as if moved by a breeze. It was pretty, he thought, and she was pretty, and she looked happier now she was playing it. It was soft, not dramatic and stormy like the Brahms rhapsodies were. The ending was especially soft. She looked over at him when she was done.

He passed a hand over his face, and said, “Soft. Soft and soothing. I feel comforted, somehow. Does playing it comfort you?”

“Very much. The next,” Irene said, quietly. And she played something that had him enthralled almost immediately. He didn’t understand why. There was a waltz underneath it, he could hear that, and on top the most beautiful things. It was sometimes soft then it built up and demanded his attention and yet was so delicate about how it did so. When it ended Soames sat silent with his mouth a little open, trying to find words.

“That was beautiful,” he said, after some moments, and he felt completely befuddled by this reaction. “I don’t understand how it is but it is. It sounds like, I don’t know, water falling from fountains in moonlight. And then it comes back to that melody, and then does that repeating thing at the end. I don’t understand. I don’t have words for any of this.” He shook his head.

“You do understand, I think. You don’t need any more than what you just felt to understand it.”

“What was it?”

“Chopin’s nocturne opus 9, number 2, in E-flat. It is one of his most-loved pieces, and quite famous.”

“Oh. I—” He shook his head again.

“We should not have been going to concerts. I should have been playing for you and making you tell me how you felt.”

Soames shook his head a third time. It was confounding, but only in that it turned out to be simple in some ways. He had merely to listen and let himself feel. Letting himself feel: that was the difficulty. He of course did, but he kept such a tight rein on himself always, even more after he had learned what happened when he did not. Except now, with her—he would tell her. He would work to do so. She appreciated that.

“Would you play it again for me, please? Is it impolite to ask that?”

“It is never impolite to ask that of me, Soames. It is a compliment. More than that. It is perhaps the most wonderful thing you have ever said to me.”

He sprang out of his chair, seized her hand, and kissed it. He returned to his chair immediately somewhat abashed, but once again deeply moved. He had no words to say in response to her; no words would come to him. He would never have guessed this, never have been capable of saying it before, in his first life. Why not, he didn’t know. It was not as if he’d spent his elder years listening to music. It was that he had realised that what mattered to Irene ought to matter to him. He had let his heart be open to music; Irene had let her heart be open to him. That was a more than reasonable exchange; they each of them gained more than they gave. The Forsyte in him approved. The lover he had always wanted to be was so happy he thought he might burst.

Irene played the nocturne again, and it was just as beautiful, but this time Soames was listening for things he’d heard the first time to come around again so he could enjoy them again, and found himself noticing other things along the way. There was so much to hear, he thought.

At the end, he said, “That was the same but different. You never quite play it twice the same. And different people must play things differently, from other things you’ve said.”

“Yes. This is what I was saying about the Emperor Concerto. Eugen d’Albert played it with such subtle phrasing compared to others I have heard play it, that I was deeply moved. It is hard to notice this if you haven’t anything to compare to. Had you heard it before?”

Soames shook his head.

“I ought to have asked.” Irene looked chagrined. “I assumed you knew more than you did.”

“I hid my ignorance. You found me out eventually.”

“I was upset when I learned you were feigning interest, but now I understand. You wanted to give me something that mattered to me.”

“I did. I reached for the first thing I could think of. Later I came to understand another thing that mattered.”

“Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You were always trying to express it, weren’t you? What your silent love hath writ.”

“I am overcharged with the burden of my love.” Thank goodness for a public school education.

“Who knew you were like this?” she asked, as she had once before.

Soames answered as he had before, sincerely, “Not I.”

“Would you like to hear anything else?”

“I am overwhelmed. I don’t know that I can hear anything more today and make sense of it.”

“I’ll wait for you to make a note of the Chopin, then. The first piece was opus 9, number 1, in B-flat minor.”

He might have been annoyed if she had not been looking at him so fondly. He slipped out notebook and pencil and made the notes she expected of him. Chopin, nocturnes, opus 9. He closed the notebook and smiled at her. He knew he was doing exactly what she’d said he did in that letter, but he couldn’t help it. He was in fact happy to have learned about them.

“You are so methodical.”

His smile became a little shyer. “I am. So are you, in your work on these pieces. I admire it.”

Irene flushed. “Thank you. I—well. Never mind. Would you mind if I asked for your assistance turning pages while I practise this morning? It would be most helpful.”

“I would be delighted to help.”

Irene took out the Appassionata again and set it before herself on the piano’s music stand. He did not mind. She would play what she loved; he would look at her face and enjoy her love for whatever it was she was experiencing. He sat on the cushioned stool beside her bench and did his best to turn pages, watching her face to determine where she was looking, trying to understand what she was thinking about. She was practising, not playing; he could tell that.

This was less interesting than he might have credited in some ways. She repeated passages over and over, at slower tempos than the work requested, with a metronome ticking, fingering the parts very deliberately. When she had trouble, she slowed down even further. When she thought she had mastery of something, she played it through from the beginning at a tempo she felt comfortable with, over and over. He began to understand how much work it was to get mastery of things if one was not a prodigy, or someone who was born with all the technique, as she said, that everybody else had to work for. But even in those few short hours, he could hear her progress through it, and feel her satisfaction with that progress. It was merely half a page, but half a page of dense work.

Soames was unsure which of them worked harder: he when he studied for his articles, or she learning the Appassionata.

At some time approaching the lunch hour they heard the bell ring, then the front door open. Millie’s voice, Lomax’s speaking more loudly than any social circumstance required, footsteps. Soames closed his eyes for a moment. The next task was going to be figuring out what line he needed to take with Lomax. It was a tightrope he must walk now, for he must not frighten Irene again. She did not want confrontation or to be forced to leave. She wanted to see if the fellow would stop bothering her on his own. He wouldn’t, but perhaps Soames could frighten him anyway.

He blew out a long breath and stood. He touched Irene’s shoulder for a moment, held her gaze, and nodded to her. “Your watchman,” he said. He worried it was an absurd and overly-sentimental thing to say, but the affection on her face at his words told him otherwise.

Louder voices in the hall, a moment of Lomax remonstrating with Millie, and the doors to the drawing room swept open. Mrs Lomax walked in first, all sharp colours and sharp perfume, but welcoming and delighted to see Soames again, so nice of him to come down to see them all. He shook her hand calmly; she was Irene’s refuge and he was grateful for her at this moment.

Lomax was behind her, and ah yes, that was the look of a man who wanted to know if Irene had said anything to him and if he had anything to bully his way through. Soames remembered how he used to behave, how his nose used to lift. He drew on that memory of himself now, lifted a supercilious nose, and extended a chilly hand. Lomax shook it briefly, and retreated immediately out of Soames’s reach. Soames did not mind what Lomax did, if he was taking the coward’s line.

Now he would turn his attention to Mrs Lomax. He found a warmer smile for her, simply to show Lomax how in the cold he was.

“You received my letter, yes?” On her assent, he continued. “It is my great pleasure to host you all at the Angel Inn this evening. I have enjoyed your hospitality at tea so often over these last months and I am so very grateful. I shall return it in a small way now, just the four of us. It will be so busy once we’re in London again, I’m not sure I shall have the opportunity.”

He’d studied over those words carefully, and felt he’d delivered them adequately. Mrs Lomax looked most pleased, and Lomax did not look quite as uneasy any more. Good. He took Mrs Lomax’s hands and pressed them to affirm their mutual affection—such as it was—and establish his goodwill towards her. She effusively thanked him, and he did his best to respond as expected.

“I shall stay here through tea, if I may, then return shortly before dinner to escort you all down.”

“Of course! What a perfectly splendid plan!” Mrs Lomax exclaimed, and it was settled.

He spent the rest of the afternoon turning pages of the Appassionata for Irene while Mrs Lomax did her sewing and other household chores in the drawing room near them. Irene asked if he were bored by this, but he assured her he was not, and he was not. He was honoured to assist her, happy to sit so near her.

Over tea, she shared her satisfaction with her progress. His admiration of her could not help but intensify, now that he knew where this skill came from. He walked back to the inn to change for dinner, thinking of her determination with pure respect.

Dinner at the inn was not what dinner at Park Lane was, but the food was good, and Soames had chosen the wines, so the experience was pleasant as a whole. He was able to play host and thank Mrs Lomax for her generosity for hosting him through those months of courtship, which was genuinely felt. This was his age displaying itself, in carefully expressed courtesy. His youthful self would not have known how to do this: he would have been consumed with Lomax. He’d have sulked and fumed and said cutting things, would have confronted the man no matter what Irene wanted. Now he knew how to give Irene what she’d asked for while being just as cutting as he wished. Stay chilly; stay calm; ply him with wine and assume he knew more about it than he did; show him what good manners were; show him that the staff of the Angel Inn fussed over Soames, not him, and that Soames knew to respond to them with courtesy instead of bluster. Show him what a gentleman was, and make his shortcomings clear without saying a word.

Or so he hoped. It was possible that Lomax was so insensitive he would not notice. If Irene saw what he was doing, she gave him no sign. Was Mrs Lomax aware? That was possible.

The dinner ended with an awkward attempt at toasting the engaged couple, instigated by Lomax. He assayed some words of praise for Forsyte and then some words about the beauty of his step-daughter, in phrasing that was just odd enough that Mrs Lomax said, “Now, Willy,” and Irene looked away. Soames gritted his teeth to prevent himself from reacting. But he did control his reactions, and he did return the toast with his best attempt at gallantry towards Mrs Lomax for her providential introduction of the two of them, which she was again quite pleased by.

Dinner could not end soon enough after that.

The walk back to their home revealed all about who was aware of what.

Irene interlinked her arm with her step-mother, who was most happy to reciprocate, and the two walked in amity ahead of the gentlemen. Mrs Lomax was extremely pleased, which meant she was entirely unaware of undercurrents. She was happy about how everything had gone: happy about the dinner, happy about her step-daughter’s match, happy about her prospective step-son-in-law’s prosperity, happy about the new burst of affection she was receiving from her step-daughter. She was warm and agreeable, and Irene did her best to encourage this warmth.

There was no such accord between the men, only icy civility. Soames and Lomax walked beside each other in perfect silence for half a block before Lomax spoke.

“I’m delighted by this marriage,” the fellow said. “Her step-mother has been fretting about her, what? She’s been low these past weeks, and you’ve brought her quite round. Just the man for her, she told me her—”

Soames broke in. “Be very careful,” he said, with a beat between each word. He stared at Lomax while he said it.

The fellow would not meet his eyes, and pretended not to have heard him, but Soames heard the stumble in his step. The warning had landed, and it ought to be enough, but Lomax was a fool. It was good Irene had the means to escape him.

They continued threading their way through the town’s streets towards the home the Lomaxes leased—thanks to the forethought of Irene’s father and nothing else—and found themselves at its front door.

Soames made his way inside with the rest of them, deliberately, as if he belonged, and sat with Irene in the conservatory while Mrs Lomax sat in the drawing room nearby, doing something he paid no attention to. He wanted a little more time with Irene, to reassure her and—if he admitted it—reassure himself that she was safe.

It was, to his surprise, the most alone and most intimate they had ever been in this house, there in the conservatory, in the dark night, with a single candle lighting them. Mrs Lomax was in earshot, but had her back to them. He sat beside Irene on the bench he had sat beside her many times before, but this time they sat in that little pool of light, in some privacy. Her step-parents were lax about chaperoning them, as always, not that Soames had ever complained. He would not take advantage of this, however. He would do no more than he did now, which was sit with Irene talking together later than they would normally be allowed to talk.

Irene leaned her head on his shoulder and he tucked an arm around her. He touched her face gently.

“It’s so much better when you are here,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

“I love you,” he said, quietly. “I don’t have the words for how much, but I do.”

“It’s in what you do, Soames, not what you say.”

“I should still like to find the words some day, if I can.”

“I only hope you know how much I care for you in return.”

“You may feel free to show me by kissing me any time you wish.” He smiled at her, and she obliged him by allowing him a brief kiss.

They sat together quietly, unmoving. Soames watched wax droplets run down the side of the candle. Two months in the past, and he still appreciated candles greatly. Such lovely warm light, warming everything around them to romantic beauty, if he dared admit it. Not that he would say so to anyone. The reflection of the flame in Irene’s eyes made something in him melt as much as the wax had melted. The way the light darkened her hair to that dead-leaves colour, that pale amber. She did not have pale yellow hair. It was a richer colour, variegated, gold and amber and yellowed fallen leaves, even more beautiful when firelit. Gold and amber hair, dark eyes. He was dark-haired and grey-eyed. What would their children be like? He had secret wishes, but if they took after her he would not complain.

He touched her lips with his thumb, then bent to kiss her again, very gently.

Irene smiled up at him, then said something unexpected. “Shall you come to church with us in the morning?”

“Church?”

“You should. News of our engagement has gone round.”

“Oh. I—Thank you for the invitation.”

He felt uneasy. He hadn’t been to church in more years than, well, she had been alive, in some strange sense. If he were in a little group with Irene and her step-mother, perhaps it would be simple routine, as it had always been. Or perhaps Nemesis would speak to him again. There was no telling. He did not particularly wish to deal with realities he could not fully comprehend on a regular basis.

Nonetheless, he said, “I—I shall go with you. Shall I call on you in time to walk down?”

Irene said, “Yes, please do. And thank you.”

“Are you sure all is well now?”

“I am. You are a safe refuge for me. You are my silent watchman.”

“And you are my lonely purple flower?”

Irene pressed her face into his shoulder at that, and he became aware that she was crying. He pulled his handkerchief out and gave it to her, and otherwise did not react. Did she want him to make a fuss or give her the courtesy of pretending it hadn’t happened? He wasn’t sure. He tentatively stroked her cheek. After a bit she dried her eyes and sat up.

“I think I must go to sleep now, dearest.”

“Oh, I am sorry! I hadn’t realised the time.”

“Don’t apologise,” Irene said. “You came here to comfort me, and you have done that.”

They stood and made their way to the front hall. Soames donned coat and hat, and found his stick. The door to the drawing room was open, so Soames remained circumspect. He kissed Irene’s lips, then kissed her cheek and whispered, “Rouse me if you must. You know where to find me.”

“I do. Goodnight, dearest Soames.”

Hearing that moved him every time, but he controlled himself, and only pressed her hand between his before making his way out the door. He walked to the inn he had walked to so many times, thinking of her as he had so many times, but now caught between worry and anger.

XX. Soames goes to church

In the morning he went to church with Mrs Lomax and Irene, as requested. This was not a thing he did, as a rule. He had of course attended church regularly as a boy at school, as one was compelled to, but he’d never believed in much of anything until recently, when he’d perforce had to begin believing in something. The alternative was to believe himself mad, which was manifestly not true in all other ways. He’d died and come back to life on a London and South Western Railway train heading from Waterloo to points south. This was not a matter of faith; it had happened. The question of belief, however, was between him and the deity that had done this for him—or perhaps to him, as punishment—and he did not much see the need to go to a church to speak to that deity. If he had spoken to it from the first class compartment of a train, he could do it from anywhere.

Was it a Christian god who had done this to him? Soames had named the phenomenon Nemesis, because he and Irene had once discussed it. They both believed in Nemesis, and here She was, visiting him and delivering him justice. He supposed he’d never know any true name for the phenomenon, and would be grateful not to. Gods were too much for the likes of him.

Now that he was sitting in the pew that the Lomaxes rented, looking at the restored Norman church, his arm nearly touching Irene’s, he thought going to church was a thing he might do now and again, if only to remind himself that his life had taken a strange twist, and somehow he hadn’t gone mad when it had happened. He’d accepted the challenge instead, and that perhaps had taken the intervention of deity.

It looked to be a well-attended service, cheerful from the note of the voices muttering before the service began. How many Norman-era churches across the south of England were just like this one?

The hour bell was rung. The church service was beginning. Everyone stood. Opening prayers. The vicar was a local man, it sounded like, the educated drawl overlaid on the Hampshire burr. He had a good cadence in his voice, and a taste of dry wit that Soames could hear even in the service’s introduction.

Time to kneel. To be on his knees next to her, so close to her, inches away: this was difficult. Her scent was in his nose, the rose petals and honey with its new deeper note. He could hear her gown rustling in the quiet of the church. He held himself as perfectly still as he could. The general confession began, with the congregation repeating the words together. He’d said this so many times as a boy that he still knew it now, all these years since he’d last been in a church. It had been so long that he found himself thinking about the words and finding them apt. He’d followed too much the devices and desires of his own heart. He had left undone the things he ought to have done, and done those things which he ought not to have done. He ought to have told her he was sorry. He ought not to have sinned against her. He needed forgiveness. He’d never get it, but even so, he might hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, if he worked at it.

A good bit of writing, the collect of the day was. All of them, really. Solid appeals to authority, and they sounded good ringing out from the minister. The fellow had a flair for it.

And then a hymn, and to Soames’s shock, he could hear Irene next to him singing, and her voice made him ache. He’d never heard her sing—had he truly never been to church with her before? He had not. He himself did not sing if he could help it, because it embarrassed him, but she did not hesitate or hold back and her voice made something in his heart feel longing of a kind it had never felt before. Did she ever sing while she played? If he asked her to, would she? Her voice was lovely. His was a croak in comparison. He was spun round where he stood by her voice, making such lovely sounds.

On to the Psalms. In this church they read them aloud together, it seemed. He broke off reading with the rest of the congregation in the middle because it upset him. “Thou art about my path and about my bed, and spiest out all my ways. For lo, there is not a word in my tongue, but thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.”

Everything he’d said was known. Everything he’d done was known. Every cruel word, every cruel deed, known. Every mistake. Everything he’d said in the dark of that room at the inn. Every time he’d stayed silent when he ought to have spoken. He was known. Soames shivered.

“Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I climb up into heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

No escape, there was no escape. This was for the rest of his life, wasn’t it? It was forever. There was no moment when the Lord—Nemesis—whichever it was—was not present, holding him. There was no moment of success, only moments when She might decide he’d failed.

Soames sat with that, with Irene so close next to him that he could feel her warmth, and hoped that a lifetime of wisdom was enough to guide him through.

“Try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart: prove me, and examine my thoughts. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me: and lead me in the way everlasting.”

There was wickedness in him. Look well, and you would find it immediately. Lead him so he wouldn’t do it again, please, Lord, please. He did wish with all his heart he hadn’t done it, any of it, but that one thing more than any other. Why had he done it? Desire. Jealousy. Anger. He’d wanted no one else, and he hadn’t known what to do with his feelings. He didn’t even have the excuse that he’d been drunk. He was a flawed man. He was being watched, a deity was watching him, would always be watching him. He could never waver. Stay in control at all times. He made an abortive gesture with his hand, clenching his fist then releasing it.

Irene turned her head to look at him briefly, and he locked himself back down into motionlessness.

Another hymn: a reprieve from thought. Another chance to listen to Irene sing while he mouthed the words and thought about what it would take for him to make sounds like the ones she was making. Impossible, he suspected. Dared he try?

They sat. Now came the sermon, which was excruciating. Soames thought about the origins of that word and resolved to choose another. Dull, that was better. The sort of man sent to a seaside town in Hampshire was not the sort of man who wrote witty sermons for fashionable London churchgoers; no Reverend Scoles here. He was educated, clearly, and made a handful of dry jokes that Soames could recognise as genuine wit, but the poor fellow had long since run himself empty of anything new to say to his congregation. They would no doubt have been upset if he had found anything new to say. It would not have been what anybody wanted. Church was about the familiar, about knowing the responses and saying the confession along with everybody else.

The church building itself was the usual Norman edifice restored some time in the last thirty years. Gutted by Cromwell, stained glass shattered, now replaced by competent if uninspired modern craftsmen. It wasn’t notable, as far as he could tell, not that he knew anything about churches or architecture. There were the usual monuments around the walls to local men who’d gone abroad in the army or the navy and come back with whatever they’d managed to steal or conquer. A dozen tiny battles were memorialised in every church he’d ever been in. This thought led him to remembering what it had been like in Mapledurham after the War, when they had put up one monument with more names on it than a hundred years of monuments had held, and he went very still for a while, and did not hear what the vicar was saying at all.

He wrenched his mind away from that and back to the topic of the sermon, which was what, again? Oh, fervent charity, the vicar was saying, the kind that covered a multitude of sins. Fervent. He didn’t mind charity, so long as no one saw him doing it. He wasn’t sure he could manage fervent. Would it help? He doubted it. Buying his way out of his sin felt wrong. His mind wandered again. How many congregants? He counted pews, multiplied, realised that he had no idea how many rows were behind them and that he could not turn to look.

Devices and desires. Odd phrase. The assumption was that everybody was a sinner, and that they all needed forgiveness.

He remembered sitting in his club once, many years ago, and overhearing two men talking about a friend who’d set his marriage right by beating his wife and then ensuring his access to her bed. The men had looked ordinary, more ordinary than he, good solid businessmen. It was a husband’s right to do that, in the Law. He’d been unable to use the word he ought to have used for it, but he’d known what the men he’d overheard were discussing. They had thought it entirely the right thing to do for their friend’s marriage, quite sensible. The Church had nothing to say about it. The Law approved. Good strong men, doing what they ought to sustain their marriages. He’d remembered this conversation later, when trying to excuse his own sin the morning afterwards.

He wanted forgiveness. Forgiveness wasn’t going to be his, no matter how much he prayed for it here with all these people, no matter how many times he went to a church and asked for it. His sin was never going to be washed away, because the Irene he’d sinned against was not the Irene beside him now, her sleeve brushing against his. He’d died with it still on him. His burden was to not sin against Irene this time. No matter what happened, he had to not follow too much those desires of his own heart.

If he’d known attending church was going to do this to him, he didn’t think he’d have gone. But Irene had wanted him to. Maybe it was like that night in his room at the inn when he’d faced it at last. He needed to admit what he’d done, whom he’d wronged, and how. He’d once thought it was as simple as letting her refuse him. Then he’d thought it was a test he could pass by naming his sin and asking for forgiveness. Now he knew it was more.

Then the sermon was over, and there was another hymn, and his heart was soothed by the pleasure of listening to her sing again. This time he opened his own mouth and tried to join her, quietly, but he tried. He remembered this hymn from boyhood, and singing it then, and though he felt shy, he could do it. This was worth going to church for. There were so many things he had not known about her. He had been so foolish! On the whole he was grateful to be given the chance to experience this. It was worth the pain of being reminded of his sins.

The vicar said, “O Lord, let thy mercy be shewed upon us.” And Soames responded, automatically, with the rest, “As we do put our trust in thee.” Did he? He supposed he had no choice.

The final grace and then it was done, and they were making their way out of church. They were in a line of family groups waiting to speak to the vicar. And here he was, being introduced as Irene’s fiancé, shaking the man’s hand, exchanging pleasantries, mentioned as likely to be accompanying them on many future visits. Well, that was the price to pay, and he would pay it to hear her sing.

And then out onto the cobbled streets of Lymington, making their way through the churchgoers. They walked arm in arm, slowly, with Mrs Lomax ahead of them a little way, talking with other matrons.

Soames was disinclined to talk after that experience inside the church, so they walked the length of a street in silence. They turned a corner and the sound of church bells behind them dampened a little. Feet on pavements, women talking, birds singing. England in spring on a Sunday morning. Then Irene spoke.

“Do you attend church often in London?”

Soames shook his head. “I haven’t been in some years.”

“Do you object to going?”

“No. It simply doesn’t feel worthwhile.”

“Do you not believe?”

“I believe in a deity,” he said. “I don’t think that’s why one should be a decent man, but I believe there is a higher Power and we are given justice.”

“You seemed distressed more than once.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

He said, carefully, “I was thinking about whether I’ve earned what I have been given. Once I wouldn’t have questioned it. Now I do.”

Her hand tightened on his arm for a moment. “Soames, some day you will tell me.”

He made no reply; none was possible. He could never tell her. She left it alone, to his great relief, and they continued on to the house, where they settled to the afternoon’s occupations. When the Lomaxes had left them alone, Soames took a folded square of paper from his pocket that he had prepared that morning and passed it to her.

“A telegram form,” he said, “addressed to me at Park Lane, with a coded message on it. Write in your time of arrival at Waterloo if you know it. It’ll reach me no matter where I am in London. My family will forward it.”

Irene unfolded it, read the message, then folded it back up again. She tucked it into one of her dress pockets. “Thank you,” she said.

“I think I have covered every contingency,” he said, finger to his lips. There were some he had not, but he thought Lomax would not attempt them, not with an open window for Irene to scream through. God, what a grim thought. His stomach felt strange.

That afternoon Irene practised the Beethoven Appassionata once again, and he assisted, patient with the repetitious work of a determined student attempting to grasp something difficult. He stayed through tea, sitting across from Irene, watching the afternoon light warm on her hair and face. He endured the minor chaos of a home with but one somewhat hard-pressed little maid and a cook, and thought about what Irene was about to experience.

Had his younger self spent any time thinking about this? Or had he been merely a hungry, foolish youth, assuming that she would be grateful for what she was about to receive from him? Irene was about to have more pin money than this entire household ran on. She’d be free of her step-parents, and in charge of a household of her own that she’d never dreamed of or perhaps ever wanted. He thought about how hard she was working at the Beethoven. She’d wanted to be a concert pianist. She’d come close. She was still close. She still tried to break through by playing hard things. His thumb went without thought towards his signet ring as he meditated, and he rubbed his thumb against it without any awareness that he was doing it. Was asking her to marry anyone the wrong thing for her? Did she know what she was going to be asked to do? She had to have some idea what her step-mother did to keep the house fed and the fires burning. His internal agitation rose, unsoothed.

She needed him, though. She needed him there. He could do something useful for her.

Their usual decorous private kiss goodbye turned desperate on his part this time: he clasped her hands and touched his forehead to hers, repeating her name. “Remember what to do,” he said. “Don’t hesitate. Please.”

“God willing I won’t need it.”

“If he drinks, be ready. Irene.”

“I will. Dearest, thank you.”

He sat on the train up to London, thinking about that word, “dearest”, and how she’d never said it to him before, and how much he hated that it had taken this for her to say it to him now. He felt helpless. She had chosen to stay. He had to let her decide what she wanted. He had to let her do as she wished. He prayed she was right.

XXI. Old Jolyon at home

Braced as Soames was, nothing happened through the last days of May and the first week of June, and Irene returned to Park Lane for her second visit safely, without Lomax having repeated anything untoward. Either Irene had been unduly alarmed or the man had been scared off by Soames’s threat, which anyone who’d heard Soames’s voice, cold as death, might understand. Whichever it had been, this was the best of all possible outcomes. Soames received her at Waterloo feeling a weight lifted from his heart. She was re-installed at Park Lane, safe, with even more of her music brought into the home to practise.

She was wrapped and ribboned in the dresses which had begun to arrive from Emily’s dressmaker, and the succession of tedious formal dinners at the homes of the uncles and the cousins began. Soames endured them, and returned to his habit of eating very little, more out of indifference than anxiety this time.

Even more enjoyably, the summer opera season began, and he and Irene joined his uncle Jolyon at Covent Garden to hear Italian opera. Irene was not happy to learn they sang all operas in Italian, even the ones written to be sung in French or German, so they did not attend those. Soames found the opera less intimidating than he feared: it was melodrama with lovely singing, and the music was not hard for him to understand in the main. On Sundays, he took to going to church with the household, to his mother’s great surprise, so that he might listen to Irene’s singing and be taught how to use his own voice alongside hers. Not that he was good at it; not that he was proud of it. Irene encouraged him anyway, most kindly.

Some time in June, George sent a message round to him at the Connoisseurs, asking him to call at the Hotch Potch at his convenience on a Monday or Tuesday evening after dinner, for a drink and conversation. Soames came round at the first opportunity, curious what George might want, and curious if George wished to continue what might be a surprising new friendship.

George came to meet him at the porter’s desk, and led him to a side room where they could sit quietly in armchairs with a drink. The waiter came round, silent on felt-soled shoes, with brandies. Soames nodded to George and drank. It was good brandy, of course. He looked about the dim recesses of the room, anxious to see if Jolyon were about, but he could see no sign of the man. They were in the Strangers’ Room, after all, so perhaps he was in no danger.

Soames had been in the Hotch Potch once or twice before, mostly to call on that fellow Jolyon. It had a reputation for even better food and drink than the Connoisseurs, and was rather more elegant than his own club, a touch more ornate. The Strangers’ Room had an air of aloof showiness, as if it were saying to him, don’t you wish you were a member? if only you were worthy. Soames on his second go of life found this faintly amusing.

George spoke, “I have a bit of an odd question for you, Cousin Soames. Not sure if you’re going to tell me to call round your office or not, but I wanted to sound you out first.”

George sounded uncharacteristically off-balance, so Soames did not attempt to ask questions. Instead he nodded and made an interrogative noise.

“I’ve, ah, been thinking of how I might turn my allowance into investable capital. Or something I might turn into income. Or income overall, as a concept, what?”

This was a surprising question indeed, and George was clearly nervous. Soames said, carefully, “There are a number of things you might do, depending on the allowance, your current savings, and your expenses.”

“I’m not sure how to work out the expenses, precisely, because I was rather thinking of changing them, that is, I was contemplating what they would be—dash it, I wanted to work out what it would take to marry Miss Béranger and set up comfortably.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t really know—Don’t mock me, please. I’ve learnt the need for reform only recently.”

“It is a serious question and I shall answer it seriously,” Soames said, quietly. “The answer is it depends and it depends on how much money she has, how much her parents are going to want you to put into settlement, how much bargaining power you have, and a number of other factors.”

“A property negotiation. How perfectly Forsytean.”

“Exactly.”

“Makes one want to elope. Except that my father would be so put out.”

“Your father might give you more of an allowance if you marry,” Soames said. “He is also the one who will be asked to engage in the settlement negotiations on your behalf.”

“I shouldn’t count on that,” George said, gloomily. “He hates the French.”

“Very well then,” Soames replied, imperturbably, “we shan’t. We shall work it out with what you have.” He rather doubted Roger would jib at the responsibility when he came to it; the family was more likely than not to take care of a reformed son settling down in marriage.

George tugged at his waistcoat. “What are your fees for doing this sort of thing?”

“You will gratify me by not mentioning that subject again.”

George paused a moment, then lifted his drink to Soames, face carefully still.

“Can you give me an idea of what sort of time we have? Have you spoken to her yet? Do you know her mind?” Soames recognised the look that came over George’s face at that moment, and raised a hand to save him having to answer. “Right,” he said. “We’ve got enough time. You’ll want to know your expenses and what you can trim.”

“Club, tailor, rooms, valet, tobacco, racing. Oh, and I’ve engaged a French tutor,” George said. “I’ve given up the racing already.”

“What?”

“Since I met her. No racing at all. It’s been a sore trial. I sold a nag I had an interest in as well. The figure in my pass-book has gone up. If I give up tobacco it’ll go up further. Quite a strange experience, that. I’ll keep the tutor, I think. It’s paid off already. Lucie says my accent is less atrocious now.”

Soames nodded, and revised inward his time estimate. “Right. Keep that up. We shan’t talk business here. You’ll come to my office tomorrow, about eleven if you can? Good. Here’s my card. I’ll give you a range of things we might try, and how we’ll follow them up. You’ll give me specific numbers. Then I’ll tell you what you’re going to want to have. You may count upon my discretion.”

George took the card and tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat. “Thanks,” he said. “Quite sincerely, thanks.”

Soames nodded to him, and lifted his brandy to George in a return salute. Then, quite casually, “Irene says you’ve been going to the Béranger salons.”

“And mostly surviving them,” George said, with a bit of his usual wit glowing through. “I’ve got three sentences memorised. Désolé, je n’ai pas compris cela. Then pourriez-vous répéter. And c’est fort intéressant. Dites-en plus. Carry me through everything.”

Soames smiled his side-ways smile at this joke. “I understand. Slowly you begin to understand more, but not enough to be able to reply to any of it.”

“I think of things to say five minutes later. It’s quite an awful experience if you’re me, accustomed to saying something witty at every moment. I’m reduced to being earnest.”

Soames wondered how much of a genuine trial that was for George. What was George when he was earnest? The sort of fellow who bought paintings of disturbing white monkeys eating the fruit of life and standing over the rinds, possibly. Out loud, he said, “Lucie has been calling often at Park Lane while Irene is in town. You should call more than you do. Both Irene and my mother enjoy your conversation.”

“Thanks, I will.” George looked earnestly pleased: earnestness again! The poor fellow. He must have fallen for her badly.

Neither man smoked, but they drank good brandy in friendly company. Soames was pleased he could do a service for George. He had no idea how to tell George his attitude towards him had changed, but he could do something useful for him, something George needed done. They shook hands on parting and Soames found himself attempting warmth. Awkwardly, he knew, but George seemed to accept it for how he meant it.

A few days later Soames took Irene to call at Old Jolyon’s in Stanhope Gate. They were invited to tea and conversation, and then to an early dinner, for the sake of June, who was not yet ready for late nights. James and Emily would join them for dinner. It was a relief to both Soames and Irene to have a small dinner instead of yet another grand formal occasion. The smaller dinners were less stressful. At least for Soames. Irene seemed to be sailing through them like a swan gliding across water, serene and untroubled.

They arrived at tea-time, already dressed for dinner. Irene was resplendent in one of the gowns that had been ordered for her. Soames thought it quite a change for her. The colours were not like the colours she’d chosen for herself before. But she did look wonderful and he could stand back and enjoy her beauty as he used to, as a perfect thing.

Irene and June were introduced by his uncle. It was a show of contrasts, fiercely red-haired sun-freckled June reaching up, the amber-and-white Irene bending to take her hand and greet her with a cousinly kiss. June was twelve, and was to practise being a hostess tonight, she informed Irene, and Irene expressed her certainty that June would do admirably. June had many questions for her new acquaintance, from where she had learned to play to why she had learned to play to why she was marrying Cousin Soames instead of anyone else at all.

“Because I am very fond of him,” said Irene.

June made a face at her. “He’s stuffy,” she said.

“Manners! You are standing in the same room as he,” Jolyon said.

“He is, though! He hasn’t said a single thing to me yet.”

Soames gazed down at her, uncertain what to say at all in response to that. He looked at Irene for help, but the expression on her face told him this was up to him. He touched his ring haplessly, let it be, and settled on the obvious.

“I haven’t seen you in over a year, Cousin June,” he said. “Not since my sister’s wedding. I hope you are well.”

“Thank you, yes. Have you come to ask me to carry Miss Heron’s train?”

“That is a matter entirely between Miss Heron and you. If you wish to, I suggest you begin negotiating with her now. It might be a coveted role.” And with that, Soames saw the Forsyte in June awakened, and some stubborn need flare forth.

“Well!” she said. “I’m the oldest of the granddaughters. The rest are only fit to carry flowers.”

“I see,” said Irene. “You seem well-aware of your position.”

“I carried Cousin Winifred’s train. I did it perfectly.”

Irene said, gravely, “That is most excellent experience. And I suppose Winifred would give you a good character?”

June stared. It hadn’t seemed to have occurred to her that she might have to compete for the role. Soames hid his smile behind his hand.

Irene continued, “I shall inquire.”

Jolyon said, “Now, June, do welcome your guests into our drawing room so they can sit down.”

Irene took June’s arm and said, “I wish to get to know you better, Cousin June. Show me the way to your drawing room, and let’s talk.”

June was delighted by this, Soames could see, and almost dragged Irene up the grand stairs to the first floor where the Stanhope Gate drawing room was. Soames turned to his uncle with a tiny smile on his face, for he remembered Fleur at this age, or slightly younger. Had Fleur ever been that naive? Possibly not, but she’d been that energetic.

“I apologise for my granddaughter,” said his uncle.

“No need at all,” Soames said. “She is charming.”

“You are quite kind.”

They walked up the stairs together far more slowly. Jolyon was only five years older than his father was, which put him in his mid-seventies, but he was slower on his feet than James was, and considerably slower than Soames himself had been in his first life. Heart trouble had been the bane of this branch of the family, if Soames recalled. He said nothing, but made conversation with his uncle about the paintings on the walls. His uncle liked the English school, he could see: rural landscapes, dogs with their chins resting on bunches of carrots, wind-swept moors, and waterfalls in craggy landscapes.

In the drawing room, they found Irene and June in deep discussion about June’s interests.

Irene was saying, “But pray, tell me, what are you studying at school? Do you paint? Play an instrument? Study a language? Or pursue another subject?”

June lit up. “I have been studying the history of genius in Art.” Soames could hear the capital letter in the word. “I have learned some things about composers, but mostly I have been learning about painters and architects and sculptors and how difficult it is for young artists to make their way. It happens over and over where the men who have money don’t want to see the genius of young people, even in the Renaissance.”

Soames sat next to Irene on the sofa. She gave him a fond look. Then she said, to June, “I suppose those young people grow up to fail to see the genius of the next generation.”

“Yes! And it makes me sick! People really ought to die and get out of the way of the next generation!”

“Well,” said Irene, “that certainly is one way to move art along. But it would deprive the world of some of Bach’s greatest works.”

Old Jolyon said, “Titian lived to ninety-nine, didn’t he?”

“Yes!” said Soames. “I own two Corots myself; he was painting them past seventy. Turner as well, and Frans Hals into his eighties.”

“Liszt is still alive, thank goodness,” said Irene. “As is Clara Schumann.”

“Verdi is still writing operas, is he not?” said Old Jolyon.

“Indeed he is!” Irene said.

Soames said, “One more painter for you, June. Goya near the end of his life drew an old man, bent, walking on two sticks. He wrote underneath it I am still learning.”

“Very well,” said June. “Perhaps some men don’t have to die. But most should.”

Irene said, very gently, “Perhaps instead we might consider bringing attention to newer painters and composers and giving them a chance, instead of hoping living ones die. I for one mourn the early deaths of Mozart and Schubert and Beethoven.”

June gazed at Irene, and Soames saw something like worship creep over her face. “I think I understand,” June said. “There’s room for more genius, is what you’re saying.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” Irene smiled at June.

“The more painters for me to discover, the better,” said Soames.

“You discover painters?” June’s interest in him was now acute. “How do you do that?”

“I look for them in galleries,” Soames said, simply. “I found one in a painter’s supply shop once in Paris. It’s a matter of keeping one’s eyes open and having taste.”

“How do you have taste?”

“Look at many things and decide what you like. Go to the National Gallery and look.”

“Stuffy!” said June again. It seemed to be her word.

“See here,” said his uncle. “You can see good work in the National Gallery.”

“I quite agree,” Irene said. “Soames has shown me some beautiful paintings there.”

Soames gave her a stealthily grateful look for arguing his side of it. The two of them had visited several times together during her visits, and he had shown her how he looked at Constable and Crome, as well as Turner’s oils.

To June, Soames said, “You need to look at the same things new painters study as they learn. Some work is good; most of it won’t be. Only by looking at a great deal of work will you learn to tell the difference.”

That was perhaps the most Soames had ever said about painting in June’s presence, and he was quite near regretting it now that she had fixated upon him. “I believe more are better than you think,” she said.

Soames very politely said, “That is your taste differing from mine, which is as it should be.”

“Which one of us is right and which wrong?”

“This is the wrong question to ask,” said Irene. “You’re both right, for you. I like the compositions of Gabriel Fauré. Soames doesn’t. Both of us are right, for ourselves.”

June was giving this a great deal of thought, for it was an idea new to her. The idea that there was no universal correct answer in art was, apparently, one to grapple with. It was fascinating to watch her think. Soames had never objected to June having an opinion about art in his first life, only to the militancy and rigidity of her ideas. Well, and to her dislike for him, though there’d been something to that; perhaps he could have behaved more likeably.

The clock in the room vibrated out a deep chime for four-thirty.

“Ah!” said his uncle. “Time for tea.”

Parfitt and a maid brought in the tray with the tea service. Irene sat in the place of honour and served them all tea. The blend was not Forsyte & Treffry, which his uncle no longer had any business interest in, but another importer of which he approved. His uncle still had the palate that had earned those teas their reputation and his fortune, and the proof of this was in the flavour of what he served in his home. He kept the older generation supplied with good tea to this day. The reputation of his palate had risen almost to the level of myth. However exaggerated it was, the tea in this home and in Timothy’s had remained good. The Forsyte family always had exceptionally drinkable tea, even the fashion-prone younger generation.

Irene asked how his uncle took his, and seemed unsurprised that he took it without anything at all. Soames took his with only enough sugar to take the bitter edge away and a little milk, which Irene already knew. June took hers with too much of both, and her grandfather did not chide her.

This was a ritual that had not changed through the years. The china perhaps changed slightly in fashion, but not much. The spirit-lamp hadn’t changed; neither had the little spoons, the teacups, the saucers, the milk jug. All this would perhaps never change, as far as Soames knew; why should it? How comforting it was to be handed a cup of tea by someone who knew exactly how one took it. How comforting it was to drink the tea, and find it delicious. There were little tea-cakes as well. Soames took one and ate half of it.

After tea, Jolyon begged for Irene to grace them with piano-playing, which she was delighted to do. She settled herself at Jolyon’s piano—another Broadwood, Soames noticed—and touched her fingers to the keys.

She said, “Would you like some Schumann? Or would you prefer Schubert?”

“Beethoven today, please, Miss Heron. I have been longing for him recently.”

“Please do call me Irene. I will be married to your nephew soon, after all.”

“Thank you, my dear,” he said.

“And I shall be more than happy to oblige you with Beethoven. Do you have anything in particular you wish to hear?”

“Surprise me,” his uncle said. He sat where he could watch Irene’s hands, and waved Soames over to sit near him. June roamed about the room watching Irene from whatever angle took her fancy.

Irene smiled at the three of them and began to play. Soames sat quietly with his uncle and listened.

She was playing something he didn’t know, but he could recognise as most definitely Beethoven and not anyone else. He was slightly surprised to notice he had learned to tell one composer from another, in the main. Chopin sounded different from Mozart and from Schumann. What would he ask Irene to play if she asked him what he wanted? He was unsure. He’d never thought about this before. What did he love best? It felt an absurd question to consider at the moment, while he was listening to Beethoven, but he thought it might be either Chopin or Beethoven.

He cast a glance to the side at his fellow listeners to see what they were thinking.

Uncle Jolyon looked simply happy in a way that made sympathy well up in Soames. This was a reaction he understood. June was watching Irene play silently. Her stubborn Forsyte face under its red hair was thoughtful to a degree that almost alarmed Soames, for he knew what lengths the older June could go to when she got an idea in her head. The twelve-year-old June was not yet old enough or experienced enough to wreak that much havoc, but she might try. Precisely what she might try, he had no idea.

He let himself go back to watching Irene’s hands on the keys. At the end of what must have been the first movement of a sonata, she stole a look at her audience and then simply kept playing with the next movement. How did she have so many pieces in her memory? But then, Soames had the laws of the nation in his memory, and the years they’d been passed, and case law about them, and he could draft any number of legal documents without needing anything other than a pen and a sheet of paper. It was much the same thing, he supposed. They each had an expertise. Irene’s was the piano.

He hadn’t thought of it that way before. He’d always respected her, even through the worst moments of their first life together, but he hadn’t respected her deeply enough. Why not? And why hadn’t he said it? And why did listening to certain music make him so melancholy and wistful and full of such regret about the past? He could do better now. He could feel hope.

Irene played the third movement, which was fast and alternated between quiet runs and loud strikes, which was an enormous contrast with how it had started. It was interesting that the quietest part of it had been the first movement; wasn’t that usually reserved for the middle bit?

Soames became aware that Irene had stopped playing, and that his uncle and she were looking at him. He straightened up and glanced around at them. Had he missed something? Apparently he had.

“Was this boy asleep?” Old Jolyon said.

“He was not,” Irene said. “He was deep in thought about Beethoven. What were you thinking, Soames?”

Soames flushed. He looked down, then said, “There is so much to think about in a Beethoven sonata, and so many of them to listen to. That one started off like a nocturne, but it didn’t end that way at all.”

“It’s called the Moonlight,” said his uncle, “and Irene has a marvellous touch with it.”

Irene said, “The first movement is a bit like a nocturne.”

“It’s wistful and moody, then it turns quite intense. Is Beethoven always like that?”

“Ah, not always! I shall give you Beethoven in a quite different mood.”

She then began to play yet another piece that was—again—obviously Beethoven, but not something he had heard before, and it sounded nothing like any of the other Beethoven she’d played for him. The theme felt like it was tossing a joke from one side of a dinner table to another. The second movement raced around itself in little circles, and the third was pretty. It had four movements, which surprised him.

“Was he younger when he wrote this?” Soames asked.

Old Jolyon chuckled. “Much the same age as the Moonlight, but Beethoven had more than one mood in him. That was The Hunt sonata. Not one of my favourites, but it is lighter. Irene, you have a command of the repertoire indeed. Could we try some Schubert now, perhaps?”

Irene graciously inclined her head to him. “It would be my pleasure again.”

And she was off playing Schubert impromptus to his uncle’s delight, and Soames did not mind in the least. Her playing was only interrupted by his parents’ arrival for the early dinner at half-past six, timed for June’s early bedtime. Old Jolyon took him aside and asked him if he would mind taking June in to dinner and helping her play the hostess. Soames told his uncle that he would be honoured to escort his cousin. He could see that the old man was very pleased by this response.

The procession in to dinner was small, and otherwise predictable: his uncle took his mother in, his father took Irene in, and Soames and June came last.

He remembered escorting Fleur in to dinner when she was about this age, twelve or so, and how he’d felt, and it came to him that his uncle would feel the same now. So he offered his arm to June with grave courtesy, and smiled at her with all the warmth he would have offered Fleur. June was more impetuous than Fleur, who had been fine, and on the watch—always acute, always perceptive. June wanted to pull him forward, but he touched her fingers and gestured to slow her down.

“Watch Irene,” he whispered, for her alone to hear.

June watched, and they made their solemn way forward in careful imitation of Irene on James’s arm. At the table, he drew her chair back, and waited as June watched how Irene sat, and then eased the chair forward to meet her as June attempted to match it. He caught his uncle’s eye and saw his nod.

He did not offer praise to June, but instead was quietly accepting of her performance, as if she had done well as a matter of course. He smiled to her and made conversation with her as if she were any other dinner partner, not special in the least, and of course doing it all quite correctly. This seemed to reassure June, who settled into some kind of comfort, and was able to converse with him about painters, and why he bought what he bought. He tried to explain what he looked for, and when he took chances on younger, more adventurous painters, as honestly as he might. June began to relax with him a little, and to be less reluctant and suspicious of her stuffy cousin.

When the soup course was taken away, he cued her to turn the table to switch conversation to partners to her right, instead of her left. She asked why, and he responded that there was no good reason: it was simply tradition, so she ought either to follow it or to break it with ceremony. June considered this, then turned the table with some care. She began conversing with her uncle James on the topic of why it was done, cautiously, unsure of what her uncle would say. James was puzzled by the question, and said she would have to ask Mrs James.

His mother was to Soames’s left. He looked to her and saw her beaming at him.

“What now?” he said.

“You’re being very kind to June.”

“Doing no more than what I ought to do,” he said. “She has to learn somewhere.”

“Exactly,” Emily said. “Now eat your fish, dear. You’re too thin.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said, with a cast-up eye that was affectionate despite itself. He was still too thin.

They came round to the relevé, which was, of course, a saddle of mutton. Soames had informed Irene before her first dinner-party about the tedious interest of the first generation in where their mutton originated, and in their idiosyncratic choices of origin; he had further warned her of the folly of engaging directly in this impossible dialogue. She was therefore entirely bland and non-committal during the first run of dinners about her opinion of any specific cut of meat arriving before her, until she had tasted it. This resulted in great consternation, it not being generally agreed that one could understand how something tasted in the mouth before one had established how much expense it had taken to arrive in that mouth.

Old Jolyon revealed to Irene that his mutton of choice was Dartmoor. Irene asked why. “Are the sheep there particularly flavourful?”

Jolyon said, “Apparently. My cook tells me I prefer the flavour above all other muttons.”

“There’s good pasturage in Wales,” said James, clearing his throat.

Irene glanced across the table at Soames, and he saw that impish look on her face that presaged something that George would have loved to have observed. “Has anyone exchanged mutton? Say, put mutton from Dartmoor into the kitchen at Park Lane and mutton from Wales here?”

James said, “Now why would anybody go and do that?”

“To see if the dinner party could observe that they had been served the wrong mutton,” said Irene, innocently. Soames hid his face behind his wine glass.

Jolyon’s eyes twinkled. “Now I should like to do that to Swithin some time. Fancies himself to have a palate.”

“I am told you are the one with the palate,” said Irene.

“For tea, certainly. For anything drinkable, perhaps. I won’t stake my reputation on anything beyond tea.”

“We shall have to make the experiment some time,” Irene said. She paused to taste the claret, which by her face she thought good.

“Change Swithin’s Southdown with Nicholas’s Argyll,” James said, unexpectedly, and Jolyon laughed out loud.

“He sits on the board that ships it, doesn’t he? That’ll show the fellow.”

June listened wide-eyed to all of this, absorbing the adult conversation raptly. When they came round to the sweet, Soames leaned in to her. “Watch when it comes to the savoury,” he said. “When the table is finished with it, you’ll want to cue the ladies to be ready to follow your lead out of the dining room.”

“How do I do that?” she whispered.

“You look round and catch the eye of each. But they’ll all be watching for you.”

“Thank you.”

“You are most welcome.”

When the savoury was done, Soames saw June very obviously nodding to his mother and to Irene, and then standing up ostentatiously, and the two women followed her out graciously. The men stood as the ladies left the dining room.

Old Jolyon’s bearded butler Parfitt came in with brandy instead of port.

“Have a brandy, James,” said Jolyon. “It’ll do your liver good. You too, young man.”

Soames had not dreamed of declining. He took his glass in hand and sniffed first. It was good, expanding in the mouth nicely, with hints of sweet fruit and wood. He had more and let it warm him.

“No cigars in the case. Soames, come along into my study with me and we’ll fetch some,” said his uncle. “We’ll be back in a minute, James.”

Soames followed with some trepidation; this was clearly a pretext to draw him aside to talk with him in private. He’d never been in his uncle’s study before. He had in fact spent little time in his uncle’s home in Stanhope Gate; he’d never been friendly with Jo, who was some eight years older than he was. The study was dark and old-fashioned and solid: mahogany furniture, Turkey carpets, dark papers on the walls, and over it all a rich smell of cigars soaked into everything. There were dark paintings on the walls of yet more dogs sleeping in rural settings, with the occasional chicken as variation. And was that a Morland? Soames thought it could possibly be, or more likely a copy, though it was too dark in here to be certain.

It was in fact quite dim in this room, with gaslight splashing warm circles of light around sconces. Soames settled himself at a corner of the carpet, hands behind his back, and watched his uncle fill the cigar-case from the cabinet.

“Well, young man,” said his uncle.

“Uncle,” said Soames, remembering his manners.

“Your young lady seems to have reformed you.”

Soames looked at his feet in patent leather shoes on the Turkey carpet, then up again at his uncle’s face, at those magnificent flowing moustaches, at that chin so indefinably similar to his own. They both had Forsyte faces, didn’t they? His uncle’s face was hidden, while his own was exposed, but they were the same.

Was his uncle right? Was he reformed? The years he’d lived had reformed him, but that was unspeakable. But Irene had also reformed him, or rather, the attempt to do things right by her had reformed him. How could he say this to his uncle in a way that would be understood? Perhaps the simple words were enough.

“I try to be worthy of her,” he said, eventually.

“You’ve outgrown your sulking.”

Soames carefully kept his mask in place. Yes, he’d outgrown it; yes, he still felt an urge to sulk even now when his uncle mentioned it. What was it about the man that caught him this way? Perhaps it was the mere memory of being a boy with his intimidating uncle looming over him barking at him. He said, in a flat calm voice, “Yes.”

“They say you’re a long-headed young man.”

Soames made no answer to this; it was what they said and they both knew it.

“And yet you’re marrying a woman with no money.”

“It doesn’t signify. I love her, and that is why I am marrying her.”

His uncle made a sound. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but you have more in common with my son than you know. He did everything he did for love as well. Gave it all up for love, or so he said to me. I’ve been angry with you since then, you know.”

“I know you’ve been, but I have never understood why.”

“It was the business with Frances. I blamed you for her decisions. I think I understand it better now, since we talked at Timothy’s. I understand you better now. You’re not a bad sort.”

“Thank you, Uncle.” Soames was now in some kind of ferment. He was both upset to be compared to that fellow and touched. This hurt in a way he could not name. He felt defensive of something in himself that he couldn’t describe, and tried to push it away. He said, “Your son and I never got on. I was angry with him about the scandal.”

“You were always chalk and cheese,” his uncle said. “I was angry with him too, of course. Still am.”

“You’ve always seemed impatient with my father as well.”

“Bah! That’s just the impatience of a man with his younger brother. I’m just as put out by Swithin. Nick is the baby; I can make allowances for him. But see that I trust your father with my business, and that’s the sign of what I truly think of him.”

Soames nodded. “I see, sir. It takes a certain sort of man to—”

“To what?”

Soames paused to choose his words carefully. “I think few men understand what it is to take care of the family. To think of their best interests and try to advise them well. My father takes this seriously, and so do I.”

“Do you think of that as your task?”

“At times it is my task. Your generation goes to my father. The younger generation comes to me.”

“I suppose the mantle passes on.”

Soames nodded. “They come to me for property advice. There’s another sort of advice they get from the aunts and you. Who will inherit that role?”

His uncle studied him quietly, then took a cigar from the case. “Do you smoke cigars, young man?”

“Not yet,” Soames said, and that was a slip. Fortunately his uncle seemed to take it merely as prediction.

“They make you wax philosophical,” the old man said. “You’re young yet. If my own boy were still here, I’d want him to take the role, but he wouldn’t want it. He never wanted to tell anyone else what to do. Your Irene might, but she’s young for it yet as well. We’d better hope Ann and I live long enough for someone to grow into it.”

“I do hope so, Uncle.” Soames was sincere. He didn’t want the role again just yet. He was far more prepared than he’d been the first time, but he wanted to enjoy a youth that looked to be far happier than his first shot at it had been.

“Let’s go keep your father company, shall we?”

They went back out to the dining room. Soames touched his father’s shoulder on his way past. He found himself doing that more often than he ever had in his first life: touch him, let him know that his son cared for him and thought of him often. Soames found it sad that his uncle didn’t have that; he’d thrown it away. He seemed hungry for it. Why else would he put up with James’s son? Or perhaps it was just that Irene was pretty and could play Schubert and Beethoven as well as she could, and tolerating James’s son was the price Old Jolyon paid.

Whatever the reason, it was rather lovely to close out the evening at Stanhope Gate sitting in the drawing room again, watching his mother guide June through serving coffee to her guests, listening to Irene play more Schubert. His uncle looked happy and satisfied, and June looked delighted beyond words.

Soames felt it was a successful dinner, and he handed his parents and Irene into the barouche back to Park Lane happily, and made his way south to his chambers on foot in contentment.

XXII. Paint and paper

The dresses ordered from Irene’s first set of fittings arrived. Irene’s reaction to them was most interesting to Soames. She was both delighted to have serious fashion and fine dressmaking for the first time, and seemingly interested in what she might do next with a different dressmaker, or with different fabrics or colours. She didn’t say anything about this directly, but he could hear it in her voice, and see evidence in it of how closely she studied the Liberty’s catalogue.

The arrival of the dresses in late June signalled the impending end of this visit to London. Mrs Lomax had written requesting that Irene return to Lymington to meet her own sister, who was visiting Bournemouth the coming weekend. Irene felt it was a reasonable request, and she could not reject it without seeming quite impolite, and besides, she told him, her step-father had been on his best behaviour.

Soames did not like that she was returning south, but it was her decision, and his duty to accept it, and distract himself with the enjoyable task of furnishing the house with her.

Soames had purchased furniture many times in his long life, starting from when he’d furnished Green Street the first time, for Winifred before her marriage to Dartie, because Winifred had sought his advice. He’d been more than happy to do it for Winifred. She’d needed a dining room that looked right and he’d had an idea about what to choose that would suit her and the current fashion; it was his deepest pleasure to find the right things for her and arrange it just so. Making Fleur’s arrangements come off well—or as well as a father of the bride could—had also been his pleasure.

Here, his duty was to assist Irene in the decorations, and make it all run smoothly for her, which was its own sort of satisfaction for him. He knew there were three furniture dealers in London to take her to, and he would take her to them and let her make the decision. He knew to make sure all the items they needed were thought of and arranged. He knew to hire a man from Gillow’s and hand over all of Irene’s instructions and preferences. He would take her to Liberty’s, and to the Morris showroom, and ensure it was all arranged perfectly.

And so it was on a Saturday that he and Irene made their way to Great Pulteney Street to visit the showrooms of John Broadwood and Sons, to see if anything there would suit her needs. Irene was thrilled to be shopping at last for her instrument, and Soames was both anxious and delighted to see the interest on her face.

It was a fascinating showroom to Soames, quite large, smelling of wood and polish and filled with strangely gaudy instruments on display that seemed to dismay Irene. An assistant intercepted them to ask what he might help them with, addressing Soames and not Irene.

“A grand piano suitable for a drawing room,” Soames said. “My fiancée will be making the decision.”

The assistant made an ingratiating gesture to him and turned his attention to Irene. Irene nodded to the man politely. He tried to lead them to the nearest of the over-decorated instruments, but Irene was uninterested, and requested that he show them pianos meant for serious playing.

He led them to what he described as a drawing room grand. “May I demonstrate the instrument for you?” said the shop assistant.

“I will see what I make of it for myself,” said Irene, coolly.

She sat on the bench before it and removed her gloves. Soames took them from her, and stepped back and out of her line of sight, so as not to distract her. She assayed some runs up and down the keyboard, which Soames knew to be trials of what it played like. She then played what he recognised as Mendelssohn. It was a surprising choice, given what he knew of its difficulty, or rather, its lack of difficulty.

She played it, and it sounded much as usual to him. She frowned, and that surprised him again. She then assayed some things that he did not associate with any pieces in particular, but instead with what Irene might play at the beginning of her morning practices. Her face was not promising, but Soames remained still. Then she stood up. Soames returned her gloves to her, and she began working her hands into them again.

Soames said, uncertainly, “Was that a good instrument?”

“It’s perfectly playable.”

The assistant was hovering, but Soames paid him no mind.

“Is that the one we should have in our drawing room?”

Irene looked away from the assistant and did not answer.

“I thought not. Let us go to the other shop then, shall we? There is no need to rush the decision.”

“What is the other shop?”

“It’s one for a French maker, I have mislaid the name.” Soames reached for his notebook to find the name, but Irene was ahead of him.

“Érard?” she said.

“Yes, that’s it. Just round the corner.” There was something in her face that told him he was on the right track with this idea. It was a very short walk from one showroom to the other, and he had the pleasure of walking with her on his arm. He was not in danger of growing tired of being arm in arm, nor of looking over at her and smiling.

Another shop, again redolent with wood and polish, another assistant advancing to speak to this obvious young couple furnishing their new home. This shop assistant was a Frenchman. He did not offer to play any of the pianos for them, but inquired merely what sort of instrument they were seeking. Soames was ready to answer, but instead Irene said something to him in French, and he replied, and led them to a different place in the showroom, to a piano far less showy than the ones near the front. Irene nodded with satisfaction. She went to the piano the assistant indicated, and adjusted the seat the way she had at the other shop. Soames couldn’t see any difference between this piano and the ones at the front of the showroom, other than the frivolities, and couldn’t see any difference between the ones here and the ones at Broadwood, other than the name over the keyboard. Perhaps something about the strings? He hadn’t ever looked at the inner workings of pianos and thought about what made one different from the other. He was sure Irene could explain it to him.

The assistant stood beside him and said something in French about how lovely the young lady was.

“Yes,” Soames said, “elle est.” The assistant smiled behind his hand. Soames then advanced to Irene and took the gloves she had just removed to hold while she played, and stepped back again so that he would not distract her.

There were the runs up and down the keys again, but this time Irene smiled when she completed them. Something about them had satisfied her, and something about them was different. He had no idea how to describe the difference, but he felt it. Irene paused, thinking for a moment about something, then she began to play. Soames stood up straight. She was playing a Brahms rhapsody, he knew that much, the second one because it was quieter, but that was as far as he could get. Her face was somewhere else entirely, thoughtful and intense. He could also see that the assistant had changed his attitude entirely and was now watching Irene respectfully instead of with mere frank admiration.

Irene stopped, flexed her fingers in a gesture he had come to recognise, then began to play something else. Chopin, he knew instantly, and he liked it rather better than the Brahms, though he could find Chopin showy. This Chopin was not the usual, but was something he had not heard before; it was in fact showy and fast, technically. Then he realised that Irene was much happier with this piano than she’d been with the previous. The same music was different, lighter, faster, airier. She was more comfortable. The assistant had been joined by a more senior man. They were both watching Irene. No, not exactly. They were watching her hands and listening to her, with some pleasure.

She switched again to another piece he recognised but had never made much of, Fauré, the nocturne in E-flat minor. Irene loved this piece, he knew, and had been delighted to learn it, but he was still struggling with it. Sometimes he thought he had the thread, then he lost it. Irene was lost in the pleasure of playing it now, on this piano, he saw. This was the instrument. The showroom assistants knew it, he could see, and their attitude changed yet again. Now they were watching him: they smelled a commission. Soames smiled quietly to himself. Well, they had one. They might fight over which one of them got it.

She broke off and stood. He could see on her face that she was satisfied and had played something she had enjoyed playing. He went to her and handed her gloves back. He had a quiet word while she put them on. “I could see from your face that you were more pleased with this one.”

“I was.”

“Did you have enough time with it?”

“Yes, it was quite clear from almost the first moment.”

“Shall we make our purchase?”

“I think so, if this is within our means.”

“I believe it is. Or rather, this is important enough that other things make way for it.”

“Thank you,” she said, and the look on her face made his heart ache. He told her she was most welcome in that voice he saved only for her, and turned to the showroom assistant to begin the conversation. The two waiting men did engage in a brief skirmish about which of them got the commission. Soames decided to favour the young man who’d originally assisted them, out of an impulse that told him this attitude would be useful.

When Irene saw the prices, her face changed, and he could see that she had blanched and might interject. He touched her elbow and drew her aside for the moment. “Is this the right piano? There isn’t something you’d like to play instead?”

“This is—This is what I played at the Conservatoire, only newer. It feels comfortable to play in a way the English pianos don’t. But it’s so much more, I—”

“Then this is the one we choose. The rosewood, I think, but please tell me what the right size is. I don’t know.”

She hesitated another moment, then he saw that she had decided. “About six feet. Any longer, and it is too loud. Any shorter, and the sound is compromised. No ornamentation on it, please. It’s for playing, not for show.”

“We’ll tell them as much.”

The piano settled some issues about the decor, in his view: the drawing room must suit the piano.

They made their order; Soames engaged in some conversation with them about when their house would be ready to receive the piano, and when it would be ready to be delivered. This conversation ended most satisfactorily, and they left the showroom content. Irene was on his arm once more, and he could feel that she was almost quivering with energy. Her face was alight.

“You wanted to visit Liberty’s again?” he said. They had visited once before, earlier in her stay, but only to browse. This visit would be the one where they committed to selecting colours and fabrics.

“Oh, yes! I went over the notes I took last time, and today I want to make specific selections for the decorator. We are to meet him later, are we not?”

“Yes, and this is a sensible plan.”

Here, the staff were again delighted to fawn over Irene, the lovely young lady who obviously knew what she wanted and was just as obviously planning a significant purchase to decorate a house. While she chose linens and colours, Soames busied himself establishing an account. Irene would make the selections; the fellow from Gillow’s would provide exact lengths and sizes; he would pay for it all and enjoy looking at the results.

Soames returned to Irene to watch her. The assistant carried some bolts of a faded green linen back into the stores. Irene did a sum in her notebook, and her face changed in a way that alarmed him. There was a look there he had not seen before.

He touched her arm. “What’s wrong?”

“The bill,” she said. “It’s going to be—ought we to… The piano was shocking, but it is a piano and I expect—that is—this is merely fabric and it’s unimaginable.”

“Show me.” She showed him her estimate, which was several hundred pounds. “It’s no more than I had planned. If those are the fabrics you want, they’re well within our means.”

“They are?”

“I would let you know well before you reached the limits of what I had thought to spend. I have the numbers in my own notebook. I ought to have sat down with you and talked about them in advance.”

She looked at him with doubt in her face. “You are certain?”

“I am.”

Irene went back to the shop assistant and confirmed some matters with him, and left with an itemised list of what they wanted to order. Then they left the shop and Soames flagged down a cab.

As they rode back to Park Lane, Soames said, “Irene, this house is yours to decorate. If you wish my opinion, I will give it, especially about how I should like to hang paintings. But otherwise, I want—I want you to show me what you’d like.”

“You have an eye as well, Soames, an eye for colour that is most interesting. Not quite aesthetic, but to the side of it in a way I cannot describe.”

“Oh!” he said.

“I should like this to be something we do together.”

“That would—yes, of course. Would you like an opinion on something you’re unsure about?”

“Of course.”

“Distemper in the halls, lighter colours. And you are right to want the smaller Turkey carpets. They look better than fully-carpeted floors.”

“And Soames?”

“Yes?”

“I should like to see the notebook. So I understand better.”

“Of course.” It hadn’t occurred to him. “When we’re at Park Lane.”

They did not go back to Park Lane immediately; they went to Pelham Crescent, where the man from Gillow’s was to meet them and talk over what they had ordered from Liberty’s, and discuss what wallpapers he would be purchasing from Morris to match. Emily was supposed to be meeting them there as well, to chaperone and then accompany them back to Park Lane, but they had arrived somewhat early. The conversation with the decorator absorbed Irene for some time. Soames followed the pair of them around the house, and made notes as the discussion progressed. They ended up in the drawing room, where Soames gave the decorator the exact dimensions of the piano they had ordered. The fellow marked the bounds with chalk on the bare floor, then ran downstairs to fetch something. Soames heard his footsteps in the hall, then the sound of the front door shutting behind him.

Soames stood near the door of the drawing room, watching Irene move around inside it as he had on the day they had decided to take the house. The walls were stripped bare now. Her footsteps rang against the walls. They were, he realised, completely alone in the house, as they almost never would be, not even when they were married and living there as man and wife. He took two steps forward into the room.

Irene had her back to him, mere feet away. He was aware of her scent, rose petals and honey, as he always was. He could see the nape of her neck, bare above her dress, wisps of dark gold hair straying free above it. She was there, beautiful, desirable, so near him. Two more steps would bring him to her, and he might—he might take what he had taken before, might take what Lomax wanted now. Prove me, and examine my thoughts.

He closed his eyes, put his hands behind his back, and rubbed his thumb against the face of his signet ring. He opened them again, and held himself completely still, save for his thumb moving.

Irene turned to him and smiled, completely unguarded and free with him there, and said, “The position we planned for it will suit it.”

“I’m pleased,” he said. He stood motionless, watching, until he heard the door open again.

In the Park Lane drawing room later, they sat on the sofa, with their heads bent together. He handed over his notebook to Irene, open to the pages with the household decoration budget, a few pages on from the ones where he’d worked out how much he had available to put into settlement. Irene’s first reaction was to smile.

“Your handwriting is lovely,” she said to him. Soames was startled. “It’s so elegant and compact. You write so quickly and yet it is all legible. It is the thing that struck me first about your letters.”

“Oh,” he said. It had cost him to learn to do that; he had tried to write with the wrong hand as a boy.

“May I look at your notes on music?”

“Of course. They’re back from where it’s open to now.”

He watched her page through his notebook. She lingered here and there, solemn, smiling a little now and then. Had he written anything he did not want her to see? He thought not.

She then leafed forward to the pages with the household furnishing budget on them, with notes about sources for the capital, and what he’d estimated as an overall total, and where he would trim if one category ran over. He saw her studying the numbers, and flicking her gaze up at him. Did his care surprise her? Did the amounts surprise her? She hadn’t had anything like the means for these expenditures before. He was not a warm man yet, but he was becoming one, and he had not stinted on the house decoration budget. He wanted her to feel she had expressed herself and that she would be living in a home she had made her own.

“This is—” she paused. “A shocking amount of money, Soames. That you have this, that you planned for this and set it aside, that you have a reserve in case I should want something surprising, all of this is beyond me.”

“I have been saving capital for this specific goal for some time. Since I first met you, if I must admit. I thought that if I hoped to marry you, I should start planning for a home for us.” He thought about George, who’d understood he needed to do this, but was struggling with how to do it. George was starting with—what did the racing men call it? a handicap. Lead weights in his saddle.

Irene looked down at the notebook again, and said, slowly, “I see. It’s still more than I can imagine.”

She closed it and gave it back to him. Soames slipped it back into his breast pocket. He felt uneasy about this conversation; Irene seemed to have some feeling about it he did not understand. Was it not his duty to provide this for her?

Irene said, “You plan ahead.”

“I do. It is who I am.”

“You are cautious.”

He looked down at his hands, folded over his waistcoat. He was cautious, far more cautious than she was. He loved her boldness; he loved her playfulness. He wanted her to fear what he feared. Out loud, he said, “Yes. The end of it all is that I have the money to allow you to do what you wish with the decorations, as you see, and enough in reserve not to endanger my investments. I do not have anything like the capital my father has, or his income, despite what I have saved for this. I am likely to someday.”

“You are dedicated to your profession,” she said.

“I am. And I am becoming successful. I am developing a reputation.” He looked down. He did not want to boast here, particularly as it was not something Irene had the expertise to understand or care about, but he would eventually have a very good reputation indeed, and he would guard it zealously until the day he turned his back on it all. Though perhaps this time he would not want to do that.

“Did you ever think of becoming a barrister instead of a solicitor?”

“I was encouraged,” he said. “I would not have been good at it. I did think about going to university on the way to becoming a solicitor.”

“And?”

“I wanted to, but my father thought it better to get to work immediately and not waste time on frivolities. I did as he wished.”

“Do you ever regret that decision?”

He looked at her in a little surprise. “I’ve never thought about it since. It was enough to have the opportunity of starting out in his firm, I suppose. It did suit me. I got through my articles and exams and started making money.” It was so long ago for him now that he could not remember what he’d felt about it, in fact. Parkes had perhaps complained more than he had.

Irene said, “You talk a great deal about making money.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

“Is there anything more you do?”

“Until you, no. The paintings, I suppose, but nothing more. I—I told you I didn’t share those.”

“You said no one asked.”

“They enjoy looking at them on walls. Everyone has something on walls. Photographs, dried flowers, lithographs. They don’t think about why I might spend hours in a gallery looking at one painting, only that I do, and they find this amusing.”

“Whereas everyone enjoys politely applauding Mendelssohn in a drawing room.”

“With perhaps as little true appreciation.”

“There are a few people who seem to appreciate it. Your uncle Jolyon. And you.” She touched his hand briefly. “But why is making money what you do?”

He smiled, more to himself than to her, then said, “There is a goal I have, for you, for myself, for our children. Security. Comfort. To give you pretty things and all the concerts you might wish to go to. But also—I dream of not living in the city someday.”

“Oh?”

“And of not working. I should like to mess about in a punt, fishing. Or watching birds.”

“Slowly you reveal yourself. You would like to do more than make money.”

“There’s a great deal more I’d like to do. I haven’t had much more that interested me until, well, until you. You’ve changed everything.”

She didn’t answer at once. He feared that he’d said too much, laid himself too bare too quickly. But then her hand slid over and came to rest on his where it lay on the sofa between them, warm, reassuring. He let out a breath.

“You’ve given me so much to look forward to. A house. A piano. Birds. A punt on a river?”

Her smile didn’t last all the way through, and he couldn’t help but feel his own smile wavering. He felt uneasy. None of it was theirs yet. She had to go back. They had to make it through the next separation. A summer, an autumn, a wedding. The house was renovations unfinished, wallpapers to be delivered, fabric for curtains yet to be made, linens yet to have her monograms sewn into them, furniture yet to be delivered. A piano ordered and unfinished, undelivered, untuned.

In between them and what they dreamed was her next few months living in Lymington, under the same roof as her step-father.

“You go back Thursday?” he said. He knew which train she intended to take. He hated knowing the time it left.

“Yes, I—My step-mama has asked—that is, she wants—there are calls she wants to make with me.”

“You have everything ready? My card, the telegram form?”

“I have it all.”

“You remember the plan?”

“I have it committed to memory.” She said it as if it were a jest she were sharing with him. “I could repeat it to you in my sleep, Soames.”

“Don’t repeat it to anyone else.”

“Of course not.”

He should have left it there. He’d thought of every contingency; that was what he did. He’d told himself this over and over, on the train up after she’d confessed to him what her step-father had been doing, and on countless sleepless nights afterwards when he’d thought over what he might do to ensure her safety. He almost believed he’d buried his emotions. But he could feel emotion rising in him, that same deep half-controlled feeling, the one that would only know satisfaction with Lomax’s throat in his grip, the one that didn’t bear thinking about. It was cold, so cold. He’d thought he could hide it from her, but he couldn’t. He was shivering with whatever feelings were coursing through his blood, the feelings he couldn’t hide from her.

He felt her hand wrap itself round his. It was so warm.

“Soames,” she said, very softly. “You will stay in London. You will let your own forethought manage it all for us.”

“I know. I planned so that I need not be there.” His voice was rough. “That isn’t the same as liking it.”

“Dearest. I know.” She pressed his hand under hers. “If it came to the worst, and you were there, you might find yourself doing something that couldn’t be undone, and then where would we be? Trust me to follow your instructions.”

Soames swallowed. She would protect him from himself, from his own anger. He was supposed to manage himself! He was supposed to be able to control himself, but he could not. This was where he broke. At least he knew it.

“You taught me how to do this,” Irene said. “Trust me to execute it. Trust me with our plan.”

If only trust did not involve inaction, breathlessly waiting while he stood still and watched for some clear sign. This was the hardest sort of trust there was, the kind that waited for its object to deliver on what one hoped was as straightforward as it seemed. He much preferred to be the one doing, to be the one trusted. His entire life had been built around being that man. Now she was asking him to be trustworthy another way.

He bent his head to her. “I’ll stay where you’ve put me, until you send for me.”

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

He saw her off at Waterloo on the Thursday. There was nothing to be done on a public railway platform but what anyone might do: hand her up into the carriage, see to her bag, hold onto her gloved hand longer than might be quite proper, and hope that she read in his face what he could not find words for.

He stood outside her carriage, looking up at her. She opened her window and leaned out to smile at him, to give him that open unguarded smile that was his now, and so cherished. He made himself give it back, despite the fear he was feeling again about letting her roam far from where he could keep watch over her. That was his duty and he couldn’t do it when she was down there. It had started as a jest and now it was far too real for him.

The engine hissed and steam roiled up into the air.

“Thursday week,” she said. “You shall meet me here, and we will go and see whether they have hung the paper in the dining room.”

“Thursday week,” he said.

The whistle went. He backed away from the carriage, and the steam engine blew in earnest as the train groaned into motion. South she went, on the train he had taken himself so often, the train on which he’d awakened so recently and found himself given a second chance. Irene was carried south towards that man, who might do anything or nothing.

Soames stood with his hat in his hand, staring into space while carriages moved past him, faster and faster, until he was standing in silence on the platform, alone with his dread.

XXIII. Irene escapes

Irene had wrapped her wrists under her sleeves. They hurt, and her fingers were starting to feel stiff. She’d been up all night writing the letter to Emily, and that had made them stiffer. She made her ritual flexing gesture to loosen them, but it was not helping.

She signed the letter, holding the pen with reluctant fingers. Whatever it said now would have to do. On the envelope she wrote Mrs James Forsyte, then the Park Lane address. She stamped it. She unfolded the telegram form and reviewed it. She crossed out the name SOAMES on the address and wrote EMILY above it. She looked at the train timetable one last time, and wrote in the time on the form. Two of six sovereigns Soames had given her were in her pocket, where she would use one to pay for the train, and have one near to hand in case of surprises. The others were in that purse that hung around her neck, wrapped in a handkerchief so they would not clink.

Her preparations were done.

The candle on Irene’s desk was near guttering. Dawn was showing in the sky outside the open window; the morning birds were speaking to each other in the trees. She cracked her door open so she could hear it when the servants woke. This was, she hoped, her last night in the house she’d lived in with her dear papa. She would try to remember him in it, and no one else.

Irene heard Millie’s steps on the stairs, and poked her head out. Millie came in to her and Irene embraced her. She handed over the telegram and the letter. She asked Millie to repeat the instructions in a whisper, as Soames had asked her to repeat his instructions. She handed over a shilling for the telegram, and generous tips for both Millie and the boy she would send on the errand. She gave another embrace to Millie; the girl always did her best, and she was wiping her eyes as she crept off with the messages.

Irene went back into her room. Time to finish packing. She had her bag with the things she could not replace: Soames’s letters and her parents’ photographs, some precious scores that she was not willing to leave behind, like the marked-up Appassionata, the Brahms, some others from the Conservatoire, her childhood Chopin and Mendelssohn. It hurt to leave all her other music behind, but it truly could be replaced. She had little beyond that to take. She packed the dresses Emily had given her merely to fill out the bag.

She blew out the candle before it guttered out. Dawn had broken, and the sun was up. She must hide her bag now, and pretend to be asleep. He had a routine on this day of the week, business that took him out of the house to Bournemouth at half past nine. She need only wait until he was out of the house and had caught his train, and then she could leave after him and catch the next. Once he was out, the only difficulty remaining was getting her bag past her step-mother. Millie would help.

Irene looked at her bed and found herself unable to consider getting into it. Instead she went to the open window again and leaned her elbows on the sill carefully, avoiding where it hurt. She breathed in the dawn air.

Footsteps inside the house. Irene froze and her blood thundered in her ears. She listened for movement in the room across the hall from her and trembled. Nothing. It was only Cook’s footsteps on the way down the back stairs, nothing more than that.

Where was her self-command? She’d told Soames she would carry out his plan, and she would need to keep her nerve to do so. He had such faith in her; she had to live up to it. It ought to be easy from here on. Now she need do nothing; she need merely wait until he left the house. Then it would be safe for her to leave.

She sat down at her desk and laid her head upon it to wait.

She dozed off despite herself, and woke when she heard sounds in the room across the hall. A male voice, clearing its throat. He was awake. Heavy footsteps, a floorboard creaking. His throat clearing, then he was speaking, saying something in a conversational voice. Her step-mother answered. Irene did not move, afraid that she might make an unusual sound. The sounds of morning washing, shaving, dressing, then her step-mother going downstairs, her step-father following. Her step-mother calling up to her impatiently, reminding her that breakfast was on the sideboard.

Irene stood. She had to appear, and had to seem to eat. She walked downstairs, taking care to do so with normal grace. She had to look as if nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. It was an ordinary morning. This was an ordinary breakfast at the table where they always ate as a family. A family.

The eggs and kidneys made her stomach revolt. She took toast with a little butter and poured herself tea. She sat at the table safely across from him where he could not reach her, even though her step-mother was in the room. She ate her toast and drank her tea, doing her best to show nothing at all on her face. How did Soames do it? He seemed to have this mastered, the art of masking himself away, of looking smooth and composed when near this man. She ought to ask him how. He was jovial, expansive, pleasant and affectionate with her step-mother. He caught her eye at a moment when she incautiously looked up, and his smile made her shiver with fear. He smiled wider when he saw her shudder.

“What are you doing today, my dear?” he said to her.

Irene’s vision did something most strange: it went black around the edges. It had done that once before, before her first recital. Her piano teacher had reminded her to breathe. She breathed.

“Practising,” she said.

“You shall have to play for me tonight,” he said, and it seemed so innocent, so completely wholesome, and her step-mother was entirely taken in by how kind her Willy was being to his step-daughter by marriage.

What did she do at recitals now? She thought about the music. She did her best to give the music to the audience. She could do that even for this man.

Irene smiled graciously and said, “Of course.”

“Capital,” he said, and his smile broadened again.

Her step-mother spoke up, half into her tea, half to the table. “Willy, do remember I shall be at the church sewing circle tonight.”

“Of course, dear,” he said. “Irene will keep us occupied.”

Oh. Oh. That was what he meant. Irene did not dare move from where she sat, lest she give anything away. Let him think he had broken her. He had not. She finished her toast and her tea, and assisted Millie in tidying up. Millie caught her eye and nodded once. The messages had been sent.

He did not leave immediately to catch his usual train, but was instead doing something inside his study. He seemed in no hurry. Irene sat at the piano playing scales to warm up for her practice. Her wrists and fingers gradually loosened. He came out into the drawing room with his case and top hat, and stood behind her. Her skin crawled. She imagined she could feel him behind her. She imagined she could smell him. She knew she could do neither thing. And then a step behind her, another. She could hear him breathing.

She watched the clock while she moved from scales to more interesting warm-ups. He was going to miss his usual train, and yes, there her step-mother was reminding him of this, and he replied that he knew that perfectly well, and would be on his way soon enough.

If he missed his train, he would be on the train she’d planned to be on.

Irene began playing the first Chopin étude, which was just difficult enough that it ought to take her mind off the clock and the man behind her. Timing, technique—No. Her fingers would not obey her. She found herself playing very badly indeed, and had to stop lest she teach herself something she would have to unlearn with great pain. Mendelssohn instead, something so easy she could not play it badly.

Her step-mother’s husband had now officially missed his train. He was still standing behind her, watching her play. She could still hear his breathing when she paused between pieces.

She remembered Soames at dinner in town with them, lifting his nose sideways and smiling with pure supercilious anger. It was that smile that had convinced her she would need to watch Soames carefully and keep him away from this man in future, but it was also that smile that inspired her now.

Irene paused, lifted her own nose a little sideways, and smiled. She knew something that even her pained wrists would manage. She began playing the third movement of the Moonlight sonata, which was loud, and insistent, and so deep in her learning she need not think. It only took thirty seconds of this before he laughed and said, “I shall see you tonight.” He left the drawing room.

Irene played the rest of the movement, at fortissimo, then made her way upstairs swiftly and as silently as possible. She slipped into her room and closed the door.

The front door opened and closed. Irene went to her window and pulled her curtain to the side, carefully. There he went, in top hat and Inverness, umbrella open against the rain. He was out of the house. She breathed out, and felt her fear loosen. She rubbed her wrists. Every moment of playin that had hurt; she would pay later.

Contingencies. Soames had told her once that he didn’t merely think about the first solution to a problem, he thought about contingencies. What might go wrong? What is less likely to happen but might still happen? It had been interesting to try to think like him while planning last night. He was clever, and it seemed so easy for him, but Irene had found herself enjoying attempting it. What if she missed her train? Wait for her on the next. If she missed that? Wait until nightfall, and only then fear the worst.

She pulled the timetable out of the pocket of her cloak, and checked the time on her little watch. Her next opportunity would be thirty minutes after her planned train. More waiting, now. She wanted to arrive at the station after his train had left. Ten minutes, then, and she would leave.

She slid her bag out from under her bed. Where was her step-mother? She listened carefully, but could hear nothing. Somewhere in the house sewing, perhaps. Cloak on, hat on, bag into hand. The stairs she had ascended minutes ago were now frightening. She descended a step at a time, as quietly as she could. A creak and a pop—she froze in pure fear, then kept descending somehow. She was at the front door. A long breath. Would the door truly be silent for her? The knob turned, the door was pulled carefully inward. She was out.

The door pushed closed behind her with a firm click. The rain was falling steadily. She opened her umbrella and angled it into the wind. Then she was in motion, quickly, bag held ahead and to the side, keeping it out of view of the windows of the house she used to live in with her papa, as she made her way as rapidly as she could to the corner where she would be out of sight. She would be running if she could, but these skirts would not allow it, and it would attract too much attention. One block, two. Now she was safe. To the station. The train was there, waiting.

Irene bought her first class ticket, found an empty compartment, and boarded. She sat wedged against the window, where no one would touch her. Now she must trust Emily and her letter.

Emily was at her desk doing the household books when the telegram arrived, addressed to her rather than to any men of the house. Her first reaction was anyone’s reaction when a telegram arrived: a thrill of shock followed by anxiety. What had happened? Was it bad news?

She opened it immediately, and did not notice Warmson moving more slowly than usual towards the door, preparing himself to act if called upon. Origin station: Lymington. Message: MAKE HASTE TO HELP ME, and then a time in the mid-morning. Emily was an educated woman; she knew the message immediately for the 70th Psalm. Lymington meant Irene, and therefore the time was a train arrival time.

She stood to ring for Warmson, but he was already there, miraculously. She said, “I need to send a message to Mr Forsyte at his office, which I shall be writing in a moment. Oh, and do please have Winifred’s room prepared for Miss Heron again. She’ll be arriving later today. Please come back in five minutes. Thank you, Warmson.”

She immediately wrote a note to James: If Soames were there, James was to send him to Park Lane immediately. If not, he was to tell her where Soames was, so that she could summon him. Irene was on her way to London, and she needed help. She sealed the envelope. On another sheet, she wrote the words “COME HOME EMILY” and the Poultry address.

When Warmson returned, she gave him both messages: the first to be run to James by the hall boy, and the other to be sent by telegram, to alert James that the slower message was on the way. The telegram itself might be enough to get Soames in motion.

Emily paused at this point to consider what else she might do. It felt, to her, like something Soames would have thought ahead for, since she knew her son and his caution, and his careful preparation. The question was why Irene might need help, and why Soames would have wanted to think ahead. What had been on his mind?

It would take him most of an hour to come home at best, and she might as well use the time to put the dress that had arrived last week out for Irene to see.

While she was in the midst of this preparation, the midday post arrived, and what questions she had were answered, for Irene had written to her. She opened the letter, which was not short, and read it through immediately.

Emily was a warm-hearted woman, and the men she had known in her life had deserved that warm heart. Reading Irene’s letter hurt and shocked her, genuinely. Other less fortunate women might be surprised by or have cause to doubt her shock, but it was real. James had never—would never. James had never expressed his affection to her where anyone else might hear it, but Emily had known only love from him. Her own family had been warmer than the Forsytes, and she had never feared for her safety in her own home. She was deeply distressed to learn that Irene did and that she had been frightened for some time.

Soames’s reaction—this had to be considered. Soames, Irene wrote, was so angry with her step-father that she thought it best not to involve him in executing his own plan. He would be tempted to do something rash. For his own sake, he must be kept out of it. Would Winifred and Emily please come to meet her at Waterloo? She was uncertain she would be alone on the train. It was possible she would not be on it, because her step-father’s morning routine was uncertain, but would instead be on the next. If she were not there by nightfall, they would need to come to Lymington, because she would have been prevented from escaping.

Emily wept briefly, then dried the tears from her face and set herself to practical thought. She had to act on Irene’s request immediately; she could be upset later, when the dear girl was safe.

She took out another sheet of writing paper. She wrote a second note, this one to Winifred, explaining Irene’s need and instructing her to come to Park Lane directly, with Publius and his nurse if necessary. She rang for Warmson again and had him send this message to Green Street, chased by the carriage as soon as it could be ready, so that Winifred and baby need not walk. Emily tapped a forefinger against her lips. What else could she do? Soames would need handling, that she was sure of. He would be angry and stubborn, and she was unsure which way he would jump. Emily would need to talk him down, and that would be the task.

There was plenty of time yet to meet the train. The telegram had arrived well in advance, and so had the letter: Irene’s letter had gone ahead of her. Winifred would be at Park Lane on time; Soames might arrive just in time; James would arrive last. The room was immaterial now. The question was what sort of state the poor girl would be in.

Well, Emily would simply have to ready for whatever she found.

Soames could barely control himself as he tumbled out of the hansom. He ought to behave like a gentleman, calm, emotionless, but he found it impossible. Why had his mother summoned them home? He could think of only one predictable reason, and the other reasons he could not think of did not bear contemplation. His father was waiting for the message that would inevitably follow; Soames could not. He tossed too many coins at the cabbie, and was out and into the house in moments.

“In her sitting room,” said Warmson, to Soames’s look, and then Soames was in motion up the stairs. He barely knocked and was in.

His mother was there at her writing desk, turning to him as he entered. She looked deadly serious, almost grim. She held out a telegram to him: MAKE HASTE TO HELP ME, and a train time. Addressed to his mother, not to him? He froze for an instant, then said, “I’m going to Lymington if she’s not on that train.”

“You will do no such thing. Her letter arrived after I sent for you. She requested Winifred and me specifically, and asked that you not come. We’ll be leaving as soon as Winifred arrives.”

Soames opened his mouth to argue.

“No,” Emily said. “She said it was for your own sake that she was doing this. If you care for her, you will respect her wishes.”

Soames stared at his mother. “She wrote that?”

“She did. She has a reason.”

“Is she coming here?” he asked.

“Yes, dear. I know you don’t like it. You needn’t worry. You will be able to see her. Winifred and I will take care of her, and rest assured, we will go to Lymington if we must.”

He breathed out. “She asked me not to go. Very well. You’ll need directions through the station.” He tore a sheet of paper from his notebook and sketched a map of Waterloo for his mother, and handed it to her. A meek, obedient son he was.

He had no intention of obeying, of course. He need not tell his mother what he intended to do. He went downstairs without a further word, to wait, to fret, pacing along the hall. Winifred arrived, with nurse and son in tow. He embraced and kissed her, and sent her upstairs to their mother. Some time later, the hall boy ran out to stand in the wet street and hold the horses. A few minutes after that, Emily and Winifred came down. Soames, hands trembling but silent, escorted them to the barouche and pair, and handed them into it. His hand lingered on the door, and he set a foot on the step.

He saw his mother look at him and shake her head. Did he trust his mother? Did he trust Irene? Was he trustworthy?

He closed the door and turned away. He walked up the rain-wet front steps and put his hand over his face. He could not bear that he’d walked away. He heard the driver speak to the horses and the wheels grind into motion. Irene had told him what she wanted. She’d been clear. She had written his mother, not him. He knew better than to mount some kind of legal defence for any foolish defiance of her wishes. He could do nothing but stand there helplessly, listening to the carriage move away.

Soames went back inside the house, past Warmson whose look he refused to meet, and mounted the steps to the drawing room. His head was down. What was he to feel? What was he to do? He wanted to know her safe. That was what mattered. Did he trust his mother? Yes, without question. Why then did his heart revolt inside him? Because he’d wanted to be the one. Because he’d wanted to receive her, rescue her, hold her, be her watchman, be her everything. Be trusted by her. Did she not trust him? Was he being selfish even to form this question? He wanted to see her the first instant it was possible to see her and ask her what had happened. He had not read the letter she had written to his mother and it was tormenting him. What had happened? Was she well? What comfort did she need?

He flung himself onto the drawing room sofa. He spun his signet ring, stroked it with his thumb, and tried to think. She had escaped. She had sent the telegram. She had managed to send a letter to his mother. Surely this meant she was—It meant nothing. It meant she had escaped, that was all. What had happened before that was unknown. He wanted to read the letter she’d sent his mother. He could not demand it. He had to endure until they returned.

“Drive on,” Emily said. The coachman snapped the whip in the air, and the horses started. Now she and Winifred were in the barouche on the way to Waterloo without Soames.

It had been a near thing. Soames might have decided to be the stubborn boy he sometimes was, instead of the level-headed man he had grown to be. That was the thing about Soames; she’d heard him called cold-blooded, but he was the opposite. He hid it all because his feelings were so fierce inside him. She loved him; she knew he was frantic with worry and also as angry as Irene had warned.

This station was positively a labyrinth. Soames had given them clear directions on a scrap of paper to help their way through it. He’d been insistent, and Emily had thought him overwrought, but once again he’d proven to be merely carefully foresighted, and thus they were in place when the morning express pulled in.

People began alighting and streaming towards the exit from the platform. Emily searched faces, looking for ladies’ hats and skirts. No sign of her. Was she coming first-class or second? The crowd became thinner as the carriages emptied. Still no Irene. Emily looked at Winifred, who shook her head. The platform emptied further as passengers climbed onto the train for its journey back south.

The guard blew his whistle.

Winifred touched Emily’s arm. “It was this train, Mama?”

“Yes.”

“If she’s not on the next, we have to think about her having been prevented.” Winifred was quite calm and thoughtful about this, not shocked.

Emily reached up to her throat, where her cloak buttoned. It would do no good to fret about that quite yet, so she would not let herself, but she might need to consider bringing James if it came to that. She would need some kind of assistance. She went back to speak to the coachman to tell him they’d be waiting another half hour for the next train, then returned to Winifred.

Half an hour of waiting. Emily walked in little circles on the platform, restlessly.

“Mama,” said Winifred. “You are as bad as Soames is. Sit down and wait.”

Emily stopped and looked at her. Why was she so calm? It was quite strange. She ought to be as fretful as Emily was, as Soames was. Winifred knew what had happened; she knew what a blackguard Irene’s step-father was; surely she would be as startled… Emily brought a gloved hand to her lips. James had not been easy in his mind about Monty. Soames tolerated him only because Winifred cared for him. He had not paid for Winifred’s pearls. Emily had seen him in his cups more than once. Was he—? Surely not! Winifred would tell her mother about it, wouldn’t she?

Emily turned away from Winifred to hide whatever was on her face at the moment, and began a longer walk, down the length of the platform. She regretted having made Soames remain behind. Soames would either cast up his eyes and tell her to stop fretting over nothing, or calmly explain what he was doing about Monty. Without him, Emily was left worried sick about two daughters, one her blood and one about to be hers by marriage. She would have to manage this on her own.

She reached the far end of the platform, where the bored guard gave her a polite nod. Emily responded graciously without thought, turned, and began the walk back. Grey clouds overhead had begun once again to drop a steady rain. They were under the station’s high roof, but the light beyond it had darkened though it was early afternoon yet. Emily hoped the dear girl was on the coming train and not waiting in the rain to catch the next, or worse yet trapped in her home unable to escape.

If she were not on this train, or the next, or the next, she and Winifred would go to Lymington. Ought she to send for James to bring along? Accosting the man and shaming him in front of his wife would be difficult work, and she would prefer to have James with them. The timing for fetching James would be difficult. She could not send the carriage for him without risking having it not there when Irene arrived. She could send a telegram home, but any telegram would need to be worded very carefully to keep Soames from tearing here instead of James. Perhaps “Irene delayed, James come, keep Soames calm.” She might want to hold the carriage until the last moment and wire despite the risk of upsetting Soames.

Emily finished another slow circuit around the platform and came to a stop alongside Winifred, who was sitting on a bench calmly enough. She looked as if she’d been deep in thought about something, Emily knew not what.

“Well, Mama?”

“We can but wait.”

At that moment the station staff began moving: the next train was visible on the tracks, on its way in. Winifred stood, and wound her arm through Emily’s. They stood together and watched it approach. It pulled into the platform with squealing wheels and steam hissing out of the engine, coal smoke billowing above.

Emily drew Winifred with her and positioned them once again where they could observe the passengers as they alit.

Almost immediately she saw dear Irene coming down the steps from a carriage in the middle of the train, one bag in hand, and tears sprang to her eyes that she immediately controlled. The girl was clearly exhausted, with dark shadows under her eyes. She walked steadily towards them and they towards her. Emily took her bag and kissed her forehead. Winifred took her arm and Emily saw Irene wince. Now she leaned on Winifred, and Emily could see her begin to tremble, resolute until the moment she was safe. Brave girl.

Emily led them back out to the carriage and helped Irene up the step inside. Winifred sat next to her and put an arm around her. Irene rested a head on her shoulder. Emily would have been touched by how close the two were if the circumstances had been less horrid. That sweet girl; that wicked man. Emily tried to ask how she was feeling, but Irene merely shook her head. It was unthinkable and shocking and no wonder Soames was as angry as he was. Emily could not blame Irene for wanting to keep Soames uninvolved, however. He might have done something regrettable. Emily was not far from doing something regrettable herself.

Soames was pacing in the entry hall, back and forth, back and forth. They were late. Irene had missed her train.

He continued pacing. He’d told her he would stay where she had put him. He would trust his mother to fetch him if she needed him. Down the length of the hall, back to the front door. Warmson was in the hall with him, polishing silver that did not need polishing, carefully not looking at him. The family closed ranks at times like this. Warmson was, in some way he could not explain, family.

The pacing came to a sudden halt when he heard the sound of a horse and iron wheels on cobblestones out front. He met Warmson’s eye, and Warmson looked outside through the window. Warmson nodded at him, then smoothly opened the front door. The hall boy ran out, and opened the door of the barouche. Three women entered: Winifred first, followed by his mother with Irene on her arm. His mother’s maid Fifine—Warmson’s wife—appeared from below stairs somehow and the three women clustered around Irene. They none of them had any attention to spare for either him or Warmson. He met Irene’s eyes and saw her acknowledgement that he was there. She said nothing to him, so he said nothing to her. He stepped back to let them pass. Behind them came the hall boy with Irene’s bag. The four women made their way up the stairs silently, slowly, followed by the hall boy.

Soames bit at his finger. He was beyond anxious, but there was no point in saying anything. She was here; she was safe now. His mother had it in hand and she was more than able to soothe things. He had to trust his mother; he did trust her. He had so wanted to be the one that—he had so wanted to be the one. She had chosen his mother. He would accept it and be happy she was safe.

Soames retreated to his father’s library and sat in a quiet corner to lick his wounds and stroke his thumb against his ring. He would have preferred to have gone to his boyhood room, but that was too close to the room that had once been Winifred’s, where Irene most certainly was now. He would sit here, in dim silence, and remind himself that all of this was sensible, that he would have done the same in his mother’s position, that his task now was to remain patient. Irene was the one in need. His duty was to serve her. Eventually he would believe everything he’d just told himself and feel better.

Some time later Winifred appeared through the library door. She made her way to the back corner and sat next to him.

“Warmson said you were here.”

Soames said nothing, but looked at her.

“She was up all night last night. She’s sleeping now. Her arms are badly bruised but she is otherwise unharmed.”

He breathed out pain and fear he hadn’t known he’d been braced against, and found tears in his eyes despite the relief. Because of it? Whichever it was, tears were rolling down his face in front of Winifred no matter what he wished. He’d been imagining a thousand upsetting unnamed things and coiling himself into tighter and tighter knots. Now he could loosen some of them. He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped at his face.

“She’ll be all right, dear.”

“I wish I could see her.”

“She won’t be leaving her room until tomorrow, I think. She’s exhausted.”

“If you talk to her again, please—would you give her my love?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

“Soames, dear.” He looked at his sister, eyes still blurry with tears. “It’s been rather a bad time for her. That man is horrible.”

“I know,” he said, very quietly.

“Give her time.”

“I will.”

“She does love you.”

He could do nothing but hide his face behind his hand in response to that, for Irene had never said that with those words, so he could not believe it. It was very kind of Winifred, however, and he embraced her to express his thanks in earnest. When she’d left him, he finished mopping his face dry and resumed his mask.

Soames decided that there was no point staying at Park Lane if she were not coming down. Instead he would go to his office and pretend to work, and if he was lucky, coax himself into some real work. He made his way back downstairs to the front hall. Warmson was there, polishing silver. He told Warmson he was heading back to the office and to send word there if he was wanted. He kept his face a calm mask with every scrap of skill he had learned through his long life, and he knew it held, for he saw Warmson’s relief that he was not distressed. He walked, to give himself more time to let his feelings settle. It did not help; they were far too strong for that. He worked. He failed to have tea. He worked some more. He went to his club and failed to eat dinner.

After this pointless sham, he fled to his chambers and sat there in full retreat, with a whisky and soda—one, no more than that. He stretched out in his cane chair and recited the litany: she was in Park Lane; she was safe. That she hadn’t reached for him hurt. Why hadn’t she? Ought he to be upset? Ought he to mind? Ought he to care at all or only be relieved she was safe? He had to let her do as she thought best. He had to trust his mother.

He went to bed but woke often through the night, fretting about her. If only he’d been able to talk to her.

In the morning Soames was calmer, but not happier. He needed to see her and hear from her own lips what had happened, hear from her that she had not been harmed. He shaved with an unsteady hand and cut himself twice. He forced himself to dress more slowly, as if he intended to go to his office that day and work. If she would not see him, he would go to the office as if that had been his plan all along. If she would see him, he would see her. Whatever she wanted. He could do nothing else.

He walked to Park Lane slowly, controlling himself, reminding himself that she came first, always.

He asked Warmson to send word to Miss Heron that he was there and ask if she would see him. He would wait in the hall for her reply.

Warmson returned fairly quickly: Miss Heron would see him in Mrs Forsyte’s sitting room. Soames went upstairs with some measure of hope. He knocked on the door and entered, and was greeted by her with warmth, which made him feel even more hope.

“Irene,” he said. He took her extended hand, and pressed it, but did not attempt further intimacy.

“Soames,” she said in response.

“I—I am relieved you are safe.”

She merely nodded at him.

“My mother has told me very little other than your request that I not go. I am here to offer you whatever it is you wish from me.”

She breathed deeply in and out, and he recognised the gesture of someone seeking the right words to express something. He waited.

“Soames, dear,” she began. “I sent for your mother and your sister, not for you, for a reason.” She looked at him as if waiting for him to object, or complain in some way, but he did not. After a moment, she went on. “I wanted to avoid a scandal, most importantly. Escaping to you or with you would have caused a scandal.”

“I understand,” Soames said. This was a reason he could not argue with.

“The other reason is a harder thing to say. I don’t want to hurt you, but I must say it.”

“Please say it.”

“I did not want your anger to lead you to do something we both might regret.” She held up her hand to forestall his objection. “I know that you have my protection in mind. I know that you wish to do your best by me. But I did not wish to tempt you, because—” and here her voice was unsteady— “because it was genuinely distressing. You would have been right to be angry.”

Genuinely distressing? His head swam for a moment, until he breathed himself out of it. He continued to breathe steadily until he found words for himself: “I understand your fear. I might have hoped to behave better this time, but I understand.”

“There is one more thing I must say.”

“Yes?”

“I would not have escaped without your forethought and the steps you took,” she said. “Thank you.” She stepped close to him, pulled him down gently and kissed his lips herself. She stroked his cheek.

Soames found himself trembling at her touch. He said nothing at all, but reached out for her hand. She gave it to him. He kissed it, and stayed bent over it for a moment, deeply moved and unable to speak. She had appreciated him. He had not rescued her in the moment, but he had mattered. It was absurd that he had to matter, but he did. It was his weakness, perhaps, his flaw, but he wanted to matter to her.

“Irene,” he said. He swallowed, then continued, “The most important thing is that you are here, and you are safe.”

He found, as he said it, that he believed it. It was the truth in his heart. Seeing her in the room with him and holding her hand made up for it all. He did not have to be the one; having helped was in fact enough. He could feel gratitude to his mother and to Winifred, after a day of feeling emotional about them; what mattered was that she was here, smiling at him, safe.

He kissed her hand again and said, very quietly, “I love you.”

“Dear Soames,” she said, and he knew enough to hear this as deeply affectionate. He closed his eyes and clasped her hand between his, to give himself a moment. He released her hand gently.

“Tell me what you wish to, when you are ready to.” He could feel the cold anger still present deep inside himself, carefully contained, locked away where she would not see it and it would not escape.

She nodded.

When he left Park Lane to go to his office, he was at peace with her decisions. He was not at peace with not knowing what Lomax had done, but she would tell him if it mattered, when she was ready to, and he had confidence in that.

He sat in his office thinking about the expression on her face. Winifred had said her arms were badly bruised. The fellow had pinned her in place. He’d done that to her once, just once, in that first life. He had left bruises on her too, no doubt, and an expression on her face like that. A worse expression? He had been the horrible man. Her own husband, holding her down and—God, he had such a hard time with the word, though he knew that was the word and that was what he had done to her. Lomax hadn’t done that, had stopped short of it. It was unimaginable to him as he was now, that he’d been capable of it. He could remember what a torment jealousy was, how starved for her he’d felt, and he knew that the reality of her infidelity landing on him had sent him out of his body and mind, but he could not imagine doing it now. He was still capable of that anger today, but he had learned control. That was the whole point of this second life, wasn’t it?

Why hadn’t he apologised to Irene, that Irene, ever? He couldn’t face what he’d done. He’d felt guilt and shame and had taken the coward’s route.

He buried himself in work so that he could stop thinking about what his past self had done.

Soames called in at tea-time that day to reassure himself that all was still well, that Irene was not as badly harmed as she once had been. Irene was down to tea, looking more rested and calmer than she had been, more like herself. Emily poured tea for them both. His mother was uncharacteristically solemn and unhappy, and Soames was unsettled to see it: he could not remember seeing her so serious.

“I sent a telegram to Mrs Lomax,” Emily said, to Soames. “After luncheon. I told her Irene is here. I followed with a letter giving the explanation in the clearest terms I could manage. I asked her to send Irene’s things and said we would pay. I should give it a day or two before we expect a reply.”

Irene looked down into her teacup. Soames wanted to reach for her but did not. It was for her to reach for him. He was acutely aware of this. Whatever it was that had happened, Irene had to decide who touched her right now. Soames had to stand back and wait.

XXIV. Soames listens to Beethoven

Soames brought a valise of clothing to Park Lane and installed himself back into his boyhood room. He could not bear being far away from her; it broke him to consider going to his chambers and sleeping there. She was safer if he was there standing guard, or so something buried inside him believed. They were both in the same house. He could reassure himself that she was safe every morning and every evening. It was soothing for him to be back in his parents’ home as well, to enjoy its comfort. He did not examine this feeling deeply, and no one around him asked him to. His father simply told him it was good to have him at home.

They breakfasted together as a family. He, as always, left before James did, and came home a little later, in time for tea. They would dine together later, usually only the four of them. He could bring her in to dinner on these nights, and sit across from her, and talk with her. Afterwards they would sit together in the drawing room and she would play for him, or they would read. They were growing so close now, doing this, and his heart was as full as it had ever been.

About three days after her return he sat in the breakfast room, drinking coffee and eating eggs. He’d put on some weight again, which was good. His mother and Irene came in, Irene in one of her lovely new day gowns. He rose and greeted them both, smiled at her. She nodded to him. She was still not herself yet, but she was doing better now that she was in London. It gave him a little thrill to breakfast with her, then later to tell her he was going to the office and hear her warm farewell, a taste of what marriage would be like when they lived in their own home together.

He worked as hard as usual. He had two clerks apprenticed to him now, and had their training in hand. It was rather pleasant to do this again, to teach young men how to do the basics perfectly, to settle into his previous life as a lawyer and investor, to start at the beginning again with his collection of paintings. He had an ordinarily busy day: wills, contracts, brief preparation, a bit of investment shuffling. It was pleasant to say goodbye in the morning to an Irene who was warm to him, not manifestly waiting for him to leave, and to return home for tea to an Irene who was happy to see him. He continued his habit of going to church so that he might sing with Irene, very quietly, and listen to her sing.

That afternoon when he came back from the office it was just he and Irene taking tea at first. His mother came in a few minutes later, sorting the late afternoon post. Some for his father, one for him from Parkes, one for Irene, and something for Emily herself that made her stop and set the rest on the mantelpiece.

“Mrs Lomax has written to me,” Emily said to Irene.

Soames put his teacup on the saucer and set it onto the tea table. There was no predicting what she’d written. Emily went to her writing desk, took out her letter-opener, and cut open the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside. Emily read it, with a hand to her throat, then handed envelope and letter to Irene. Soames watched her read: no reaction, nothing. Irene slid the letter back into the envelope and tucked it into a dress pocket. She said nothing, but picked up her own teacup as if nothing had happened.

He looked to his mother for an explanation. Emily said, “They will come to the wedding and do what they must. They will send her things.”

Soames looked at Irene again, but she again had nothing on her face for him to read. He decided to say nothing, but instead to nod at his mother.

Two evenings later, Irene played a Beethoven sonata for him, the Pathétique. This time she played not merely the second movement, but the whole piece. Soames listened intently. It was, he thought, one of those pieces she played as shelter, for comfort, like Mendelssohn. That second movement was so beautiful and sweet. She was recovering; pieces like this were the sign. She was so close to him now, so intimate. She had to be feeling what he felt, when she looked at him like that, with those dark eyes so deep and intent on him. She wasn’t smiling yet, but she would again soon.

Emily looked at her future daughter-in-law, in chemise and corset in her morning room, being fitted by Emily’s own dressmaker and an assistant. Emily had been dressed by this woman for years now, and was a most valued customer. Madame had been delighted to dress Miss Heron, who would surely be an excellent showcase for her work. Irene did indeed look good in whatever she wore, as Francie was alleged to have said. They were putting a toile on her, and she looked good in that, for goodness’ sake. Not that she was looking at herself in the cheval glass at all today.

Irene was quite polite through all of this, but Emily often had a sense that there was something she was dissatisfied with in the dressmaking. She often suggested colours that neither Madame nor Emily thought fashionable, or that lace was unnecessary. She had not ever created a fuss, or done anything more than suggest, but today she went so far as to mention that she had seen the most lovely silks at Liberty’s when she’d visited with Soames, which she thought might suit wonderfully. Madame looked at Emily, and Emily demurred, but said perhaps with the next dress. This was the wedding dress, and they were not going to experiment with this. Madame smiled, where Irene could not see it.

Poor dear girl. Such a trial the last few weeks had been for her. She was bearing up wonderfully.

Soames went into Agnew’s in the early afternoon in search of a very specific painting he’d spotted there. He’d seen a Morland, a painting of a roadside inn, that he was nearly certain was not an inferior copy and was of the man’s best period, before the drink had ruined him. Morland was going to do quite well, and he did enjoy the English school. He’d ended up loving the later Dutch realists more, but there was something about the solid English subject matter Morland had chosen. Stables, horses, dogs, toll-gates on rural roads: they all captured a past that was lost now that railways had thrown their web over the nation, and would be even more distant when motor-cars arrived.

The question was if it was a real Morland or not. Morland had been a rackety chap. This time Soames had his glass with him and could take a look at the brushwork and satisfy himself. He had a good idea of what the market was now, and what the market would be in forty years, and he’d learned already that his apparent youth gave him an edge in these negotiations.

The Morland was real, in his estimation, but he could see that the dealer’s man was unsure that it was, and this gave him a true advantage in the following negotiation. He emerged having paid two-thirds what the man had originally asked, which had been less than what the painting was worth to begin with. He had it sent to Park Lane. He would like to show Irene the sorts of paintings he collected, and start to learn what her taste was.

He returned home to Park Lane at tea-time, as usual, and greeted Irene with his usual gentle kiss. She seemed well, and to be in good spirits. He settled himself in the drawing room with the catalogue he’d collected from Agnew’s but not yet had the time to study in detail. The doorbell rang: visitors for tea. He could hear Winifred’s voice in the hall, which immediately made his already good mood brighter.

He rose when the drawing room door opened, and there was Winifred, with Publius in her arms, dressed in some long white thing, and the boy’s nurse trailing behind. Emily made a sound of great delight, kissed Winifred, and wasted no time snatching up her first grandchild to cradle in her own arms. Irene greeted Winifred, and the two embraced. Soames watched, and was moved. Winifred was so gentle with Irene, and Irene so relieved to be with her. The two were genuinely happy to see each other. The women all sat on the sofa, and there was cooing over the baby. Soames would once have cast up his eyes at it all, but no longer. There was still a raw hole in his chest where his daughter had been.

Emily handed Publius to Irene, and Winifred showed her how to hold a baby, hand just there, arm like that, and Irene looked down seriously at the boy, intent on learning her role. Soames’s heart ached to see it. She wanted a child as well, he thought. She understood. They would be parents together.

Then they offered the baby to him, thinking he would refuse, but he did not—he would of course hold the boy and show Irene how much he longed for this himself. He dandled Publius and looked down into those eyes for the second time—the boy had grown! His eyes were following things about now, and he could make happy burbling sounds. Soames’s heart ached again, looking down at his sister’s son. This time he would have a son of his own. He would hold his own boy like this, and be called Papa, or Pater, or Daddy—whatever he wished!—watch him grow and become a young man, watch him found his own family, be cared for by him when he grew old, the way Soames would care for James. His heart was so full he was in danger of it overflowing. He looked over at Irene and held her gaze across the room. She smiled at him, and he knew she felt it too.

He rose and carefully passed the boy to his nurse. Dartie’s son, but he’d turned out to be a Forsyte, a sensible lad, even if he hadn’t cared for his uncle at all. Perhaps he and this life’s Publius Valerius would get on.

“Where you learned how to do that, Soames, I’ll never know,” said Winifred.

Soames merely grunted, and sat down to have tea with the women of his family.

The Morland arrived after tea-time, safely crated. Soames unwrapped it and stood it against a chair in the drawing room. He stepped back and considered it. Yes, very definitely genuine, and of the best period, and the subject matter pleased him. The horse was particularly good, and the countryside behind the inn was well-realised, with the greens of summer England.

Irene came into the room and near him to see what he was looking at. “George Morland,” he said, and watched her face.

“It is an interesting painting,” she said, and that was said politely. She did not care for it, and was not inventing praise to placate him. Soames was pleased by the honesty. Irene would not tell him something she did not believe.

“He is not your painter,” Soames said to her. “Not all of them need be. I didn’t understand Fauré, after all. I have more painters to show you.”

She looked relieved at that. “I have more musicians for you as well. You have not heard any Liszt to speak of, never mind those transcriptions he has done of Wagner.”

“May I tell you what I admire in it?”

“Of course.”

“Morland at his best was an excellent draughtsman, and his subjects were what he found around him—the English countryside. Here we have a roadside inn, the sort of thing that doesn’t exist any more, but did when he painted it. He caught it as it was, and that horse was standing there, and there was a dog like that about the premises. His technique matters to the work—he applies the paint thickly, see here? The texture gives the horse’s tail movement and life. The same for the trees here. He observes well, and the technique gives the animals character. And his subject matter is a rural England that is long gone.”

Irene leaned close and studied the brushwork in the places he’d pointed to, and he could see her reconsidering the work. She didn’t like it any better, he thought, but she now saw a little of what he saw. “I think I understand something of what you like in paintings, Soames.”

“Oh?”

“You seem to feel most strongly about art that rescues something lost or vanishing. A moment of the past caught for you to imagine and dream over. It was in the very first painting you showed me, and it is in this one too.”

Soames opened his mouth, closed it again, and considered this insight. “There’s something to that,” he said, quietly. Irene stood with him a little longer, considering the painting with him, and then made her way back to the piano.

Soames carried the painting up to his room, where a number of others from his chambers had been moved, in preparation for a final move to the house when it was ready. The decorator was at work painting and papering—they were to meet him on the Thursday to discuss his progress—and it would not be long before the furniture started arriving.

After dinner, Irene beckoned him to sit by the piano while she played another Beethoven sonata for him, a late one, number 31, she said, opus 110. He’d never heard this before at all. He listened with tilted head, thinking. It was not an obvious piece at all to him. It wasn’t merely pretty, or showy, or passionate, but there was something else going on in that last movement. It was thoughtful, perhaps. This wasn’t a refuge piece or a comfort piece. It made him go inside and contemplate things, rather than feel. He watched her, as he always did, but she was intent on performance, not on signalling emotion or meaning save when body and sound could not help but unite in movement.

When it was finished, and she had turned to look at him, he said, “That was interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“I think that is the right word. It made me think. It was more oblique than the Pathétique. You said it was later?”

“He wrote only one more after it.”

“It felt like he was working out a puzzle or something like. The third movement had odd things in it. They were intentional, I could hear it, but—”

“I shall have to teach you what a fugue is. Not tonight.”

“Whenever you wish to. Thank you.”

“You are most welcome. Good night, Soames.” She stood, and he rose politely with her.

“Good night,” he said. She inclined her cheek for his kiss, and he gave it gently.

About a week later, the two sat together in the drawing room late. James and Emily had gone to bed. The door was ajar as propriety demanded, but the house was quiet and the servants were elsewhere. They had not been talking much that evening. The silence had been pleasant, not heavy. Soames had a novel, and Irene had a book as well. He was sitting close enough to her to reach out and touch her, but refraining from doing so because they were alone. He had been cautious about touching her since she’d fled Lymington. He wanted to, oh he wanted to touch her, but he had to be certain she wanted him.

He finished a chapter, and put his bookmark into place. He glanced up at Irene, to see how she was getting on, and saw that her book was closed. She was instead gazing into the empty grate in the fireplace, thinking. He reached out but stopped short of a touch.

She saw it and looked at him solemnly. He withdrew his hand. “Are you—?”

Irene stood and picked up a candlestick. She carried it over to the piano and set it on the nearby table. She then sat at the bench and beckoned him over. He stepped noiselessly over to the piano; there was no music on it, so he moved the chair back to where he could watch her without disturbing her.

She sat for a long moment, breathing deeply and slowly. Soames was about to ask her if she needed something from him when she began to play. He knew it immediately: Beethoven, the Appassionata, recognised from weekends turning pages back in Lymington for her while she worked on it.

This was not Irene working on it or struggling for it, though. This was Irene playing it. It was at proper tempo, and at the proper volume. She had found it.

Soames recognised it, but he was also hearing it for the first time. As he watched her hands and listened, something began to happen to him. It began to demand his full attention and he began to give it. He was caught by this sonata in a way he hadn’t been by the others. It was so intense and dramatic. It would return to that opening theme and he’d get a moment of peace that he knew wouldn’t last, and then it would burst back to drama. Irene’s shoulders and arms, her entire body, moved to get the sound of the more thunderous moments, and the sound vibrated through his chest. He could feel every note with his body. She was leaning into it. He held his breath through the quiet passages, wondering whether what would happen next was a blow to his heart or a moment of suspense and beauty and questioning over it all. That was just the first movement!

Irene paused and recollected herself. Perspiration rolled down her temples, and she was breathing in a way he’d never seen her need to breathe after playing.

The second movement was slower and less physically intense. Major key, almost delicate in places, singing, but the movement’s pull on his attention was as strong as the first movement’s had been, reaching out and gathering him in with a soft touch. He was utterly motionless through it, almost afraid to breathe. This was so lovely that he let himself sink into it. Why hold back? She was putting her entire self into this, she loved this piece so much. She was playing it for him, and him alone. He could let himself go for her, yield to it.

The third movement started without giving Irene a moment to rest, shifting abruptly back into that tempestuous—no, passionate—mode. It was fast, and demanding. His entire body was vibrating with it again. He leaned forward towards her, and saw how hard she was working to play it—the damp on her forehead, on her bodice. He’d thought he was aware of her before but that was nothing to how aware he was now. He was sweating in sympathy, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, holding himself in place desperately. God. Those right-hand stabs were stabs to his heart.

And then the ending! It was more of those blows to the chest, delivered by a woman striking the keys with her entire body, her fingers moving faster than he thought possible. He winced with each strike.

It ended, and the drawing room was silent.

Soames slumped and tried to catch his breath again. What had he just heard? He’d been swept away by it. Caught off guard, gathered up—he’d surrendered to it, and he was—content? No! The opposite. On fire. He—if he said anything to her now, it would be to tell her how much he needed—if he moved now, it would be to—he dared do nothing but breathe and watch her. Why had she done this to him?

Irene herself was still breathing heavily, hands braced on the piano bench. That performance had cost her. The Broadwood was heavy, she’d said, when she’d chosen an Érard instead.

Eventually Irene stood, though her breath was still fast. “Good night,” she said, and left the drawing room.

Soames stayed motionless where he was and let himself calm down. She’d played it through, as Clara Schumann had at the same age. She didn’t have the same command—she was still finding its meaning, but—she had done more than play it. She’d showed him what she’d called one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever, something she said ought to be shared, and she’d played it for him alone. She’d meant something by that. Did she—did she feel as much passion for him as he did for her? Was that the message? Passion, desire—surrender?

Eventually Soames stood and took the candlestick she’d carried over to the piano, and with it lit his slow way upstairs to bed.

XXV. If you’re anxious for to shine

Soames moved himself back to his chambers after that. Irene was safe from her step-father and fearing otherwise was absurd. Living in the same house with her had become more than he could bear. It felt like married life—was almost married life—in its intimacy, and he had begun to live in the same state of perpetual hunger he’d lived in once before. Not that moving back into his chambers helped; he was still in that state, merely further away from her. He’d taken all his paintings away, and it was bare and lonely now. He lay awake at night and thought about her and counted the weeks until October. Too many, too many.

He called every day at tea-time, and dined with her nearly every night, either at home with his parents or out at innumerable dinners with uncles and cousins. He tried to speak with her about the Appassionata, but she would look down and go silent. He didn’t understand it. He wanted to talk to her about it; it had moved him so, and he had thought it so important to her. He was missing something, and he knew it.

Miss Béranger was calling upon Irene almost daily, to talk or play duets together, which gave them both great pleasure. Soames had no idea there was so much composed for violin and piano together, but he was learning to enjoy it. Today George was not there, for once. Soames sat quietly to the side, drinking his tea, reading a dealer’s catalogue, hoping to spot something of interest. Lucie and Irene were talking quietly about his cousin George, and he paid attention despite himself.

“Alors, comment vas-tu, ma chère?” Lucie asked.

“Tout doucement. Et toi?”

“I’ve been to my father’s salon with George five times now. He did quite well at the most recent one. His French is improving greatly, and my father said after he left that he was not so objectionable for an Englishman.”

Soames pieced this together on the fly, but was fairly certain he understood her. Irene had no such difficulty; she laughed easily, and said, “Lui as-tu avoué tes sentiments?”

She’d laughed! It was the first laugh he’d heard since she’d returned to London, and he hid behind his catalogue when he heard it lest anyone see his face. That and what she’d said about how she was doing—softly? Something like that? He felt hopeful. Then Soames peeked over the top of his catalogue cautiously to see what Lucie was thinking. She looked uncertain and shy and quite young, to his older self.

Lucie said, “I do not know how I feel. I am happy when I see him. I am sad when he leaves and think about when I might see him next. I don’t know what this means or if this is anything more.”

Irene said, gently, “Je crois que c’est peut-être plus que de l’amitié.”

Lucie was silent. The expression on her face said that a great deal was going on inside her, uncertainty and not a little longing. To Soames’s eye, she was sweet on George, but unsure what that meant.

The pair continued talking, but Soames gave over listening. He quietly lifted the catalogue so he was safely hidden behind it. George knew his own mind better than the young lady did. Turning up at a French diplomat’s salon and doing his best was a stretch for a man like George; he was putting more effort into this than Soames had seen him put into anything before. The fellow certainly had reformed his finances to an astonishing degree. He was still casting about for some sort of profession suited to him, but he was at least looking for something, unlike that parasite Dartie. In fact—Soames thought he had an idea there.

Soames was himself hoping it came right for George. He’d come to like George more than he’d thought possible. The man had turned out to be both amiable and sweet-tempered. Irene approved of him. Soames himself thought him sound if lost and confused. He did hope George wasn’t destined for heartbreak.

Lucie said, “Quand vas-tu te remettre sérieusement à ta musique? Tu as l’opus 57—il le faut!”

“Je prends cela au sérieux, c’est pourquoi je peux le jouer.”

Soames held still for a moment, but they started talking about something he couldn’t follow, and he turned his attention back to the catalogue. He turned a page. Was that an Alfred Stevens? It was. Soames found himself sitting up straighter. He did love Stevens. The women he painted were so well-executed, their faces and skin and hair so realistic, their gowns so perfect for their time. He had loved his Stevens best of his collection in his later years. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask why until now, really. What had he loved about that painting? The way the woman in it had felt real? The way her depiction had called back to his younger days? The careful details of the painting? Stevens was quite skilled. Perhaps it didn’t bear examination: it was simply what he loved. But he thought it was the subject that he loved first, a beautiful woman in a beautiful gown, and the skill of the painter had drawn him in second. Stevens had painted a beautiful woman of his heyday, realistically, and he had loved looking at her.

What an odd situation Nemesis had put him in, that he could remember things that had yet to happen. Most days now he was so used to it that he didn’t think about it. He was himself, living a life, with the advantage of more practice at things, and of knowing what mattered and what didn’t in life. This was what they called wisdom, he supposed. He was as wise as the years in his head, beyond the years that showed on his face. Some days he would forget how dislocated he’d felt at the start of it, and then something would happen to remind him, or remind him of Fleur, and it would all rush back on him. Sometimes Fleur was a dagger in his heart, and sometimes a distant ache. Sometimes he was wistful for paintings he might or might not manage to find again.

Whatever the strangeness of his second life, this catalogue attracted him. He would have to look in at the auction. Strange that auctions did not strain his nerves. Social occasions made him break down and hide or go silent, but he could perform in an auction completely coolly, as well as in a negotiation with a dealer. It made no sense to him.

Irene and Lucie had finished their heart-to-heart, and Lucie looked as if she had taken some kind of resolution, he hoped in George’s favour.

The evening post had a letter from Parkes with a most interesting scheme that he took to Irene immediately. “Parkes wants to take us to see Patience at the Opera Comique and then to a late supper.”

“Oh!” Irene said. “I should so love to see it. I have heard it very well spoken of. When?”

“Saturday.”

“Perfection. Is he bringing someone?”

“He writes that he is. One of the many women he says he has been calling on. He does not mention which.”

“He did confess to me that he was unsure which of the young ladies had his heart. I was somewhat disappointed in him.”

“You were, were you. What did he say to that?”

“He looked embarrassed, and said he had not yet found the right woman. In fact, he said he envied you, for having found a soul-mate.”

“What?”

“That is what he said.”

Soames sighed. “I never know if Parkes is sincere about that or not.”

“I think he might have been. I think he is genuinely hoping.”

“I should have put him down as an eternal bachelor, but then I should have put George down for that as well, and look at him.”

“You think George is sincere about Lucie?”

“I know he is.”

“How do you know?”

Soames shook his head. “I can’t reveal why, but believe me, he is. If Lucie encourages him, he will declare himself immediately. Consider, though—the poor chap hired a French tutor.”

Irene laughed. “That is proof enough. But you think Gregory might still be a bachelor at heart?”

Soames shrugged. “He does not tell me anything other than that he enjoys the company of his many lady friends, and further, enjoys charming them and whispering sweet nothings to them. He’s had no shortage of young ladies he’s been calling on, never with any definitive outcome.”

“I wonder,” said Irene, quite thoughtfully, and they left it at that.

Soames called at Park Lane around half-past six on the Saturday, for they had arranged to meet there to proceed to the Opera Comique. Irene came down to greet him in the newest of her evening dresses, a magnificent creation in amber silk with white decorations. When Soames complimented it, Irene was reluctant to accept the praise.

“Don’t you like it?” he said.

“I do,” she said. “It’s a finer dress than any I’ve had.”

“But you don’t like something about it. Tell me?”

Irene sighed. Soames looked at the dress again, this time with a critical eye. “The colours suit you. It is a deeper colour than you prefer, but the ambers in it echo the darker colours in your hair. But—”

“The colours are good. But it is the trimmings and lace. I wouldn’t have chosen so much. The drape of the fabric matters more than all this.”

Soames bit his finger. “You want a different dressmaker.”

“A French one.”

“My mother would be—”

“Hurt. So I shall stay silent and appreciate her generosity.”

He touched his pocket. “I bought something to go with this dress. I hesitate now to give it to you.”

“Soames, please do not hesitate. You are most sweet, and your mother will love seeing it. But I would ask—”

“Tell me.”

“I am not sure about most pieces. I fear you will buy me a gift I cannot love with all my heart.”

“I think you might like this one. You lingered over it at Liberty’s.”

“Soames!”

He handed over the case. It was a striking necklace, this time an enamelled piece made of silver wire with a piece of raw amber at its heart, depicting an egg from which a phoenix had hatched in flames. Irene did not speak when she opened the case, but covered her mouth and burst into tears and laughter at once, and reached up to Soames to kiss him.

“I did linger over this,” she said, “but I thought you were distracted.”

“The assistant betrayed you. May I?”

“Of course you may.”

She turned to allow him to put the necklace on. He fastened the clasp, leaned forward, and whispered into her ear, “This is you playing the Appassionata for me.” Then he dared to brush a kiss over the clasp at the nape of her neck. Irene shivered and he made a soft sound that he hoped she could not know the meaning of. He stepped back from her and sighed. She was so beautiful and he loved her so and he ought not torment them both like that. The piece did suit the dress. It suited her neck and it suited her. It came to him that he was staring where he ought not, and turned away with his face burning. Irene took his hand and pressed it.

Parkes appeared at the appointed hour not with a young lady to introduce to them, but instead with George. They were both resplendent in evening dress, cloaks, and opera hats.

“I thought you were bringing a member of the fairer sex to join us,” said Soames.

“Alas,” said Parkes. “She was unable to join us.”

He did not look particularly happy about it, by Soames’s estimation, and that was surprising. Soames exchanged a glance with Irene. He was reminded of his earlier resolution to buy a drink for Parkes if this sort of thing happened. Well, he would arrange to be at the club Monday night.

George grinned at them with an ironic twist in his smile. “You must make do with me instead. I think I look stunning on Parkes’s arm.”

“Where is dear Lucie?” asked Irene.

George’s smile faded. “Back in Paris. I am alone and pining most desperately. This is why you must console me, dearest cousin Irene.”

“Oh, must I.” But she was smiling.

“I would be so grateful, that I would not mock your fiancé tonight.”

“That is very kind of you,” Soames said, tartly, but George knew he didn’t mean it. “You’ve been abandoned?”

George looked genuinely fretful. “For a week, she said.”

Irene looked at Soames. “We are surrounded by forlorn men.”

Soames said, “This is a comic opera, at least. Perhaps they’ll be cheered by it.”

“Let us go, then, so that they stop weeping on our shoulders.”

They left Park Lane, then, and entered the cab that Warmson had already secured for them, without being asked to do so. Irene sat next to George. She wound her arm through his and consoled him with soft words Soames could not catch, which George seemed to find encouraging. Soames took the opportunity to speak with Parkes.

“Let me buy you a drink Monday night,” he said.

Soames watched the gleam of Parkes’s eyes under his opera hat. Parkes was silent for a moment, then said, “Will you steal a cigarette?”

“Only if you insist.”

Parkes smiled briefly. “Can you dine?”

“Yes. Eight?”

“Right.”

And with that it was arranged. Irene was still speaking with George, whose good humour seemed to have returned, in the main. When they emerged from the cab, she came over to Soames to hold his arm on the way down the alley to the theatre. He caught her eye and she shook her head and whispered merely, “Later.”

The passage downward from the street stank of drains. Soames made a face and then smoothed it away, striving to keep himself indifferent and dignified. He wasn’t supposed to take notice. Down and then into the theatre, which was dug deep into the earth north of the Strand off Wych Street. What a terrible hole it was!

It was stifling inside the theatre, which was surely the worst Soames had been inside in either life. They found their way to the stalls: Parkes, Soames, Irene, then George. Parkes had bought quite wonderful seats. They had arrived on time for the opening nonsense, which was not what they had come to see. Soames paid little attention to it, instead watching his friends and fiancée and talking in low voices with them. The audience was, as a whole, doing the same, and the theatre was noisy until the orchestra began tuning for the main performance.

The gas lights in the auditorium lowered; the lights around the orchestra brightened. The overture began. The music was enjoyable; it was certainly much lighter in mood than the other orchestral things Irene had taken him to hear, much happier than all the tragic Italian operas he’d heard earlier in the summer. He supposed that would make sense for a comedy. It made its points without being spiky or difficult or modern; he could simply listen and be pleased without needing to study what it was trying to say to him.

The plot of Patience was the usual business with Gilbert and Sullivan, if he understood correctly: a chorus of love-sick maidens was sought after by a chorus of military men of some sort. In this case, it was a troop of dragoons, upset that an exactly equal number of rapturous maidens were not paying attention to them, but were instead all sighing after a poet chap named Bunthorne. Bunthorne was supposed to be Oscar Wilde. Or maybe it was Swinburne? Irene thought it was Swinburne, and whispered as much to him. Whichever, that fellow had no interest in the chorus of maidens, of course. It wouldn’t be interesting if he wanted any of the women chasing him. He had eyes only for the milkmaid Patience, who was lovely and pure and insisted on loving selflessly.

Swinburne—or Wilde, whichever—sang a song to the audience directly, very dramatically, about what a dishonest fake aesthete he was. He did not love dirty greens by any means; he was not fond of all one sees that’s Japanese. Soames laughed into his hand. The people around him weren’t trying to hide it; they were laughing out loud. Dirty greens, like the curtains they’d just chosen for the rooms upstairs. And the Japanese sun-shade they’d admired at Liberty’s. Bunthorne was a modern man!

The poet then sang about how to fool them all into thinking one aesthetic, by pretending a passion for vegetables and carrying a lily about. Soames found himself leaning close to Irene and shaking with laughter. She was shaking as well. His stomach ached with laughing. Would he pretend to love a not-too-French French bean to make Irene like him? Of course! He would carry a lily and swoon with it for her. The whole thing was absurd and delightful. And he did not need to pretend art stopped short in the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine. Had he installed Empire furniture into Winifred’s dining room? Indeed he had. This song was encored several times, which was decidedly not the sort of thing that happened at Italian operas in Covent Garden.

The milkmaid and the other poet fellow were the only honest people in the whole thing. He rather liked the other poet, Grosvenor, the one who had known the milkmaid as a boy. He was a good sort and a sincere man. Soames wouldn’t mind being him: he deserved the love of the milkmaid Patience. It was a much better sort of thing to be than Bunthorne.

And of course it all came right in the end, with everybody married off to the people they ought to be married off to: the dragoons to the maidens, the honest poet Grosvenor to Patience, and Bunthorne to nobody at all. The audience made a great deal of noise at the end.

The crush on the way out of the theatre was the usual mess. Soames undertook to pay a commissionaire to get them a cab. George directed the cab to where their late supper would be. He’d chosen the restaurant, of course, and as he said to them all, he wouldn’t have trusted any of the rest of them to have chosen a single nut. Further, he’d secured them a private room so they could eat and laugh and enjoy each other’s company in peace. The dishes and the wines were marvellous, and the champagne in particular was a relief after that hot and miserable theatre.

Soames particularly enjoyed that for once he could sit next to Irene at table and smile at her secretly and receive the gift of her smile in return.

George was in high good humour after the opera and Irene’s reassurances about Lucie. He pronounced himself more than willing to assume all the stained-glass attitudes needed to emit French platitudes to win the goodwill of Monsieur Béranger.

“Not Miss Béranger’s goodwill?” asked Parkes.

“She has already pronounced herself impressed by the lengths to which I am willing to go to impress her father. Mind, all I have managed thus far is to be declared not as objectionable as expected.”

“A triumph, surely,” said Irene.

Soames said, “You need to invite him to a late supper where you order the food and wine. If he isn’t impressed by that, he’s a fool.”

Parkes seconded this immediately. George looked quite pleased by these compliments, and drank more of his champagne with a self-satisfied glow. Parkes was pleased to toast him, but Soames thought Parkes was drinking more and laughing less than usual. Was he a man who’d been thrown over? That was surprising, but then, Parkes had been willing to introduce this young lady to Soames and Irene, and that had been unusual. Whatever the reason was, Soames felt better that he’d offered to buy Parkes a drink.

Irene was also drinking more of her champagne than usual, Soames saw, and he could not blame her: it was very good champagne. She touched Parkes’s arm and said, “Tell me, Gregory, what you made of the opera.”

Parkes blushed, to Soames’s surprise. Soames said nothing, however, but ate his bread and butter and watched quietly while Irene found a way to cheer Parkes up.

“It was quite amusing. I know nothing of Swinburne and that lot, but the velvet and poses and lilies and what not sent me into fits. I felt far more sympathy for that poet chap than I ought to have, perhaps. His scheme fell apart on him all at once, didn’t it?”

“It did indeed,” Irene said.

“Hoist with his own petard,” said Soames.

Parkes continued. “The business with them all chasing the handsome chap around no matter what he did was quite good. If he’s an aesthetic, they’re all wearing dirty green. If he’s a sensible City man, then they’re sensible girls. Everyone ended up married off correctly.”

George said, “Every dragoon gets a rapturous maiden.”

“Grosvenor gets Patience,” said Soames. Something rose in him—maybe the champagne, maybe being among the friends he loved best—and he dared.

“A Chancery Lane young man, a Somerset House young man, a very delectable, highly-respectable thrupenny-bus young man.”

“Forsyte sings,” said Parkes. “Forsyte sings.”

“Badly,” said George, “but he does sing.”

“You must own I’m a pushing young particle, what’s the next article Waterloo House young man.”

“Yes,” said Irene, “but you also approved the sage green curtains and the Japanese sun-shade for the garden.”

“Hush,” said Soames, knowing that the secret was already well out.

George, meanwhile, was enacting his astonishment by tipping his chair over backwards onto the floor while still seated upon it, very quietly.

The supper ended cheerfully around midnight, and the four of them left the restaurant arm in arm. They stood upon the pavement together for a moment, discussing how they were to return to their various homes. A hansom came by and hovered in hope. Parkes hailed it. Soames looked at him in a little surprise.

Parkes smiled a little impishly and said, “This is for you two. In you go.”

Parkes helped Irene into the hansom. Soames tapped Parkes on the shoulder in thanks and tucked himself into the hansom next to Irene. Parkes shut the doors on them both and gave the cabbie the Park Lane address. Away they went.

Soames looked sidelong at Irene, and saw her looking at him, smiling mysteriously. She touched his gloved hand with hers.

“It was a lovely evening,” she said. “I enjoyed every moment.”

“I as well. What was that business with George?”

“I told him not to fret. Lucie has gone to Paris for a cousin’s wedding, and she has already written to me to ask after him.”

“Good. I’m happy for him.”

Hansom cabs were so intimate, so small and enclosed. They were touching each other from hip to knee; they didn’t have to be, but they were. Her scent surrounded him, roses and honey. Soames turned his head and there she was, looking at him, dark eyes unreadable, her lips so close he could feel her breath. The champagne sang in his blood.

“Did—may I ask—did you change your scent since you were—since April? It’s deeper than it used to be.”

Her lips curved in her little smile. “I did, yes. Your mother took me to a perfumer, and we had a long consultation. Why do you ask?”

“I do so love it.” That, in a low voice.

He leaned close slowly, so slowly, giving her every chance to move away, and then they touched. The kiss lingered, then he made a sound of pure need and they kissed again, and again, all through the long ride, until Irene broke away and touched his lips with gloved fingers.

“We are nearly arrived,” she whispered.

Soames sat straight and smoothed his coat. Damn. That cab ride could have lasted forever as far as he was concerned.

The driver called to the horse and the hansom came to a smooth halt. Soames opened the hansom doors, helped Irene out, and escorted her to the door. He saw her inside and climbed back into the cab to ride back to his chambers, torn between frustration and delight at those kisses. Two months left to endure until their wedding.

XXVI. Irene escapes again

Dinner with Parkes at the Connoisseurs was a quiet affair. Parkes had less of his usual glossy ease and seemed more melancholy, but possibly only someone close to him would have noticed. He and Soames talked about impersonal things, and any attempt Soames made to bring the conversation over to Parkes’s private life was quietly ignored, in favour of bland conversation about some school-fellow who’d moved to America recently. After a light meal, they sat in Parkes’s corner in the smoking room with whiskies. Parkes had his usual cigarette between two fingers. He flicked at it nervously, letting it burn down without smoking it.

Soames let them both drink a little before he spoke. “Shan’t pry, but tell me if you like.”

Parkes sighed. “Nothing to tell. She agreed to come but was indisposed in the evening.”

“I hope she recovers well.”

Parkes shook his head. “She’s been indisposed twice now. I think I shall stop calling on her. I have recently met a simply lovely young lady near Richmond, who has asked me to ride with her. I think I’ll call on her instead.”

“Parkes,” said Soames, softly.

“I suppose I sound heartless,” said the man. “I’m not. I’m a bit stung, in fact. I liked the young lady. Still, she is saying she’d like me to withdraw, very delicately, and it is my duty to hear it and withdraw.”

“I suppose so,” said Soames. He fidgeted with his whisky glass and turned it around and around in his fingers. He himself had not been as graceful at being told no.

Parkes went on. “I suspect I shall never meet my Miss Heron. It is likely the bachelor life for me. I shall of course continue to meet lovely women and continue to entertain the notion.”

“Well, that’s an elegant excuse to flirt with them all.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Parkes smiled brightly at him.

Parkes lit another cigarette, and Soames seized his chance to steal his single smoke for the evening. He contemplated Parkes through the curling blue haze. Was this bravado? What did Parkes feel, truly? He’d known Parkes since they were boys, and he was quite certain Parkes had feelings about the matter, though apparently he intended to keep them well-hidden behind his white shirtfront. But still, one wondered. He crossed one knee over the other and changed the subject.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. Parkes snorted softly, and Soames glared at him, though without heat.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said again, “that my cousin George has some skill that might benefit you. He’s been joining his father valuing house property since he was a boy. His father does very well with it. I took George along with me to consider a house on Montpellier Square.”

“Good location, bad reputation, might rise,” Parkes said, almost automatically. He put his cigarette to his lips and drew.

“That was his initial judgement as well. Said it would depend on the price and the size. Then when we went to view it, he told me he’d snap it up before his father got it if he had the means. So I did. He doesn’t have your eye for condition, though.”

Parkes laughed softly. “You heard me complain I had more money than I could usefully employ, and this is what you do.”

“Better than putting it in consols,” Soames said, dryly.

Parkes tipped back his head and blew a long stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I thought he was a gentleman of leisure.”

“He is now a gentleman attempting to acquire the means to provide for a household.”

Parkes sat up and stared at Soames. “The poor devil. Why didn’t he tell me this?”

“Too proud, I think. You might want to put it to him as doing you a favour.”

“Well, then. I’ll see what he makes of himself.” Parkes put his feet up again on the footstool and resumed his slouch.

Soames blew a smoke ring. He’d improved his skill with them over the last months, one stolen cigarette at a time. “Do you like your tobacconist? And how many cigarettes a month do you order?” he asked Parkes.

Parkes held his cigarette sideways before his face. “My tobacconist is quite good, as you well know, you thief. Sullivan Powell, in the Arcade. And I take fewer than you think. I only smoke here. Set my armchair on fire once and my valet has forbidden me from smoking at home. Hollis rules me with an iron fist.”

“Set your—”

“One bottle of Pol Roger too many. You’d gone home like a sensible chap and there it was.” Parkes laughed, and yes, there was the bravado.

“Oh, I remember that night.” Soames tapped ash into the dish on the table between them and resolved to invite Parkes to dinner more often.

On the following Sunday afternoon, Soames sat in the drawing room at Park Lane on the sofa with Irene. The door was open, and Emily was in and out of the room, but they were otherwise alone. Irene’s hands were clasped in his and they were sitting close together, talking quietly about small things. He was distantly aware of his mother opening the door, walking past, then leaving the drawing room again, but he didn’t think it worth interrupting this moment with her.

Irene told him about when she’d first realised she was more skilled than anyone around her at playing the piano, and her father had taken steps to get her the best teachers he could find. She’d been fond of her father, and she smiled telling stories about him. He’d never heard this before; it touched him deeply to hear her talk of her childhood to him. Every moment of it was something to treasure.

In return he told her about the boyhood tutor who’d tried to teach him draughtsmanship. His mother had noticed how much time he spent looking at his father’s paintings, and how much he enjoyed visits to galleries, and had thought to see if he would enjoy learning how to do it himself. The tutor had rapped the knuckles of his left hand with a ruler every time he tried to pick up a stick of charcoal or a pencil with it, and he’d been frustrated trying to do anything with his right hand. It was a less pleasant story, and not one he’d ever felt comfortable telling to anyone before. Irene kissed the fingertips of his left hand gently, and he caressed her face with them for a long moment.

“What do you dream of?” he asked her. “What do you wish we could do together?”

“Travel. See parts of France I haven’t yet seen.”

“We shall do this.”

“Where would you go?”

“I will always suggest Rome to you. I’ve only been once, and I should like to visit again with you. It is such a beautiful city, with light that I cannot describe. And there is peace there. No rush or bustle, no work or fretting. Warm sun on the marble and wine and good food.”

“Are you a secret hedonist, Soames?”

“A secret sensualist.” He gave her a shy smile, and she smiled back.

“What is it that you dream of, when you daydream during those concerts?”

He half closed his eyes, and thought about what he wanted most, in those moments when he was drowsing in his bed, on his way down to sleep. “Oh, so many things. Mostly—our honeymoon. Paris nights together. Being able to, to—to be together at last. And—”

“Our—our honeymoon,” Irene said.

Soames made a sort of humming noise, thinking about it. She’d told him she’d surrender to him when she’d played the Appassionata for him. It had been so intense and he’d been so moved by it in exactly the way she’d described that day when they’d listened to the Emperor Concerto together. And now, as they sat together, holding hands, talking so intimately, he felt such warmth that he thought he might say it. She had given him all the signs it would be welcome, so he would say it, and share his dreams with her.

His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve told you this, I think. My dearest dream is—is a home in the country, on a river, the Thames perhaps, where I can punt and fish. Do you remember this?”

“I do. You talked about watching the birds.”

“Yes. There are so many birds near rivers. But the house—at the house we have cows and horses.”

“For a carriage?”

“Yes, and for the children to ride.”

“Children?” Irene seemed surprised.

“Yes. We have children. Two, just two. Young James, of course. I think he looks like you, nothing like me, golden hair, handsome. And a daughter. I do so want a daughter. I think—I know what we’ve named her. I—may I tell you what—”

Irene shifted next to him, and her skirts rustled. She was looking away from him. “I am not certain I want children at all.”

Soames’s chest tightened. “No children? I—”

“I don’t want, that is, I’m not ready to think about—”

“But we’ve talked about this. I thought you wanted—”

Irene said, more firmly, “I’m not sure I would like even to risk having children.”

Not even risk it? But that meant—hadn’t she—she hadn’t spoken to him about this at all, hadn’t given him a hint. No children. He wouldn’t be a father. No son to set into James’s arms, no Young James to fulfil James’s deepest wish. No little Fleur to hold in his own arms. His chest hurt, his heart felt as if it were shattering. How could she do this to him without asking?

He said, “What do you mean, not even risk it?”

Now she looked him in the eyes. “I mean not do things that might—”

She meant not to allow him into her bed. His heart felt as if someone had set a hot iron to it. His head swam. This was worse. This was what it had been before, the old aching hunger, the deliberate distance and unbearable longing. He felt himself moving from his body and what it was feeling.

“You can’t mean this,” he said. “You can’t decide this on your own.”

“Soames, let me explain—”

“Stop,” he said. “I won’t hear it.”

No children, no son, no daughter, no embracing—why did she even want to marry him? What was this marriage even for? Why were they discussing it? He didn’t know where he was. He should stop speaking. He should shut his mouth and stop. He should walk away and calm down.

Instead his hands tightened and his fingertips dug into her palms. He said, “You have a duty to me and to the marriage and you will do it.”

“Duty?” Irene’s face had gone very still and her eyes were wide.

“We shall have children,” he said, in a voice as cold as the North Sea. She could not dare deny him. Marriage was for the procreation of children. A son. A daughter.

There was utter silence between them. Soames was furious still, his body shivering with something that he didn’t dare think about, because if he thought about it he would sob out loud. He was only barely aware that she’d pulled her hands away. Irene’s eyes were locked with his. She had shrunk away from him on the sofa, but she was not backing down.

“Excuse me,” Irene said, with complete calm despite his anger. “I need a moment.” She rose from the sofa and left the drawing room.

The door closed behind her. The drawing room fell into a deep hush. Soames sat up on the sofa, still shaking. The fury faded as fast as it had rushed through him, and he was left feeling sick, hands trembling from its after-effects. What had just happened? His body felt cold without her near him, empty without her hands in his and her eyes to look into. What had he just done? He’d told her—He’d said things he ought not to have said. He’d said things he did not even feel.

He rubbed his hands together anxiously, then soothed himself with thumb on signet ring. He’d lost his temper. Damn. Why had he said that? He didn’t understand himself. He ought to have kept control. He ought to have asked her what she meant. But if she didn’t want children—God, that was a blow. He had dreams. He could see little James and little Fleur. He could imagine them in his arms and in hers. He ached for the want of them. He ached for Fleur. He missed her so much some days. To think that no one would call him Daddy ever again was—it was as if someone had punched him in his stomach. He hadn’t expected to feel that when she’d said it. There was a great empty place in his heart where Fleur had been and he’d hoped—but Irene would deny him the joy of children again. Unshed tears stung him, and his throat closed up. The anger was entirely gone and all that was left in him was the grief.

Soames sat in the drawing room with his head in his hands. She didn’t want to give what he wanted most, beyond her love. Surely she didn’t mean it. He had taken her by surprise, perhaps. He would apologise. He would tell her he hadn’t meant to be angry. He would explain himself, he would give her a chance to think it over, surely she would see it was an ordinary thing for a man to want. Surely she would understand he hadn’t been unreasonable. Perhaps she would see her way to consenting to it. They would talk.

He heard Warmson’s voice in the hall, and the front door opening and shutting—someone leaving. His mother and father on their Sunday afternoon call to Timothy’s, no doubt. Thank goodness his mother hadn’t come in again to check on them both. Soames was in no mood to deal with his mother’s well-meaning questions just now. He could only barely imagine speaking to Irene. He was only just now regaining control of himself.

Soames stood and paced, piano to fireplace, back again. He always paced when he was like this, back and forth. Annette had clucked her tongue at him and told him to stop being foolish; Irene had ignored him back then, the first time round when she’d hated him. It helped, though. He calmed down and the sickness in his stomach eased.

Where was she? It had been twenty minutes, longer. He must have upset her more than he’d thought. He’d go find her and make his apologies.

Soames went out into the hall, where he encountered Warmson hovering, as if he were expecting Soames to appear. His stomach felt odd again.

“Warmson, where is Miss Heron?”

“She left about ten minutes ago, sir.”

Soames flinched then controlled himself. “Left? Did she say where she was going?”

“No, sir.”

Warmson’s face was as expressionless as ever, but Soames knew his own was not. He bit his lip, thinking hard. Perhaps she’d taken a walk to try to think it through. Perhaps she was as upset as he had been. He had to give her time to think.

“Thank you,” he said. “Please let me know when she returns.”

He turned away from Warmson and mounted the stairs two at a time, up two flights to his room. He closed the door and flung himself on his bed. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. In this safe place he soothed himself and tried to re-order his thoughts. He’d upset her; he understood that. He wanted a walk himself; it made sense that she had taken one. What would he do when she returned? He had a small trove of music here in his room waiting to be given to her at opportune moments, from that seemingly endless fountain of work by Liszt to that odd Brahms chap to Chopin to all these modern Frenchmen. He could make amends with that.

He’d read the Appassionata wrong, hadn’t he. She’d gone silent every time he’d mentioned it because he’d asked about the wrong thing. It wasn’t passion as desire alone. It was passion and storm and violence and intensity. She’d meant something else by it. What?

She was not in the house. He could not lie here without knowing where she had gone. He sprang up and with his noiseless step made his way out to the hall and across to the door that was hers.

He went into her room, propriety be hanged. This had once been Winifred’s room, and he’d been in it many times through his youth to talk to his sister about life, growing up, school, their parents, anything at all. Now it was ghosted over by Irene’s presence, her scent, her taste, her music books, the book from the lending library she’d been reading, the silver-backed brushes he’d given her. Soames shivered with longing for her. She’d left everything. There were pins and oddments on the dressing table, and the brooch and the necklace he’d given her from Liberty’s. Beside it lay the pouch she wore around her neck with the money he’d given her for emergencies, the money she’d used to get here. Soames touched it, estimated—four sovereigns left inside, and some smaller coins. She hadn’t taken any money. Surely she could not have gone far, or meant to have gone for very long?

He slipped out of her room before he could be noticed, and made his way back to his boyhood room quietly. He would wait until tea time, and surely she would be back by then. He hadn’t—he hadn’t done what he’d done before. He’d spoken out of turn, no more. He sat at his desk and took out pen and paper. He wrote a short note to her, saying that he loved her and he begged her forgiveness. He folded it up, sealed it with a splash of wax, and pressed his signet into it. Then he sat and watched the wax cool, rubbing his thumb over his initials on the ring absently. It was tea-time and he had to go down. He went into the hall and slid the note under the door of her room, then made his way downstairs to the drawing room. She was not there; his parents were. His mother looked at him oddly, and there it was, the question. Where was Irene?

“She went out in the late afternoon.”

“When is she expected back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Soames, my dear boy, what happened? I saw you talking, and you seemed quite happy.”

“I lost my temper.”

“What on earth about, Soames?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. He sat down for tea with them, but could only hold his cup while he listened for the door. Nothing. He couldn’t bear this, and he couldn’t bear his mother’s sympathetic glances any more.

“I’m going to my club,” he told her. “Please send word there if she returns.”

“Of course, dear.”

Soames walked out without another word. Not his club, not yet. Looking at Parkes would remind him of what he ought to have done. He walked to his chambers to see if there was any post there: nothing from her. Here he could be truly alone, and he let himself be alone, curled up around a pillow on his bed, cursing himself with bitter words, counting hours since she’d left, wondering if she’d gone back to Lymington, to the home of one of her Conservatoire friends, to a hotel, to somewhere he could not guess.

It was so easy to tip over into what it had felt like when she’d left him in that previous life, when he’d truly transgressed. His heart had been shattered and he hadn’t wanted anyone he knew to see him. That long failure of spirit had been a great hole in his life, in which he’d done nothing but work. He could feel that despair reaching out for him again. It was foolish. She had only been gone for a few hours. This was nothing like then, when she had told him plainly how much she loathed him and wanted to escape from him. When he’d deserved it. This time all he’d done was lose his temper and say things he could apologise for, if only he could find her.

Where was she? What was she doing? Had something happened to her? Had she left him for good? Had he lost her?

She’d escaped from him again, hadn’t she. He’d failed again.

Part 3

XXVII. Soames faces facts

Soames could not stay where he was any more. If she had returned to Park Lane already, word was waiting for him at his club while he was lying here feeling incapable of speaking to anyone. He rolled off the bed and tried to get himself in order again. He’d behave as if nothing had happened. He’d eat dinner, have a drink, wait for news.

He changed, because the club wouldn’t let him dine there if he did not. He made himself look presentable, brushed his hair, straightened his white tie. What did it matter? He would go and wait for a message.

He walked to his club and once there, realised there was no possibility he could eat. He went to the smoking room, hoping to find Parkes so he could sit and say nothing at all to him and perhaps feel better knowing there was someone who thought him not worthless.

Parkes was there, in his usual spot, with what looked like a set of architectural drawings. Soames came over quietly. He sat next to Parkes and said nothing at all in response to his greeting.

Parkes tried again. “Hallo.”

“Yes.”

“Come to find out how your cousin is getting on?”

“No.”

“Did you dine here?”

“No.”

“Did you dine at all?”

“No.”

“What the hell is going on? Out with it.”

Soames said, “Nothing at all.”

“Stuff and nonsense. Forsyte. What’s wrong?”

Soames sighed, and gave in. “Irene left Park Lane.”

Parkes sat up. “What d’you mean?”

“She left. Walked out. We argued and she left. They’re supposed to send word here if she comes back but they haven’t. I couldn’t stand them looking at me any longer.”

He lowered his head into his hands. Parkes set a hand on his shoulder and Soames flinched. “Steady, Forsyte, steady.”

“She left without anything. She didn’t take any of the money I gave her in case of emergency.”

“None?”

“No. She just… left it. And everything else.” She’d done this before, in that first life. She’d left all the things he’d given her. Her note had said it—nothing he or his people had given her. It was happening again. He spun his ring around and tried to soothe himself. It was no good, of course. He’d done it again. He’d threatened her again. She’d walked away from everything he was, even the things he’d given her out of love. She’d rejected all of him.

“I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if she’ll come back.”

“Why do you think she’s run off?”

“I was angry with her and… said things.”

“It must have been something more than that, Forsyte. She wouldn’t have run off for a lover’s tiff. That woman thinks the world of you.”

Soames sighed. “It was more.”

Parkes laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned in. “Tell me,” he said, very quietly.

“We were talking about the future. Dreams. Wishes. It was lovely—we were so—” Soames broke off and shook his head. “I told her about wanting children. And she said she didn’t know if she wanted children at all. I lost my head. I spoke… harshly.”

“I know you in that humour. You are a brute and a bastard.” Soames said nothing. Parkes stared at him grimly. “So she walked out on you.”

“Yes.”

“Good for her.”

That stung. Soames reared back his head and stared at Parkes. Why did Parkes take her side in this?

Parkes went on. “What made you behave like a brute?”

“She—I thought she felt the way I did.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I—no. But she ought to have consulted me before deciding.”

Parkes tapped Soames’s knee. “And did you ask her, before you decided you wanted them? See it her way, old man. Dare say I’d think twice myself, if I were a woman. Never heard a single good thing about the whole business.”

“Women are supposed to want it. Having children. Being mothers.”

“She wanted to be a concert pianist, Forsyte, not a mother. You decided to fall in love with one of the most unusual women I’ve ever met, and now here you are, wanting her to be usual.”

“She said she didn’t want to chance having them. That means—”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“She meant it that way.”

Parkes studied his face, and became even more serious. “Look here, have a drink. Calm down. When you can have a rational conversation, we’ll talk.”

“I am rational—”

Parkes laid a firm hand on his knee and Soames shut his mouth. “You’re not, old man. Drink. I’ll be back in a moment.” Parkes stood and vanished from the room.

Soames accepted the whisky from a waiter who came over a moment later, and drank. It tasted of nothing, but it had a kick on his empty stomach. Parkes was right: he wasn’t rational. His feelings had always been too much for him, and they were too much for him now.

Was he a brute when he was angry? It had been a long time since he’d been angry as he’d been regularly in his younger days, or during that first marriage, but he was aware that he’d spent his twenties and the entirety of his first marriage in a constant irritated sulk. There had been a handful of times in his life when he’d been truly enraged. This hadn’t been one of them. This had been more like—more like those early days of marriage, when he’d been thwarted, when she’d been so cold to him no matter what he did and he’d sulked and fumed. Or when she’d hurt him and he’d lashed out. He remembered that last day again, when he’d tried to hurt her even though he had desperately wanted her to stay with him. He hadn’t been able to think straight or feel one coherent thing. It had all been a jumble of frustrated misery. He’d said things. He remembered them now. He remembered her sitting there, with her lover dead, looking broken. He’d flung it in her face. That alone was unforgivable.

Shame welled up in him again. He couldn’t make amends for that, either, could he.

Parkes came back and pulled his chair closer to Soames’s. He sat down again, and picked up his own drink.

“Have you used that clever brain of yours, Forsyte, and puzzled this one out?”

“I am a brute,” Soames said, quietly. “I hadn’t realised how much of one.”

“Have you ever listened to yourself?”

“No.”

“You’re silent, generous but shirty if anyone takes notice, and an absolute bastard when you’re angry.”

Soames watched the glowing tip of Parkes’s cigarette, and imagined himself burning up in it from pure shame. The back half of his life had been a different thing, but until Fleur had been born he’d been either working or deeply frustrated. He’d known how to be a lawyer, a son, a brother. He hadn’t known how to be anything else, but he’d wanted to be, and every failure had frustrated and angered him. He had never worked out how to be a husband. He’d wanted to do it, but it had eluded him. Fleur had been the balm that had soothed him despite his failures. Now he was without her and he had to be that better man despite the hole in his chest where she’d been.

“Damn,” he said, very quietly. “Damn me.”

Parkes wrapped an arm around his shoulders and Soames leaned into him. This was not a thing he’d ever done before and it felt strange but comforting. “Steady. You’ll put it right. Apologise.”

“If I can find her, I’ll grovel.”

“Not sure that’s what she’ll want.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d kick you if you grovelled.” Parkes released him, and sat back to light a cigarette.

Soames thought about this. He wanted her to understand what he’d meant in the moment, and know that he hadn’t been assuming anything—no, he had been assuming. But he could tell her it had hurt to have his dreams halted so abruptly. He couldn’t tell her about Fleur, and how much he longed for something like her in his life again, but he could tell her he wanted to be a father. And he could apologise for having been a brute. He had to do that, at the very least.

What did Parkes mean about Irene being unusual? Did she not want what women usually wanted? Did she not want a family and a good household and pretty clothes? Did she want only music in her life? Did she even want him in her life? What did she want? He thought he’d begun to understand her but he hadn’t. He’d made a mess of it again, failed to understand her, sulked and been frustrated and angry. She had left him again because he hadn’t known what to do with his feelings or how to talk to her when they were too much for him. He had to tell her what he felt, no matter how hard it was to talk about, and he had to ask her what she wanted, no matter how hard it was to give her that. Love wasn’t desire alone.

Why couldn’t he be like Parkes? Why couldn’t he be like other men? They all seemed to know what to do, how to be graceful and calm and how to say what they meant straight out without making a muddle of it.

Soames drank his whisky, shoulder brushing against Parkes’s for comfort all the while, and tried to think it out. Nemesis was punishing him for his sins, that he knew. He’d been warned. He’d been told he had to get it right, and he’d got it wrong. Well, Forsyte, get up off the floor and face what you’ve got wrong. Try again. Set it right. Beg her forgiveness and tell her what you’ll do to get it right next time. What else could he do?

“I have to ask her what she wants,” he said to Parkes. “I have to ask her why. Shut my mouth and listen.”

Parkes tapped cigarette ash into a dish. “You are sometimes the dimmest brilliant man I know.”

Soames looked askance at Parkes, then finished his whisky. “What do I do now?”

“Ask yourself where she’s gone.”

Soames gave Parkes a doubtful look. “Ask myself—” He fell silent, and it came to him he knew where she’d gone. She’d told him in one of her letters, when she’d written about living in London as a girl. The Round Pond.

“Go to her,” Parkes said.

“Thank you,” Soames said. He tentatively touched Parkes’s shoulder, unsure how to do it exactly. It must have served, because Parkes put an arm around his shoulders again and shook him gently in return. Soames made his way out of the club and out into the night. He knew where to find her, but he did not know if she’d receive him. And if she did choose to speak to him, what would she tell him? Why didn’t she want to chance having children? Would her reason be something he could bear?

He had to ask anyway.

XXVIII. Embassy

The Park gates were closed at that time of night, but it did not matter for anyone who knew how to avoid the gates and slip in by any of a dozen other ways into its dark wilderness, through underbrush, under trees, along the water’s edge.

The Park was in the middle of the most civilised place in the world, the beating heart of it all, and it was dim and silent and frightening to Soames. What must Irene be feeling? The moon was already setting, and the gibbous light cast eerie shadows from trees that in daylight were calm managed things. Bushes and flowers had become wild undergrowth. Soames walked along the by-ways through Kensington Gardens, under the shelter of the elms, where it was so dark he could not see his hand before his face. He followed its paths into darkness. There were others in the Park, dark figures seated at the bases of the trees, in couples or alone, but all was hushed. Sheep clustered in the fields; lost souls clustered under cover of elms and bushes.

Soames walked silently on the grass, careful to avoid the watchmen that would see him off if they spotted him. They might have spotted her before now, if she had not been wary and known to listen for boots on gravel. Worse still might have befallen her, for the Park was not safe.

Ahead was the pond. He approached carefully, scanning the benches. He stopped when he saw the figure of a woman seated alone, where the moonlight filtered through the trees. He could see her silhouette against the light: Irene. Her head was sunk down on her chest. Sleeping? Then she stirred and looked around. No. She’d be awake all night, watching. Soames stopped and thought for a moment about what he was going to say. Was he ready for this? As ready as he could imagine himself being: completely unready, and desperate to speak to her.

He made his way to the gravel path and walked deliberately towards her, boots noisy on the gravel, taking care that she could see him, slowly enough that she would not be afraid of him. He stopped a few feet away from her and took off his hat.

“Good evening,” he said. “May I speak with you?”

She studied him carefully. He held himself very still, doing his best to signal how safe he was, how unthreatening. His hands were behind his back, his head down.

“You may,” she said at last.

“Thank you.” He took two steps closer. “May I sit with you or would you prefer me to stand?”

“You may sit.” She indicated the far end of the bench.

“Thank you.” He sat, and set his hat between them on the bench. He had some words ready, but now that he was next to her, he had difficulty saying them. She looked as if she were cold. He didn’t know if he could offer her his coat or if she would accept anything at all from him. It troubled him; he could not bear that she was cold. He had to bear it for now.

After a minute of uncertainty, he said what he had prepared. “Irene, I wish to apologise to you and to explain something to you, if I may, and then to ask how I might make amends.”

“I am listening.”

Her voice gave nothing away about what she might be feeling. He felt at sea, shipwrecked. What was he to do, how was he to guess what she wanted? He could not. He had to say what was in him to say.

“I behaved badly. I am ashamed of myself. I ought not to have spoken to you that way. I didn’t mean what I said, though I know it is difficult to credit that.” He peered at her to see how she was accepting this, but he could not see her face well enough to know. He could only press on.

“I am sorry. I—that is one thing I need to say. The other is to explain why. Why I reacted that way. I don’t mean to excuse my behaviour. I mean to tell you how I felt, if I may.”

Silence, then her voice, calm and controlled, not the least timid or frightened though she sat here in the dark. “You may.”

“You asked me to tell you what I dream about. I told you my dearest wish, the thing I want most. I want to be a father, so very much. Your response was—it was not something I could—I didn’t know what to do when I heard it. My heart felt as if it were shattering.”

He touched his chest under his coat. It was aching again.

He hung his head. “I never know what to do. I know there’s something I don’t understand about how to get on. I lash out instead of—I should have done something else. Walked away. Written a letter. Something, anything, I don’t know! But—”

“But?”

“Instead I failed you. But that isn’t the worst.”

He sat silent. Irene simply watched him, equally silent. Now he came to it. To the thing that had sent her running from his father’s house.

“I’m afraid of myself,” he said, eventually.

“How so?”

“You’ve seen me angry. You’ve managed things to avoid it happening. You’re right to do it. I have lost control a very few times in my life but I am afraid of myself when it happens. I say things I don’t want to say, I watch myself saying them and I can’t stop. I have… done things. I’m on watch against myself, you must understand. I have to be on guard against myself. I’m not a good man.”

He looked up at her. She was staring at him in the moonlight, unblinking, unyielding. What was she thinking?

He swallowed painfully. “I know I must not make demands of you and I remind myself to behave otherwise and yet something in me still wants it to be so. I want to tell you what you must do, what sort of wife you must be, demand that you give me what I dream about. I know I should not but the urge is there.”

And now, the hardest thing he had to say.

“I may not demand children from you. It is your life at risk. I must defer to you, even if it hurts. I accept it.”

And well he knew that, having spent hours pacing, wondering if Annette would live or die, wishing it were not he who had to choose. He could not choose for Irene, would not ever do so. He looked up at her to see if she was still listening to him. She was. Her face was unmoving, but she was intent on him, not looking away.

“Irene. I’m sorry. Please tell me how I might set it right. I wish to so very much.”

She was silent for some time, but did not look away from him. He forced himself to keep looking at her no matter how hard it was.

At last she spoke. “Soames, I need to tell you—I need to—I can’t. I can’t.”

She turned away from him and wrapped her arms around herself. Whatever it was she had just tried to say had been too much for her. Soames wanted to reach out to her; he held himself back. He could not touch her. He waited for her to regain her composure with his own hands trembling.

Irene turned back to him, and in a different voice said, slowly, “I would like to ask you for something first, before I try to tell you what I need to say. May I do so?”

“Of course,” he said. He clenched his hands in his gloves.

“I respect you, Soames. You are a good man despite what you say. You have almost always been kind and respectful and loving to me. But today you showed me why you are afraid.”

Soames hung his head. “I know. I don’t deserve—” He turned away from her and ground his teeth.

“No. Soames. Don’t. You are not alone responsible for today. I have not—I have not told you—there are things I ought to have said to you.”

She had his full attention now. He watched her as closely as he could in the waning moonlight.

“I am going to ask you for something, and then I will tell you why. This is my request. I want—I want my own money. Something that is mine alone. The means to leave you and keep myself.”

“You want—”

“I do.”

He knew why. He knew why. He swallowed painfully.

“Will you do it?” she said.

Soames was silent for a long moment, thinking. She hadn’t asked him to set her free, but she had asked for him to give her the means to set herself free. The oath he’d sworn on his honour and proved himself honourless over: Nemesis had thrust her sword through him here as well, and was forcing him to live up to it. And now he knew why he must. She was sitting here on a bench with nowhere to go, penniless, and it was his doing. He hated seeing her like this. After marriage she wouldn’t be penniless, but did she know that? Had he even told her about the marriage settlement? An uneasy feeling washed through him. He hadn’t talked about this with her. She knew less about the money she would have than her step-mother did. But—he could tell her.

After a minute of thinking, he raised his head. “I must explain something important.”

“I am listening.”

Soames paused again and thought carefully. He had his facts; he knew his options. He knew what was before Parliament now and what would assuredly pass next year. Coverture would end, thank goodness, and women would truly be able to own property. What had allowed him to settle money on Fleur would allow him to give money to Irene. He had to explain this to her clearly. She did not know the law as he did.

“The facts are these,” he said, in the voice he used when talking to clients. “The trustees hold five thousand pounds for you in the marriage settlement. This gives you about a hundred and fifty pounds a year to do with as you please. The income is yours by law. I cannot touch it. I can increase your settlement over time, and I shall as my own fortune improves. The law both protects that money and presents us with a problem.”

“How so?”

Soames kept his voice calm and flat. This was a recitation of facts. “A marriage settlement is not what you request. You want money that is your own, and that means capital. I cannot give you that and have it remain yours. The law of coverture makes everything else you own mine when we marry.”

“I didn’t know—That’s barbaric.”

“It is.” This too was a statement of fact to him, remembering Fleur. “There is a bill before Parliament, however, which is likely to pass next year, ending coverture. You will be able to own property.”

“You will find a way to give me my own money when the law passes?”

“I will give you money now in anticipation of that event. Before the wedding, I shall open an account for you at the bank I use. You will have your own cheque-book. I will not ask what you do with it.” Soames pressed his lips together. “Your control of that depends on mutual trust, not on any guarantee of the law, so it is still not enough.”

Irene continued to watch him cautiously. And now he would describe the thing he had done so easily for Fleur, that required all his courage to do for Irene, but must be done.

“When the law changes, I will write a deed of gift to give you money that is yours, in your own name. No trustee will be able to take it from you. I will not be able to take it from you. I don’t yet know what my financial position will be when that happens, but when it does I will determine a reasonable amount and explain why I chose that by opening my books to you. There is no reason to leave it to a single gift. I can add to it later.”

Irene was breathing very hard, as if she’d been running. She was looking down at her gloved hands, her fingers twisting and untwisting around each other. “You would undertake to do this for me?”

“I will. You will always be able to leave me.”

His voice was still flat and calm, and so was his face, but Irene said, “It hurts you to promise that.”

Soames said nothing in response for a full minute, because she was right. Of course it hurt him. He was giving her the means to do what he’d sworn to do the first time, but failed to perform. He was doing what he ought to have done then. He’d been forsworn. She had to be free to leave him before it reached that point, before he had a chance to behave as badly as he had. He could only think about how badly it had hurt that day when she’d come back, only to leave again in the morning. She’d left with nothing and he’d never known how she’d managed to live. By the time he’d located her, she’d found her feet. How badly had it hurt her that day to leave with nothing? How badly had it hurt her today?

If she were free to leave, he must never make her wish to leave. He must not drive her to it. He had to watch himself always. Check his worst impulses. Stop himself from reacting in anger, think twice, breathe, think before speaking, think again before acting. The man he’d been then could never have done it. The man he was now could do it, perhaps, if he stood watch over himself. Stand solemn, upright, dignified, the watchman over himself.

“It does,” he said, eventually, when he was sure he had his voice fully under control. “More than I have words for. But if I fail, you must be safe. If I fail, you must not sit on a bench.”

“Thank you.”

Both of them were silent for a little. The night was hushed around them. Animal sounds, a rustling in the bushes, the hoot of an owl. Soames saw that she was trembling, with cold or with emotion he was not certain. His heart pained him.

Irene spoke. “I will try to explain to you why I asked for that.”

“Because when I am angry, I am—not to be trusted.”

“Soames, please. Don’t. We hurt each other this afternoon. I asked you to tell me your fondest wish and when you did I immediately told you no—of course you were hurt! And then you wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell you why your wish frightens me. And now I must tell you; this is what I must explain.”

He gripped the edge of the bench and kept silent despite his urge to ask questions.

She said, slowly, “It is difficult for me to speak of this, but I must or we risk marrying and finding our hearts broken on the first night. I am afraid, Soames, so afraid.”

“Of what?” he asked, gently. He could see her shaking.

“Do you remember when we heard the Beethoven Emperor Concerto together?”

This surprised him. “Yes.”

“I told you what it meant to me to listen to d’Albert play, to hear how much he loved the music, to hear a love so strong in him that it gathers me in—it possesses me, and I surrender. And when it’s over, I have given something, and I feel content.”

“I remember.”

“What if, what if—what if we are together, and I cannot feel that from our, from our connection? What if I cannot be possessed and surrender to what I hear and feel from you? What if I hear nothing? What if there is nothing? I have never heard anything but music that has moved me this way. How can I know if I can surrender to you? How can I know if I have never experienced these things or felt my body respond to a man at all?”

She broke off and turned away.

“Oh,” Soames said, softly. He remembered that first night so many decades ago, in his first life, how overwhelmed he’d been, how she’d cried. Had she done anything at all other than lie still underneath him? Had he done the least thing to consider her? He could not even remember. All he could remember was what had gone through him when he’d seen her, and how the next moment he’d seized her in his arms and was kissing her fiercely. She’d been afraid. Not cold. Afraid. He hadn’t even noticed.

He kept his voice as gentle as he could make it. “Is it that you are afraid, or that you don’t know?”

“I—I must tell you now—When my step-father held me, the only thing I felt was terror and revulsion. This whole month it has been all I can think about, his hands on my wrists and his breath when he forced kisses on me, his body—”

She broke off and sat with a hand over her mouth, breathing heavily. Soames leaned toward her; it was unbearable that he could not reach out to comfort her here and now.

He found his voice and asked as gently as he could, “Did he do worse than you told me?”

Irene spoke so very softly that he had to lean close to hear her. “No. But he said he would. He pinned me to the wall and told me it was coming. He told me I would enjoy it when it happened.”

Soames closed his eyes and reached deep for mastery of his own feelings at that moment. It would not help her if he became emotional. He had to care for her first. His hands were shaking, but he managed to keep himself silent.

Irene went on, “When you touch me and kiss me, it’s so sweet. I feel so warm. Before it happened, when we’d kiss, I felt so different. In the cab on the way home from supper with Gregory and George, I felt so safe kissing you like that. But then I think of him, when he threatened me, when he pushed me—”

“Irene,” Soames said, as if praying.

“What if all I feel with you is fear, no matter how kind you are? How can I think of children if I cannot get past that first thought, if I don’t know if I can even—I have been selfish with you just now, but I am so very afraid. What if I cannot let you possess me? I know that you are afraid of that word, but surely if it’s mutual—but it must be both of us. If I can’t, is it fair to you? If I lie there and endure it, is it fair to me?”

“No.”

“What are we to do?”

Soames closed his eyes, and begged Nemesis or God or whatever it was for forgiveness in this moment. He was a monster. He had done monstrous things. He deserved nothing.

He said, “Whatever it was he said, however it was that he threatened you, please know that it will be different with a man who loves you, a man who is giving to you and not taking.” A man who was not a monster; a man who loved her and behaved as if he did.

“How do you know? How do you know it will be better?”

Soames bit his lip. “I don’t know how to answer without speaking of intimate matters.”

“I think we must.”

Soames swallowed. This was not something he’d spoken of with anyone. Annette had been freer about this than anyone else in his life, but he hadn’t been able to speak to her about it, not even when they’d been in bed together. He had to find the words this time.

He began tentatively. “What do you know of the act of love?”

“What a woman ought, I think, but nothing that is truly meaningful, such as how to give pleasure or receive pleasure or what that pleasure is meant to feel like or how much it is to hurt the first time.”

“It is called the act of love because that is what it is. What matters is love. Paying attention to your lover and what she is feeling, giving pleasure to her the way she wishes it to be given, giving her what she needs. Love is why you needn’t fear me. Or so I pray.”

“I don’t need to know?”

“You will learn. You’ll feel it. It’ll be on your face and in your, your voice. And you’ll see it on my face. We’ll both be uncertain at first. Neither one of us will know what the other wishes for. What matters is loving each other enough to learn.”

“You’ll tell me how?”

“I will. And you will tell me.”

“But how—”

Soames looked at her. He remembered so many past conversations, so many bitter moments of begging her to try, to let him in even once. This was the first time she was meeting him half-way. She was asking him for help. Irene needed him. This was his moment. All those oaths sworn: now he must fulfil them. And he did love her, oh he did. More than ever before. He understood her now, at least a little bit, and what he’d come to understand moved him so much he was trembling.

He tried to speak, could not. He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment, then tried again.

“Let me love you,” he said. “Let me try to, to love you so much I reach out and gather you in to be part of me. Surrender to me once. Let me possess you for one night. If you can still bear my touch at the end of it—if you felt that response—then we will know.”

“What will we do if I felt nothing?”

“Then we will go without.”

“Would you be content?”

Soames closed his eyes and looked within himself. He would never touch her unwilling again. He would suffer, but he would not be without her. He said, “I want to embrace you. I want to so very desperately. I think you have seen how much—I cannot pretend otherwise. But I love you more than that. If you don’t want me, I won’t touch you. I’ll take only what you offer freely. I can’t—I won’t. You must want me too, or it’s no good.”

Irene clasped her hands in front of her face. “I think—I think we will find our way through. When you called on me in that hotel sitting room after I wrote to you, merely seeing you was enough to make everything better. Your hand on mine made me feel so reassured, so comforted. You were there. And you knew I was writing a note to you without a word spoken.”

He looked down at his gloved hands, thinking about that note in her palm, and how she’d slid it into his hand, how he’d fretted until he’d read it. “I’m glad.”

“Sharing as an act of love—that I can do for you. And if you can teach me to surrender to it—”

“I think I can.”

“If we can get past that—if I can accept your embrace—then children will follow.”

“Let me love you. Let me give to you, please. I want to so much.”

“I am so fond of you, Soames.”

And at those words Soames covered his face with his hands, because the moonlight was enough for anyone watching to see him. He felt her hand touch his shoulder. After a moment he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face. It was undignified to weep in public. He would do it when he was alone in his rooms. It was not a declaration that she returned his grand passion, but it was a declaration of love far beyond anything they’d shared before.

He returned his handkerchief to his coat pocket and spoke carefully. “Are you cold? I should like to offer you my overcoat.”

“I—I am.”

He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. She immediately clutched it tight at her throat and shivered.

He said, “I will be guided by your wishes in this, but I should prefer that you not sit here on this bench through the night. May I offer you my escort?”

Irene thought for a moment, then spoke equally carefully. “I would appreciate your company as I return to Park Lane.”

“I should be honoured. If we walk to the Kensington Road we might find a cab, even at this hour.”

“That would be good, I think.”

He stood and resumed his hat. Irene stood. He offered her his arm and she took it, slipping her right hand out of his coat sleeve while her left held it closed at her neck. They began walking south, along the strange dark paths through the trees. The shadows were longer and odder as the gibbous moon angled down towards setting. Soames led them out more directly to the main paths, avoiding the deeper shadows. The park was odd and eerie yet less frightening than it had been, because she was with him now, and he need not worry about her any longer.

They were under gas lamps now. Civilisation. He said, quietly, “If you choose to call on me at my office at any time during the week, I will take you to my bank and act on the first of my promises.”

“Thank you. I shall.”

So formal they were with each other yet. Soames felt it was safest to stay that way while he was touching her, so that she knew he was remaining on his best behaviour, as courteous and restrained and decorous as he could manage. He was a gentleman. He would remain that way.

They found a cab on the Kensington Road after a minute or two of walking east. Inside, Irene sat next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. So much for decorum and distance! He put his arms around her and held her close and said absolutely nothing at all, rocking gently back and forth. He held her until they arrived at his parents’ home. He helped her from the cab, and could see from her movement that she was tired and still shivering with cold. He asked the cabbie to wait. She leaned on him as they walked up the steps. He rang the bell and opened the door with his latchkey. Almost before Irene could step inside, Warmson was there in his nightshirt, and Fifine in her nightgown. Irene crossed the threshold into his parents’ home, and turned to hand his coat back to him. Soames paused on the threshold, knowing he must not enter, and decorously tipped his hat to her. She touched her hand to her heart, then went inside, where Fifine immediately wrapped her in warm arms and drew her out of sight.

Soames returned to the cab to be driven to his rooms, though not to sleep. He needed to be alone. He needed to curl up with himself and his feelings and the fear she’d confessed to him tonight. He needed to brood over what knowing her fears was doing to him: how had he so misread her? He had to think about what she needed from him, and how badly he’d behaved.

Before he went to bed he posted a note to Parkes, who deserved to know, and came dangerously close to revealing an emotion in his expression of thanks. Friendship was a comforting thing. Love was anything but: madness and wonder by turns.

XXIX. Irene’s return

Soames went to the Poultry the next day and worked as if twenty demons were after him, hard enough and so obviously unhappily that Gradman shooed him in to stand in front of his father as if he were an errant clerk. Soames looked at his father: how old was he? Just seventy, seventy-one? The age Soames himself had been when he’d died with his hand in Fleur’s. And Fleur had been the age he was supposed to be now. It was an eerie thing to think: here he stood, the lovelorn fool, in front of his father, head down. How much was in the blood and how much was in the head? Everything burned hotter in him now, no matter what he had learned through his life.

His father’s face was sympathetic.

“I don’t know what it’s about and I don’t want to,” James said, and rubbed at his nose. “It would do you good to talk to Irene. Go home. There’s nothing here that won’t keep.”

“Thank you,” Soames said.

He left the office and headed to Park Lane by cab. When he reached his parents’ home, he hesitated. Warmson took his hat and coat, but Soames remained in the hall. What if she were not ready to talk to him yet?

He said, “Warmson, would you let Miss Heron know I have called to see her?”

Warmson came back in a moment to say that Miss Heron would see him, and was in the drawing room. If Warmson had any feelings at all about being awakened last night at such an hour, or questions about why, none of them appeared on his face, nor ever would. Soames nodded to him, grateful but of course unable to say it in any acceptable way. He mounted the steps.

Irene was standing by the tea-table to receive him. She was alone, so he left the door open. He stopped several feet away from her, uncertain about his welcome. She was wearing one of her older dresses, he saw, one that had been made over. The colours did look better on her than the new ones did. This was an inane thought to have while they stood looking at each other silently.

“Soames, this is the first time since April you have come to call on me and not given me that little smile you have when you are happy.”

“I am still ashamed of my behaviour yesterday.”

“If I did not say it last night, I will say it now. I accept your apology. I offer you my apology for not listening to your dearest dream in the spirit in which it was offered.”

“I accept your apology.”

In the next moment they were embracing, and then kissing, and Soames was embarrassed to find tears on his face. He pulled out his handkerchief and dried his face.

“I am going to have to change my collar,” he muttered. She smiled at him: she could smile again, it seemed, even though she was drying her own tears.

“Are you feeling well enough to go to my bank with me?” he asked. “I should like to fulfil the promise I can fulfil immediately.”

And so they went to his bank, opened an account in Irene’s name, deposited a notable sum of money into it for her own use, and acquired a cheque-book for her. If Irene was surprised by the number, she gave him no sign. Soames in fact exerted himself to be generous in this first gift, and on his part gave no sign that the number was meaningful to him.

Thus he made good the first of his promises to her.

Later that week, Irene stood for another fitting in Emily’s morning room, with Emily’s dressmaker. Emily had, it seemed, ordered things for her without being asked. This was both endearing and stifling. Soames had written to her about this trait of his family in one of his earliest letters, saying they cared but they suffocated.

Emily had ordered many pieces. This was the trousseau, she supposed, the full range of clothing for her newly married life, more clothing than she’d ever owned. It was both wonderful and horrifying, because she did like wearing good clothing, but not this clothing. It was not what she thought right, not what she thought she looked best in, or what she thought most beautiful to the eye. Or what Soames would want to look at, for she did admit that she had begun to consider what he might enjoy when thinking about colours and dress. Irene would not have ordered most of this if asked.

This day dress, for example, was quite lovely in shape and drape, but the fabric Madame was proposing was too dark, and the pattern was so busy. Perhaps the Pomegranate? or the Lichen? The Old Gold went well with her hair, she thought. Madame and Emily were both receptive to this discussion—they had, after all, said that they were open to experimenting with the next dress, since it was not the wedding dress. Emily reminded Madame of this, to Irene’s relief, and the three of them had a moment of amusement, and Irene was able to agree graciously that the wedding dress was indeed the one dress to be careful with.

Emily asked if these Liberty’s art colours were indeed fashionable and Irene assured her they were. She saw Emily’s eyes dart down to Madame and back up. She couldn’t see the dressmaker’s face. What did she think? Emily was—how old was she? Fifty? These were old women’s fashions, not young women’s.

The cut on the afternoon gown was also old-fashioned, she thought, though the fabric here was better and she could say it was better, though she stopped short of saying it was good. Could the cut be freshened a thought? Madame thought it could. Irene felt a moment of pleasure: she’d won her point on two of the dresses. On the morning dress it did not go in her favour, for both Emily and her dressmaker held firm on the practicality of the design and fabric for the daily tasks they assured her would be her duty. Irene would be spending her mornings practising, not discharging wifely duties, or whatever it was they thought was ahead of her.

This evening dress they were proposing to fit for her was mauve silk, and it was cut very high, and it would make her look at least a decade older than she was, positively ancient, and she simply could not imagine wearing it. It was one wrong dress too many.

“This won’t do,” she said. “The colour is wrong and the cut is wrong.”

There was silence in the room. Irene stared into the cheval glass, unaware of the other two women looking at each other.

“Very well, Irene,” said Emily.

They moved on to the next item.

Winifred was more than delighted to accompany Irene to Liberty’s to choose fabrics. Irene had apparently found a French dressmaker who had a little shop in Beak Street—in Soho! quite daring—and had commissioned some dresses. The woman had taken her measurements and specified how much fabric would be necessary, and Irene was now selecting the colours and purchasing it.

Winifred hadn’t spent much time at Liberty’s but had found it quite wonderful and exotic. The fabrics Irene had chosen enticed her, particularly the silk. She drew off a glove to feel it properly under her hand. The rose silk was cool and alive under her bare hand, finer than anything in her own wardrobe. It had a scent that was unlike that of any silk Winifred had run through her hands before. She wanted it, not for any dress she needed, only to have it to touch, because it was so lovely. She put the glove back on.

The assistants were fawning over Irene in a way that Winifred found most amusing. Irene seemed to think it was quite normal, however. This was what life was like when you were that beautiful, perhaps: you got used to the attention. Winifred found herself envying it. She’d never been treated that way by any shop assistants. Winifred wished she had been, even once.

But perhaps it was merely the money Irene had to spend, not her looks. She had a large allowance from Soames, it seemed. She bought many yards of fabric in three different silks and two different cottons, more fabric than Winifred expected. It was a shocking amount of money for the silks! But they were quite fashionable colours, very chic, and Irene had both an eye for them and a very decided opinion about which colours. Winifred envied this as well. Irene had a very clear idea of what she wanted, and could communicate it clearly. Winifred herself knew that she wanted to follow the fashion, but could not express what that fashion was in any comprehensible terms.

Irene made her purchases and had it all sent to her dressmaker. She said she had five different pieces commissioned from somebody she hadn’t had a single dress from yet, but Irene seemed quite certain about it. And all this at eighteen! It was most impressive. Winifred envied that as well.

But the true envy was, Winifred knew, somewhere else. Irene was buying her trousseau—the silk, the gloves, five gowns from a woman she trusted on sight—for a marriage to a man who watched her across a room as though she were the only thing in it worth seeing. Winifred had once had a trousseau of her own. She’d had a man watch her across a room, and had thought, at twenty-one, that having him watch her meant she was what mattered to him. She was fond of Irene. She found she hoped, with a longing that startled her, that Irene’s marriage would keep the promises all these dresses might make.

She knew her brother. She knew if it was in his power, the marriage would keep those promises.

Aloud, all she said was, “This is the French style, you say?”

“Yes. Everything is in the quality of the fabric, and the way it hangs and is folded. You don’t need any excess decoration on it.”

“Goodness. I am looking forward to seeing the dresses. You will be far ahead of the fashion in the family.”

Irene sighed. “The family is far behind, from my point of view.”

“Well, you certainly know what you want.”

In late September, the dresses began arriving, and Soames found himself in an awkward position about fashion, of all blessed things. Irene was beyond delighted. Her wardrobe for the honeymoon was complete, and she was, it seemed, selecting what she would take and what she would leave behind. Some of the dresses his mother had had made for her were being set aside, while the new dresses were in favour. These new dresses were quite different from anything Soames had seen on Winifred or his mother, and closest perhaps to what he’d seen Miss Béranger wearing, but with very different colouring. The fabric was folded and ruched and twined around itself, almost without external decoration. The quality of the silk was on display, as was the figure of the woman in the dress.

His mother was unhappy to see all of the dresses she’d had made for Irene cast aside, and had told him so, circumspectly and not in Irene’s hearing.

Irene wore one of her new dresses down to dinner. It was an evening dress in old gold silk, cut low, with fascinating twists in the fabric at the shoulders.

“It’s nothing I’ve seen anyone else wearing,” his mother said, looking at it. She cast a glance at Soames, to see if he had an opinion, and so did Irene, but Soames kept his face carefully neutral. He’d heard the story from both his mother and Irene, and he had thus far managed to say nothing at all to either of them that committed him. His mother was hurt. Irene was frustrated. He wished it were possible to have nothing to do with the matter. What did he care for frocks? Nothing. He wanted peace in his household.

The rumbling was perceived even by James, who was less aware of the finer points of its source, but equally miserable about its existence. After the ladies quit the dining room, Soames and his father sat drinking port together, a little glass apiece of ordinary port, and shared a look of complete mutual understanding.

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” James said. “Some business about the wrong dresses. Your mother’s unhappy.”

“I know,” said Soames.

“Irene’s unhappy about it too, poor little thing.”

“I know.”

“Can’t you fix it?”

Soames felt touched to know his father thought he had the skill to fix this, but he did not. He rather felt that anything he said would make it worse. The idea of taking sides was of course impossible.

“Father, I think we must let them work it out between them.”

James sighed. “You’ve been right all along about her, my boy, I must say. She does care for you, and it has been good for your mother to have her here. She’s cheered up by seeing so much of you at home again.”

“I know,” murmured Soames. He himself treasured this time as well. He knew, in ways deeper than his father could guess, what it was to sit at these dinners with his father and then without his father. He drank his perfectly ordinary port in a room with his father, and was deeply content. The future was loss, but it was yet to come.

James muttered into his glass. “I don’t know. I can’t tell. Nobody tells me anything about these aesthetic things, and then here we are fussing about them. All this worry and trouble about dresses.”

“It’ll pass, Pater. Much ado about nothing.”

James sat back and made a helpless gesture. “I thought she was sensible.”

“She is. She and Mother both.”

James gave his son a sharp glance. “You certain of that?”

“Yes. It’s a difference about fashion. It’ll pass.”

“You think her new gowns are pretty.”

Soames looked down into his port glass to hide his amusement. “I’m meant to.”

James almost smiled at him. “At least she’s no Dartie.”

“Thank goodness,” said Soames.

It was a Sunday at Timothy’s, the drawing room quite crowded, with the Nicholases, Old Jolyon, Swithin, the Jameses, Soames and Irene all there. Irene was in one of her new dresses, made from Liberty fabrics in the new aesthetic colours, freshly delivered from the hands of her French dressmaker.

Soames leaned against the mantelpiece, drinking his tea. He had a biscuit to nibble at with it. He didn’t particularly want to speak to anyone today, or listen to gossip. He did, however, want to enjoy simply looking at Irene, as always. If pressed, he’d admit he would enjoy having a bit of a chat about business with his uncle Nicholas. He lifted his teacup and drank. He caught his uncle’s eye, and Nicholas came over to him.

“There’s some hubbub about dresses going on,” Nicholas said. “Some argument raging over colours. I don’t know what it’s about but I’ve heard nothing else all week at home.”

“Fashion,” said Soames.

“Costs a pretty penny, is all I know about that.” Nicholas stirred his tea.

Across the drawing room, the women around the tea table were talking. Soames listened with some dread, keeping his face carefully blank.

“Well!” said Emily. “I do confess I was doubtful about those dresses and those Liberty art colours! So new, so unusual, too modern for me. But now that they’ve arrived and I’ve seen them on Irene in her fittings, not to mention this gorgeous dress today, I must say they have persuaded me. The colours are most becoming on her. The styles are what Winifred calls chic—too young for me, but delightful on Irene. As you can see!”

Soames raised an eyebrow. That was how his mother had decided to handle it, then. Elegantly done.

“Most becoming, Emily, yes,” said Hester, looking at Irene in her sage green walking dress.

Juley said, “Young people will want their liberty, it seems. Oh, and did I tell you what Francie said about the latest colour Euphemia wants? Said it was the worst of the new colours, something called ‘beetle’, most upsetting!”

“Beetle?” said Emily. “Oh dear me. What an odd name for a colour.”

“There it is,” Nicholas said to Soames, nudging him. “They were arguing about beetle all week. Now that your Miss Heron is wearing one of these new colours, Euphemia will be in beetle before the day is out.”

Across the room from them, Aunt Hester was saying, “I think she’ll look well in it. Though she is a bit thin.”

Juley said, “Not like our dear Irene here, who is anything but thin, and has a most wonderful figure. I am told that dear Monty admires it greatly.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Emily spoke, in as comfortable and soothing a voice as possible. “I do understand the dresses that Miss Béranger brings back from Paris a bit better now. Such interesting cuts they are, though the colours are more what I would expect!”

“It’s the draping that matters,” said Irene. “How the fabric hangs and folds. Lucie has a most excellent dressmaker, I think.”

“What is this I hear about George and some French girl?” Juley said, plunging from one precipice directly to the next. “A little bird told me he’s been visiting salons at a French diplomat’s home! And we all know how Roger feels about the French.”

“And we also know how dear George feels about marriage, Juley, goodness,” Emily said, in the smoothest manner she had. “There must be nothing to it. We do see quite a bit of George about, you know. He and Soames seem to have become great friends.”

Emily glanced over at Soames, as if seeking his help, but Soames had a mouthful of biscuit at that moment. Emily had been doing her best to keep the rumours quiet and Juley sniffing after the wrong scent, but Soames suspected it was no use. Sooner or later Young Roger would hear it, and then Roger himself would.

James rose to the occasion and said, “I heard the boy has gone into business speculating in house property, like his father.”

“He’ll end up in Queer Street if he’s not careful,” said Swithin. “He’s got his mind on horses, not work. The lad has a good palate, though.”

“Does he?” said Old Jolyon. “I had no idea he had anything at all in his head.”

“He had good things to say about my Heidsieck.”

“About time he settled down,” said Nicholas to Soames, who had remained silent through all this. “Roger had all but given up hope of him. Don’t suppose you know what he’s up to.”

“Uncle,” said Soames, giving him a sidelong look.

“Yes, yes, keep your mouth closed, you know your business. We’ll know it all soon enough.”

Soames cast up his eyes, for he would be surprised if they didn’t all know everything already. This family!

“Three daughters, all of them out. This is all going to cost me a fortune in new frocks,” said his uncle, and sighed.

Soames, his mother, and Irene were in the house in Pelham Crescent, moving in some personal effects and arranging some ornaments. It was nearly complete, only some furniture and the piano left to be delivered. All of Soames’s paintings had been moved to his study. He stood contemplating them, thinking about where to put each. Irene had yet to see most of them, and he was looking forward to showing them to her and consulting. He poked his head out of the door to listen for her, and heard her and his mother talking to the maids, who had moved in only that week. He would be showing them how to work the geyser in the bathroom later in the day.

He retreated back into his study and sorted out his two Corots and the Watteau. He would nominate these for the drawing room, if Irene approved. He leaned them against the wall by the door, to show her when next she came down. Then he remembered the programme in his pocket from the Crystal Palace, where they’d heard Eugen d’Albert again. He slid open the drawer in which he kept his most precious things—her letters, the engagement photograph they’d had taken, her pressed flowers—and found a package there, wrapped in plain paper. He dropped the programme with the others and took up the package. He shook it gently: a little odd rattling, some heft at the bottom, most definitely a box. He set it on his desk and considered it. Someone had given him a present. Well, at least they had done it where no one would notice him opening it.

He folded back the paper, then opened it all the way in some confusion. It was a colourman’s box, with the label Lechertier Barbe. Inside the box were dry watercolour cakes in a tinned tray, pencils, charcoals in a holder, rubbers for erasing, brushes of various sizes. Underneath the box was a sketchbook. Soames sat and stared at all this. It had to have been Irene—no one else would have thought to put something like this into his drawer, especially not that drawer—but why this? What was he to do with it?

He heard a rustle of skirts and smelled rose and honey, and knew she was watching him. He swivelled in his chair to look at her. She was smiling her mysterious smile at him, which was a very particular sort of smile, a smile he’d learned meant she was hiding what she was thinking, for some reason. She wanted to know what he was thinking, perhaps, without giving herself away.

Whatever it was, he was certain it had been her now. Had he ever been given anything at all by Irene before? No, not once in that prior life. He never knew what to do when given gifts, and especially not now, when the gift was from her.

“Irene,” he said, and gestured at the box on his desk.

“Yes?”

“You bought me—”

“Materials for painting. I know less about this than you do, but I think you should set the watercolours aside for the moment and use the pencils. No one will rap your knuckles here.”

She took his left hand and kissed his knuckles. He looked up at her, touched. He’d told her that draughtsmanship story, but the events were so very long ago. He still used his left hand for many things, but he hadn’t reached for a pen with it since he’d been a boy. He had given up.

“Irene, I haven’t the least idea how to draw anything.”

“You shall keep everything here in your study, and no one shall look except you, and you shall practise until you learn how.”

“I can’t learn at my age.”

“Nonsense. You’re twenty-five.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You will never know if you don’t pick up a pencil and try.”

Soames stared at her. He had no earthly idea what to do. Was there a book he could read? A tutor, as George had found for his French?

“Thank you,” he said at last. “Thank you. I shall try.”

He stood and kissed Irene’s hand, then clasped it between his. Left and right. He leaned close to her and kissed her lips.

Emily was in her morning room making notes on the dinner plans for the week when Irene knocked and entered.

“Yes, dear?” Emily said.

“Mama, I should like to ask a question.”

Now that was new, calling her ‘mama’. Emily studied Irene’s face. It was open, and the girl seemed to be doing it entirely without guile. She was not at all the sort to say something she did not feel wholly; Emily had certainly learned this. And seeing the warmth in her face was enough to melt Emily’s heart completely.

“Please do ask, my dear!” she said.

“I was thinking about jewellery,” Irene said. “For the wedding day, and the wedding dress specifically. I should like your advice. What would go best with it? I scarcely know, and I think you would.”

This was territory Emily felt quite comfortable in. “Oh! I should be quite glad to give advice on this. There are your hair, earrings, and a necklace to think about. Are you looking for new pieces?”

“I was hoping there was something already in the family to wear. Something traditional the family will recognise. If that’s appropriate?”

“It is most appropriate. Come up with me to my dressing table, dear, and we’ll look through what I have.” Emily took Irene’s arm and they climbed the stairs together to the big bedroom she had shared with James for nearly thirty years. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Irene looking around. Let her look, and see what a marriage could be, Emily thought.

Emily opened the casket with her jewellery and examined it thoughtfully. Most of what she saw would not do. The pearls, however, would. She took them out and laid them on the table.

“Soames has been giving you pieces that look quite different from the sort of things I wear, I think, but pearls avoid the whole question of gems and settings and so on. And they always look lovely with white dresses.”

“Oh, pearls, yes, of course!” said Irene.

“The question is, what have I got to put in your hair? I think I have something with some very tasteful diamonds you might like. And—keep this quite between us—we might mention where Soames can hear it that you are in want of pearl earrings. It gives him something to contribute without being asked. The dear boy always seems happiest when he has his part to arrange.”

“I’ve noticed this about him,” Irene said, and they shared a conspiratorial smile.

Emily embraced Irene quietly. She was a dear girl. Quite young and inexperienced, yes, and impetuous, but she had a good heart. And she was deeply fond of Soames and he of her, and that was what mattered most.

XXX. The perfection of the house

It was the end of September, and autumn had come to London. The house on Pelham Crescent had been decorated, and Soames had paid the decorator’s bill. All the painting and papering, all the furnishing, was complete. The alterations were long since accomplished by expert workmen hired with Parkes’s advice. The staff had been hired by Irene with Emily’s guidance, and had taken up residence in the house to learn its ways. Irene had, he thought, arranged for some items he did not recognise in their bedroom, but he took no notice very carefully.

Their house was ready to be a home, to be lived in, to be visited, and to be enjoyed. Or almost. It lacked but one item.

The very last thing to arrive was the Érard. This was delivered under Soames’s watchful eye. He would not have this botched: it was the most important piece of furniture they’d purchased, and certainly the most expensive. It was lifted on block and tackle, swung carefully over to the first floor windows, and manoeuvred within. Workmen assembled it once it was inside the drawing room, and then an odd little man with odd tools came in and tuned it. He spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time about it, not that Soames grudged him the time.

Irene arrived partway through the work, along with Winifred and his mother. Irene came upstairs to watch the tuning, while Emily went down to the servants’ area to satisfy herself that all was well with the cook, whom she had engaged herself.

Soames and Irene watched the tuner work. It was quite fascinating, he thought, to see the intricacy of the mechanism that made such a sound. He was not a mechanical sort himself, but he filed away in his mind that pianos were not in fact all alike. There was a German make that was also quite fine, Irene said, but she preferred the two French makers.

The man stood, and slid the keyboard back into the piano.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, and then spoke to her in rapid French that Soames partly understood: he was complimenting her taste in something Soames could not catch but assumed was about the piano. Irene answered easily, and then the man invited her to sit on the bench with a gesture.

She assayed her usual runs and exercises, then some Chopin he recognised as often appearing at the start of her practices. It sounded different to him than it had when he usually heard it, and he suspected he was hearing why Irene had preferred this piano to the others. He had no idea what it was but she was doing something faster with her fingers and everything felt lighter and yet richer. Though—was something not right?

The tuner held up a hand and Irene stopped immediately and rose from the bench. The little man then pulled out a section of keys and adjusted something in the action with some tools. Irene was giving him every courtesy, Soames noted, not treating the fellow like a workman at all. He was not dressed like one, he supposed.

Irene sat and this time played the Fauré he found so baffling.

“Elle est plus douée qu’elle ne le craint,” the tuner whispered into his ear. He smelled like oil and gardenias.

Soames nodded. “Vrai.”

Irene broke off and looked at the tuner. She said something with a smile, and he asked her a question. Irene expressed satisfaction. The tuner began packing his tools.

Irene then began playing something that Soames immediately recognised: what she had been playing when he’d first seen her. A love song, she’d said, by Schumann for Clara, arranged by Liszt. Even he had known the name Liszt then. This piece! He stood frozen in place, transported back to that moment, that drawing room, the first sight of her face.

The tuner and the workmen left the room, and Soames did not notice.

Irene continued playing until the piece had reached its quiet conclusion. The room was still. Somewhere on the roof, the workmen shouted to each other. Somewhere downstairs, Emily and Winifred spoke.

Soames raised his hand to his throat. Had she played that for him, remembering? Or was he being absurd? Then he saw her looking at him, and he held her gaze. She’d remembered; it had been for him.

When he could move again, Soames went to Irene where she still sat at the keyboard, and stood close. He could not speak for some little time. Irene was silent as well, watching him, it seemed.

Eventually he said, “Is it to your satisfaction?”

“It is. Thank you.”

“It sounds so different.”

“It is so much easier to play. I need not be so heavy-handed with it.”

“I hadn’t realised you were heavy-handed before.”

“It was quite difficult not to be. But with this instrument, I can put my attention elsewhere, on the phrasing and other aspects of expression. You could hear it?”

“I could. Truly. I remember what it sounded like the first time you played this in my hearing.”

“You remember a great deal, Soames.”

“When I pay attention, yes. It has always been a skill, a useful one. And with you, I have paid attention since that first moment.”

“When you fell in love.”

“When I fell in love.”

They held each other’s gaze for a long sweet moment, not touching. Then Soames offered his hand to Irene. She took it, and he led her up to the second storey where their bedroom was, ready for them to come in after the honeymoon. He led her first into his dressing room, where all the things a man might need were: a washbasin and mirror for shaving, a chest of drawers, a clotheshorse, bootracks, and so on. A little bed stood tucked into a corner.

“If you wish not to share your bed,” he said.

He next led her into the bedroom, where the brass bedstead stood with its head against the wall. “If you wish to share it.”

The bedroom had warmer Morris papers than the drawing room did, deeper creams and reds, so it felt more cosy and enclosing. There was an armchair by the fire where she might sit if she wished of an evening. Irene’s dressing-table was here, though not yet her jewellery or brushes or other things. The room did not yet feel hers, without that scent of rose and honey in the air, however faint. It would be hers, and hers alone, and he would show her why.

He turned to the door that connected his dressing room and the bedroom, and showed her a bolt, freshly installed on the inside of the door. “There’s another on the door to the hall,” he said.

“Soames—”

“It’s safer than a lock with a key, because I might have a copy of any key. This way you can be certain you will be alone.”

He held her gaze while she studied him. He put his hands behind his back so he could steady them.

Having bolts installed in place of the keyed locks was one of the hardest things he’d done. It was something he had to do, he knew, after that conversation by the Round Pond. She had to know she could be safe from him. He knew he might deserve being locked out, so he had given her the means.

It was so painful to remember what she had done in that previous life, and hold in his heart the awareness that that first life’s Irene had only acted as she ought in the face of a man without consideration. He was a watchman indeed, a watchman protecting her against his own worst self. If only he were a better man, if only he deserved more. He would earn the right to sleep beside her if he could, and hold onto it. You are a brute and a bastard, Parkes had said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to be otherwise. Perhaps it was the easiest thing for Parkes. Parkes was surrounded by women he could choose among. Parkes wasn’t an awkward silent man burdened by a grand passion he hadn’t the least idea how to express. Parkes wasn’t a selfish grasping beast.

Irene came closer to him and laid a hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” she said. “This was thoughtful. I believe we shall not need it.”

“No?”

She looked down at the square of carpet they stood upon. “I did not mean to say I don’t want you. I meant I am frightened. Of the act, not of you.”

“I am afraid of myself.”

“I know. But I trust you, Soames.” She looked up at him, and he saw that she was trembling.

“Irene,” he said.

“I am unsure and frightened and I don’t know what to expect or what I am going to feel. I don’t—”

Irene reached up to him, and he gathered her into his arms. “I will keep you safe,” he said, very quietly.

“Thank you,” she said, unsteadily.

He held her close for a long moment, and whispered to her. “I will ask permission before every touch, every kiss. I will do everything I know how to do to give you pleasure, as slowly and carefully as you need me to be. I’ll give you all I have. I do love you so, Irene.”

“Thank you again,” she said, so softly, into his shoulder. He kissed her forehead, then stepped back to brush a kiss over her lips.

“It will be an honour,” he said. He meant it. He eased back to hold her hands. She was steadier now, and when he smiled, she returned it. “Shall we go back downstairs now?”

Soames laced his fingers with hers and led her down two flights of steps carefully. Together they walked to the stairs down into the kitchen. Irene descended to join his mother and Winifred in deep discussion with the cook. Soames stayed upstairs, out of the women’s territory of the kitchen, and listened to the conversation with some satisfaction. His mother was most pleased with the woman she had engaged, and with the parlour maid they had found together. Irene had engaged the chamber maid on her own with Emily watching and expressing her pleasure in the readiness with which her pupil had learned to judge character. It had all gone as well as any of them had hoped. Irene was ready to be done with Emily’s supervision, but was also sensitive enough to know how much joy Emily was taking in helping her daughter-in-law-to-be set up a household for her son, and thus the peace was kept.

He wandered away from them and back into his study. Here he would work in the evenings when he needed to. It was a pleasant room, with light from the garden behind. The Alfred Stevens he’d snatched up was hanging here so that he could look at it and think about it, the privilege of the newest addition to the collection. Irene and he had walked around the house together choosing locations for the rest of his paintings. The Morland was in the dining room. Irene still did not care for it, but this was unimportant. His two Corots and the Watteau were all in the drawing room. The Turner was also in his study, for the moment; they were still discussing the best place for it.

His study already felt like a welcoming place. He’d spent so much time in his attic room in Montpellier Square, hiding from the awareness that she did not want him near her. If he tried to sit in her drawing room, she’d stop whatever she was doing and sit patiently, doing nothing, until he left. He’d been so baffled and angry about it, so frustrated. Now—now in her drawing room there were a pair of chairs next to each other by the fire for them to sit in, near enough that they could touch each other while they sat.

Soames sat in the chair at his new desk, so much more pleasant than the merely usable writing-desk he had still in his chambers. The only thing he wanted to keep from his chambers was already here in his study: the cane chair, which he did love, arranged by the garden window. His first clumsy sketches of fruit arranged on a plate—which he would surely never show anyone—had joined the drawing materials Irene had given him, hidden in the drawer with his keepsakes of her.

There were voices in the hall, moving away and then muffled. They were in the dining room, he thought, discussing the furniture, or the wallpapers, or the colours. Something. His mother sounded rather puzzled by it all. Winifred thought it chic and modern, which it was. It was what Irene wanted, somewhat influenced by what his own eye had preferred when she’d asked. He’d enjoyed being asked.

Soames had suggested distempers in creams and sage greens in certain spaces, to give good backgrounds for any paintings that might be displayed there. In others, Irene had chosen wallpapers that Soames found lovely to the eye: flower designs in golds and more of those sage greens. The drawing room felt so light and airy to him, as if it had room to breathe. The dining room was the same. In the bedroom she’d chosen warmer colours, so it felt cosy to be in, as if they were safe inside a warm nest. Even his dressing room was warm and welcoming.

It was their home in a way Montpellier Square had not been. The Irene of his past life had helped him decorate, but she hadn’t been enthusiastic the way she’d been this time. It hadn’t cost him anything to share it; it had been a joy. They’d wanted the same things the first time round, but the end effects hadn’t been the same; the house hadn’t felt so flowing and harmonious. For one thing, his paintings hadn’t been shared. He’d hoarded them in his attic room like a miser, lest he risk finding out she despised his taste. Now he knew she did not.

He did like arranging things for people, he knew. He’d found deep satisfaction in being asked to decorate Green Street for Winifred, and arrange her wedding breakfast. He’d liked straightening out George’s finances for him—it was the only way he knew of telling George he thought highly of him. But here it would have been the wrong thing. Letting Irene display her taste had been the better thing.

The voices of the women in his life were outside in the hall again, and advancing to the door of his study. Soames arose from his chair to greet them politely.

“The sanctum sanctorum,” said Irene. Soames looked down and smiled.

“Your study is just as modern as everything else,” Emily said. “But Soames, dear, must you be so far away? Your father is most concerned.”

“It’s not that far, Mother.”

“I suppose not. Your father will fuss about the horses, though.”

Winifred laughed. “Goodness, Mama, what does he keep them for, if not to drive him across the Park?”

“One does wonder, the way he carries on sometimes. Well, it is all quite lovely and ready for you both after the honeymoon.” Emily clasped her hands and sighed.

“Come see the drawing room, and we’ll have tea,” Irene said. “We’re expecting other guests soon.”

She was playing hostess for the first time, and Soames could see the satisfaction on her face. She linked arms with Winifred, and the two went out and up the stairs to the first floor, trailed by Emily.

The doorbell rang. Soames peeked out of his study to watch the parlour maid in action answering it. It was Parkes and George, arriving together. They were expected, she told them. Coats and hats hung, and then they were escorted upstairs. Soames heard their names announced, then a burst of conversation. He wasn’t sure if Irene had invited anyone else, but he did want to go up and shake hands with the two of them.

He mounted the stairs two at a time. Youth! He was enjoying it. He entered the drawing room and was delighted to greet his friends and practise touching a hand to Parkes’s shoulder. He was quite bad at it still, never sure if he was doing it at the right time or with the right pressure or if he were merely as awkward as he’d always been, but Parkes never seemed to mind. His cousin George still teased him, but he now understood it to be George’s way. When George disliked someone, the mockery felt entirely different.

Parkes! Made of charm. There he was buttering Winifred, who was perfectly happy to be buttered. Lock up your wives! Parkes would flirt with them all, and then wander off to flirt with another group of women without hesitation. Soames sat to tea with them and accepted a cup from Irene with relish.

George joined them, was poured tea, and then Irene whispered to him as she handed him the cup. George immediately looked absurdly pleased, and checked his pocket-watch.

“Elle est en retard,” he said.

“Elle arrive quand elle le souhaite,” Irene replied. “Votre accent s’améliore.”

“Thank you. It is won with great pain. So much vocabulary to memorise! So much time speaking with my tutor and being called terrible names. At least I assume they’re terrible names. He refuses to translate them for me.”

“Dear George, it is quite marvellous to see you happy like this.” Emily was fond of George, and further had a new zeal to see everyone else’s sons married off happily now that her own was on his way to marital bliss. Or so Soames assumed, given that she’d been doing the same with Parkes.

“Aunt, I have no idea to what you might be referring. I am learning French for my health.”

“Of course, dear, of course.”

Soames heard voices in the downstairs hall through the open door, and shortly the maid Larkin entered the drawing room to announce Miss Rosalyn Whitford and Mademoiselle Lucie Béranger. The men rose to greet the new visitors. Lucie, he noted, was carrying her violin case. Soames raised an eyebrow at Irene, who gave him her most mysterious smile. She had made this an occasion, it seemed.

Irene introduced Miss Whitford to Winifred, who had not met her yet, and then poured even more tea. George and Lucie were exchanging shy looks across the tea-table. George now seemed tongue-tied. Soames smiled behind his teacup to see it. He remembered feeling like that.

The wedding party was assembled, he realised: his groomsmen and her bridesmaids. That had to have been intentional on her part.

The doorbell rang again, and this time Larkin announced Mr James Forsyte. James was unexpected, but none of them minded, and especially not Soames.

James entered, looking unusually angular in his frock-coat, and looked about himself in surprise to see so many people. “I came here to see for myself,” he said. “Didn’t realise there’d be all this crowd. How do you do, Miss Whitford, Miss Béranger.”

Soames rose and went to his father and touched his arm. He drew him in to sit next to Irene where Soames himself had been sitting, and then silently stepped back to the fireplace, where he could watch everyone without being noticed. The room was lit by late-afternoon light from windows with curtains open, that crisp early autumn sunlight from a clear sky that promised a starlit night. The drawing room was lovely; the Corots looked marvellous over the piano; and the whole room looked airy and bright.

Irene poured for James, who took his teacup and said, “Well, this all looks cosy. It’ll be hard on the horses, having to come all this way so often.”

“Papa, surely you can take the train,” Irene said. “We’re quite near the station.”

James looked at her, and his face went soft and he looked as though he were very close to a smile. “I suppose there’s something to that.”

Soames drank his own tea while leaning against the mantel with a sense of satisfaction that was difficult to express. So much tea drunk through a lifetime; the ritual repeated like a clock ringing the hour, but this was the first time he’d been handed a cup of tea in his own home by Irene, with affection. Who could have foreseen this? Irene calling his father “papa” and his father looking as if he were almost happy? He looked at them all, talking so cheerfully, in his own home, where he would be living with her so very soon now.

He caught Irene’s eye, and smiled.

“I should like to tell you all,” Irene said, “that our piano was delivered today, and tuned, and it is ready to be played. I think we should mark this occasion by playing it. Shall we?”

Irene, Miss Whitford, and Lucie went to the piano and began discussing what to play. They were clearly amiably disagreeing about which should have the honour. Finally Irene yielded and sat on the bench. She and Lucie selected a piece, then there were some moments of tuning and discussing timing.

Then Miss Whitford announced, “This is Fauré’s sonata for piano and violin.”

Oh dear, Fauré again. Lucie and Irene began to play a piece he hadn’t heard before, with many passages of violin and piano trading back and forth as if speaking to each other. They both seemed to know the piece, enough to be putting feeling into it, but not well enough to do without Miss Whitford turning pages for them.

Watching a duet played before him was different to watching Irene play alone. Irene and Lucie had eyes for each other as much as for the music and their instruments. They were playing together, making music together. He’d learned through Irene to take pleasure in the sight of musicians working together making a thing that he could only receive.

George ranged up next to him, grinning. “Here we are again, cousin,” he said, sotto voce.

“So we are. I think they both have a good seat.”

“They do. By the way, is Parkes reliable?”

Soames looked at George carefully. “I do business with him.”

“That is all I needed, thank you.”

George abandoned him to rest his hands on the piano, where he could gaze like a moon-struck calf at Lucie while she played. Soames smiled to himself. He understood George completely.

Soames moved quietly along the length of the drawing room to a window where he could both listen to the baffling Fauré and look out upon the street below. The setting sun’s warm light glowed on the houses at the end of the crescent. Was the house perfect? The question was the wrong one. On the other side of the drawing room, he heard Winifred laugh at something Parkes had said, and his mother make some kind of retort. The piano in this room was perfect, and so was the woman playing it. His friends were in this room, and that made it pleasant. His parents were in this room, and therefore it was blessed.

XXXI. Soames among men

On the second Saturday of October, in the evening, Soames shaved, dressed in evening clothes, and got into a cab for Kettner’s in Soho. He was on his way to his bachelor dinner. George was hosting, at his own insistence. Soames had pressed him on the shoulder—the way Parkes did, he hoped—in thanks when he’d learned this. George had been more than happy to arrange the menu and the guests, after a brief consultation with Parkes for his opinion. His palate was of course contributing to the Hotch Potch’s reputation of late, young as he was, and no sensible man would object to his hosting.

The guest list was small, but Soames was happy that it was. He could not have borne a large dinner party. He preferred to talk with a few people he knew well. George, Parkes, Dartie—required lest he slight Winifred, which he would never do—his uncle Nicholas’s third son Archibald, and his uncle Jolyon, who’d spent more time with Irene than any of the aunts and uncles over the summer thanks to those operas at Covent Garden.

Parkes and Soames arrived at Kettner’s at the same time, and found George already in their private room, talking to the sommelier.

Arriving after them was his cousin Archibald. Archibald was a good sort who ought to make something of himself, but needed encouragement. He had left university without any sort of direction, and in consequence was having a flirtation with the idea of joining the Militia. Nicholas wished this to be sweated out of him before it turned into a real affair. He’d asked Soames to lend a hand, and in thanks for Nicholas’s early patronage, Soames had done so without hesitation.

Old Jolyon and Dartie arrived at almost the same time.

Here they sat at his bachelor dinner, talking over the end of his life as a single man. He wasn’t the sort to get drunk on a night like this, and they knew it. Even Dartie was behaving himself, and not drinking all that much more wine than the rest of them.

The dinner opened with huîtres, Colchester natives with brown bread, butter, and lemon. The chablis with them was ice-cold. Conversation was not yet flowing smoothly. Parkes wasn’t known to any of them save George, and Archibald was not the sort of man to make easy conversation with men he did not know.

At the conclusion of this course, Soames gave both Parkes and George the traditional white kid gloves in silver paper, along with silver peacock cuff-links that he’d commissioned. He remembered a night he’d spent wandering the empty streets of London during his first life, when he’d made a terrible mess of it, and how much listening to the peacocks crying over the water had meant to him: an almost human scream that had been the sound he could not make himself. Peacocks, therefore, with colourful tails worked in enamel, in the modern aesthetic style. He’d had a pair made for himself as well. He’d found the perfect craftsman through Liberty’s.

They were moved, and there it was. Soames sincerely hoped they never said a word about it again.

On to the potages, two of them, a clear consommé first and then bisque d’écrevisses, accompanied to Soames’s mild surprise by a madeira. Soames had no complaints. Madeira was something he associated with his father in his most nostalgic moments, and therefore enjoyed.

“Madeira?” Old Jolyon said, to George. He tasted it suspiciously, but his face cleared immediately. “Now this is a fine vintage. You do have taste, young man.”

“Thank you, Uncle,” George said, and he shot his cuffs, looking quite pleased with himself.

Old Jolyon’s compliment broke the ice, and conversation got a tentative start.

“Your father was saying something to me about the Militia,” Soames said to Archibald.

Archibald sat forward and brightened. “I’ve been thinking of enlisting.”

“Whatever for?” said Dartie.

“I need something to do.”

“Can’t blame a man for wanting something to do,” said Parkes. “But why that thing in particular?”

“The uniform,” said Archibald. “The drill. The rifles.”

“But why not the Yeomanry?” asked Parkes. “They’re much more dashing.”

“Can’t ride.”

The expression on Parkes’s face was briefly something between astonishment and horror, but quickly masked.

“Why not the regular Army, then?” Soames asked, calmly.

“Father says if I can’t get through Sandhurst, there’s no point.”

Parkes, face safely under control, asked, “But what did you read at university? Surely that gives you something interesting to think about.”

“Classics,” said Archibald.

Parkes shot a look at Soames, who offered him a shrug. He couldn’t remember what Archibald had ended up doing with himself; the man hadn’t stuck in his memory, more’s the pity.

The fish came round, turbot in sauce homard, along with a Steinberger hock that was delicious. Soames tasted both and let himself enjoy them. Delights of the body! He’d lived an abstemious life; not a great deal of food, drink, or women at any time. He’d kept himself under tight control, for when it slipped, what he’d done had been unforgivable. He was safe enough tonight, here with his friends, however.

The conversation among the men started to ease a little, and become more free-flowing and far-ranging. Parkes had a way of getting people talking about themselves, and he was at last able to draw out Archibald and get him talking about books instead of military matters. Here Archibald seemed far more sensible, and to have more interesting things to say. He seemed, in fact, to have an interest in what made for good stories that reminded Soames somewhat distantly of something related to magazine-editing. Had the fellow ended up a publisher? Soames was embarrassed not to remember. He supposed he’d have to do it properly by learning what the lad was good at.

Champagne came along with the next course, the entrées. These were ris de veau à la financière and suprêmes de volaille aux truffes. The champagne was a dry Pommery—very modern of George. Soames had grown weary of the sweet champagnes that the past apparently loved, and it was refreshing to taste a more dry wine.

The sweetbreads were delicious. He hadn’t had this dish in some time.

Soames drank champagne, ate a bite of truffle, and thought about food and wine and how he rarely let himself enjoy them. When he was upset, food was the first thing he gave up, because it felt impossible. Now, though, he was happy, and he could luxuriate in it. For example, this Pommery was absurdly good and it set off the truffles in such a subtly pleasant way. He found himself curious about the sensations of eating in a way beyond simple comfort or physical need. He’d had good food at Mapledurham, but it had been almost mechanically perfect. Why was this better? Perhaps because of the men at the table with him. Could things be as simple as that? Friendship and warmth made things better?

Soames paid attention to the conversation around him again. Dartie was apparently quizzing Parkes. “How do you know Soames?” he asked.

“We were the same year at school. We’ve been fast friends and business partners since.”

“Ah, Marlborough. Some roughs there, I hear,” said George.

Parkes said, “Forsyte had rather a reputation at school.”

“For violence?” asked Dartie.

“For brilliance and for not suffering fools,” said Parkes. “He was only violent when he needed to be.”

Dartie seemed impressed by this. It was, of course, pure exaggeration, since he’d only been violent twice, no, three times, and only caught once. But Soames was willing to let Parkes get away with it. Perhaps Dartie would think twice about treating Winifred badly if he thought Soames would be ready to black his eye over it. Why hadn’t he, come to think of it? He ought to have. He’d been angry about all the wrong things.

Soames had another mouthful of sweetbread and considered this.

The sweetbreads and truffles were removed in due course; filet de bœuf was brought round. More champagne was poured, and the table became quite cheerful.

Uncle Jolyon asked how Soames had come to ask George to be a groomsman. “I thought you two didn’t get on,” he said.

Archibald chimed in. “I thought George rather despised you, Cousin Soames. Do tell.”

George cast a withering glance at Archibald, drank some champagne, then said, “They do have a point. Why me, Soames, of all people? And no temporising this time.”

Soames sighed. He might as well come out with it. “Because of something that happened when we were children. Your older brother Roger had been terrible to Winifred, and she was crying. I was working myself up to fight him, and I didn’t want to because of how much bigger he was. You told him off, then went over to Winifred and made her laugh. I’ve never forgotten it.”

George looked sidelong at him, with a little smile on his face that was oddly warm. “Well, that’s a terrible burden to bear the rest of my life,” he said. “I allowed your moment of cowardice.”

Soames said, “And of course because you’d hate every moment of it. You’re forced to behave yourself. Well, at least until you start drinking at the wedding breakfast.”

“Damn your eyes, Cousin Soames, my vengeance shall be vicious and memorable, and all the more vicious because I am forced to wait until you are back from your honeymoon. And because I am deathly afraid of upsetting Cousin Irene. One glare from her and a thousand ships will launch. But never you fear, I will build a wooden horse and trick you into letting me in past your guard one night and hey presto! I’ll have a knife in your ribs.”

“The Greeks built the horse,” Archibald said. “You’ve got your sides mixed.”

“I know exactly what I said, you hapless ink-stained wretch.” But George saluted Soames with his glass, and Soames knew George had understood him. Winifred was someone Soames would move mountains for, very quietly. Dartie really ought to be on guard.

There was an interlude in the meal at this point for punch à la Romaine. Soames looked at his glass and calculated exactly how badly his head would hurt in the morning, and how little he would regret it given the quality of the food thus far. Rum and champagne and meringue: simply delicious, and a drink vanished from meals by the War. A loss, in his opinion.

Archibald stood up with a full glass of the punch and said, “Gentlemen, I should like to toast the bridegroom, the man who manages the affairs of all the Forsyte cousins with such quiet skill and efficiency. To Cousin Soames!”

The other men stood and toasted him. Soames flushed, and was relieved he need not answer this toast. He need merely drink with them and relax. He appreciated it nonetheless.

After the pause of the punch came the highlight of the meal: partridge, for it was the season for game. That was almost expected. The thing that Soames did not expect was the wine. The wine poured with it was the 1865 Château Lafite, bottled and corked when Soames was a boy, a notable year, and not just any notable year. It was one of the last excellent years before the vineyards of France and Portugal had been destroyed by the pest, and their vines regrown with American rootstock. Wine hadn’t tasted the same since.

Soames was startled by the reminder of what truly great claret had once tasted like, and he sat with his glass savouring it for some minutes. Soames hadn’t George’s or Old Jolyon’s palate, but even he had been able to taste the difference. This was—it was a thing that he could taste only here and now, in his own past.

Parkes said to him, “Eat, Forsyte. It’s uncommonly good.”

Soames looked aside at the partridge and blinked. “Quite,” he said. “The claret, George, the claret is astonishing.” He would not taste its like again, and he was grateful to have done it tonight.

Their uncle spoke up, “It is, George, it is indeed. Again, young man, you surprise me.”

George was now almost preening.

The entremets was a hot soufflé with Château d’Yquem. Soames had a difficult relationship with sweet wines and sweets in general, but he had entered into the spirit of the thing, and was eating and drinking a little of everything with pleasure. This was a meal to remember, perhaps one of the best meals of either life. The table had begun to slow and relax under the warm blanket of good food and good drink, and the self-satisfied look of their host.

After the sweet came the savoury, mushrooms on toast, a little bite of something that tasted different from what came before. Soames was lost in thought again, still emotional from wine, thinking about Irene now, about the challenge before him. Did he know how to get it right, whatever it was? Did he know how to do right by her? To make her happy, to treat her tenderly and with love, to give her what she needed? He’d thought he had known, that first time, but he’d been a young arrogant fool. How could he know this time? How could he stay humble?

How could he be a good husband? Was asking her what she needed from him enough?

“Soames?” said his uncle.

“What?” Soames looked up from his plate to find the table looking at him.

“Where are you, boy?”

“Sorry. I was thinking about, about getting things right. Getting marriage right. Being a good husband.”

“It’s not hard,” said Dartie. He lifted his wineglass and gestured with it. “You tell her sweet things, and kiss her, and take her to bed as often as possible.”

Soames went very still. He stared at Dartie, and his face was cold. Parkes took his arm casually but held on; Soames let him.

George put a hand on Dartie’s shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. “Come, old man, he doesn’t want to think about that,” he said. “You’re married to his sister!”

“What? Oh, yes, suppose you have a point there. Sorry, old boy, no offence meant.”

“None taken,” said Soames, because Parkes was squeezing his arm.

“Marriage is a great deal more than that anyway,” Old Jolyon said, grumpily. Soames could see in his face that he thought no more highly of Dartie than Soames did.

The port circulated, and every man poured his glass full to the trembling brim. George took his glass and stood. “The Queen!” he said.

All stood. “The Queen!” And they drank to her. Soames found this toast nostalgic yet satisfying: he had not drunk it since returning to life in his past. The age of the great Queen Victoria was yet with them. She had a good twenty years left, and they would be prosperous ones. To the Queen, indeed.

Cigars went round. Only Soames and George abstained, and Dartie shook his head to see George steering clear of tobacco. “Don’t know what’s come over you,” he said. “No cigars, no bettin’, only the billiards now and then.”

“That’s because you’re blind as a bat,” George said. He lounged in his seat, watch-chain glittering across his slim waist. George had a very good tailor indeed, Soames thought, looking at that perfect waistcoat.

“That’s a fine thing to hear from me own best man.” Dartie pouted then broke into his easy smile, and punched at George’s shoulder.

“Gentlemen,” said Old Jolyon. The port went round again, and they charged their glasses. Soames’s palms started to feel damp, for he knew what was about to come.

His uncle stood. “Gentlemen, I give you young Soames, a man who deserves the happiness he is about to enjoy. To the bridegroom’s health!”

They all stood around him and drank to him, while Soames’s face flamed red. He hated being the centre of attention so very much, but it couldn’t be helped. They all sat again, and Soames sighed and rose to his feet.

He’d known he would have to do this, and he had prepared for it, with a little help from Irene on his French. He considered them: George, clean-shaven, curl of dark hair over his forehead like a schoolboy’s, leaning back in his chair, smiling with half his mouth, but somehow sweet-tempered. Parkes with his handsome face and lion’s mane of hair, leaning over to George and whispering something that made George’s eyes crinkle with a full smile. Dartie, glossy and self-satisfied under his moustaches, slouching with his cigar. The tall pale Archibald with waxed curled moustachios, who looked as if militia drill would break him in half, sitting with port glass in hand. His uncle Jolyon, also sitting at ease with a cigar, satisfied, but entirely different about it, as if he had decided that what he saw around him was acceptable.

Soames passed his hand over his own face, giving himself a moment to find his poise. He cleared his throat and said, “I am the luckiest of men. I don’t deserve any of you, but somehow you are here with me. Uncle Jolyon, you have done me the kindness of joining us when you need not have done so—your blessing means more to me than I can express, sir.

“Archibald, your father has been a staunch ally, and I shall be that to you. My hand is yours.

“Dartie, so long as you keep my sister as happy as she is today, my hand is yours as well.” Old Jolyon and George both made soft sounds at this, but Dartie seemed pleased.

Soames turned to George. “George, l’amour nous capture tous, mais cette captivité est douce. Je suis heureux pour vous.” George put his hand on his chest and bowed to him in acknowledgement.

“Parkes—Parkes, I—I have not the words.” He trailed off. He’d written something for Parkes, but he couldn’t say it. His throat had closed up. He held Parkes’s gaze for a long moment.

George sat up and said, “Cousin Soames! I have been wanting to know. How did you meet the fair Irene? And when were you first aware that she was the woman you would wish to marry?”

Soames sat down in some relief. This was a rope thrown to a drowning man; his duty was to seize it. “I am her step-mother’s trustee, and she had me down to discuss re-arranging her investments to improve her income. Irene happened to be home from the Conservatoire for a week, and I walked in on her playing the piano. Later I came to understand that her step-mother had arranged it so I would meet her, but I didn’t have it in me to be annoyed.”

“Clever woman,” said Old Jolyon. “What was Irene playing?”

“A love song by Robert Schumann for Clara, called Widmung, in an arrangement by Liszt.”

“Oh,” murmured Old Jolyon.

“I was in love before she’d finished it, though not as much as I’d be by the time we’d finished talking.”

Old Jolyon said, “That’s a piece to fall in love to if ever there was one.”

George said, “Love at first sight. It exists, then.”

Soames said, “Seemingly.”

George said, “You’re a cautious devil. I think we’d better admit it exists.”

Parkes said, “You two victims say so, at least.” Old Jolyon gave George a canny look.

“Gentlemen, charge your glasses,” said Dartie, and the port went round again.

Dartie stood, with all his dark good looks and white teeth and easy manner, glass in hand. “Gentlemen, I give you the most beautiful woman in London, capable of making a man fall in love at first sight. To the bride!”

They all stood, and Soames drank to his bride quite happily. She was indeed the most beautiful woman in London.

There was only one toast left to give, and this one was his. It was odd that his nerves didn’t tweak him here. He was about to sing the praises of another man, and that did not bother him at all.

“Gentlemen,” Soames said. “Your glasses, please.” The port went round to the left one final time.

Soames stood with his full glass. “Gentlemen, I hope you realise how rare and delightful this meal has been, how well-chosen every dish, and how exquisite every wine. I can scarcely believe all this was done in my honour, but so it is, and for all these pleasures we have one man to thank. To our host!”

They all stood and said, “To our host!” and drank, while George blushed and looked quite remarkably pleased.

The waiters efficiently swept the port away and replaced it with coffee and cognac. The drink had begun to have its effect even on Soames, who’d been careful with it. It had all been so good, and the sort of thing he knew to cherish and enjoy now. The claret in particular had been a treasure that would vanish entirely into memory. He drank coffee, hoping to clear his head, but no longer had the strength of will to resist the cognac as well as he might have wished.

The cognac made him melancholic and thoughtful, even through the warmth. Four more days and he’d be standing at the altar with Irene, putting the ring on her finger.

He was going to be married again. In one way it was his third marriage; in another deeper way it was his first marriage, done over again. His chance to get it right this time. His chance to love his wife properly, to treat her as she deserved, to be a good and loving husband. She’d promised to be a good and loving wife to him on that day so long ago, in that first life, and he’d told her she wouldn’t fail. She had failed, and he had failed to be a good and loving husband to her as well. This time he would put his whole self into it. He knew more now. He knew more about himself. He knew more about her. He knew more about what the trouble was, and how he’d got it wrong the first time.

Then dinner was over, and they were making their way out of the private room and downstairs. Old Jolyon and George had some kind of discussion with the Kettner’s maître d’hôtel that Soames turned his back on, lest he hear something he wasn’t supposed to. He went out into the street and breathed in the cool air gratefully. It was a crisp October evening, cloudless, with the stars and moon visible overhead.

A man from the restaurant fetched a hansom, and Archibald set his foot on its step. Soames rested a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll talk when I’m back,” he said. “Don’t do anything until then.”

“Thank you, Cousin Soames,” said Archibald. He climbed into the hansom and was gone. Soames could only hope he’d understood the message.

The next man into a cab was Dartie. George slapped Dartie on his back and saw him off heartily, saving Soames the trouble. Then came George himself. Soames found this difficult.

“George,” Soames said. “I cannot say enough about this dinner. It was beyond anything I might have dreamed.”

“But not beyond what you deserved,” George said. “You’re not what I thought, Cousin Soames.”

“Neither are you, Cousin George.”

“Let us say no more about it, shall we?”

“Agreed.”

“It was a fine dinner,” their uncle Jolyon said. “And the cigars were good. Your palate is notable, young man. I salute you. Come round for dinner some evening, and talk wine with me.”

“Thank you, Uncle,” said George, who looked as if the sky had fallen twice.

“Capital dinner, capital company,” said Parkes, and there was the charm. Parkes now had two friends and business partners, it seemed.

Parkes and Soames bundled George into a hansom, and off he went.

A man from Kettner’s brought the next hansom up, this one for Old Jolyon. He paused a moment before it with Soames.

“Well done,” his uncle said, simply.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I shall see you on Wednesday.”

This was respect from a man he had never felt respect from before. Why? There was no telling. But now they’d found a bridge through Irene, whom Old Jolyon had loved in both lives. Soames could understand that. So he shook hands with his uncle, and they held it for a heartbeat longer than he might have expected. He nodded, and watched his uncle as he climbed into the hansom.

Parkes was last of all. It took all of Soames’s experience and control to hold onto himself here, all the more so because of that last glass of cognac.

“Parkes.”

“Forsyte.”

Soames looked at him and could not speak.

Parkes said, “Tuesday evening, my rooms. Mind you bring the ring.”

A handshake, a hand on his shoulder that Soames let himself lean into, and Parkes was into his cab and off.

Soames himself walked down the Soho pavements, intending to clear his head and tire himself out. He needed to walk off the wine; he’d perhaps tuck himself into a cab when he’d done so. As he walked, he considered the man he was and the man he’d become.

In most ways he was the same man he’d always been. He would sit quietly and rub his thumb on his ring while he thought. He hated to be noticed. He knew the law and he knew how to make money—how did Parkes put it? as a science. He had a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility; he couldn’t leave things undone. He was still prone to sulking, and he was still frightening when he was angry. But he could also show his parents he loved them, tell Irene he loved her, open his heart to her and tell her his secrets, and listen to her when she told him hers. He could manage to tell both Parkes and his cousin George that he appreciated them.

He made his way south out of Soho, past Leicester Square, still noisy and full of Saturday-night theatre-goers. He passed through them and out into the open spaces of Trafalgar Square. He paused to look up at Nelson on his column. It was an event barely in living memory, only seventy-six years ago. Aunt Ann might remember something of it, if he asked her. Watershed moments like Trafalgar and Waterloo hadn’t happened since. They didn’t put anybody on a column after Jutland, or build statues for the battle of Amiens.

Soames pulled his eyes down from Nelson to the pavements before him, and started walking again. The evening was cool but clear, with stars visible above him. His feelings about London were so tangled. It was his birthplace, his family’s centre, the place he knew best and possibly the place he cared most about, but it was not his home. Home had been Mapledurham, on the river. He’d been round the world in that first life, had seen all sorts of amazing things in a quite fortunate and long life. He’d been blessed in many ways, if not in the one way he’d wished for most. At least he’d had Fleur, and at least he knew that somewhere she and Michael were in London forty-five years on with his grandson.

He’d learned how to be a father. An over-indulgent one, perhaps, because he’d known Fleur would be his one and only child, but he’d loved her and done well by her, and in the end died for her. That would always be an eerie thought, however long he held it.

He walked along the Mall, through Horse Guards, and onto Whitehall, Big Ben in sight now. His body was starting to feel good, warm from the exercise, beginning to sweat off the dinner and the wine. He was feeling more clear-headed.

He’d thought of this second life as punishment, hadn’t he. He’d woken on the train and thought it meant the gates of Paradise had been closed to him. He had to do penance for his sin and then he’d be released. It wasn’t that, not exactly. This was both penance and Paradise at once. He’d never finish making amends, but so long as he stayed on the straight and narrow, so long as he lived a godly and righteous life, so long as he treated Irene as he ought, he would taste Paradise on earth. None of it would be easily won; he didn’t deserve ease. But he did deserve to enjoy the sweetness when he did get it right, when he was worthy of Irene and her love.

It was all rather terrifying when he thought about it, so he tried not to. Instead he put one foot before the other until he found his way back to his rooms and fell into his bed.

XXXII. A Forsyte wedding: Oct 12, 1881

Soames spent the night before his wedding with Parkes in his latest place in Belgravia. They didn’t eat much; Soames was too worked up to eat. Parkes tried to give him a brandy, but Soames refused it. Parkes tried in vain to distract him with talk about contracts that needed drawing up for the development of his latest property acquisitions, the ones that George had scouted out for him, but Soames could not manage to keep his mind even on that. He paced back and forth across Parkes’s sitting room ceaselessly, until Parkes made him drink a negus and go to bed.

Soames fell asleep immediately in the darkness of Parkes’s guest bedroom. If he dreamed, he did not remember it.

They were awakened extremely early by Parkes’s man Hollis, who brought them each tea and breakfast, then shaved them in Parkes’s dressing room. He then helped them dress.

Soames and his tailor had taken some pains over his clothing for today, because he would not be seen wearing anything but what was carefully correct, knowing that Irene would be beautifully dressed. He in fact had already seen her in her dress, as wedding photographs had been taken several days earlier, but today was different. Today he would stand up in church in front of his family and friends.

He was wearing what he ought, all made for the occasion: black calfskin boots, pale grey trousers, an immaculately white linen shirt with collar and cuffs, peacock cuff-links bright against the cuffs’ starched perfection. Over this, a white silk waistcoat, into which he threaded his watch chain. A dark blue morning coat over it all. Signet ring on his little finger. He tucked a handkerchief, scented with eau de cologne, into a coat pocket. Hollis fussed over him at this point, and retied his lavender cravat and repositioned the gold pin. Soames submitted to it, though he felt uncomfortable, because his own hands were not entirely steady. Hollis refused to allow him to put most of what he wanted into his pockets. Soames bowed his head to the instruction, and instead tucked it all into the case that would join his clothing at Park Lane, when he changed to travel. It was a very polite iron hand that ruled over Parkes.

Into his buttonhole, a white rosebud. In his hand, a black silk top hat. He looked into the glass. There the bridegroom stood, ready for whatever it was that would happen next. Parkes’s face appeared in the glass over his shoulder.

“Cheer up, old man,” Parkes said. “Come on downstairs. George will be here any minute.”

George arrived on time, looking impeccable, wearing exactly what Soames was wearing, down to the peacock cuff-links. Hollis inspected all three of them and passed them. Soames handed the ring over to Parkes’s care, and watched him stow it away in his waistcoat pocket.

The three got into their cab—along with Hollis, who was attending, as were nearly all the Park Lane servants—and were driven to St George’s. Of course Emily had insisted on St George’s, and Soames hadn’t had the strength of will to resist his mother on this topic. There was a brief skirmish about who paid for the cab, won by Parkes, then Parkes led a suddenly nervous Soames into the vestry by the side door. They were early, as was appropriate. Soames stood uselessly in the vestry while Parkes went in to speak to the rector. He couldn’t remember what he’d done last time. He couldn’t remember a thing about last time, other than how utterly proud and confident he’d felt, how he’d claimed his bride with the belief that they’d return from the honeymoon with Irene in love with him, a good and loving wife, and he the perfect husband.

That had not been how it had gone, had it.

He looked out through the opened vestry door at the church. It was a beautiful interior. The reredos was notable. Had he been married here last time? No. It had been a Knightsbridge church. He couldn’t remember which one or why it had been there and not here—his mother would surely have wanted St George’s then, too.

Parkes came back. “All is well. The rector verified I have the ring. I verified he has a Bible. We both verified the church has an altar.”

“Reassuring,” said Soames, tartly.

“I’ve got a flask in my pocket if you need it,” Parkes said, perfectly seriously.

Soames shook his head. “I’ll manage.”

He paced around the little vestry for a few more minutes, listening to the rising murmur of conversation in the church beyond. His family was arriving to see him be married. Irene’s Conservatoire friends and their families would be there. Somewhere in the church Mrs Lomax would be sitting, for those two had arrived in town to do their duty and maintain appearances.

Parkes went out again and came back smiling. “Your cousin is in his element. Utterly delighted to be gossiping with everyone as he pretends to seat them.”

Soames could not smile back. Waiting in the vestry was destroying him. His second marriage to Irene was before him, and he would either pass the test and enjoy a taste of heaven on earth or fail and be doomed. He didn’t know how to do it. He’d never know how. This was folly. He leaned against the vestry wall and groaned.

Parkes laid a hand on his back. “Steady,” he said.

“What if I am a brute to her again?” Soames said, in complete despair. “What if I still don’t know how to be a good husband?” He let his forehead come to rest on the wall.

Parkes rubbed his back gently, and mercifully did not offer him the flask. “Steady, steady. You’re a good man, Forsyte. You’ll get it right. Stand up straight now.”

Soames clenched his jaw, and levered himself away from the wall. He stood up ramrod-straight. “What’s the time?”

“Five more minutes, old man. You’ll live through them.”

“What if she’s late?”

“You’ll live through that, too.”

“What if she doesn’t come?”

“We’ll go and get blind drunk. Don’t be an ass, Forsyte—she’ll come. She’s just as mad about you as you are about her.”

“Oh,” Soames said, faintly. He breathed, and felt his shoulders settle into place, and his jaw ease. He looked at Parkes and nodded.

“Good man,” said Parkes, under his breath. He brushed at Soames’s shoulder where he’d been leaning against the wall.

Soames settled himself to wait, as solidly and composedly as he could, hands behind his back. He would be himself. He would be contained. There was nothing to be done but to show up at the altar and say his responses with as much depth as he felt them.

Parkes peeked out of the door again and took a good look at what was happening in the church. Then he turned back to Soames and his own attitude became purely formal. He touched Soames’s arm.

“The rector’s here, come on.”

One last deep breath. One last settling of the shoulders into place. Soames nodded to Parkes. He was ready.

Parkes and Soames walked out in controlled, solemn procession. He saw his parents, his sister, seated in the front row on the family side of the church. He caught his father’s eye. He and Parkes joined the rector at the foot of the chancel steps. The man smiled kindly at Soames, and nodded at Parkes, who tapped his waistcoat pocket in yet another confirmation. Soames’s mind was spinning despite his outward composure. And then he thought about what Parkes had just said. She was as mad about him as he was about her. It was true. She was mad about him. They shared so much more this time and knew so much more about each other. He might even understand her this time. She was—they were—a warm glow suffused through him, starting in the middle of his chest and radiating out. He was about to marry her, and this time—this time! this life!—she was fond of him. She kissed him of her own accord.

The church was beautiful—the glass in the east windows was particularly lovely. He was pleased to be marrying her here, in a space that was worthy of her.

And then there was some kind of noise at the other end of the church, and sunlight streamed into the dimness from the church doors opening. The light flickered as figures came through the doors—first George, looking solemn, then Lucie and Miss Whitford. Behind them—her. Trailing behind, the little red-crowned figure of June, holding her train. The processional played and they made their way toward him. He locked eyes with Irene and saw nothing else as she came up the aisle on the arm of that unnameable, unutterable fellow. The fellow delivered her to the chancel step.

Soames took her hand with contained ferocity. She was his, not that fellow’s, and he would defend her to the death from him. Then he breathed. She was safe here. He glanced sidelong at her. She seemed much steadier than he felt, for she squeezed his hand and gave him a tiny nod.

The rector spoke the familiar words in his clear ringing voice. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. First, It was ordained for the procreation of children.”

Children. He was a little afraid to look at Irene at these words.

“Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin…”

He glanced aside at Irene here, and found her looking straight ahead of herself, at the rector.

“Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.”

This ought to be the first reason, in his view. This was what he craved beyond all else. Yes, he wanted a companion in his bed; yes, he wanted children. But more than anything, he wanted this. And he wanted to give Irene this. He stole another look at her. She was looking aside at him as well.

“Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.”

Soames held his breath. Who would speak, but he himself? He knew he would forever hold his peace. It was unspeakable and therefore it would remain unspoken.

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment ye do now confess it.”

Soames’s heart lurched. Surely the secret of his heart was already known? His first life, if it was an impediment, if it had to be confessed, surely the Lord already knew.

The rector turned to him. Soames drew in a deep breath and let it out. Now it began.

“Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

Soames forsook the Irene he had so badly hurt: he let go of her. It was done. He would love, comfort, and honour the woman beside him now.

“I will,” he said, as clearly as he could, with his heart in his voice, so that all the congregation could hear him.

“Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband … Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will.” Irene’s voice was entirely calm, and her face was serene and trusting. Looking at her reassured him: she had no doubts. She trusted him. He would live up to her trust.

“Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?”

Lomax touched Irene for what would be the last time, to take her right hand and place it into the rector’s hand. Then he backed away and was gone. The rector placed Irene’s hand into Soames’s right hand. Soames asked her the question with his eyes, and she squeezed his hand in response. Yes.

The rector prompted him, and Soames spoke his responses, once again for the entire church to hear, but looking directly at Irene the entire time.

“I, Soames, take thee Irene to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

Soames released her hand. Irene then took his hand, and looked into his eyes and spoke to him as clearly and intensely as he’d spoken to her.

“I, Irene, take thee Soames to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

Irene released his hand after another surreptitious squeeze. Would she obey him? Did he even want her to? It seemed an absurd thing to want. He wanted her to love and cherish him.

Now Parkes stepped forward, and laid the ring upon the Bible the rector held open before him. He stepped back. The rector handed Soames the ring. He raised her hand in his left and waited. The rector spoke, and he repeated the words. He slid the ring onto her bare fourth finger, pausing after each phrase. His eyes were locked with hers while he spoke, and every bit of his heart was in his voice.

“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

This time he would not break that oath. He would not violate her with his body; he would worship her with it. He would give her his worldly goods so that she could leave him if she wished, and then never give her a reason to wish.

They then walked up the chancel with the rector to the altar and knelt before it together.

“Let us pray.”

Did he believe in this? He believed in something and it might as well be this. He knew that after death, something happened, there was a higher Power, and he knew that whatever it was, it was strictly just and yet kind. So he closed his eyes and prayed with the rector, a rather different prayer than what the man in the collar was reciting, but nonetheless heartfelt, that he might have the strength to do whatever she needed from him, that he not be the man he had been before, that he some day hear her tell him she loved him, and that he deserve it.

The rector joined their right hands and pronounced them man and wife. “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Then he pronounced a blessing upon them.

Soames was somewhere else, now, holding Irene’s hand and looking into her eyes. The rector was chanting one of the Psalms, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. He was paying attention to her, to her serene face, to their hands touching, to her scent, her entire being kneeling next to him so near, she who was now his wife.

And then the rector was done. They rose, and she took his left arm. He led her away from the altar and down the chancel steps. He was trembling, and he could feel her pressing his arm in reassurance. They walked arm in arm, and his swelling pride was overcoming his nerves now—they were married, and she was his wife. He was hers! She was his! The world knew. It was done. Only a little more to get through, and they would be alone, and he could taste the sweet blessings of marriage.

Into the vestry, to the registry book. He signed his name, and watched her sign hers: Irene Heron. The last time she would sign that, God willing. And then out again into the main body of the church, his hat in hand, while the recessional played, and there was quite a racket as they paced solemnly back down the aisle. Soames paid the racket no mind, but made his steady way to the church doors with Irene on his arm.

Through the doors, out into the fresh air. It was a clear autumn day, not cold, with that pale cool mid-morning light of the season. The bells were ringing. Soames helped her into James’s barouche, top up, and was helped in turn by the coachman. The door was shut upon them. They were quite alone now, and the wedding was complete: they were married. Soames let out a long breath, closed his eyes, and let himself fall back against the seat of the carriage for a moment. It was in motion now: wheels rolling on pavement, horse hooves clopping. He remembered driving Fleur to her wedding in an open motor-car. Much more comfortable. Did he like motor-cars better? Oh, Fleur! He had said his final farewell to his daughter, so that he might make it right with the woman next to him now. And yet, he would never say it. He would always feel her presence and her absence, his quick restless daughter, farewell.

He opened his eyes to the present again and sat up straight. Irene was looking at him with a mysterious smile on her face, the one that meant she was not saying what she was so pleased about. He said, very carefully, “May I kiss you?”

“You may,” she said, still with that mysterious smile.

He took off his hat, lifted her veil, leaned in and there she was, meeting him with lips parted, willing to find out what it was. He wet his lips and kissed her again, ever so gently, his own lips parted, heard her make a soft sound. He bent to her again with a mind to set her on fire as best he could, to show her every bit of passion he felt.

Here he had the advantage of a lifetime of kissing and being kissed—perhaps not a lifetime, but twenty-five years of a marriage with a woman who had enjoyed kissing and hadn’t minded that it was him doing it. He knew how to make this kiss a memorable one, gentle enough not to frighten Irene, a soft thing that teased and fluttered at the corners of her mouth before her lips parted and he was kissing her properly. He backed away before he’d tasted enough of her and brushed his lips along her jaw to her ear, rather keenly missing his moustache just then. A nuzzle of her ear, the temptation of her throat and shoulder resisted, and he eased away from her. Her eyes were closed and her face flushed. Her lips were still parted for him. He brushed his thumb against them, such beautiful lips, and touched his forehead to hers. He wanted to keep going, to press himself against her, to know her fully and allow her to know him. But not yet, no—he could wait, now. It was so close.

“Soames,” she said.

“Yes?”

“So far—so far I think I hear it.”

“There is more to hear,” he said. “Tonight. If you wish.”

“I do so wish. But—”

“Yes?”

“You may say a little more, while we drive.”

He smiled, in a genuinely open smile for the first time since she had fled Park Lane, and gathered her in for a deep kiss that lingered and said everything he could possibly say in a carriage moving at full trot towards Park Lane.

June was triumphant after another successful train-carrying. She ate cake, tasted champagne offered by her grandfather and still disliked it, and was delighted to congratulate her friends Cousin Soames and Cousin Irene, in whose marriage she had played such a pivotal role. Irene thanked her with a kiss, and Soames with the formal courtesy he’d used when they’d eaten dinner together before.

He was stuffy, but he was a polite and helpful stuffy, and he’d told her interesting things at dinner, so she wouldn’t tell him he was stuffy any more. Not when she wanted to spend more time learning how Irene managed to do all the things she did so well. And if Irene liked him, he couldn’t be entirely terrible. Irene was magnificent and everything June wanted to be. Though marriage was ridiculous and June didn’t understand why people did it. It was of no account, anyway.

There were many other people there to greet, like her great-aunts. Aunt Ann was impossibly wrinkled and old and she was always saying odd things that June didn’t understand, and sometimes she said things about missing June’s father that June had no time for. Her father had left, and her mother had been angry, and so had she.

She’d met the rest of the wedding party when photographs had been taken. Irene’s bridesmaids had been interesting, and Soames’s best man had flirted with her and made her blush, before he had started flirting with one of the bridesmaids quite seriously. Her Cousin George told her he flirted with everyone and to pay him no mind—he would bet her a shilling that she’d catch him flirting with Aunt Ann at the wedding.

June decided to go and look to see if this were true. Flirting was horrible. He did have a quite pleasant moustache, though.

Emily circulated, watching the staff move round the room carrying glasses of champagne. Warmson came round to her and offered her a tray and she took a glass. “Are we doing well?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“And there is enough for you all to celebrate properly later?”

“Yes, ma’am. Mr Soames ensured it.”

Emily smiled, for of course Soames had, even though it was his own wedding breakfast. One could not stop the boy from doing it. “Thank you, Warmson. You are all doing so wonderfully today. Carry on.”

It had taken much arranging to get this far. Invitations and menu preparation and hiring staff and laying in enough champagne for the guests, ordering the cake from Gunter’s in time to get it, that whole business about the trousseau, getting the travel arrangements in order. Soames of course had been a marvellous help through it all, such a reliable boy.

The day had been perfect thus far. The wedding had been beautiful, and in St George’s as she’d wished, such a beautiful place, so fashionable. Soames had so very obviously meant his wedding vows as he spoke them, and so had Irene, and it had made her cry quietly to hear them. James had reached out and held her hand, of all things, it had been so moving. She would miss having the dear girl with them, but it was good to see her boy grown and married, a man with wife and home. He had said he wanted to give them a grandson, which would make James so very happy. Not that they didn’t love Publius, their first grandchild, but James did have his dreams, and Soames knew it.

Irene was truly lovely, and had looked so good on his arm coming back down the aisle, and was so lovely again standing with him now talking to guests. Their children would be most handsome indeed. This wedding was all she might have hoped for as a mother. Winifred’s wedding had been perfect, and so had this one. She’d seen both her children married, and they’d both married for love.

The presents were on display to be inspected by one and all, and this of course was a great highlight of any Forsyte wedding. It was a special highlight for the wedding of James’s only son, and had been a topic of heated discussion on the Forsyte ’Change for weeks. They were all likely to be swayed by how prosperous the groom was, and how likely he was to expect nice things, but the elder generation had its habits that could not be budged. Soames, of course, was a connoisseur, and thus known to expect them to spend to their means, and his bride! Well! One did not want to be caught giving Irene anything other than the best. It seemed sacrilegious, somehow, to give such a distinguished-looking woman a tawdry wedding present.

Aunt Juley and Aunt Hester walked along the display of presents, pricing them quietly. Aunt Hester thought it was all looking quite as it ought, and Soames ought to be quite pleased, and she said as much to Juley as they both studied the display.

Jolyon had given a dinner service—Jolyon always gave a dinner service—and Roger had given a plain good claret jug, something they’d use every day, and of excellent quality. Swithin had given a silver épergne, which did not seem quite the thing, even to Aunt Hester.

“Who wants one of those nowadays?” she said, in a disapproving voice.

“I heard George speaking French with that lovely young girl who was a bridesmaid,” Aunt Juley said. “He was quite gallant to her. It was a very handsome wedding party, don’t you think? Dear Irene has brought such style to it all.”

Hester said, “They say George is following in his father’s footsteps now, collecting house property, and developing it. Look at this salad bowl from Susan. So thoughtful.”

Juley replied, “House property. He is building it, they say. Quite like our father did. I do wonder why, after he’d been so keen on horses.”

Hester said, “Oh, look, Nicholas gave them spoons with a pheasant crest stamped on them.”

Juley looked at the spirit case from Archibald, a most handsome item with silver decorations. Beside it was a set of champagne glasses from George, in a very odd shape. “George and Soames are great friends now, they say.”

Hester had moved on. “Oh, a lovely Sèvres dessert service from the Darties. So thoughtful.”

“And of course that French girl is Irene’s friend. It seems quite odd to me.”

“Oh, Juley, look, there’s the family silver Ann sent, the salvers our dear father used. She is so fond of Soames. He’s quite her favourite.”

“Her favourite now that wicked young Jo has gone and run off with June’s governess. They say he has a second child with her now! A daughter! So shocking.”

“They’re married now. It’s not shocking at all, Juley, dear. What is this interesting blue and white china? Is this the new aesthetic?”

George was looking forward to the next part, the toasts. Miss Whitford had the bride’s bouquet ready to distribute. He wanted to watch Lucie get a flower, just to see her smile. The toasts were of course something Cousin Soames was going to endure, the poor chap. He always looked miserable when the room was looking at him and he had to take notice. He hadn’t looked miserable saying his vows earlier, mind, and neither had his new Cousin Irene, and well, if that was captivity, it did indeed seem sweet, as Soames had said.

The first toast was to the bride. Which of his relatives was going to stand up and sing the praises of that gorgeous woman with no money, that terrible French artistic influence corrupting the pure Englishness of the family?

The devil—? His own father was standing up with a glass of champagne. His own father was going to toast the praises of Irene, the new Mrs Soames? Pigs had wings, apparently. George rubbed his chin with the hand not holding his glass and waited to hear exactly what his father would say.

Roger looked around the room before he spoke. He said, “When I was first introduced to this distinguished young lady, I was taken aback. What was our Soames about? An orphan musician who trained in Paris! I myself have given the French some chaff at times, I admit. I don’t trust ’em. But I am happy to say I was quite wrong about Miss Irene. Meeting her has been a revelation. A woman who studied at the Paris Conservatoire has special graces I never expected. The new Mrs Soames is welcome to play in our drawing room any time she likes. To the health of Soames and Irene!”

The room drank, very cheerfully, and George drank as well, cheerfully but moderately. He’d enthusiastically done bumpers and no heel taps at Dartie’s wedding, but not today. Lucie was sitting next to him today, and he had no intention of being drunk next to her. She deserved his most careful attention. Come to think of it, when had he last been drunk? But that was immaterial. Had his father—had his father said what he thought he’d heard? Had his father said that he no longer feared this French influence? Could he tell his father what he was about with Lucie? The possibility spun George around so violently that he decided to stop thinking about it for the moment. Later. Tomorrow.

George pulled his attention away from this dizzying thought and back to the moment’s amusement, which was watching Soames writhe. There it went, Soames was standing, glass in hand. He looked as if he were facing a firing party.

He said, “Irene and I give our most gracious thanks to our friends and family for doing us the honour of celebrating with us today. It is such happiness to see you all.” And then he sat again promptly. Good man, keeping it short and sweet.

Miss Whitford gave Lucie a flower, the first gift from Irene’s bouquet, and she and Lucie smiled secretly at each other. Lucie then held it up so George could see. Orange blossom, the bridal blossom. It had a truly sweet scent. He met Lucie’s eyes and flushed and looked down. Fortunately at the next moment the wedding party was distracted by the sight of June receiving a white rosebud from Irene’s own hands, and expressing her delight with a cry the whole room could hear. That was adoration on the girl’s face or George would be clean bowled. Then Miss Whitford was over handing out yet more flowers to George’s own sister Francie, who was happy to receive stephanotis and orange blossom from her. This tradition was sentimental, and George hated to admit it, but he found it pleasing. He could not laugh at it.

George was maliciously interested in the next toast, which was to be to the bride’s parents. He’d heard the full story from Lucie and was fully ready to join Soames in a good bout of violence if one was needed to deal with Irene’s step-father. He had seen Soames’s face when he took Irene’s hand from that blackguard’s, and he was in full sympathy.

Soames was braced for the toast to the bride’s parents. He didn’t know who would be giving it, or what would be said, or what Lomax would say in reply. He had resolved already to stay calm no matter what happened, and instead to stare icily at the fellow, but he did wonder.

To his surprise, Uncle Nicholas stood, champagne glass in hand: his spry uncle Nick, the eternal schoolboy, looking solemn but somehow a little bit mischievous. His uncle Nicholas? He suspected something was afoot, but what?

His uncle held his glass high, and said, “The bride’s parents are not with us today. Our new niece Irene lost her mother Cecilia young, and her father only a few short years ago. Though they are not with us now, their memory is with us in this room. Their blessing is with us, for they brought this wonderful young lady into the world, and they raised her up to be the gracious woman she is. To Professor Heron and Mrs Cecilia Heron!”

Soames stood with the room, and drank the surprisingly sombre toast with them all, and sat again. Answer that, Lomax, he thought. He looked for the man, and saw him begin to rise, glass in hand. But the room was not turning toward him because another man had stood first: his own father.

James looked magnificent in his frock coat, glossy, shining, with a glow on his face that Soames almost never saw there. He touched his nose, looked around himself at the assembled Forsytes all gazing at him with champagne-reddened cheeks, and sniffed. Lomax sat again without a word said.

James spoke. “When Soames first told me he was engaged to be married to Irene, I asked him what he was about. She was orphaned; her parents had left her nothing. He told me that when I met her, I would understand. I was not easy in my mind. I was worried about him, about her. That was until Emily and I met her. She’s lived under our roof for the last few months and we’ve come to love her as if she were our own daughter. Professor Heron and Mrs Cecilia Heron aren’t here to thank you, Nick, but I’ll thank you. To the bride’s parents!”

This reply emptied every glass in the room and there was a great noise. Long before the end of this speech Soames had turned to Irene and taken her hands to ensure she was steady. She was: her eyes were damp, but she was smiling. Soames brushed her lips with his, and then lifted his glass to her, in thanks to her parents that he would never know.

That was, George decided, most neatly planned and executed. By Soames’s face, it was a complete surprise, and by Irene’s face, it was touching indeed. He glanced at Lucie, and what he saw there moved him to surreptitiously touch her hand, lingering for as long as he dared. He wished he could speak to her. Perhaps later. The next toast passed them by while he sat with her, having feelings of the sort that he’d always sworn he never would. Nothing ever happened to him, he’d once told Aunt Ann, and how mistaken he’d been. Something had happened to him, and now he sat, carefully close enough to her that his fingers might graze hers to reassure them both.

The men around him stood and toasted, and George stood with them, quite by instinct, and drank. He sat. Parkes—really the most improbable sort of man to be Cousin Soames’s best friend, but there you were; he himself was just as improbable—was standing with pure happiness on his face.

“It is with great pleasure and delight that I thank you for your praise of our bridesmaids, from the young lady June who carried the bride’s train so admirably, to the lovely Mademoiselle Béranger, to Miss Whitford who bestows flowers upon us all—they are all surely the loveliest young ladies in the room.”

They were lovely, though one more than the others, in his opinion, and George said so with his face over his champagne glass, as clearly as he might.

After that last toast the wedding party all retired upstairs. Soames and Irene both needed to change into travelling clothes, and of course Irene would need help doing so. Irene and her bridesmaids were in her room across the hall. Soames and Parkes went up to his boyhood room, the room where he’d returned with his homing instinct that first day he’d awakened on that train. Parkes’s man Hollis was there once again to help him change. Soames was grateful but again awkward.

“You got through it,” Parkes said.

“I did,” he said.

“You said your vows like you meant them. So did she.”

Soames looked down at his feet, then was immediately nudged to look up again as Parkes’s man tied the four-in-hand knot in his travelling-clothes tie. There was nothing to say to that. He had, and he’d known the entire congregation had heard it, and he’d known what he was about. She had too, and that was a joy.

Soames looked at Parkes in the mirror. He was genuinely happy. Things had changed between them so much over the last months. What he’d once tentatively called a friendship he now understood properly, and he had a second friendship to compare it to. What a strange thing this second life was.

“Parkes,” Soames said. He tried to find the words and failed yet again, then gave up and shook his head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, old man.” Parkes rested a hand on his shoulder. Soames, held in place by Hollis, was unable to return the gesture, and was reduced to blinking rapidly lest emotion show itself somehow. Parkes released him with the usual hearty clap.

His pockets were once again full of the things he expected to be there, most importantly his propelling pencil and his notebook. He thanked Hollis gravely, took a deep breath, and made his way downstairs. Before long, Irene came down to join him, in travelling clothes and hat, cloaked for the journey. It was time for farewells.

He and Irene first found Mrs Lomax. Irene embraced her. “Thank you,” she said. “You did your best by me, and you were the reason I met Soames.”

Mrs Lomax had little to say in response, but seemed touched, and embraced Irene in turn. Soames shook her hand and said merely, “I will keep your investments at their best.”

They sought out their aunts and uncles. A kiss to Aunt Ann where she sat, embraces to Aunts Hester and Juley. Hearty handshakes from Uncles Jolyon, Nicholas, and Roger. An overly-long kiss for the bride from Uncle Swithin.

Farewells to Lucie and Miss Whitford. A carefully formal and courteous farewell to June from Soames, and a kiss from Irene.

George was touchingly charming to Irene when they bid him farewell. He kissed her hand and held it over his heart. “I owe you more than I can say. You know why.”

“I do. See you deserve it,” Irene said. Then she kissed George’s cheek and made him flush scarlet and stagger back into Parkes’s arms.

Winifred got kisses from both of them, and Dartie a warmer handshake than he deserved.

They both kissed his mother, who was of course weeping gently into a lace handkerchief. Soames murmured his thanks into her ear, for he now understood how much she managed it all.

James embraced him at the door. “Bless you, my boy,” he said.

“Pater,” was the only thing Soames could say in return, as he held his father. He knew what his father had done, quietly, in the weeks before the wedding: he’d settled his own money on Irene, without a word to Soames until after it was done.

Soames stepped aside, and Irene kissed James’s lined cheek while she embraced him, and it was James’s turn to be speechless.

They went out the door and down the steps, and rice pelted them from every direction. Soames was grateful there were no shoes thrown. He had no idea what that was about. He had no idea what the rice was about either, but at least it didn’t hurt when one was struck by it.

Then they were helped into a cab with luggage on top, this time on their way to the station. Paris awaited.

XXXIII. A Paris night

Many hours later, they were in their hotel, the Hôtel Meurice, overlooking the Tuileries. Not that they’d seen anything; they had arrived after dark, and been escorted to their bridal suite almost immediately. Their luggage was delivered safely, and their rooms were lovely; they would have a view of the ruins in the morning. Soames found himself uninterested in such things; he had space in his mind for only one thing now.

Mere minutes after they entered their suite, there was a knock on the door, and a man bearing a tray with an ice bucket and two glasses arrived. The bucket held a bottle of champagne for the couple. Soames, puzzled, was about to say that he had not sent down for anything yet, but the man stopped him. It had all been arranged, he was told, by someone who’d sent ahead with instructions and a card for the honeymooning couple. Soames took the card and slid it into a pocket uncertainly while he watched the sommelier open the champagne. An expert twist, and the bottle popped open with no fuss. The man sniffed the cork, poured a little, and handed the glass to Soames. Soames considered it, then tasted it and raised his eyebrows.

“Stupéfiant,” Soames said, unsure it was the right register to use. The bottle was swaddled and he could not read the label. Parkes, he thought. Parkes had overdone it.

Two glasses poured, and the sommelier was gone. Soames carried both glasses over to where Irene was standing at the double windows that opened onto the balcony. “Champagne,” he said. “It’s rather good.”

She took a glass from him and tasted it, then looked at him.

Soames said, “When I say rather good, I think it might be the best I’ve ever had.” He lifted his glass, looked at her over the brim, and drank. She mirrored him, then made an expression similar to the one he’d made when he’d tasted it. He said, “Sit with me?”

The gaslight in the room was low. There were two candles, one on the table, one by the divan. Soames led Irene over to the divan and sat beside her. He touched his glass to hers and gave her a look that lingered, then drank again. It was delicious, a trifle dry, but truly fine. He watched her drink, and smile over it.

“It is a superb wine,” she said. “Who chose it? Your friend Gregory? Cousin George?”

“There’s a note.”

He slid it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She opened it, read, and laughed quietly. She handed it back to him. It read:

Steady on, Forsyte. GP & GF

Soames sighed. “I’d thought it was Parkes, but of course it was both of them.” He slid it back into his pocket.

“They are fond of you, you know.”

He said nothing in return, but shook his head. He looked into her eyes over his glass, which gave a wonderful scent under his nose. He drank a little more wine, and she mirrored him.

“I’m not certain what happens next,” she said. He could hear the tremor in her voice.

Soames touched her face. “We should drink the champagne, I think. Warm ourselves and relax. There is no hurry.”

“I see.” Then she decided to smile at him, it seemed, and raise her glass to him. She said, “I have never given a toast. I had drunk very little champagne in my life until the last few months, when I have been poured quite a surprising amount of it, mostly by your uncle Swithin. But I have heard some toasts given.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed. I shall toast Soames, the man who I thought fell asleep at the Emperor Concerto, who said but music? when I talked of passion and surrender. That dear sweet man, who had so much locked inside him.”

She drank, and Soames flushed very red, remembering how he’d sat staring at her, unable to speak. Well, he sometimes did that even now, as he was doing at this very moment.

“Aren’t you going to toast me?”

She was teasing him, but of course he must rise to the challenge. He thought for a moment.

He raised his glass. “To Irene, who taught me what she meant by passion and surrender, by playing the Appassionata to me. May she—may she allow me to surrender to her again tonight.”

And he drank to her, because that would allow him to look away from her eyes after he’d said that. When he looked at her again, she was not blushing, but was looking at him quite seriously.

The champagne had now begun to course through Soames, and he knew it would be moving through her as well. The time for them to retire was approaching, and this made him catch his breath. His body knew what was coming. Did hers?

He said, very calmly, “Would you like more?”

“A little, please.”

He topped up their glasses and returned the bottle to the bucket. It would be a pity to waste this wine; it was shockingly good. He returned to Irene and offered her her glass. He wished he knew how to do it with the sort of flourish Parkes might manage, but he did not. He could only offer it with a contained, economical gesture, his own way. She took it, without seeming to care in the least what sort of gesture he made.

Soames sighed at himself, inside. Perhaps he need not fret so much.

Aloud, he said, “I should like to toast us.”

“Very well.” Her gaze on him was expectant, lips curved with that beautiful little smile, that mysterious look of satisfaction with what was happening around her.

Soames took a deep breath and lifted his glass to touch hers. “To the solemn watcher and his lonely purple flower.”

“Oh, Soames.” They both drank.

Then there was an awkward pause. There was only one thing to do now. He set his glass down and gently took hers to set it next to his. He gathered her hands in his and bent to kiss them for a long moment.

He rose and met her gaze. He said, quietly, “Shall I ring for the maid?”

She looked down at their joined hands, and nodded. He squeezed her hands, then released her. He walked over to the bell, and rang. He went back to her, took her hands again, and kissed her deeply. It would be soon now.

There was a knock at the door. They released each other and sat back hastily, though surely the maid knew what a honeymooning couple was about. The maid came in, avoiding his eyes, but looking only at Irene, bobbing towards her. She said something in French rapidly that he could not follow but Irene could. Irene looked at him, with some meaning in her eyes he could not guess at, and was gone into her dressing room, led by the maid.

Soames swallowed the rest of his champagne, heedless of its quality, out of pure nerves. She was about to be undressed by that maid, and dressed again in a nightgown made from Liberty silk chosen by Irene for this purpose. He knew what the challenge before him was. He knew what he ought to do. Pay attention to her. Hold himself under control. Do not yield to passion. Stay always aware of her needs, her reactions, her experience in the moment, her sounds and shivers and half-formed words, stay with her, not with himself. His own pleasure was an afterthought—it would happen no matter what; all she need do was hold him and let him linger a few extra moments embracing her and moving with her and he would yield himself to her.

He stood and breathed, then went to his own dressing room. There was a gas lamp burning low there, enough for him to see that strange man in the glass again, a dark-haired man with flat cheeks and a chinny face, who had a worried look and a line between his brows. The fellow was too thin. He wasn’t sneering, for once, and he didn’t have his nose lifted at a tilt, which made him almost unrecognisable. He also didn’t look as if he were angry or sulking. This fellow was about to go to bed with Irene. Unbidden, a smile crept out over the young man’s face. Soames rubbed his chin. He still wanted a moustache, but if he managed to smile now and then, he wasn’t too bad-looking.

Enough of that. He’d been in these clothes for many hours. It would be a relief to take them off. Soames pulled open a drawer: there was his nightshirt, his dressing gown.

He looked for his dressing case and found inside it that his bride had bought him a complete set of moustache grooming tools matched to the case, little scissors, wax, brushes. Soames swallowed. Well. She had apparently wanted her own money at least in part so that she could buy him presents. It was enough to make him weep and laugh at once. He touched them, and resolved to ask her what she meant by the gift. He would not guess at meaning any more; he would ask, lest he grow a great flowing thing that she hated.

And now, the ritual of a gentleman undressing, which would soothe him. Coat off, onto the clothes horse. Everything taken from coat pockets and tucked into his dressing case, removed as methodically as they had been slipped in. Watch-chain unthreaded. Waistcoat off. Silk braces off his shoulders, unbuttoned. Collar off, studs into a small dish. Cuff-links off, into the leather pouch. Trousers off, shirt off, everything hung on the clothes horse. A stroke of his thumb on the signet ring, more from habit than from necessity, and then that went into the pouch in the dressing case.

His hands were steady through all this. His heart was pounding. Soon. Soon. They would be man and wife soon. He would be tested soon.

Now the nightclothes. He took off his underclothing and put that aside. Nightshirt over his head, draping down to his somewhat knobbly knees. Dressing gown over the nightshirt. The dressing gown was a little warm in the suite, with its fires and gas lighting and candles, but it disguised his excitement. Would she mind if he took it off? He was unsure, suddenly, completely at sea, unsure what was allowed and what was not, what she might be comfortable with and not. What would he look like to her? He smoothed his hair with a hand. Ought he to shave? He ran a hand over his chin. Perhaps? It was not so very bristly, but if he had time—did he have time? He looked down at himself. It was no use. He was what he was in this moment. He needs must appear before her as the man he was and hope she understood.

He stole out of his dressing room into the sitting room, then made his first venture into the bedroom, carrying the champagne bottle and glasses with him. It was a bridal suite, and the bed was large, a four-poster, with a heavy carved wooden headboard. A candle burned on a little table to each side. The bed was turned down for them, coverlet and sheets beneath. The fire was warm and the burning wood smelled good to him, fragrant. He set bottle and glasses down on the table closer to her dressing room door. It was warm enough that he did not need the dressing gown; he shed it and draped it across the chest at the foot of the bed.

Now he had only to wait.

What the devil was taking her so long? He paced on bare feet to and fro across the room. He should have shaved! Why did women have to wear so much clothing? They would get past it eventually, shed the corset, and the world would not end. In that other dressing room, the maid was unbuttoning her dress, unlacing her corset, removing everything she wore—the thought made him pace faster.

His nerves rose with every turn round the room. The last time he’d been with her, he’d—Don’t think about that. Think about love. Think about his promise to love her so much it possessed her and moved her to surrender to him. Think about that. Think of her first and not himself. Get it right, Forsyte. Get this right. He knew what he had to do. He thought maybe he knew how.

God, it would be wonderful. If only she ever came out of that dressing room.

He heard a door open and shut elsewhere in the suite. He went to the bed and sat down and tried to breathe. She was going to come in to him in a moment.

Her dressing room door opened, and she stepped into the bedroom. He looked, and caught his breath: a creamy silk peignoir disguised her form, hinting at what lay below, her hair down, cascading over her shoulders. So much dark golden hair, so much, flowing loose. She had not plaited it tonight. She paused in the doorway, a raised hand resting on the frame, and looked across the room at him.

“Irene,” he said, with what remained of his voice.

Irene walked towards him. He could not look away. She was afraid; he could see it in how she moved, so hesitant. She had been putting a brave face on it when they’d been drinking champagne. He stood when she reached him and took her hand. It was cold in his. He was almost sweating.

He said, as calmly as he could manage, “Shall we sit on the bed together?”

She nodded. They sat.

“Would you like a little more champagne?”

“A very little, please.”

He brought a single glass over from the table and sat again. He held it to her lips; she tasted it. He tasted as well. Neither of them needed more. It was mere temporising. He set the glass on the table and turned back to her. Did she know how beautiful she was? Did he have any hope of finding the words? Her hair was so lush—it had haunted his dreams for so long, in his most secret thoughts, that dark gold hair, gleaming in the candlelight, flowing over her shoulders, unbound, uncontained, the sign that they were at last together.

He looked, and his breath came heavy.

“May I touch your hair?” he asked, very cautiously.

“You may.”

He could see that this request had calmed her somewhat. Her hair was no mystery for her. For him—He had no words for what it was like to stroke it, to run his fingers through it. No one saw this but he. No one could touch this but he. Her scent was everywhere in her hair, honey, roses, musk, so sweet and heady at once. He wanted to plait it for her, to play with it, to luxuriate in it, brush it for her. He gathered it in his hands, pulled it gently back, kissed her temple, kissed her neck, found his way back almost to the nape of her neck underneath it all. Every touch made him more excited. He loved her throat, her bare shoulders, the way they felt under his hands, how they felt to kiss. The nightgown was in the way. He wanted it gone so he could kiss her shoulders. Oh, why was it in the way? There were buttons. He could—No, Forsyte, no, slow down, steady on.

Soames got himself back under control with some difficulty. That had gone to his head faster than he’d thought possible. His entire body was alive and aware of her now. Every touch sent thrills through him. He pulled back to take her hands again and breathe himself down. He rested his forehead against her knuckles and almost groaned. That scent.

“Soames?”

“Irene,” he said, huskily. He raised his head. “Your hair is lovely.”

“I—you are making me feel loved. And wanted.”

“You are loved.” He kissed her hands. She was trembling very slightly. “And wanted. I want you, so very much. Do you want me? You may, if you wish to.”

“I think I do.” She stood, and reached for the elaborate bow at the waist of her peignoir. A little tug, and it came undone, and opened. She let it drop to the floor, and now Soames could truly see her form in the silk. He felt madness rising in him again. To forestall it, he stood and gathered her close against him, and nuzzled her ear.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered to her. “Come. Let’s get into bed. We’ll hold each other, nothing more.”

She assented quietly. He drew her to the head of the bed, and climbed in ahead of her. He held the sheet up to welcome her. She was afraid again, he could see, holding her arms before her breasts and trembling a little. He must move carefully now, intentionally. He pulled the sheet up, then the coverlet. It was up to their chins, and they were warm now. He slipped his arm around her and moved in close enough to kiss her forehead. Not her lips yet, not until she gave him permission. Face to face, breath to breath, quiet, calm.

“Is this all right?”

“I think so.”

“How are you feeling?”

“You’re holding me so carefully. I’m safe. And nervous. And excited.”

“You are safe,” he said, as tenderly as he could.

“I can feel your voice vibrating in your chest,” she said. “You have a lovely voice. And a very special tender voice that you use only when you’re speaking to me, when we’re alone. You used it in church today, speaking your vows, and it was so moving.”

“Oh.” Everyone had heard him speaking like that to her. Well. They all knew how he felt, now. They all knew how much he loved his wife.

His wife, Irene. The woman next to him whom he had sworn to keep safe.

He took no liberties yet; she was not ready for liberties. They lay under the sheets simply holding each other, bodies barely touching, with almost nothing separating them. She was trembling against him still, whether from fear or excitement he could not tell. He was himself trembling, though he knew why. He stroked her back with an open soothing hand, trying to slow everything down for them both. He looked deep into her eyes, hoping to see something he could understand. Wide pupils, dark eyes, creamy skin warm from the candles at the bedside, lips dark from his insistent kisses earlier. No doubt he looked the same to her.

“May I kiss you?” he whispered.

“You may.”

One kiss, a chaste one, and a sigh from her. He felt a tension in her ease again. This she knew; this she was comfortable with. He let her kiss him and let her tell him when she wanted more. He expected her to want more chaste kisses, but Irene did not want chaste. She put a hand behind his head and tugged him closer and kissed him open-mouthed. That was licence to kiss her as he wished for long minutes, body against body, breathing together, exploring what it meant to kiss without barriers now that they could, to touch each other as they wished. He kissed her throat, kissed his way back up to her lips, and tasted them. She made a sound as much surprised as it was pleased, and he felt her tongue cautiously exploring his lips.

When he almost could not bear it any more, he broke away. “Irene. How is this?”

“So far… I feel it.” She was a little breathless. He knew what that meant. He kissed her, and she returned it with more intensity than he expected. The next few minutes were that: kissing with passion unrestrained, eyes closed, his hand on her back pulling her close, his knee finding its way between her thighs ever so slowly as she began to relax with him.

He drew back, and Irene made a little sound of dismay. “May I touch your body?” he asked. His voice was unrecognisably husky.

“You may,” sighed out more than spoken.

He let his hand move more freely while he kissed her, from her back forward to her hip, caressing everywhere he could reach, drawing her closer against him, until they were pressed against each other. He lifted her nightgown, slowly, slowly, while she clung to his neck. A hand, gently stroking with his palm, nothing frightening, soothing, moving up to her waist with the silk under his hand. He kissed her the while, keeping her mind on that, not on fear of what was to happen, instead on the pleasure she knew and was comfortable with. She shifted to allow him to pull it up further, and he coaxed her to lie back. He let his hand rove and find her most secret place. Her eyes fluttered shut. In her breath was buried the sound of pleasure that she did not yet know how to reveal to him. He stayed there, very gently touching, until she relaxed again and sighed. Her eyes opened again; she looked up at him and said his name, very softly.

“Yes?”

“This is so—”

“So?”

“I didn’t know.”

“This is ours to share.” He kissed her shoulder. “This touch, what you feel now. This is what I want to give you. I love you.”

She said nothing in response but closed her eyes and eased herself even more open to his hand. Soames watched her face and saw pleasure flush over it. She said his name again, this time almost pleading.

“May I lie with you now?” he asked.

Her breath caught. “Slowly, please.”

“Slowly,” he promised.

He knelt over her and what came to him in that moment was the oath he had sworn to her that morning: with my body I thee worship. He was worshipping her. Every touch was an act of loving reverence. He helped her lift his nightshirt. She touched his hip timidly and he made an encouraging sound, but the thought of going further was too much for her. There would be other nights.

He shifted and lay over her, not touching her intimately yet, merely kissing her, rubbing her cheek with his, saying soft encouraging things to her, letting her grow used to the weight of his body over hers, to the feeling of such close touch between them. He waited for her to ease again, to part her thighs for him and welcome him further. When she did, he let his body touch hers, just a grazing touch, and she gasped under him.

“All right?”

“I think—yes.”

“Irene, I should like—may I become one with you now?”

She breathed a sound that made him shiver, then said, so softly, “Yes.”

These were the words he needed. She welcomed him. She wanted him. He was accepted. He took himself in hand, gently, and touched her. She gasped. He went slowly, oh so slowly, letting her know what was about to happen, what his body was, what her body would feel like when he joined with it. She made a sound, and then said, “Please.”

He shifted and felt that moment of resistance: he heard her gasp again, and saw her expression change. He stilled himself and waited, watching her face for the sign that she had relaxed again. He wanted to speak but could find no words. They were man and wife now, as of this moment. They were united. They were one. He watched until Irene nodded to him, and he let out a long breath and nodded to her in return. He let himself move again, slowly, letting her feel what it was like, his body against hers, within hers, she surrounding him. She moved under him to wrap herself around him: he was cradled by her now, held close and allowed deeper intimacy. This was different from anything he’d done before, to be so focused on Irene and what she felt, to be watching so closely, so carefully, to be so attentive to her pleasure and not his own. Her eyes closed as he moved and he heard a soft sound from her, the first sound of pleasure. The sound sent a thrill through his heart. It felt so wonderful that he almost wished it could go on forever, this gentle union.

Irene opened her eyes and looked at him. He hoped she could see in his face what he felt, love and pleasure both. It took such strict control over himself to go this slowly but oh it was so much joy to feel her yield to him, to surrender to him, to realise that she was safe and loved with a man who loved her. She said his name, and he could not help the sound that escaped him, which she returned, softly, so softly. He whispered her name in her ear and told her that he loved her, that she was everything to him, that he would love and cherish her until death did them part, that he worshipped her with his body, whatever he could remember from his oath to her, mixed with wordless sounds of longing. He held her close, with his face buried in her neck, kissing her, moving slowly, steadily, listening to her.

Another sound from her, and he began to understand that she needed a little more from him. He shifted up so he could touch her again. Now her breath changed, came faster, and she made the sounds he’d been waiting to hear. Her hand on his shoulder tightened. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. It was going to happen soon. Her hand gripped his shoulder almost tight enough to hurt, and then—and then—all her tension gathered together to a peak; she reached her moment of pleasure, her face transfigured by it, her soft cries, her body shuddering under his. His own eyes closed and he followed her there, completely undone by her voice, the look on her face, the knowledge that at last, at last, he’d seen on her face the most precious thing he’d ever seen there.

Soames lay cradled in Irene’s arms for a little while, unwilling to move. He kissed her neck and shoulder, her lips, softly. Irene seemed to want him there, for she was stroking his hair, his back, and whispering sweet things to him. At last he eased away from her and lay on his back beside her, breathing. The sweat on his face and in his hair told him how much effort he had spent without realising it.

He looked over at Irene. She reclined on her side smiling at him. She looked like she had after the waltz, perspiration catching the candlelight on her temples, streaked along her throat, her hair every which way. Oh, that smile! He could not help but return it. This smile was the smile of a woman who had been embraced and loved, heavy-lidded, satisfied. He wanted to see it on her face every time they were alone.

So many smiles since that day on the train: the smile she’d given him on the front at Lymington; the smile she gave him whenever he presented her with new music; the mysterious smiles she’d given him so many times in between. This smile was the one he’d keep in his heart.

She spoke. “Soames.”

He touched her hair in response.

“I love you.”

Soames could not move, could not speak. He choked out her name then he buried his face in her neck and the tears came. He could not control it in the least. How long had he waited to hear those three words? She had no idea. She couldn’t possibly. It had been a lifetime of waiting.

“Hush, darling,” Irene said, softly. “I was afraid to say it before. I should have said it, I know now. I’ve loved you the whole time, I think, but I didn’t realise it.”

Soames shook his head at her. None of that mattered. “I love you, too.”

“That’s settled.”

He laughed and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Come here,” he said, and gently tugged her close so they shared a pillow and could idly kiss again if they wished, which he certainly did wish. His emotion calmed, and he found himself in a glow of happiness he could not contain. Irene’s face said she felt the same. It was almost too much; he wanted to burst from it.

“You are too thin,” Irene said, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He made no reply, but ran a hand over her backside, which was not too thin. It was perfect, in his opinion.

“I can count your ribs.”

“Oh.”

“I watch you, you know. You’re always so careful at dinner. You taste everything, and finish nothing, except perhaps the soup at the start. That you will drink.”

“I hadn’t thought anybody watched that sort of thing.”

“Your mother didn’t notice?”

“She also thinks I’m too thin, but she ascribes it to chasing after you for so long.”

“I am going to make you take me to the finest restaurants, and then I am going to order the most marvellous food for the two of us, and I am going to insist that you eat every bite of it, and that you tell me how wonderful it is, and how much pleasure it gives you.”

“Only if you do the same.”

“Very well.” She touched his lips with her fingers and he kissed them.

He said, “I shall insist that you take me to the concerts you most want to attend. You will allow me to watch you quietly throughout, and then afterwards you will tell me what you felt as you listened. I will tell you what I understood, if I understood anything at all.”

“I shall endure this trial,” Irene said, solemnly.

She sat up and winced, and then looked down at the sheets. She made a face. Soames was not supposed to notice this, he knew, but he did, and he could not help but smile at her and tug her over to a less messy part of the bed. He pulled the coverlet up over their shoulders, and they once again moved close to each other, close enough that they shared a pillow. She had that mysterious soft smile on her face again. Was it mysterious? Was it merely Irene being quietly happy? So long as she kept smiling.

“A long moustache or a short one?” he asked her.

“You shall have to try several kinds of moustache so I can see.”

“Thank you, by the way. That was most thoughtful.”

“You have not found everything yet, I think.”

“Irene, you must not spend—”

“No, you promised not to ask.”

“Yes, but I don’t need—”

“Stop.” She put two fingers against his lips and he sighed.

“I must teach you how to invest,” he muttered, then kissed her fingers.

“That is your job. Mine is to delight you in ways you will not delight yourself.”

“If you insist,” he said, but he was smiling as he said it, and he saw that Irene knew she had won her point.

They kissed again for a little while, gently. Soames tried to put some order back into her hair. Irene closed her eyes, and Soames watched her drift off into sleep. It was so completely unlike that first wedding night. Nothing had been the same. He remembered how he’d behaved, so clumsy and desperate. He’d been unable to tell her how he’d felt, unable to tell her how overwhelmed he’d been. He’d been so focused on himself with her before, so hungry, so impatient. Young fool. It took the patience of the old man to give this woman what she needed, the time to feel herself safe, to feel herself loved.

He’d got this right.

XXXIV. A Paris morning

Irene was snug on Soames’s arm as they walked out of their hotel. The autumn day was crisp and the note in the air had a promise of cold, but not yet the arrival of cold. The leaves were turning, and the wind rattled them on the branches. Men were roasting chestnuts at street corners. He bought some for the two of them, and carried them in a twist of paper in his coat pocket as they crossed into the Tuileries gardens. The ruins of the palace were beside them, exposed to the elements and to Soames’s melancholy contemplation.

Irene was unaffected. “There is so much to do,” she said. “Everything I wished to do before, when I was in Paris.”

Her excitement was infectious. Soames pressed her hand where it rested in the crook of his elbow. “Anything you like.”

“With you to share it. Do you have your notebook?”

“I do.”

“Oh, good. You’ll want to write down what you’re going to hear tonight.”

She dipped her hand into his pocket and stole a chestnut to eat, removing her gloves to peel the dark shell away. She fished out another, peeled it, and gave it to him. It was delicious, and there was something special, to Soames’s mind, about eating one warm while strolling through gardens in the autumn, with the rubble of the Tuileries visible, on their way to somewhere more agreeable. The Louvre was on the other side of the ruined palace, and Soames thought they might spend some time there today, though there was no hurry at all. They could sit on a bench in the October sunshine and eat chestnuts together, and then go and look at paintings.

The future was both known to him and unknown. Would there be a Young James and a little Fleur to call him Papa? He didn’t know. It was possible, even likely. He did have a wife who loved him, who was smiling up at him as she peeled a chestnut for him, and that was an experience he’d never had before. He would need to be ever on watch over himself to stay worthy of her love, but he thought he might manage it.

Soames stripped off his own gloves and peeled a chestnut for Irene. The shells were exactly the colour of her eyes. She laughed at him as he held the nut out to her and then shocked him by eating it out of his hand. Who knew she was like this? Not he. He laughed and reached into his pocket for another chestnut.

-FIN-

Repairs

2015-12-07T12:00:00+00:00

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Throat raw from screaming, body battered and bleeding, Clara hung limply from the stone pillar as the uncaring stars shed their feeble light onto the mountaintop. She was going to die here. The Doctor would find her, she knew, but it would be too late. She was done fighting; there was no more left in her. Death was coming. All she could do was make peace with herself, with her life, with the ghosts of everyone she’d known.

Regrets? Hundreds. Right now she regretted most that he’d find her like this, and know what had happened before she died.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with what remained of her voice.

“What for?”

He was here. He was here. She might yet live. Clara wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. His arms were around her, taking the weight off her arms. She could breathe again.

“Ribs broken,” she rasped out.

“Hush.” The sonic whirred and the chains fell. The Doctor took her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Clara, hold on. Just a few steps to the TARDIS. Hold on, love.”

Clara tried, but it hurt too much, and she let go of everything and slipped away.

She woke in the TARDIS medical bay, on her back on one of the treatment beds. Her body was covered in a blue shell from her chest down. She couldn’t feel anything. The Doctor was there, touching her shoulder.

“Clara.”

“Hey.” Voice still pretty bad. Didn’t hurt to talk, at least. She tried to wiggle her toes, but had no idea if she’d managed.

“You’re going to be fine. The TARDIS is repairing everything.”

Oh. “They did things.”

“I know.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, Clara. I’m here.” He kissed her forehead.

Clara slipped away again.

She woke on the treatment bed again, this time without the shell over her. She wiggled her toes; they seemed fine. Her ribs, also fine. Nothing hurt, particularly. She cleared her throat, and there was a clatter and the sound of boots on the floor, and the Doctor was there, taking her hand in his. He kissed her forehead, as he had before, and Clara found she could smile again. If it felt hollow, it wasn’t his fault. He’d come. He’d found her. Sooner than she’d thought possible.

“How long?” she said. Her voice sounded normal.

“Four days.”

“Tell the old girl thanks for me.”

“I already have.” The Doctor pressed her hand between his. “You’re cleared to leave the treatment bed if you want.”

Out of bed. Out of the TARDIS. Back out into– something. Did she want? Did she have a choice? The only way out was through. She’d said that to herself when they’d first chained her up, when the leader had, had– Her mind skipped away.

“Clara?”

“Yeah, I’d like to get out of bed.”

He helped her sit up. Everything was working, but she was oddly shaky. After-effect of anesthesia? Or the repairs? She didn’t ask. She swung her feet cautiously out of bed. She was wearing a soft blue gown, something like a hospital gown. The Doctor must have dressed her. Not much had been left of her clothes by the end. Her mind skipped away again, to better places. She watched it go.

“Are you okay?” the Doctor said. He stroked her hair back from her face. Clara gave him a little smile.

“Yeah, sure.”

“It’s okay not to be okay. There are some things that take time.”

“Touchy-feely of you.”

The Doctor’s arm steadied her as she stood. Her head spun then righted itself.

He said, “I, um, read a few books on trauma recovery in humans. While you were unconscious.”

“Are you going to be sending me to counseling or something?”

He smiled at her and it was so tender she nearly wept. “Not unless you want to go. But I would like you to tell me about it. When you’re ready.”

“Not sure I want you to know.”

“You can, er, assume that I know everything that– anything that left traces on your body. I had to, so I could program the–” The Doctor broke off. He wasn’t looking at her straight on. “The TARDIS reported it all.”

“Oh.” Not really a surprise, and it was strangely comforting to know that he understood most of what had happened. Of course he couldn’t look at her directly. Made sense. She was broken now.

“Clara, I– I understand. I went through something similar. Not quite the same, but–”

“Oh.”

He didn’t offer any explanation, and Clara didn’t ask. But she had to readjust. He knew what it was like. He was broken the same way. He understood. It was, again, strangely comforting. Though he was so different from her, had lived so long, that there was a chance it wasn’t the same at all. Maybe. He was trying. That mattered.

She leaned hard on him as they made their way out into the hallway. The TARDIS had moved her bedroom to right across from the medical bay. The old girl didn’t hate her much any more, it seemed, or the Doctor had planned out this trip before she woke.

“Why am I so tired?” she said.

“The TARDIS uses some of your own energy to heal you. The worse the injury, the more energy.”

“How close was it?”

He shook his head and would say no more. He handed her a bundle of clothes and turned his back politely. Pajamas. He’d picked the ones with little kittens all over them. Clara pulled off the blue medical gown. She looked down at herself, at her bare body. Ribs intact. No burns. No scars from the knife. No gouges from the manacles on her wrists, from how she’d fought to escape. No sign that it had happened. Wiped clean away. Had it happened? She remembered those things, but had it been real?

“Clara. Let me help with that.”

The Doctor had her pajamas in his hand. He held the top over her head and dropped it into place. Clara stepped into the bottoms on her own. It wasn’t the first time the Doctor had seen her naked; there had been the time in the prison that had been convinced the wrappings on their bodies were armor. They’d really freaked out about her bra. Clara had been mortified until they’d both started giggling. They’d laughed so hard the guard had come to check and the Doctor had rather casually relieved him of his keys. The memory was soothing. That was before. Before the troop of men on the mountain.

“I really don’t want to go to sleep right now,” Clara said. “I just spent four days in bed. Can’t we go somewhere?”

“You need real sleep. The brain needs its time, to dream. The medical machine suppressed all that.”

“Don’t want to dream.”

The Doctor pulled back the blankets and gestured her toward the bed. “You need to. To make sense of what happened. It’s the way brains work.” He wriggled his fingers at his temple.

Clara frowned. Clearly he was going to insist on this until she gave in. But the thought of it made her sick in ways she couldn’t talk about. The thought of being left alone in the room made her even sicker. “Stay with me?”

A shrug, as if were nothing to him. “Yeah. Was planning to do some more reading anyway.” But he was here, and he was hovering.

She climbed into bed. The TARDIS had constructed a sleigh bed for her, after that Christmas, with an elaborately carved headboard. Feather pillows, fluffy blankets, a faint smell of lavender, everything she had learned to associate with safety and comfort. She was safe now. The Doctor was there. It helped, feeling his hand on her shoulder, feeling his weight on the bed next to her as he settled himself on top of the blankets.

The Doctor stroked her hair. “Sleep, Clara. Finish healing.”

He touched the control panel on the wall and the lights dimmed down through the shades of sunset. Bedtime on the TARDIS, just as she’d set it up for herself months ago. The only difference now was that the Doctor was with her, lying on top of the blankets beside her, with a book in his hands and a nanobot reading light floating just over the pages. She smiled at the absurdity of it, the low-tech book with the gadget from an almost unimaginable future, and let herself sleep.

Dreams. The usual dreams at first, running through corridors, chasing or being chased, trying to solve the puzzle before people died. Puzzles, mazes, traps. She was trapped. She was bound. A mountain top. Sun beating down. They were going to kill her. She had to get out. The flames were rising and they’d heated their knives.

She came awake gasping, hands raised to protect her face. The Doctor was there, taking her hands, kissing her forehead, as he never had before with this face, so tenderly. He wrapped his arms around her and Clara let her head rest on his shoulder. He was here. He hadn’t abandoned her. Hadn’t forgotten about her. Hadn’t left her to die.

She slept again, and dreamed again. Woke again, screaming.

He was there every time, next to her, holding her gently, kissing her forehead, saying soft things that she wasn’t sure made sense or were in English at all. Once she woke up to find that she’d been beating his chest with her fists, as if he’d been the worst of them, Bran, the leader, the one who’d held her down on the slab and– Her mind skipped away again. She knew she had to go there. She had to think about it. Tell the Doctor, probably, so somebody else could know. He knew already, but not the details, and the details mattered.

No. This was not how Clara Oswald dealt with things. Clara Oswald got on with it.

The next day or so she spent on the TARDIS, in the vortex, not in her own timeline. More physical healing, gentle exercise walking the corridors, as recommended by the Doctor. She was shaky for the first day of that, not that she admitted this, but then she woke up from a night of fitful sleep feeling like herself again. She went to the gym the TARDIS had constructed for her and ran on the treadmill. It felt good to be moving again, good to be sweating, but the course was boring. She was bored. She needed to get outside and do things.

She marched to the console room afterwards and proclaimed herself ready to see some more planets. The Doctor eyed her sidelong, with his forefinger curled over his mouth, but he did not contradict her. He offered her a choice of nebulas, pulling the viewscreen around to her with a flourish. She picked the Horsehead gleefully.

“Ha! Good choice. A sculptor is missing. Her three-dimensional touch sculptures are the talk of the nebula in its 37th century, but she’s vanished, along with her masterpiece. Shall we find her?”

“Let’s shall!”

And so they did. The next few places they visited were on the high-tech, highly-civilized end of the range, with problems that they solved through cleverness or negotiations at parties. No running, no being locked up in prisons, no dangers at all. Completely safe, and completely boring.

“I know what you’re up to,” she said to him, as they Charleston-ed their way through a fancy dress ball.

“Oh? What am I up to?”

“Keeping me safe.”

“Am I?” Said vaguely, as he glanced back over his shoulder to spot their host, the man with the artifact that was making him most distressed. The one they had to quietly relieve him of.

“You are. And you don’t have to. I’m over it.”

“You might not be the only one with issues to recover from,” he said, and let go of her to do the hands on knees part. Clara mirrored him. Lindy hops had never been her favorite, but it was worth it to see the stick insect wobble his knees around. He was disturbingly good at it for a man who ran like he had no shoulders.

They had made their way to the back of the room, and next they had to sneak down the staircase, into the vault, so Clara let it drop.

But he’d heard her message, and their next jaunt put them in more interesting territory: alien interference, a propped-up despot, and future technology that shouldn’t be in the hands of somebody quite that unethical. They had made their way deep into the despot’s fortress when they were, as usual, captured. The Doctor rolled his eyes at Clara, and she rolled her eyes back. The plan was so obvious they didn’t bother talking about it: be dragged before the despot, talk fast while thinking faster, and improvise.

But that was not what the guard with the shock pistol had in mind. He waggled it at them and directed them downward, down and down a spiral staircase, to a dank cell with bars and a suspicious drain in the floor.

Clara’s breathing went strange. Beyond strange. Her vision was narrowed down. The guard. The manacles on the wall. The pile of straw underneath. Manacles. Dark-stained wood, blood, a pit.

Manacles. He was going to chain her up.

Clara kicked the guard in the crotch. She went for baton hanging from his belt. Got it. Swung it. Once, twice. And then the Doctor was between them, hands raised.

Clara dropped the baton. She covered her mouth with her hand. The guard was unconscious. Worse: his face was a mass of blood. The Doctor tipped him over onto his side and checked his airways; blood was running freely from his smashed mouth and his nose.

“Let’s run,” he said, and they ran back up the stairs, and they got back to the TARDIS, and they shut the door behind themselves.

Safely in the vortex, far away from that place in space and in time, Clara found herself dizzy. Breathing oddly. The guard’s blood had spattered on the white sleeves of her shirt. She sat in the Doctor’s chair and stared at it. Blood stains. She’d hit him. Over and over.

The Doctor perched himself on the arm of the chair beside her, and touched her arm. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to.

“That wasn’t good,” Clara said.

“No.”

“I freaked out. I completely freaked out. I–”

“I know.”

He was silent for a while. His hand rested on her arm still. This level of contact with him would have surprised her once, but he’d been unusually tactile with her in the last few weeks. Since, since– Clara shook herself a little bit.

The Doctor gazed at her sidelong. The weight of that gaze made her feel uncomfortable. It was too knowing. Too aware. He knew what was wrong. She wasn’t going to be able to lie to him about this. Not after doing that to the guard.

Eventually he spoke. “There’s something I’d like to do for you.”

“What?”

“I would like to help you sort through what happened that day.”

Clara shook her head. “I can’t talk about it.” Couldn’t even think about it straight on.

“You don’t need to. I can–” He pointed to his head, then gestured toward her temple. “We can join minds.”

Clara stared, then remembered. “You’re a telepath. You said once. Previous you.”

“Not a very good one, but good enough for this.”

Quiet between them for a little bit. She’d hit the guard. Beaten the guard. She might have killed him, if the Doctor hadn’t stopped her. He probably hadn’t been on their side, but he hadn’t deserved that. She’d been back there, on the mountaintop, and she hadn’t been in control of herself.

That couldn’t happen again.

“Okay,” she said.

He stretched out his hand for hers. She took it, as she had so many times before. Cool dry fingers, slim, squeezing her tight for an instant. Then he drew her up the console steps, toward the deeper parts of the ship. His thumb caressed the back of her hand. So tender he was. He wouldn’t be after this. After he knew everything.

He led her to the library, to a comfortable broad couch where they could sit close enough to each other to get the physical contact he needed. They sat facing each other, crosslegged. The Doctor took her hands in his. He leaned toward her and touched his forehead to hers.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

Clara closed her eyes.

He was there, a presence just outside her mind. She had a impression of him knocking, politely, and waiting for her express invitation to enter. Come in, she said, and held out a hand. He took her hand and then he was there, with her. His mind was with hers, and he was all around her. He greeted her and she could hear him and feel him.

Will you show me what happened?

She was afraid to. Afraid he would think less of her.

His reply was to open himself to her and show her what he felt for her: Fierce tenderness. Absolute devotion. If she had ever had cause to doubt the strength of his regard for her, she would never doubt it again. It was there in a more confused state in his earlier self, the chinny floppy-haired self, but in this self it was written on his hearts with fire. His metaphor for it, she saw.

Nothing she showed him could shake that regard.

Not even–

Not even that. Never that.

“Shall we go?” he said, in her mind. Clara nodded.

He took her hand and they walked into the temple together. Her memories were there, but as if they were in a holocube, a movie she was watching happen to someone else. His doing, his mind helping her keep some distance from that day. The temple: there it was again, the huge pillars flanking the wide doors, the ceiling vanishing into darkness high overhead, the smell of smoke and strange herbs burning. The brightly-dyed feather robes of the Illiturian king, the honor guard of soldiers in dark leather flanking him, the shy girl with the diadem who was the high king’s daughter.

Clara had smiled at her, and the girl had taken her hand. They’d talked while the Doctor made friends with the king, and when the girl had wanted to lead her away to show her the secrets of the palace, Clara had readily agreed. The Doctor had said these people were friendly, and they seemed friendly. They had been friendly right up until the moment three axe-wielding soldiers had marched in and seized her.

Clara opened her eyes. The memory receded. She was in the TARDIS library, sitting on a couch with the Doctor before her, holding her hands. His mind was still with hers, a living warm thing like his body was, oddly comforting.

“You didn’t show up when they took me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the danger. I thought you were safe with the princess.”

“I know. She sold me out. She was one of them. You couldn’t have known. To be honest–” She laughed for a moment, bitterly. “You figured it out faster than I thought you would.”

“They kept saying the wrong things to me. The questions were off. Then I asked about the flower festival, and the answers were definitely wrong. I knew right then that these people had conquered the Illiturians. The king was a captive. They were using the temple for their own purposes.”

“The mountain was important to them for different reasons,” Clara said. Her jaw hurt from clenching her teeth.

“Yes. They tried to capture me and take the TARDIS. And then I realized you’d been gone far too long.”

“Yeah.”

The Doctor touched his forehead to hers, and she felt the gentle suggestion that they go back in. Clara sighed, but led them back down into that room, with the axe men and the oddly triumphant girl.

“I’ve found a sacrifice for you,” she’d said. “This one has the power to feed our god, so much power.”

The axemen had been pleased.

They seized Clara and tried to drag her away. Captured. Carried off. She fought, of course. She did not go willingly. She even managed to take one of them down with a broken arm; those classes in tae-kwon-do had been effective. But one of them shouted, and more of the men came into the room, and she was grasped from behind.

“The sacrifice is feisty. Bran likes feisty.”

Clara twisted free and launched a kick, but the man who grabbed her laughed. He simply backhanded her. Clara went over hard and when she came up she was dizzy. Her cheek was bleeding but she could barely feel it. Adrenaline; fury. The righteous certainty that the Doctor was going to kick them to the curb. If only he came. Which he would. All she had to do was make enough noise.

When they gagged her, she did her best to struggle and kick. So they bound her hand and foot to a pole and carried her out the back of the temple, through the sacred grounds, to a path that wound up the mountain to the place holy to their god.

It was uncomfortable and her face had begun to sting, but she was even then more angry than afraid, such was her faith in the Doctor. And then they reached the holy place at the top, the place of sacrifice to the sun god. The place where they sacrificed the powerful, the ones who were special, the ones with the blood the god liked.

Bran was there, waiting for them, in the black leather of the axemen. He wore a flower crown, so bright and pretty, and he looked noble, with fair hair flowing in the wind. Clara had felt hope for a moment, absurd hope, to see a man so upright, so handsome, smiling at her. He undid her bonds. Clara rubbed at her wrists and sat up. She was on something that looked like an altar, set before a great fissure in the rock. Over the altar was a post with manacles dangling down. The wood of the post was stained with something dark. Around the fissure: bones. Human bones. Clara swallowed, and looked up at Bran’s handsome face, his blue eyes.

“The god of the mountain will be so very pleased by your blood,” he said, still smiling. “So much power in it. So many strange places you have been. So much you have seen. It is an honor. It will be an honor to send you to him.”

And he smiled, showing off his white teeth in a fair face.

“There are no such things as gods,” Clara said, thinking back to the god who ate memories. “Just stories you tell yourself. Excuses you make for your evil.”

“Oh, my god exists. I have seen his face and been suffered to live.”

“Yeah? Show me. Let me talk to him.”

Bran smiled. “You will. But first, you will lure him to us. Your blood will call him. Your suffering will be sweet smoke in his nostrils.”

Even then Clara hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t thought it would happen. She’d laughed and waited for that sound, the sound that meant the Doctor had her back, as he always did. But she didn’t hear it, and they chained her down on the slab, and Bran ripped off her skirt with his own hands. The first moment of real fear came then. Bran climbed on top of her and–

She was back in the library, her hands clutching the Doctor’s so hard her knuckles were white. He said nothing, but sat with her quietly, holding her. Present in mind and body, with that affection unwavering, flowing all around her. His mind, linked to hers. Clara looked at him. Blue eyes, red rimmed, but resolute.

“Stay with it, Clara,” he said. “Just once. That’s all I ask of you. Once.”

Clara gritted her teeth. The only way out was through.

It had hurt. Bran hadn’t cared that it hurt, of course. He’d just climbed onto her and penetrated her and rutted until he was done. And then Clara had laughed at him. “Is that all?” she’d said. “An inexperienced boy. Tiny. Finished in a minute, leaving his woman unsatisfied. Are there any men here among the boys?”

The man who’d knocked her to the ground back in the palace strode forward. He laughed and said something to Bran that made him scowl. Then he shoved Bran aside and took his place on top of her. It went on for a while this time, while Clara ground out insults. That was a mistake, because he beat her with his fists when he was finished.

The next man had a whip. The fourth had a knife and had wanted her chained to the post before he used it. Then something had happened, someone had arrived shouting something that excited them, and they swore and laughed. The entire troop marched back down the road. They’d left her there, chained up by her arms, bleeding into the pit, slowly asphyxiating. She had known she was going to die.

Clara came out of the memory again. The Doctor was still there, still holding her hands, not flinching away.

“That’s when you came,” she said, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “You came.”

“Oh, Clara, Clara, my Clara. How brave and clever you are. You bought me the time I needed to find you.”

She had lived. She was alive. With that realization she burst into tears. He pulled her into his lap and held onto her. No flinching away, no spluttering about human emotions. He just held her while she cried.

Afterward, the Doctor gave her water to drink and a wet cloth for her face. She wiped at her eyes. They felt raw. Her whole body felt raw, except for the places where he was near. And he was near her still, a hand on her arm, her shoulder. Touching her so much more than he ever had. His mind was still there as well, hovering close. It was the strangest sensation, but Clara found it comforting.

He kissed her forehead again. She breathed in a long shaky breath and let it out again.

“That’s what happened,” she said. “I was stalling for time.”

“My clever Clara.”

“It was obvious how it was going to end. The stake. The blood. The pile of bones under the altar, around the hole. I thought if I could keep them distracted you would–”

“It worked.”

“I feel dirty.”

“You are not dirty. They were. They were evil.”

“They got away with it. They did it. To how many people? So many bones. And they walked away afterward.”

“They did not get away with it.”

“What?”

“They’re dead.”

“All of them?”

“I may have gone into a towering rage after I got you into the TARDIS.” He was looking down at his hands, clasped over hers.

“How?”

“The temple collapsed on them when I killed the alien at the heart of the mountain. Unavoidable accident. Couldn’t be helped.”

His voice was odd. Clara understood what he could never say, would never say. She ought to have felt something more about that, some sort of regret because killing anybody, even people who would torture somebody as a sacrifice to a blood god, was wrong, she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but relief.

“Could you show me?”

And so he did. He led her into his own memories and showed her how he’d destroyed the temple, using Bran’s greed to lure him in and then unleashing a tiny part of the TARDIS’s energy to destroy the pillars. They all died there, and the Doctor had stood over the ruin of the temple and smiled. And then he’d run back into the TARDIS and wept over her still form in the medical bed, under the bubble. His guilt had almost overwhelmed him. Almost. He’d kept himself focused on her recovery almost monomaniacally.

“I feel– conflicted.”

An unusual thing for him to say, anything about his feelings, but Clara was linked with him and knew it. He had feelings, many of them, some quite strong, some she was aware he was shielding from her. But that was okay. There were things they both had to keep private. How they felt about each other, what they wanted when they were alone at night, what they were scared of. But this he let her see: that it wasn’t the first time he’d killed sentient beings on purpose; that it wouldn’t be the last; that he regretted it even when he felt it was the only way to prevent more death. That he knew there’d be an accounting some day, and his judgment would itself be judged.

“Thank you,” she said. “It helps to know they can’t ever find me again.”

He sighed out and kissed her forehead yet again, lingering this time. When he pulled away from her the touch of his mind was gone. He had withdrawn. But Clara knew now, knew what he felt, would always know what he felt. And he had been right: she felt better. Not good, but better. She gone through it once, she’d told him. She didn’t have to do it again, at least not like that.

“Come along, Clara,” he said. “Let’s go look at some stars being born.”

Things to remember, a partial list

2015-12-06T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor walks into his TARDIS. He remembers this, his home. It’s as he left it– no, not quite. The chalkboard, the jacket, the painting on the side. Not as it was. It is time to apply himself to the problem before him, and do it properly. Time to take stock. Time to nail down what remains in his memory and ensure he loses nothing more.

First thing to remember: the message on his chalkboard.

Run you clever boy and be a doctor

This message was left by Clara, the Clara whom he could not remember, whose shape and existence and personality he must deduce from the holes left behind in him. She tried to erase herself from his TARDIS before she returned it to him, but the traces are still there, in the places she had to wipe. In this message, and in the red velvet coat she left for him. The coat he knows, somehow, she liked.

Be a Doctor. He puts the coat on, shoots his cuffs, adjusts the coat until everything is just so. The TARDIS feels the change, responds. She gives him a gift: a new sonic. It feels right in his hand, just heavy enough, in tune with his mind already. Blue lights ripple around it.

He is now a Doctor.

The second thing to remember is what being a Doctor means. It means figuring the puzzle out. It means defeating the puzzle. It means winning. “Tell me, teach,” he hears himself say, “what does winning mean here?”

Why did he say that to himself? What does it mean? Who is the teacher?

The third thing to remember is that he is not an idiot. He has a perfectly functioning mind, if not a perfectly functioning memory, and he knows the sound of an early-model TARDIS when he hears one. He knows he was rescued and then left with his own TARDIS by a woman who understood more of his circumstances than a mere stranger would. Therefore, she is involved.

Commit her face to memory. Better: commit her face to paper. And do it now, before it slides away from him.

The Doctor finds his armchair, his two-thousand year diary, and the gnawed stub of a pencil. He opens the diary, finds the first blank page. He draws. Snub nose, dimples, large eyes, tears on her face as she listens to him. This woman, he is sure, is worth finding again.

He writes down what he can remember of her, of the diner, of the sounds, in his diary in pen, and in two languages just in case. Gallifreyan, his father-tongue, and English, his mother-tongue. Not that anyone but he knows this.

Next. The heart of the puzzle, of course, is his memory. He has been hit with a neural block device. A partially-malfunctioning neural block. The memories are there, but blocked away. Probably. Memory is holistic, holographic. One cannot wipe a specific memory completely without wiping the brain clean. The block will very likely yield to very careful work, if he can figure out exactly what was done to his mind.

No. Wrong verb. What he did to his own mind. He remembers choosing it. He remembers that, if nothing else. The words “I accept this” coming from his mouth.

Accept it? Why? He no longer understands that. He remembers the conviction that this was the only way, that neither one of them would ever give the other up voluntarily, that he was on the brink of destroying the universe to be with this Clara.

Clara. Clara. He needs a last name. UNIT, surely UNIT will help there.

He writes that down.

Fifth. He’s seen that diner before. He’s been in that diner, with Rory and Amy. He summoned them and himself to it, back when he’d been on a mission to avoid death for reasons too complicated and now-irrelevant to discuss. That meant the woman with the TARDIS, the woman who knew more than she ought about his story, was there as well. She was in his past, meddling. Meddling? Helping. Watching him. Because she remembers him. Because she is Clara.

She did not return to Gallifrey to die. She went somewhere else after she left him there in the Nevada desert, standing before his TARDIS. She’s out there, alive.

“Gotcha,” he says.

He closes his diary and stands before the chalkboard. He stares at the handwriting of the woman named Clara, the hole in his life. The woman who has a TARDIS like him. She’s out there; she remembers him; she’s waiting for him.

But this time, he’ll need to be worthy of her.

Teacups

2015-12-05T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor pulled the lever home. Gears spun and slotted into place and the TARDIS lit up. He looked over at Clara, intending to watch her smile up at the spinning rotors in delight as she always did, reveling in the feeling of moving in time. But this time she didn’t look up, didn’t smile. She wrapped her arms around herself, tight, and bit her lip. Something was wrong. He took one step closer to her, touched her shoulder. Clara burst into tears. He stood frozen for a moment– had he upset her? and then he understood. He caught her in his arms, sank down to the console room floor cradling her.

Some things you should never feel good about, and being trapped inside a Dalek casing was one of them, being unable to speak what you were feeling, having every impulse twisted on its way out into hatred and destruction.

Almost being killed by your best friend, because he couldn’t recognize you. That was another.

The Doctor held her and stroked the hair back from her face. A little blood oozed at her temples still, where he’d had to pull the probes free. How had he allowed her to stay injured like this? He touched the earpiece of his glasses and summoned nanobots, healing nanites, everything the TARDIS had on hand. Repair, reknit. Heal the flesh and the bone. The brain tissue. The heart was another task. The mind. The being that remembered.

“I’m okay,” Clara said. “I’m okay.”

“Clara, Clara.”

He slipped the glasses into a jacket pocket. Some things one wanted one’s own eyes for. Seeing sunrises. Seeing the face of your best friend, streaked with tears, but whole, alive. Okay, maybe. Not bleeding any more. Tears dry for the moment.

Clara rubbed her face with her sleeve. “Do you think– could I–?”

“What, Clara?”

“Could we make tea?”

He smiled at her. “Yeah. Tea. Tea would be good.” And he took her hand and led her away from the console room.

Tea in the library, in his favorite nook– her favorite nook– their favorite nook. It was their favorite place to sit and talk or sit and be silent. A plush leather couch, a fireplace with a fire that licked up into being as they approached, a table with a tea service set waiting for them. The TARDIS, doing what she did for them, taking care of them. They would do whatever they needed to do now, sit and drink tea. He poured for them both.

The Doctor wrapped his hands around his teacup and inhaled the scent. “Assam this time,” he said.

“The magic TARDIS teapot. The mad tea party.”

“Hardly. The cups are always clean.”

More nano-technology, or something like it. Something rather beyond it, if he was honest. The history of a species was punctuated by certain specific discoveries that either propelled them forward or destroyed them: how to split the atom, the concept of a generalized computing device, how to assemble new beings using DNA, generalized matter assemblers, how to harness black holes, time travel. The TARDIS was the embodiment of several of the more advanced punctuation marks. Exclamation points, he liked to think of them as. The Time Lords had written a sentence for themselves with all of those punctuation marks. Then they had sat alone at the pinnacle of the universe, at the climax of that sentence for a very long time. Then the Daleks had joined them. Full stop.

The Daleks. Davros. That moment of hell, watching them fire on her. Believing he’d done it, he’d created Davros in a moment of cowardice, and Davros in turn had created them.

She was sitting close up against him, her knee brushing his, and he couldn’t have borne it if she’d kept her distance. He’d do anything to comfort her but stay away. That he couldn’t do. He needed too badly to touch her, to feel the whisper of her mind near his. He’d believed her dead. She’d believed herself doomed to die as a Dalek. She’d thought he was going off willingly to his death. He had been going off willingly. So much guilt. He’d botched it. Muffed it utterly. Seen Davros and run.

Once again Clara had inspired him to find a better way. Over and over, Clara Oswald showed him how to solve the problem with mercy and forgiveness and compassion and– His hearts squeezed in his chest. Love. Love. He buried his face in his teacup as that word came to him, because he wasn’t sure what would escape his mouth if he spoke. Something completely different. Some complaint about her, or about humanity, or about the universe as a whole. Not what he was feeling.

Were there words for what he was feeling? Probably. Three words. Famous ones. Not words he could allow himself to say. They weren’t the words that would come out of his mouth if he thought them anyway. Think of something else. Think of tea. Tea. Tea was comforting.

“Yeah, tea is good,” Clara said.

He’d spoken aloud, apparently. He smiled into his cup, as if he’d meant to speak.

“Do Gallifreyans make tea?”

“Yeah. Every species has tea, or something like tea. Hot water, dried leaves put in to soak. Not all of them sweeten it, but many do. Milk, ah, milk is a more unusual choice. Not even all humans put milk in.” Babble, babble, babble about tea.

“I like it with milk in.”

“I like it with sugar in.”

“Seven lumps. I counted.”

“I metabolize it differently to you.”

“Good thing.”

He did like sweet things. Tea, chocolate, jelly babies, Clara. He looked over at her carefully to be sure he hadn’t said that out loud, but she wasn’t looking at him oddly so he must not have. His cup was empty save for a little bit of sugar-thick tea at the bottom. He tipped it up and drank the last of it. Clara set her own cup down on the tray, and then bent to take her shoes off. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa beside him. He looked at her sidelong. A little blood dried on her temples, a little redness in her eyes– the only signs on the surface that she’d been through something horrible.

And what signs on him? something in him asked. None. Never. Never show weakness. The universe had no patience with his weakness. He was in no position to complain about anything ever, not he, not the man who had the power of universes at his hand. He felt the tears inside, but held onto them.

“Are we doing hugging now?” Clara said, into his silence.

“Yeah, I do that now.” With you, and you alone, he thought, but did not choose to say.

“I mean, can we do hugging now. As in now.”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

He settled them so they were stretched along the couch with her back against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, his arm around her waist. The contact was good. Full-body contact, all his weak telepathic senses engaged. It would be better skin to skin, but he would have difficulty explaining that to her. As it was, this was more contact than he’d had with anybody in this regeneration, and it was enough. Warmth, closeness, grief, fear, affection. So much going on in her. He nuzzled into her hair. Jasmine. She liked jasmine shampoo. She also smelled like ozone and copper and blood and mud. He was as bad. It didn’t matter.

“You’re humming,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s kinda nice.”

“Good, good.”

Her weight felt good against his chest. His arms tucked around her waist perfectly. Such a wee thing, his Clara was. So fragile, so strong, so bright, so dark. He felt fragile when he held her sometimes, as if he were the one in danger. A teacup that could be dropped. He knew it because he’d been dropped before. He was a teacup that had been mended over and over. He wouldn’t break precisely the same way, not on those exact lines, but he would break again when she fell.

The shell of a Dalek cracking open to reveal Clara. The blood on her temples. The pain in her voice when it was hers at last. He’d wanted to weep, right in front of her, kiss her face, mingle his tears with hers. But he hadn’t. He’d held on, got her out, returned her body to herself.

He shuddered.

“Not a good day,” Clara said.

“No.”

“Will you tell me why all that happened?” Clara said. “And where you went after we escaped? How long were you bracing to be captured by Davros?”

He sighed. “A couple of months. I was hiding from it, but I knew I’d have to go eventually.”

“Why?”

So he told her. The whole sorry story, from his initial cowardly flinch, to his return to the battlefield, the word “exterminate” on his lips. He’d created the Daleks, in some sense, created them by refusing to kill their creator, and in that act had given them the idea of mercy, which had in turn allowed Clara to be known to him. His cowardice, his desperation, his whistling in the dark before what he thought to be his most-justified death: all these things he told Clara. He thought he understood the prophecy of the hybrid now, but he kept that locked away, deep down, out of centuries of habit. It had indeed been his fault, and Gallifrey had indeed been in ruins, and he’d made some kind of amends. At least to them.

Or that was a lie too. But he resolutely turned his thoughts away from that, and toward Clara, who was shivering in his arms again, as she once again relived the experience of being trapped inside a Dalek.

“You’re not inside it,” he said. “You’re free. You are yourself.”

“It was horrible. What it does to you, being inside that thing. Everything you feel, perverted. Everything you try to do. Missy knew it. She knew it. She knew what she was doing.”

“The shell is an astonishing piece of technology.” It was the full stop in the Dalek’s story of themselves, the end of their story as whole beings. After that it was another kind of story.

“I was trying to say my name and I couldn’t. Missy made me say I love you and it came out exterminate. She knew. She planned it. She wanted me dead.”

He flinched. If only he were surprised. He could remember a time when it hadn’t been like that. Koschei had been brave; he’d been the timid one. Somewhere along the way he’d found the courage to stand up to them all, and Koschei had found the courage to let what had been inside all along out. It hadn’t been a good idea, had it, for either one of them. Death. So much death. Daleks, Time Lords.

“She was at your wedding. Your stag night. You were friends.”

“He– at the time she was a he– was my best man, yes.”

“I kept wondering why you let her live. Why she would try to rescue you despite being completely insane.”

“It was a deep friendship, once.”

He let his fingers trail down her arm, found the end of her sleeve, and curled his fingers inside it. Touch. Skin on skin. The whisper of her mind came a little clearer. This talking was good. Clara was curious, not angry, feeling more soothed than she had been.

“It still is,” Clara said. “You gave her your confession dial.”

“She’s the only Timelord left, besides me. There are things in it that only a Timelord can act on.” Things only a Timelord would understand; things only his childhood friend would understand. He loved Clara, but she could not do those things for him.

“I get that. I do. But it hurt.”

Her voice was so matter-of-fact, as if the pain of that hadn’t mattered much, and she was simply reporting from a distance. But he knew better. He was touching her and he felt the pain. “I’m sorry.”

“She rubbed my face in it, called me a puppy. So far below you that you think of me like a pet.”

“A pet? I–” It was so absurd an idea that it skittered around his in his head like a blob of quicksilver flitting across the floor. Then he got some purchase on it. “She’s jealous.”

“Of me? But we aren’t–”

“Our friendship. She sees what our friendship is.”

A friendship close enough that they could lie here spooned up together, talking, in perfect harmony. Or as close to perfect harmony as any two minds could reach. He could feel the pulse of her thoughts next to him, and it was as close to safety as he could ever feel.

He said, “She knows how I feel, and she can’t bear– She’s lost me to you. She daren’t kill you herself, but she tried to lure me into killing you.”

“Does she think it would break you? Make you turn to her?”

“Never,” he said. “I would never.”

His voice was not right. His hearts were not right. The idea of it– it undid him. Her death would break him. Utterly break him. He had nearly broken today. There were tears in his eyes that he was grateful Clara couldn’t see. He buried his face in her hair and tried to get control of himself. Emotions, so many emotions. This regeneration they were all so fierce, so close to the surface, so inexpressible. He never had the right words for them. Showing them felt shameful for reasons he was no longer sure about. Clara showed hers, didn’t she? She cried.

“Clara,” he said. It was the only word that got anywhere near what he felt.

“Are you okay?”

So much went through him in that moment: he was in the TARDIS; he had tea; he was holding Clara. Of course he was okay. If anyone had asked him what he wanted most, what a perfect moment was, it would be this. He was okay. Except he wasn’t and she wasn’t and it couldn’t go on like this. He couldn’t pretend anything any more, couldn’t simply send them off to their next planet. Not after this. He wanted time to think, time to hold her, time never to let go.

What came out of his mouth was a half-slurred half-keened out plea to the universe in Gallifreyan to never take her from him, to grant him his heart’s desire this once.

“What–” she said, and she was pulling away from him, breaking the loose threads that wound her mind with his. He grasped after her. She turned and sat up and took his hands in hers. She was with him again, thready and distant but there brushing up against his mind. “What was that?”

“I wasn’t expecting to live,” he said. “I failed the universe. I failed. And then you came and I wanted to live again and then–”

“What?”

“I saw them shoot you.”

“They did. Missy had a plan. She even explained it to me.”

He smiled through his bitterness. Of course she’d had a plan. Shot by Daleks on Skaro was no way for Koschei to go. It would take nothing less than the destruction of the universe to end her. He ought to have known; he ought to have braced himself; he ought not to have become as desperate as he did. Or perhaps she would allow herself to be killed by his hand and no other, knowing that the next thing he would do was end himself.

He shuddered from head to toe. That would have been what he’d done, if she’d– if he’d– He lunged forward and got his arms around Clara’s waist and buried his face against her breasts. She made a sound of surprise and then she was holding him tight, pulling him even closer. He breathed. The shreds of his self-control were somewhere.

“You,” Clara said, “are even more of a basket case than I am, and I am a wreck.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re okay. We’ll be okay. We made it.”

He shook his head. Survival, yes. The universe spun on as it had, all its shattered pieces fitting together in his head once more. He wasn’t sure if he’d created Davros. Probably he hadn’t created Davros. Probably he’d helped the universe by softening Davros. He couldn’t have killed him. Not after that. Never. Mercy, forgiveness, love. The things Clara gave him daily, what he owed the universe. Koschei, even Davros. Fixed points didn’t matter here. He couldn’t have done it. Even when he’d been frozen in horror those first seconds, recognizing the boy for who he’d become, he hadn’t been able to do it. He couldn’t have gone back there, even, without knowing that he must to save Clara.

He always had saved her. Always had, always would, because the Daleks had always known mercy.

Time time time time– time was a twisty looping tangled thing. Sometimes he thought of it as string, looped around on itself, passing through itself. Not a thing you could push, but sometimes you could tug on it. He was the string, wound through reality, the fabric of time and space, an eternal golden braid of paradox.

“A Gordian knot,” he said.

“What is?”

“Time. To me. A tangle. Could sort it out. Not worth it most of the time.”

“It’s like you to chop through things. You don’t do subtle.”

“I can do subtle!”

“Says the man who rode into a medieval arena on a tank playing guitar.”

He laughed, and she did too. He shifted himself, relaxed his hold on her and stretched out his legs. “Admit it, you were impressed.”

“Depends on what you mean by impressed.”

“You didn’t know I could do that.”

“Didn’t know it was the kind of thing you did.”

“I can still surprise you after all this time.”

“The hug surprised me. This hug right now surprises me.”

“I’m not letting go of you ever again,” he said.

“Not even if I have to go to the loo?”

“Perhaps then. Briefly.”

She laughed. Her fingers moved in his hair. She said, “Do you ever want to hide in your TARDIS for a week? Find some safe spot and just do nothing?”

“Often. I do it whenever I need to. Park it, sit on the roof, play my guitar at the stars. Or I go the other way round, hide here in the library in drink tea.”

“Like we’re doing now.”

“Yes.”

“Can I hide with you?”

He clasped her tighter. “Oh, Clara. Always.”

She made a thoughtful sound over him. She was still stroking his hair. He hoped she would never stop. Then she said, “Tea. We’ll need more tea.”

“The TARDIS has all the tea there ever was.”

“More tea now?” Her voice was plaintive, and he could not resist it. He disentangled himself from her, reluctantly, let the warmth of her mind slip away from him. He sat up and prodded the teapot. There was more inside, of course, and it was hot. He poured. Her cup, room for milk; his cup, all the way up. Lumps in, teaspoon spun round. He tasted.

“Darjeeling this time,” he told her. “No milk for you.”

“Earth tea. Always with the earth tea.”

He shrugged. “It’s where I’ve been getting my tea recently.”

“Any biscuits?”

“Chocolate ones, I think.” He pulled open a drawer in the table and found a packet. Clara took one. A dunker, that Clara was. He preferred to alternate biscuit with tea. Or simply to eat the biscuit and then have another.

Clara scooted over next to him on the couch. He set his teacup down and slipped an arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. He closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind re-establish its contact with her. Just the barest touch, not enough to read her in any way she’d object to, barely enough to feel her present with him. He ought to confess this to her. He would, eventually. It had only started that day when they’d reunited, Christmas day. He knew why but was not yet ready to face it yet. No matter. Hold her, feel her near him, protect her from the universe.

“You’re humming again,” Clara said.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s nice. You hum when you hug, I guess.”

He supposed he did. It was an odd thing, this regeneration. He hadn’t played an instrument in a very long time, but now he had music in his head all the time. Always a thread of something going. It had taken him a while to figure out what it was, though. Longer than usual this time, settling into his new skin. His new senses. Now he was comfortable in himself, comfortable with his foibles. Comfortable with Clara, who was the first face he’d seen, and who was therefore precious. She’d never know, if he could help it, exactly how much he was wrapped around her little finger. Koschei had had him right. Not that it mattered. She deserved it.

Clara shifted in his arms, stretched, yawned. “I’m tired. Long day. Days. I have no idea how long it was.”

He consulted his inner senses, did the arithmetic. “A day and a half, all told.”

“No wonder. I’ll find where she’s put my room this time and take a nap.”

She tried to stand up but he clasped his arms tighter around her. “Clara. Ah. We can nap here. The couch is big enough.”

He braced himself for her reaction, for rejection, for some comment about him sleeping for once. But Clara didn’t say anything at all, just nodded and gave him a little smile. He returned it.

“Are you going to take off any of those layers?”

He shook his head. Clara huffed at him.

“You’re losing the jacket. And the boots. Three weeks in a medieval castle? You’re losing those boots.”

He grumbled, but took the jacket off obediently, folded it, and laid it over the arm of the chair. Clara unlaced his boots, left, right. Tugged at the right until he cooperated and pointed his foot. It slid off and she tossed it aside. The other boot followed. He pulled the afghan from the back of the couch. It had been knitted by Ace, years ago, when she’d had a phase of trying to learn traditionally feminine crafts. The phase had been followed by trebuchet-building. He’d enjoyed the trebuchets. He’d also enjoyed the crocheting. His own quilt was somewhere in the library, on an armchair. It was rather messy and haphazard. This one was Ace’s, though, all green and white with black bits in. Slytherin colors, Clara had said once. She would probably have been sorted into Slytherin. He, of course, was Ravenclaw, no matter what Clara said.

Quilt spread over them. The Doctor made sure to cover Clara’s feet. He tucked himself up behind her, arm over her waist. Perfect. He’d been awake for three weeks. Longer. He would sleep now, let himself drift, let his mind do what it needed to do with what it had experienced over the last while. He would, perhaps, share dreams with Clara.

“Sleep,” he said. “I’m here.”

Storytelling

2015-10-30T12:00:00+00:00

When Malcolm woke, Clara was again already up, already dressed. He was alone in the warm bed. He could still smell her perfume on the pillow. Oh, sweet scent. Clara’s scent. He dragged himself out of bed; he’d have cheerfully spent the entire day unconscious. Off to shower, shave, and dress. He studied his face in the bathroom mirror as he lathered himself up. Gray stubble on his chin, hair sticking up every which way, but his eyes looked fucking strange. His jaw wasn’t clenched either. He felt happy, that’s what he felt. Around his neck, dark and heavy, was the leather braid. He touched the medallion, flipped it so her name was against his skin and the word owned was facing out. His arse and thighs were bruised from what they’d done two nights before, when he’d– when he’d made a tit of himself about things a grown man ought to have moved past. When he’d told her stories about himself, his childhood.

When would she want to try that business again? He had to be ready for it when she wanted it. It was what the necklace meant. He had to do whatever she wanted. It was how he proved it. He didn’t much want to yet. The thought of it made his jaw tighten.

He set that aside and went back out to her. She was on the couch now, that monstrous novel in her hands once more. She was turning pages faster than he expected. Her eyes flicked around the pages. Fast reader. Fast thinker. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. Sometimes she smiled at what was on the page before her. Mostly she seemed completely absorbed in something he couldn’t imagine. He watched until she noticed him and looked up. A smile on her face at the sight of him. His heart ached in that sweet pleasant way it had been aching: painful yet somehow wonderful.

She glanced up, saw him, and smiled. He went to her, bent down, kissed her forehead.

“Plans for me, you said.”

“Yeah. Thought we’d have a wander if you were in the mood.”

Malcolm noted she was wearing trainers and leggings. He liked the short skirts better, but the leggings were fine by him too. Anything she wore. Anything she wanted to do. She was in charge of his holiday. So far he had to admit she’d done well. Food, wine, sex, and her name on a medallion around his neck. He wouldn’t tell anybody that version of the story of this holiday, not while in his right mind, but it had happened and he was in a state of grace.

So they went for a walk, all the way into the city proper this time, hand in hand, taking their time. Lunch at a cafe with a view of a city square, lingering over coffee afterward, a pastry that Clara swore she shouldn’t eat but Malcolm ordered for her anyway in schoolboy French that he desperately hoped Clara wasn’t laughing at. She ate it and he stole part of it and licked his fingers to get all the sticky sauce. He wished he could lick her lips, and told her so.

Afterwards they wandered back into the vineyards behind their house, back into the countryside along paths made for the likes of them. Lovers on holiday, with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, no deadlines, no phones, no sense of time passing. They wandered and came to rest on a log, at the top of a hill, in the winter sunshine. Clara stretched out and turned her face up into the sunlight, eyes closed. Malcolm let himself look at her. Tiny Clara Oswald. Fucking gorgeous Clara Oswald. Fucking frighteningly intelligent Clara Oswald. Screaming genius, according to Tom, who never liked a single analysis document she wrote for him, but couldn’t sack her because it was impossible to argue with them. And if she was writing for the opposition instead of him, how fucked would the Party be? So very fucked. What the fuck was she doing with Malcolm Tucker? Why did she care for him? Would he ever understand? Did it matter?

“So,” he said. He shifted his accent southward, toward the cadences of a TV personality he loathed more than the usual. “Clara Oswald, economic policy wonk for Labour, caught sitting on a hill with Party terrorist Malcolm the Fucker Tucker. What brings you to the south of France in the off season?”

“Thanks for asking, Gavin. I’m on holiday with my boyfriend.”

Malcolm felt a little twinge in his chest at that word, a little squeak of pleasure. He lifted one corner of his mouth and shifted forward on the log.

“And what are you hoping to do on holiday?”

Clara touched a finger to her chin, the perfect picture of a politician pretending to be thoughtful mid-interview. Well-coached, that one. “Hmm, good question there, Gavin. I was hoping to eat too much good food, catch up on some reading, and have a lot of sex.”

“Sounds like heaven, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I think so. And you?” She mimed holding a microphone at him, and her accent had likewise shifted. He let himself go full Weegie to match.

“Kippin’ and fuckin’ by turns. Sleep, wake, morning fuck. Nap, wake, evening fuck. Repeat until they haul me back to fucking London greetin’ the whole way.”

“And with whom will you be having all this lovely sex?”

“Brought my mistress with me. Thought if I went down on my knees and begged, she might agree to my plan.”

“Your mistress, eh? Not your girlfriend?”

Malcolm shrugged. “She ties me up, so I call her whatever she wants me to.”

“I think she’d prefer to be called your girlfriend.” And there Clara was back to her own accent, the Blackpool that she used when she wasn’t in the office fencing with the toffs.

“That’s what she is, then my girlfriend.” He touched his chest, where the medallion rested. Owned, he was owned, and whatever she had him call her, it was true. But it was more complicated than that, okay, fine, she wanted to be his girlfriend too. He was more than good with that. Girlfriend. He tried the word out again.

“Girlfriend,” he said, again. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be your boyfriend.”

She pulled him down into a kiss that he was more than happy to yield to. Sweetness on her lips, her perfume, her hand on his chest, his hands sliding around her back. Nice. Lazy kisses, no urgency behind them, satisfied contented kisses, there on the log in the afternoon sunshine, under a tree, looking down at vineyards. He was happy, that’s what he was. Fucked as he was in the head, he was happy.

“Never imagined this,” he said. “All the time I wanted what we’ve been doing, never imagined it would feel like this.”

“How does it feel?”

“Good. And it’s not just the sex, though that’s far more fun than I’d thought it would be. I never thought being tied up for real would be better than thinking about it and wanking.”

“When did you figure out you liked bondage?”

“Fucked if I have any idea. The moment I knew it was possible I knew it was what I wanted. Got so fucking hard, it was like I’d never been turned on before. Thought I was going to come just from thinking about it.”

“You ever do anything with anybody at all before me?”

Malcolm shook his head. “Used to pretend I was tied up. Lie on me back, reach up, hold the headboard, not move my hands. Like you had me do this morning. Suggested it to a woman once– was serious about her at the time. She fucking laughed. Thought I wanted to tie her up. Couldn’t bring myself to set her straight.”

“Ouch.”

“Had to break up with her, because it like fucking lead in my stomach afterward, thinking about that laugh.”

“Yeah. I know that feeling.”

“You? When’d you figure it out?”

“Like you. As soon as I knew it was possible, but the other way around. Didn’t meet anybody else who was interested until uni.”

“How many other men have you done this with?”

“Lots.” She brushed her hair away from her face. “That sounded a lot worse than I meant.”

He smiled down at her. “Didn’t think I was your first. Just wondering how you learned how to do it.”

“Took some classes. With partners. Oh, don’t look like that. It won’t be in the papers tomorrow that Malcolm Tucker is dating a women who took a class in advanced flogging techniques at the age of twenty-one.”

“You taking the piss? That exists?”

“No, not exactly. But I did go to a workshop on it. And no, nobody took my name down, and I had purple hair at the time.”

“Fuck me, purple hair?”

“It was a phase.” She grinned in a way that told him that she’d liked the phase.

“I’d like to see their faces if you tried it now.”

“Can’t do it and stay in politics,” Clara said. “Not in the dress code.”

Malcolm laughed. Clara with purple hair. Punky Clara in a leather jacket, with a nose ring, that discreet piercing at the top of her ear a recent thing. He would chase that, skirt or no. He would have fallen for Clara at any age. Something about her, the take-charge nature, the sheer brains, the complete contempt she had for idiocy. He’d have fallen for her any time he met her.

He smiled at her like the simpleton he was. He was wearing her necklace. He’d told her he loved her. She’d kissed him in response. Hadn’t said it, but he was patient. She wouldn’t have given that tag to any man. Just him. Only him. Oh, fuck him, but he was gone.

“Flogging,” he said. “You took a workshop on flogging.” His stomach got a little odd when he said that word. Desire and fear and a sick feeling, all at once.

“Yeah. Hey. Need to tell you something. It’s going to be a little while before I’m ready to do that again. I messed it up. Until I am sure I won’t mess it up again, I’m going to take a break.” She paused. “I hope that’s okay.”

Malcolm looked at the ground at his feet rather than her. He ran his tongue over his lips. Okay? Yes. No. That was what he’d wanted to hear, yes, but he’d messed it up, not her. “It’s okay, love. You didn’t set out to do it.”

“Yeah, but it happened anyway. While I had you in bondage. That means it’s on me.”

“Rules?”

“Sort of. It’s a responsibility. You hand yourself over to me, I have to take care of you. It’s the promise I make you.”

“No, was on me. I didn’t tell you.”

Clara shook her head. “Would you ever have told me that?”

He frowned, shook his head. “Didn’t remember it. Not strictly. Can’t fucking describe it. Never forgot it, not really, but ask me about growing up and I’d have told a hundred other stories. About being poor, mostly.”

“Deep things come up sometimes, when it gets intense.”

“You said that to me once. Had no idea what you were talking about. Fucking sex. I thought it was going to be just sex, you and me.”

“I did too. But–” She took his hand and squeezed it. Malcolm squeezed back and laced his fingers through hers. There was that feeling in his chest again. He’d been feeling it for days and days. Madness, almost, longing that he almost couldn’t bear, longing that eased only when he had his arms around her.

“Anyway, the deal is that you have to tell me things like that. Or it isn’t right. I need to know how you might react. So we need to get to a place where we talk. Properly.”

“Properly,” he said. He wasn’t sure what the fuck that meant.

“Properly. That means we agree what I’m going to do, and you know what it’s going to involve, and you tell me if any of it makes you uncomfortable. But first we take a little break to reset.”

He swallowed. Yes good, no awful. He wanted her. He wanted her right now, though his middle-aged body probably couldn’t manage it. He wanted to take her in the night, after dinner and a glass of wine, tumbling into bed, kicking off shoes, laughing. Was she saying she didn’t want him? “If I asked, if we wanted– no making love at all?”

She laughed and tightened her hand in his. “We can make love all we want. So odd to hear you put it that way instead of saying fucking or something even worse.”

“Making love,” Malcolm said, drawling it out. “Embracing you. Being one with you.”

“Where is Malcolm and what have you done with him?”

“Malcolm Tucker has left the building. He’s climbed the tree and found a new leaf.”

Temporize. Distract. Malcolm scrambled off the log and onto his knees. He found a leaf in the litter and mould beside the log and held it up. No idea what sort of leaf it was, or from what sort of tree. The tree they were underneath, probably, whatever that was. He’d been raised in a city. Green leaf, perfectly lovely leaf. He held it up to her.

“See this? My new leaf. I’m going to read the leaf, tell my future. This fucking line here? That’s the heart line. Means I’m in love with somebody. This spiky bit here? Says the woman who’s fucked off with my heart is named Clara.”

“Is that so.” She was smiling at him and it was the most gorgeous sight.

“This bit here where it’s been chewed through by something? The most obscene thing ever seen on a leaf. Means we’re going to screw like rabbits tonight.”

Clara began giggling.

“Yeah, you think that’s funny? Won’t be laughing tonight when the leaf prophecy comes true. You’ll be moaning, not laughing. Begging to the leaf gods for more holes. Yeah, you’ll see. I’m fucking right.”

She was choking with laughter now and her dimples were showing. Malcolm couldn’t look away. How the fuck had the universe colluded to give her everything? Brains, doe eyes, dimples, a body that made him weak in the head. Oh he was so fucking gone. Had been since the moment he’d listened to her very quietly taking the hide off Tom for his austerity claims. Oh, Clara, Clara.

“Malcolm, you lunatic, you are utter barking mad. Malc–” Suddenly she was serious again, gazing at him with those big eyes, so huge, swimming with something. Malcolm held her gaze, tried to remember to breathe. Her hand came to rest on his chest again, right over where the pendant lay. She said, “I don’t want to mess this up. Us. This thing we have going. That’s why I want us to hold off for a bit. Is that okay with you?”

He looked down at her hand, thought about the necklace he wore and wouldn’t be taking off, no fucking chance of it. Thought about how tense he’d felt at the idea of being tied up again. Thought about patience. About how kissing her was as good as kissing anybody had ever been.

“I’m okay. Relieved. You got me right on that. The idea of it made me– Yeah.”

“You need to tell me things like that.”

Malcolm cradled his hand over hers. “Felt like shit for not wanting it.”

“Remember what I said. I’m not here just for the sex. I’m here for you.”

“Okay.” He thought about telling her he loved her again, but something held him back from it. She hadn’t said it to him. He didn’t want to say it and then have another awkward moment waiting to hear it back. She’d say it when she felt it. She would. He didn’t need to sound needy by begging her for it. But fuck him, he wanted to hear it. Wanted it so badly in that moment his heart hurt.

He didn’t want to sit there any more. Wanted to get back to the house. He felt tired again for reasons he couldn’t fathom. He’d slept for fucking ages. He stood up and stretched out his hand for hers. She squeezed it when she took it and he felt a little better.

“Yeah. Let’s get back. Need my afternoon kip, yeah?”

They walked back hand in hand, down the hilly path, through winter vineyards, down into the village and their house. Ambling more than walking, because the afternoon sun was warm and they were on holiday and for once he had nothing to run toward. The woman who held his hand wasn’t going to let him run away from anything, either. He was going to have to straighten out his head if he wanted to get tied up and fucked senseless again. Which theoretically he wanted. Pity he couldn’t just have Sam come in and sort out his memories and feelings. Here you are, Malcolm, your childhood in this file folder and a skinny muffin waiting on your desk. No fucking chance. He was going to have to do the work. Look inside his heart. Find what Clara needed to hear, so that they could go back to how it was before, before he’d broken down.

Back at the house, keys tossed onto the kitchen counter, jackets hung on the rack. Malcolm watched Clara, who went immediately for her gigantic hardcover novel.

She held it up and said, “I’m going to read. Need to stick to the plan.”

“My bruising schedule says I’m booked for a nap right now.”

“Nap on the couch with me.”

It was his pleasure to do so. Shoes off, another button or two on his shirt undone, so he could touch the necklace when he needed to, and then he was on his side with his head against her thigh. She cupped a hand on his shoulder and rested her novel on the arm of the sofa. A few moment of shifting, seeking to find a comfortable arrangement on her thigh, and Malcolm let his eyes close. He wasn’t sleepy, though, not after his morning nap. He wanted to think. This was his shot at it, this quiet moment in the middle of his holiday. He didn’t have to worry about crying, or being so upset he was off his game at the office. Safe safe safe. He was safe with her. That was the thing. Safe with his head in her lap. If he was ever going to sort himself out, this was the place to do it.

He’d always known it, hadn’t he? Some little part of him had always remembered, even as he’d heaped dead leaves over the memory of ever having had a father. He’d always said, casually, that his father hadn’t been around when he’d been a wee lad. Had died, he sometimes said, to explain how skint he always was when he was in school. Had almost believed it, except he never had. He’d just chosen not to think about it, until it was gone. Told the story until he’d believed it himself.

Malcolm cursed again, under his breath. He’d known he was a mess, but he hadn’t wanted to look at it. Was going to have to look at it, if Clara had her way, and she was always going to get her way with him. So look at it, Tucker. Look at his da, drunk. Hitting him. Hitting his mam. Until one day little Malc had grown up big enough to stop it.

Standing up. Getting hit, rocking back on his heels, then surging forward to grip his dad’s shirt in his fists. Blood trickling from a split lip. Spitting out curses, shoving him back. Telling him who was the man of the house now.

How old had he been? Fourteen. Scrawny, no use at sport, but strong enough to stand up to a drunk man.

He didn’t have words for the feeling in his stomach. He shivered. His da, shoving back at him then turning and leaving the house. His mother embracing him, tears on his shirt. Fury in his belly. Never again, never again. It ended then.

Clara stroked his face. Malcolm sucked in a deep breath, held it, let it out. Warm here, in this little sunny room, in the south of France. Nothing like the bitter Glasgow winters. He couldn’t have conceived of this life now, back then. He’d known he was clever, known he was going to uni, but hadn’t ever imagined a life that included bespoke suits and his head in the lap of a gorgeous, intelligent woman. Being a journalist, yeah, he’d imagined that. He’d liked being a journalist. He’d had his crusades. He’d had friends in those days. Jamie. He’d had girlfriends then. Never lived with them. Never drank with them. Got himself proper drunk once, with Jamie on his stag night, sworn never to do it again. Lived up to his oath.

Had he ever hit anybody? He’d swung his fists once or twice, in anger even, but if they’d ever connected with anybody it would have shocked him. No, wait, he’d slugged Glenn. And then almost wept he’d been so sick about it. Had to stiffen his upper lip, draw Glenn aside, and fucking grovel because fucked if he was going to hit people. Ever. Especially not harmless decent teabags like Glenn.

The idea of hitting Clara made him even sicker. How could a man do such a thing? How could he do it to a wee boy? How could his da do it to him? Fuck. Fuck.

His eyes burned. Clara’s fingers moved from his forehead into his hair. She was reading, not looking at him, thank Christ.

No wonder. No wonder he hadn’t let himself think about it. It hurt like fuck. Like fucking fuck fuck fuck no words. Feel it now, no choice, Tucker, you promised, you have to look at it like a man, feel it like a man, face it. His father had been shite. His mother hadn’t known what to do. Had been fucking terrorized. Like everybody around him was.

Nobody was ever going to hit him again. Nobody was ever going to dare crossing him. They were all going to run away from him. He knew things about them. He could say things. The secret was that all you had to do was say what everybody knew but nobody would say, say it in the worst possible way, and they’d all crumble. Keep them terrorized, fucking terrorized because that’s how you kept people in line. Like his da had done.

Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What was he going to do with that insight?

Set it aside, that was what. Too much for right now. Later, when he was back in London, then he’d look at that. Right now he had to deal with the fact that he’d gone strange in the head again, wasn’t sure where he was, what was going on. Clara’s hand in his hair: that was here and now. An anchor.

“Malcolm,” she said. “Hey. Sweetie.”

“What?”

“You were talking. Saying fuck over and over.”

“Shit.”

“You okay?”

“Why does this keep happening? When I think about him?”

“Malc–”

“What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re just feeling things you couldn’t let yourself feel when you were a boy. Malc. I’m here. I’ve got you.” She had one hand cupping his head and the other rubbing his chest, gently. It was soothing, yeah, but he shouldn’t need, shouldn’t care, he was forty-five fucking years old, surely a man ought to be a man by then. All he could remember was being eight, standing up and being knocked down. Shit shit shit.

“Clara.”

“Malc. I’m here.”

“I remember it now. I remember all of it. Me da was a drunk who beat me. Me mam tried to stop him but he only started on her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me mam blossomed when he left. Turned into her own woman. Was always a bit timid, but–”

“Yeah?”

“Did okay by me and by herself after he was gone. Never understood why she put up with him. He was okay when he was sober. I think. Can’t remember properly. I told myself stories about him. Told stories to other people. No fucking earthly idea what the truth is any more. Just what comes to me in these flashes. Didn’t have them until you– until we– the belt. Was all buried until then.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s good. I know, remembering the things that cunt did can’t be good, but I think it’s good. I just figured out something.”

“Yeah?”

“Can’t fucking tell you. Not yet. Need to think about it.”

“Plenty of time to think.”

He sat up and rubbed at his face. His cheeks were wet. What a fucking wreck he was. In love with Clara. Unable to say it. No idea what was going to happen next. For some reason it didn’t feel awful. It ought to, but her hand was on his shoulder and he felt as if whatever it was, she’d be with him all the way through it.

Breathing Sculptures

2015-10-17T12:00:00+00:00

He doesn’t take her home straight away. Sometimes after moments like this, all he wants is to be able to hide his face from her, and sometimes all he wants is to keep her in his sight, for if she stays in his sight she is still with him. He can see her draw breath, and smile, and flit around the TARDIS as if she had no patience with the flow of time.

Tonight she’s more still than her wont, and it makes his stomach feel strange. He’s told her more than he usually does about how he feels, what he thinks about in the quiet moments when she’s not there, what he fears at night when he can’t sleep. He’s bared himself to her. Always dangerous, with someone as quick as Clara, as quick to see the implications.

“Where are we?” she says.

“In orbit around Eta Carinae, about a hundred years after the event that caused the nebula to form. I felt like looking at something bright and shiny.”

“Nebulae are bright and shiny?”

“Sometimes, yes. When you are far away from the catastrophe that created them.”

Eta Carinae is particularly beautiful. So bright, reflecting the light of a thousand supernovae in a moment. A lightning strike, a moment of pure beauty. It’s beautiful and life-affirming and everything a sentient being might find joy in. They could look at that beauty now, if they wanted.

he doesn’t want. He doesn’t open the TARDIS door, doesn’t even bother looking at the view on his monitors. He’s seen it. He turns from her and marches up to the top level of the console room, then out. Does he hope that she’ll follow? Hope that she won’t? Damned if he can tell. He wants to be alone and he wants never to be alone. If he’s honest– which he never, ever is– he will admit that he hopes she follows. This is why he didn’t bring her home. Make up your mind, Doctor, fool, Theta Sigma, whatever his name is now– make up your mind whether you want to brood in solitude or warm yourself against the fire that is Clara. But he’s chosen, of course he has chosen, exactly as he always does.

Clara follows him, and he wonders what she’ll say to him this time, which of his protective lies she’ll strip away from him.

To the TARDIS library, to one of the little private corners, his quiet place, his thinking place through many lives. He sits on the carpet before the hearth, arms wrapped around his knees. Warmth, safety, more comfort than many beings ever experience in a lifetime. He’s sulking. Brooding, as she’d said. Why is he so sad? The curse of the Timelords. He’s visited it upon another living being today. Is it forgivable?

If he were on Gallifrey he’d be surrounded by beings like him. Immortal, or as close to it as makes no difference. There’d be no grieving there. Not by one Timelord for another. For an ordinary Gallifreyan? Oh them, yes, if the Timelords condescended to notice. His first wife– his first taste of that pain. His own fault, they told him, for loving someone who hadn’t been given the curse of Rassilon, for giving into the base desires of the physical body.

But he gave himself and he loved, and then he ran from the loss, and therefore he is here, on his back staring at the ceiling far above, with a human woman sitting beside him gazing at him so solemnly. Has he done right by the universe? Has he saved all the lives he might? Will Ashildr curse him or bless him? He has cursed Rassilon many times. He’ll curse Rassilon again before he’s done. He will live to hold Clara’s body in his arms, her mind, her soul, whatever one called it, gone. The things that made Clara dear to him, gone. He knows it. It is his curse.

She is here now, gazing at him, the weight of her stare on him, but she will not always be. He knows. He cannot forget.

“Clara,” he whispers, to the ghost that will forever be with him. With Rose, with Ace, with River, with so many others. Haunting him, bodies he can no longer touch. Minds he can no longer commune with.

“Don’t,” she says. “I’m here with you now. I’m real. I’m not a memory. I’m here.”

She rubs his chest. A soft touch, through the layers of his clothing, but it burns his hearts anyway. Clara, palm flat on his chest, soothing him. Crooning to him. Telling him it’s okay, it’ll be okay, he’ll be okay. Does he look like he’s not? Well, there are tears on his face, so perhaps he’s given her cause.

“Clara,” he says, pleading with something. The universe.

“I’m here.”

“Why?”

“Why am I here? I don’t understand.”

“Why do I feel like this?”

“What do you feel?”

“You know.”

“I never know what you feel. I know you care, but sometimes you’re so, so–”

“So what?”

She shrugs. “Distant? Abrupt? Difficult?”

“You want to know what I feel.”

“Of course I want to know.”

“I love you in every way that a man has ever loved a woman.”

She says nothing, looks down at her hand resting over his hearts. She sees the implications, of course she sees them; she is his Clara, and her mind is quicksilver and lightning.

Her hand moves to the zipper of his hoodie. Pulls it down. He holds perfectly still, holds his breath. She lifts his t-shirt. Her hand touches his belly, just under his navel. His whole body thrills; his mind freezes. She lifts his shirt. Touches his belt buckle. Undoes it. Slowly, so slowly, giving him every chance to object, to stop her. He doesn’t. He cooperates. Layers, so many layers of clothing. He helps her remove them. He lies back on the carpet, the warmth of the fire on his shoulder. He is bare, completely exposed to her. When has he been hidden from her? Never. Let her look at him. Let her see his absolute ordinariness. Let her see what she does to him.

She doesn’t touch him. She just looks. Committing him to memory? That’s what he would do, in her place. Do humans think as he does? Do they consider their brief lives the way he considers his? Scale is relative. The thought undoes him, in that moment, as Clara looks at his nude body gravely, as she takes him in.

“In case you were wondering,” she says.

“What?”

“It’s the same for me.”

Oh.

She kneels up and undoes the buttons of her shirt. He watches her undress herself. He should help. He wants to. But he watches, with the entirety of his self behind his eyes. He watches and waits. Clara, his Clara, taking off her shirt, her jeans, wriggling out of her bra. A thousand years from now, he will see this moment again, see her unbuttoning her shirt, see her casting aside all pretensions. Her breasts, pink nipples erect. She looks exactly as he knows she would, the sight doing exactly what he knows it will do to him. He is hers. He is lost. A thousand years from now, he will be able to close his eyes and see Clara, a living sculpture, breathing, warm.

She touches him. He closes his eyes. He still sees her. It hurts. “Please, Clara.”

“I’m going to give you this. I’m going to give us this. You need it. We need it.”

He opens his eyes. She is there, luminous, blinding. “It’ll end. It’ll end and I’ll be alone.”

“That’s true whether or not we do this. If we do it, if we let ourselves have this, then at least you’ll have that memory too. And some day it’ll help. One day you’ll wake up and it’ll make you feel better instead of worse to remember this.”

“How can you know?”

“Believe me, I know. Oh, I know.”

He squeezes his eyes shut. A moment of shame floods over him; she knows, and he knows how she knows. Danny Pink, who sacrificed himself for humanity. Her weight is over him, a warm weight across his hips. She shifts over him, slides against him. An instant of base pleasure, another flood of shame, and then her lips brush against his nose.

“Open your eyes,” Clara says, in a whisper. He opens them, finds her nose against his, her great dark doe-eyes swimming before him. Lashes wet, but her face is resolved. Her hand reaches down, touches him. He shivers.

“Be here now,” she tells him. “There’s nothing different about you, nothing you have that I don’t. No gift you have that I don’t. I outlived Danny. There’s no telling what’s going to happen. Stop looking ahead and imagining things. There are rosebuds here, now. Gather them. You can’t do anything else.”

“Clara–”

“Be here. Now.”

Her fingers close around him and he whimpers. She’s over him, on him, around him, encompassing him. He holds time suspended in his mind for this moment. He commits it to memory, Clara Oswald touching him for the first time, a single instant seized, their bodies frozen in this moment together yet warm and alive, like breathing sculptures. He releases his hold, and time moves again for him, Clara moves over him, around him. He moves with her and yields himself to her.

This is him, giving in, giving what remains to be given to her. He yielded himself to her long ago and this is him admitting it now. Oh, how he loves her. A hand on her hip, a thumb touching her just there, his eyes open, her eyes closed, brows furrowed in concentration. His lovely Clara, in deep thought even now, even as her breath comes fast.

He lets himself love her. She is beautifully responsive to his touch. He knows this before he touches her. He knows everything she wants, knows how to please her, knows how to love her. Has he not watched her through a million echoes? Has he not known her in every life he’s lived? Clara, Clara, Clara, his life, his love, his soul.

Clara above him, around him, grounding him, completing him, allowing him to complete her with his body, his touch, his pleading. Her name, on his lips, as he watches her, feels her in her moment of crisis. Clara, he says, again and again, Clara. His light in darkness, motionless above him for a long instant, then he hears her cry out. His name, his secret name, how does she know? Does he have no secrets?

Oh, how he loves her, in every way that man has loved woman, from the beginning.

“Come for me,” she says to him, “let it happen for me.”

“For you,” he says, breathless, and goes still. Breathes in. It’s upon him. A lightning flash. Clara illuminates everything for him, sears him with delight. He is held in this moment of time. He knows it. It will happen over and over in an eternal now, then only in memory. Clara. His Clara. He feels himself lost, feels himself suspended weightless, the convulsion of the lightning strike, and then he falls. The little death, the unbearable sadness of loss, all virtue leaving him as he comes inside her, oh Clara, why can’t we? why can’t I?

“It’s okay,” she is saying to him, “hush now.”

But he’s weeping because no matter what she says, no matter how many people he saves, it will never be enough. The fire follows the lightning; the breath leaves the body; the mortals die and he lives on.

Burning Bright

2015-10-12T13:00:00+00:00

The Doctor knew it immediately, not because of anything he observed in the world around him, but because he felt time and the universe and the order of things shift around him and resettle. He lay with Clara on that sofa in the library, sheltering her while she cried, and knew what had happened, would happen, was happening even then in her body. Knew it was a girl. Saw her for a moment, grown to adulthood, standing tall and strong and proud with her siblings. No more was granted him in that moment, and he stopped looking out of respect for the universe, and its wish to determine itself, to rearrange itself.

Knowing it would happen and knowing what Clara would make of it in the moment were two different things. So he said nothing. Held her, stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, wiped tears from her face with his thumb.

He would be a father again. The first time, he’d been proud and fearful and nervous and anxious for the health of his wife, that brilliant woman. This time: an equally clever woman in his arms, but raw, grief-stricken. This time he felt fear, but not for himself or his ability to raise their children with love. Fear for Clara, for what this loss would do to her, what the pregnancy would do to her. Would it be balm or burden? He didn’t know. He only knew that it was, that it would be, that their child would be. Conceived and gestated on the TARDIS. Part Gallifreyan, part human. She would be a Time Lord even without an Academy education.

Eventually Clara cried herself out. The Doctor pushed her sweaty hair back from her face and pressed another kiss to her forehead.

“Clara,” he said, softly. “I’m going to get you some water.”

He untangled himself from her and settled the blanket over her again. Then he stood only to find that the TARDIS had already provided: robes for both of them, a pitcher of water and a glass, a washcloth. He dampened the cloth and cooled her face. She was quiet now, exhausted. She put on the robe without demur, watched him gather up their scattered clothes, and let him lead her by the hand to his bedroom, his secret place. The place where he hoped to mend her heart as much as it could be mended.

One wall of it was a glass wall behind which was a two-story kelp forest lit by sunlight from above during ship’s day; moonlight at night. Or rather, a multi-dimensional recording of a kelp forest made with such detail that he could only spot the flaws when he looked carefully. The recording changed every so often, at the TARDIS’s whim. Before the kelp forest and the rockfish, it had been a bamboo forest. And before that, an alpine meadow. Always something green, something living. The TARDIS had messages to send him through some medium other than words.

Clara gave it the barest glance, and that frightened him more than the hour of crying had. She turned her back on it and settled herself on the edge of his bed. A huge bed, wide and flat in the Time Lord style, with pillows in the center. Pajamas for both of them were laid out on it.

“You’re going to eat something,” he told her, “then we’re both going to sleep.”

A little smile from her at that. “I thought you didn’t sleep.”

“I need it to recover as much as you do.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Stay with me while I rest, then?”

Clara shrugged. He wouldn’t push. Pushing would make it worse, if he knew his Clara.

“Let me get us something to eat.”

Clara shrugged again and picked up her pajamas. The Doctor got up and went over to a cupboard in the corner. He opened it to find what his ship had for them to eat. The TARDIS chose to send them bowls of miso in lovely red and black porcelain with matching spoons. Hot, salty, and laced with something that would put Clara to sleep and make even him drowsy. He raised his eyebrow when he detected it, but said nothing. Meddling, meddling, his ship was meddling with them both. She remembered, perhaps, the state he’d been in when he’d regenerated into the face with the ears, when he had believed that he’d destroyed his own people to stop the Time War. When the shock of being alone had first rocked him. And now his adopted species– the world he’d taken it upon himself to protect– was gone, because he’d failed. Yes, she would want to meddle.

He watched Clara drink enough soup that she’d be sleeping soon, and drank his bowl down. The TARDIS would know what she was about. She’d seen him after he’d gone through this, after all.

He took Clara’s bowl from her. Her eyes were heavy already. He helped her arrange the pillows to her liking and pulled a blanket over her. He could feel the desire to sleep on him as well, but he had more to do. He changed into pajamas, lowered the lights. Before he went back to the bed he laid a hand on the wall of his ship and sent his thanks to her.

Then he was curled around Clara once more, sheltering her, under the moonlight filtering through gently-waving kelp fronds. Deep silence in the room, save for the hum of his ship. Safe here, safe from everything, in his quiet place, where he did all his deepest thinking. Clara was with him now, wouldn’t again be leaving the TARDIS for her work week. No more Wednesdays, being dropped off on the dot. No more travels without her. She would be in this bed with him as often as she wanted. He hadn’t had a lover who’d lived with him like this since Rose. It had been a long time alone. He liked the company, he liked this, holding her. He’d never have held her without the solar flare. She’d have had a long and happy life with Danny Pink. He’d have lost her to Pink eventually, to motherhood, to her longing for a settled life. Guilt stung him, then was gone. He would have done whatever she needed, in that future that wasn’t to be.

He could only worry about this future that now was. Could he give her what she needed? Could he keep her interested in life without PE? Without her job?

He drifted off to sleep, to unsettled dreams of the solar flare licking out, burning everything, burning the TARDIS, burning their infant daughter while Clara screamed, burning Clara, stranding him alone again. He woke, found Clara in his arms. He let himself reach out and touch her with his mind briefly, to remind himself that she was alive, that she was already pregnant with his child, that their future would happen. He slid back down into an easier sleep.

The Doctor woke to find Clara awake already, sitting in bed with a cup of tea. Her pajama top was open just enough for him to see the curve of her breast. He looked, blinked, looked up to meet her eyes and see the hint of a smile in them. Swollen eyes, a puffy face, hair everywhere, no makeup, behind it the glow of a thousand other versions of Clara, from child to old woman to every echo that had ever haunted his own lifeline and saved him, hundreds of times over. The purest essence of Clara, always before him, always beautiful to him.

“Your eyes. They did that thing again just now.”

“What thing?”

“They looked like they were seeing a million years away.”

“Ah.” He made no further reply, but sat up. He scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d slept for hours, which for him was like sleeping for days. He was parched. “Any more of that tea?”

“Yeah.”

Clara swiveled her feet onto the floor. There was a tea cozy on the nightstand, he saw, and a second mug. Clara poured for him, dropped sugar cubes in, stirred. He tasted cautiously: yes, she’d put in enough sugar for him. Tea, fragrant tea, sweet and milky. The human race had been entirely sensible about tea.

Clara said, “I was going to be angry with you for drugging me, then I realized that you sleeping more than me meant the TARDIS drugged us both.”

“I knew she was doing it, so you can still be angry if you want.”

“No point. I feel better. Very slightly better. Just enough better to know that I’m going to live through this.”

He reached out and took her hand. She squeezed back. “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m here. Always.”

He felt better too, whether it was the sleep, the tea, or the drugs. He drank more tea. It was tea and nothing more than that. Love-making, sleep, tea, and a child to come. Should he tell her? Or let her find out naturally? He was a little afraid of what she would think.

Clara said, “Are we together now or was that a one-time deal?”

“I think, I believe– I believe we’re together.” Their daughter would not be an only child, that he’d seen.

“You believe?” Clara shook her head. The ghost of a smile was there again, shining through the grief. “No, don’t explain. Tell me. What happened last night? When your eyes went all strange.”

He looked down at their joined hands. “I saw the future. The future that now is, for us, after the solar flare.”

“And what did you see?”

He sighed, untangled his fingers from hers, laid his hand over her belly. A flat belly. Muscular. A young woman at her peak now; so many shifting images in his sight when he looked. He could see her belly rounded, flat again, round again. “Our child.”

“That’s a thing? I thought maybe you were–”

“Telling you something just to make you feel better? No. It has always been possible, and after last night, it is inevitable. It will be. Is already happening.”

Clara folded her arms and looked down at his hand. He removed it and distracted himself by resettling himself on the bed facing her, sitting tailor-fashion with his hands on his knees.

“You’re saying I’m pregnant.” Her voice was flat.

“Yes.”

“One time and–”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, I thought I would never–I thought it was–” Tears in her voice. She turned her face away from him. He touched her arm, let her know he was there.

“We’ll be mother and father to our races,” he said, whispering, almost more to himself than to her. “Humans, Gallifreyans– we’ll exist again. Our races will live. Somewhere, I’m not sure where. We’ll find a place.”

She sniffled and wiped her nose. “Can just two people do it? Repopulate your race and mine?”

He passed his hand over his face and bit at his thumb. “Yes and no. Our species will live on, sort of. As a hybrid. Human and Gallifreyan. Our cultures– they’re lost.”

“We’ll have to build something new, then.”

“I’m not much of a builder,” he said. “I tinker. I meddle. I fix little things.”

“I think I can build. If I decide I want to.”

He smiled at her, delighted by the idea. Clara Oswald, the leader of their new race. The first. The progenitor.

It wouldn’t be that easy. There were tears on her face yet, and on his, and they had yet to mourn properly. But there it was, the future, before them, and one vision of Clara Oswald glowing before him. Burning bright, tiger-fierce, her hand in his.

Vintage Season

2015-10-10T12:10:00+00:00

Young Jolyon packed up his color-box for a morning in the Botanic Gardens. His series of watercolors of notable London places was underway with, if not immediate success, at least the potential for success. He’d done Big Ben, as a bit of a warmup, and the dome of St Paul’s at dawn and at dusk. Now it was time for something sunnier, greener. Flowers. A bit of nature easy to reach for a man on his income, and on a sunny day like this, he was determined not to miss his chance. He kissed Helene and his children and set off by train to Kew.

He was well into his initial sketches of the rubber trees and the benches below them when his quiet was interrupted by a couple wandering quite close to him and not immediately moving away. He hated it when people watched him at work, so he prepared himself to glower at them, if necessary, to drive them away. They were a strange couple, now that he looked at them more closely– foreign, perhaps. The man wore a close-cut black jacket with a bright scarlet lining. The woman’s dress left Jolyon almost blushing, for she was in trousers if he could believe his eyes, though in a long light coat that covered her so he had to look twice. Bare heads, no hats in hand. The woman had her dark hair free, as if she were a girl, but she was anything but that.

He couldn’t decide what he made of them. Lovers? Perhaps, but strangely open ones if so, for their hands were joined. They walked slowly, hand in hand, closer to him, where he stood in the shelter of his rubber-tree. There was something in her face, something haunted, as if she were in the grip of fear even there, in the warmth and sunlight of the Gardens. She walked unsteadily. Was she ill? Or perhaps recovering from illness.

Jolyon looked away hastily lest they see him staring. The pair sat on a bench quite nearby him, with their backs to him. They were, it seemed, completely unaware of him or of anyone else in the world. A strange pair. The man was striking, with that unruly mop of silver hair and that profile. And so was the woman. So small next to him, yet her face was perfect and fresh.

Jolyon dug in his coat pocket for a pencil and his little sketch book. He wasn’t any good at the human form, but something about these two made him reach inside for what skill he had. Bent toward each other, heads almost touching. Focused on each other. He ought to feel ashamed for this moment of observation, but was he not a student of the human condition?

“It is pretty, Doctor.”

Ah, there was his theory about illness borne out. But her voice was perfectly English, so his other theory was wrong.

The man said, “Something lovely and horrifying about the empire at its height, I always thought. The perfect bliss of all these people, at the pinnacle of the economy, all this wealth pouring in here.”

A Scotsman. A doctor and his patient, perhaps. Jolyon’s pencil sought the line of that nose, strong and laden with character.

“Nothing bad has ever happened to these people. They probably can’t imagine it. The blitz.”

“There are many moments like this in history. Golden ages. Vintage seasons. Perfect moments. This, I suppose, is a perfect decade.”

“Not the Edwardian?”

The man she called the Doctor shrugged. “The fruit was over-ripe, I think, though it was pretty. I can introduce you to Kenneth Grahame if you want, though his wife–”

The woman sighed. “Bad things will happen to them all. They can’t be stopped. This vintage seasons ends.”

“Some things endure. This place, for instance. Still standing in your time. Quite nice.”

“I’m not worried about this place. Or the planet. The big things, they work themselves out. I’m thinking about the little things. Me and you.”

“Clara–”

“The terror of those moments, personal moments. It’s not the same as the terror of the people who die because a Dalek kills them. Or a bomb falls from the sky on them and they never knew. I thought– I thought I was going to die there. In that casing. I knew what was happening and I knew it couldn’t be stopped. I was ready for it.”

“I thought I was going to kill you. When I realized how close I had come–”

This conversation– it was mad, but something in the man’s voice made tears spring to Young Jolyon’s eyes. Such tenderness. Such ravaged affection. The man reached out and touched Clara’s face, tenderly, with his fingers just brushing her temples. And then he rested his forehead against hers, his hands wrapped around hers.

Clara said, “What do you do? How do you keep going?”

“Ah. We do this.” The Doctor held their joined hands up between them. “And we remember that love is a promise. You wouldn’t hurt me, not even when your every emotion was twisted. Your love stayed true.”

“You wouldn’t kill a Dalek that wasn’t attacking, even when your finger was on the trigger.”

“Ever-faithful to our promise.”

“Doctor– it’s– someday it won’t go right.”

“I know.” Ah, and that was what he sounded like when the grief was too much for a man to bear.

“Do you know how it’s going to happen?”

“No. And I refuse to look.”

“You could.” A question, a perfectly mad question.

“Yes. But it would make it so. It’s a terrible burden, Clara. Don’t ask me to–”

“Never. Just– just– let’s not waste time?”

Silence between them for a moment. Then the Doctor said, “Gather rosebuds while we may?”

“Something like that. I suppose you know a planet full of roses.”

“Well, of course. Sentient roses. A lot of opinions about being gathered. Thorny opinions, even.”

Clara laughed again, and it was a lovely sound even though Jolyon could hear tears behind it.

“Shall we go?” the Doctor said.

“Not just yet. Let’s sit here a while. Enjoy the vintage season while it lasts. The flowers. The air is so sweet.”

“Of course,” the Doctor murmured. He shifted on the bench and Clara’s head came to rest on his shoulder.

By the time the conversation wound around to this quiet moment, Jolyon had made five sketches of Clara and the Doctor, and a sixth to come of them as they sat there, her head on his shoulder, utterly indifferent to everything around them but the scent of flowers. He even dared pull out his color-box and paint them, poor renderer of the human form though he was. Capture that hair, that pretty face, that slim man and his nose and the red lining of his coat. Such an impossible pair. Improbable. Was this a vintage season? It hadn’t always felt that way to him, cast out from his family and making his own way. But he was wealthy, he supposed, in ways he hadn’t thought to consider. He always had milk for his tea, after all. And the empire was peaceful and prosperous. Paint these two, therefore, and gather ripe fruit, and when he found himself at home again he would tell Helene he loved her. She knew already, oh she knew.

The Magician and the Painting

2015-10-04T13:00:00+00:00

The Painting

The painting in the National Gallery was almost abstract, all orange blobs, a futuristic city on fire. Of unknown origin, by an unknown painter, and yet it was hung here on the wall, in a corner of a side gallery. Rose knew what it was. Rose knew it was not a fantasy, not a painting that ought to have been the cover of a pulp magazine. It was a painting of a real place. Or a place that had been real once, with real people living on it. Real Time Lords. Gallifreyans, with two hearts. Her heart, single heart, was aching right now. She always went and looked at this painting when it was especially bad.

Today she was feeling particularly aching, because it was the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Canary Wharf. The fifth anniversary of her stranding.

There was a new placard up next to it. It had a title on it. “Gallifrey falls,” she said, reading it aloud. It had fallen. In this universe as well as hers. Only this one didn’t have her Doctor in it.

“It’s called Gallifrey falls no more,” somebody said.

Rose looked away from the painting at at the man who’d just spoken. A Scotsman, by his accent, older, reed-thin. He was well-dressed, if oddly so, in a coat that looked like even her father would jibe at its cost, lined with red. And those were Loakes on his feet. Definitely minted, but unkempt. His silver hair was rumpled.

He was gazing at her oddly, but then he’d looked away at the painting again.

“That’s not what the card says,” Rose said. “The punctuation’s different.”

“I know. But it’s wrong.”

“Gallifrey doesn’t fall?”

“No.” He flashed a little smile at her. “Whatever Gallifrey may be.”

“Yeah. A fantasy world, I suppose. The painter did a whole series showing it, according to the card.” Rose leaned as close to the painting as museum manners allowed. “Very realistic. It’s almost like the people in it could step right out.” She wished it. So hard. Wished.

“Almost,” he said, and his voice was contemplative. “A door to another time, perhaps.”

“That would be wonderful.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely.”

He smiled at her. It was an alarming smile, almost scary, but this man’s face was kind. And young, somehow, despite the hair and the crows feet. There was something about him that caught her attention. A question she wanted answered, perhaps, or a question that he would ask of her.

He said, “There’s a cafe in this museum. Would you like to get coffee? Or chips. We could do chips.”

“Coffee’s great. But first you have to tell me your name.”

He thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets. The red lining of his coat flashed. “I’m the Doctor. And you’re Rose Tyler.”

Coffee

The museum shop had coffee, adequate coffee even, proper espresso made by a human and not a machine like so many things in this universe. The universe where her father had lived and her mother hadn’t. The man who’d introduced herself as the Doctor hadn’t had any money– of course– so Rose had bought coffee for them both. They sat at a table in the corner far from the door, a quiet place, where if she cried no one much would see.

He looked so different but he was the Doctor. There was something in her that knew that, could recognize him no matter what the face was. She’d loved two of his faces, after all, and he had told her once he’d had many more.

This face was far older than either of the ones she’d known best, more worn in some ways. Less worn in others. This face looked like it smiled, genuinely smiled. Those narrow shoulders in the natty black coat were unburdened.

“Are you before or after my Doctors?” she asked.

“After,” he said. “A long while after.”

“Miss me?”

“As much as you missed me.”

That was said so quietly that Rose looked at him sharply, to see if he meant anything odd by it, but he was looking at his hand, laid flat on the table. Long fingers, nervous fingers. He wore a ring with an odd green stone in it.

He said, “Sometimes when I think of you I get chips in Brighton. Proper ones, in newspaper.”

“Can’t get those here.”

“No?”

“Not in this version of England. Too much littering. I miss it. I miss you. The version of you I met.”

“The one who took you to get chips in Brighton,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not him. Not exactly. I remember being him, of course. And the one with the sand shoes.”

Rose bit at her thumb. She’d hurt him by saying that, but it was true. She did miss the Doctor when he’d had clipped hair and ears.

“Are you really here? Or is this another hologram?”

He picked up his demitasse and drank his espresso in one gulp. “Really here,” he said.

“How?”

“The painting. It’s linked to the one that exists in my universe. Via Gallifrey, which is in a pocket universe between ours.”

“I thought it was–”

“Turns out it wasn’t.” He smiled at her for a moment. It was a boyish smile in a face that yes, a face that enjoyed smiling, despite those eyebrows. “I can’t use it to get through to Gallifrey, but it turns out that I could use it to get through to any universe that has its own version of that painting. This one doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t have a Black Gallery, but it is still connected.”

Rose covered her face with her hand.

“I never could figure out how to get back. I worked with UNIT for years. I couldn’t figure out how. The painting– the whole time–”

“You would have needed a TARDIS to do it. Don’t– Rose–”

The Doctor stood up abruptly. Rose was afraid for a moment that her tears had driven him away, but no. He stretched out his hand to her.

“Rose Tyler, would you like to get some chips with me after all? Proper ones, in paper?”

She took his hand, of course. She always would.

The TARDIS

Rose took his hand and the Doctor smiled, a lovely surprising smile on that face, under that silver hair. He bent over her hand and brushed his lips against it, and was that a tremor she felt? But he’d straightened and was tugging her after him. Down the hall, up the stairs, to a corridor she hadn’t noticed, and a door marked staff only that he opened with a moment of whirring from the screwdriver. He was elegant in this face, all tall and slender in his black trousers and jacket. A little bit of a showman.

The door opened, and there she was: the TARDIS, as blue and as improbable as ever. Something in Rose had reserved a tiny bit of herself until she saw the TARDIS, until she laid a hand on it and felt it speak to her. Bad Wolf Girl would always be a tiny bit connected to this ship, this strange little police box, this relic.

The door opened for her and she smiled.

“You still have your key,” the Doctor said. “She still knows you.”

“Yeah.” Rose pulled it out from under her shirt. The chain it hung from was more posh in this life, because of all the money her father had, but that was the only difference. TARDIS key, over her heart. He reached out and touched it. His hand over hers again, a warm dry touch. He smiled briefly and turned away to the door, turned back to bow her over the threshold.

“You’ve redecorated!”

“Yeah, had a bit of a crash. Needed repairs. It all came out a bit different.”

“I like it! It’s– it’s very you.”

“You think?”

Rose nodded firmly. “Yeah.”

He looked pleased. He gestured toward the console, so very different to how it had looked, with technology that looked so much newer than anything she’d seen even in her current life, with its strange path through time. The console was as different to the one she remembered as the the rest of the decor. Sleek, glowing, like something from the Sixties when the future was an exciting place.

“Fish and chips,” the Doctor said. “Brighton. 2005.”

His fingers danced over buttons that hadn’t been there the last time she had, threw a lever she’d never seen, and set his hand on a lever she knew. Eyebrow up, looking at her. She set her hand on his and they pulled together. The rotors spun, the TARDIS growled, and they were moving.

“So long since I heard this! Thought I never would again. Yeah, love it!” Rose laughed. He was watching her as if transfixed, with an odd expression. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, Rose. It’s been a long time. So long since I’ve seen you. Your smile. I–”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “More than a thousand years.” Now that voice was casual, but it was a cover for something.

“That’s a long time. Long enough to forget me?”

“Forget you? Never. I never forget anyone who’s traveled with me. Long enough to travel with others. To, to be with others. If you can forgive me.”

Rose remembered Sarah Jane Smith, and how she’d pitied her at first, before she’d realized they were the same. “There’s nothing to forgive. You thought, I thought, that was it. We were separated. Forever. Moving on is something we had to do.”

“It took me a while.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

His hands were in his jacket pockets. “Forever is– difficult for me. I find it hard to believe in.” That smile again, a little bitter, visible for a moment and then gone.

“Where are they? The people who travel with you? Can I meet them?”

And now his face was utterly bleak.

“They’re lost to me. In time. When I realized you weren’t, when I figured out how to use the painting, I nearly didn’t come. I thought it would be better not to. To leave you to your new life. Unfixed, for me. A choice unmade. Forever unmade.”

He spun away from her and marched up the steps to the catwalk. He leaned against a bookshelf and was still. Rose hesitated, then followed him quietly. His hand was over his face and his shoulders were trembling. She touched him, and he flinched.

“Sorry. Sorry. I just–”

Her arms were around him without thinking. It was the Doctor, and it didn’t matter to her in the least what face he wore. She’d loved two of his faces so far and probably she would love all of them if she met them. And this one, this one was weeping because like her he’d thought they’d never see each other again. His last words cut off, a hologram she couldn’t touch on a beach she wanted never to see again. Down, down onto the catwalk, holding each other close, clutching at each other. His hands, with those long fingers, touching her face reverently. His own face was wet.

“It’s really you,” he said. “You’re really here again.”

She smiled at him. “Some choices need to be made. Some choices are good. Some days, you have somebody to hold your hand.”

Okay

2015-10-01T12:00:00+00:00

One

Malcolm changed into a fresh suit in his office, with the door closed and Sam guarding it. New set of clothes right down to his boxers. Thank God Sam was all business about these things, but he hadn’t been home in three days and the shower (gents only) couldn’t do anything for his half-melted shirts. It had been a hellish streak. Stress, shouting, tense meetings, the PM fighting for his political life, the Party in a shambles, an utter blood-soaked shambles. It was so bad he’d had to put off Clara and the dinner date she desperately wanted for three nights running.

The photograph of Clara on his desk had glass on it. Malcolm maneuvered himself around so he could see his own reflection well enough to knot his tie. Clara’s face smiled up at him behind his own grimace. It made him feel like a tit. He’d make it up to her somehow, though he was fucked if he knew how. He’d had Sam send her several greenhouses of flowers, complete with groveling notes, but he knew that wasn’t enough. Wasn’t the way he wanted it either. She deserved his time and attention and his presence at the quiet moments, doing things like eating breakfast together, going for walks, arguing about which one of them should acquire a cat. Not just tumbling into bed every time he managed to drag himself away, for a few hours of closeness.

Not that either one of them minded the tumbling. Tumbling was great. He’d been a bit desperate the last time, and Clara had been distracted successfully from his absences, and– Fuck. Fuck. He’d just had a brainstorm, an unwelcome moment of self-insight. He stared at himself in the glass, at Clara’s face behind. He wanted a bit more than that, did he?

Fuck. No time to think this through. Time to get on with his shit-covered morning. He lunged for the door.

“Sam! Sammy!”

He yanked the door open and stopped. Clara, sitting on the edge of Sam’s desk, chatting away with Sam, nineteen to the dozen. They broke off and looked up at him. Sam stood up and automatically took his soiled jacket from him. Malcolm gawped. His mind leaped around from bad explanation to worse; Clara looked a little solemn. She never came to his office except in emergencies. It was not the done thing, trotting girlfriends around to soak their knickers with displays of one’s power. At least not at 10 ack emma. So therefore it was an emergency. Shit. Fuck.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

Clara slid down and came toward him, not looking at him. “Thanks, Sam. Owe you one.”

Now his stomach was really dropping hard and fast. He stroked a hand over his face. “Sam, tell them all to fuck off until I open the door myself, right? Ta.”

Door closed, and he had Clara in his arms pressed up against it, his mouth on hers, just to prove to himself that she wasn’t dumping him like the absentee cock-up he was. Then she was pushing him away, gently enough, but with definite purpose.

“Sorry, darling, I am sorry. About last night. And the night before.”

“Yeah, I know. Been reading the papers.”

“Blood in the fucking water, sharks circling.”

“I get it. Seriously, I do get it. But I can’t let this wait any longer.”

“What? Clara–”

“Just shut up, okay? I have to say this.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and jabbed a finger at it. “I wrote cue cards, and then I put notes in my phone and rehearsed it. Oh my god, I can’t possibly read all this. What was I thinking?”

Her eyes went wide and she stared at the screen. Malcolm made a grab for the phone, to cut the middleman out, but she swatted his hand down and tucked it back into her jacket pocket.

“Right. Okay. The thing is, and it’s really a thing, not just a hypothetical thing, though it’s a terrifying thing that I haven’t had the courage to tell you for a week now and–” She broke off.

“What, darling? Just say it. Please. You dumping me?”

Her eyes went wide, and she reached out to rest a hand on his chest. “No. No. It’s nothing like that. More the opposite.”

“Then what?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Malcolm slammed his hand over his mouth.

The leap in his heart, fuck him, the leap in his heart was not to be denied. He kept his hand clamped down, to prevent himself from bleating out anything before he knew how she stood, what she wanted. He’d do fucking anything for her. She was waiting for him to react, watching him. He needed to say something. He pulled his hand away cautiously, wiped it on his trouser leg. He looked carefully at Clara, who was now staring at him. He couldn’t read the expression on her face to save his life.

He said, “You sure?”

“Took two tests. And a blood test.”

“How long?”

“Ten weeks, maybe eleven tops.”

“Fuck, when we went to Spain.”

“Yeah, that weekend in Spain. Wine, beach. Too much wine.”

It had been a ridiculous evening and worth the headache the next morning. He turned away because he was smiling at the memory and he felt guilty. He’d done it to her that night, one of those times on the beach or in their house after that, or – fuck, he’d got her pregnant one of those times. Two drunk to remember the condoms.

“Say something, Malcolm. Tell me how you feel about this. It’s kind of a big thing.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. What to say? Oh God yes yes my heart I am dizzy with lust right now. Did she want to hear that? Or did she want sober steady it’s okay darling I’ll back you no matter what?

“Malcolm, I’m really scared right now.”

Her voice was watery. Malcolm spun back around. Tears on her face. Shit! He lunged forward and got his arms around her.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. You’re moving in with me, mind. I’ve got the room for it.”

“What?”

“You heard me, darling.”

She shook her head. “What.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Even if it means becoming a father at the age of forty-five?”

“Even that. Whatever the fuck you want. I fucking mean it.”

He rummaged around in his jacket pockets. Handkerchief, not his thing, but sometimes Sam stocked him up. She had. He dabbed Clara’s face dry, careful to avoid the mascara. She took it from him and blew her nose.

It got to him then, the thought of it, of her with him for years and years, not just a fast affair until she got bored with him: kids, a house somewhere in Scotland, nights that were not in a dim musty building fucked full of upper-class twits. Fucking hell. Clara was pregnant. Pregnant. He’d done it. The thought of her up the duff from him, that night, that amazing wild endless warm night, fuck him, he was wild about it. Not right now, though. Maybe tonight. Maybe. If she was in the mood. Right now was she needed was a steady arm around her. He wasn’t so stupid as to not know how this worked. She needed to know he was sticking around.

Malcolm went down on his knees and wrapped his arms around Clara’s waist and tried not to let his own eyes sting. He turned his head and pressed an ear to her belly. “Can’t hear anything.”

She giggled and sniffled. “You idiot. That won’t be for months yet.”

“Any child of yours is bound to start making noise early.”

“Oh yeah? Your kid, so it’ll be shouting from the womb.”

“At least she’ll be gorgeous. Your nose, your dimples. My height.”

Clara ran her fingers through his hair. “Could have my height and your nose.”

“Don’t curse it, darling.”

She laughed. Okay. This was going to be okay.

Two

Malcolm kissed Clara at the door of his office, then walked out with her through Sam’s domain to the outer door. He kissed her again there and let her fingers trail out of his as she headed off. He bit at his thumb and turned around to see Sam looking at him speculatively. He yanked his thumb out of his mouth and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets.

“Sam, yeah, look, send more roses to Clara’s flat, would you? Also her classroom. Same message as always. I’ve got to shout at Abbot for a few, then try not to eviscerate Baldy and fuck, there’s no point to it, is there?”

“You need to eat some breakfast,” Sam told him, kindly enough. She handed him a tray with a coffee and a muffin on it. He took it, stared down at it. He was going to be a father, fate willing. He and Clara. A father. There was no way he was going to do that without marrying her first, was there? He was going to make an honest woman of her and an honest man of himself.

“Fuck Abbot,” he said. “Baldy can fuck himself or hire a rentboy to do the fucking, I don’t care which. Get Jamie here as fast as his little legs can carry him. And Sam? Yeah. Thanks, Sam. I’m gonna– there’s gonna be some things I’ll need your help planning.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow at him. She was considerably more intelligent than most of the politicians that shuffled in shame through his door.

“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “Look, yeah, it’s what you think, but I need to talk to some people first. Lips sealed, yeah?”

Jamie came by about ten minutes later, out of breath.

“What the cunting fuck is going on? Sam said top priority, which she never says.”

Malcolm drew him into the inner office and shut the door.

“Yeah. So. Here’s the thing. Clara’s up the duff.”

“Fuck.” Jamie’s face went dark for a moment, then it cleared of all emotion. “You need it handled quietly?”

“What? No! Fucking going to marry her. Need somebody to stand with me. Get me drunk before and then haul me to the church all green in the face.”

“Malc–” And then Jamie had his arms around him and was pounding his back. Malcolm endured it, let Jamie kiss both his cheeks. “You fucking devil,” he said. “No other way she would have you, huh?”

“Yeah, if she’ll have me. Haven’t fucking popped the question yet. She just agreed to move in, and we’re raising the bairn together, but I haven’t asked her this yet.”

Jamie shoved him away roughly. “Get to it, man. Get out of here and go down on your worthless knee.”

“Need a ring.”

“Go fucking buy one. You’re minted these days.”

“We both are, compared to how it was.”

“Yeah.”

Malcolm looked at his friend, his lieutenant of so many years, and saw him for a moment as he’d been in that newspaper office, bad shoes and worse suit, tie untied, no lines on his face.

Then Jamie said, “Feel a lot better about this one than the last time.”

Malcolm would have winced at that reminder of his first marriage before now. Now he didn’t fucking care. He was with Clara. Clara, who was the breath in his lungs, the blood in his veins. “Yeah,” he said.

“Get the fuck out of here and to a fucking jeweler. Go! I’ll gut Baldy when he shows up.”

The Idiot

2015-09-12T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor stepped into the TARDIS, hand-in-hand with Clara, which was how they always were these days. He turned and squeezed and smiled at her. She’d been clever at least five times over just then, and as a result it had gone the best way it possibly could. Only one life lost, and that was the life of the man who’d built the machine with the intent of killing others, and he found that acceptable.

Clara. Clever sweet Clara. He looked into her eyes and smiled at her and was lost.

“Doctor?”

“Clara,” he said, dreamily.

“Are you okay?”

“Never better.” Beautiful eyes. Strange things happening in their depths. Oh, Clara.

“Because you look– your eyes look funny.”

“Yours look lovely.”

“And now I’m definitely worried. You never say things like that.”

He felt marvelous, though. Simply wonderful. Suffused with certainty and purpose and focus and adoration and excitement. Arousal, even. He clung to her hand and stared and stared and let her eyes overwhelm him. He hadn’t felt this good since, since– Oh bugger.

He said a very bad word to himself. There was only one thing this could be. He’d Recognized her. A human.

“That’s impossible,” he said. “I can’t be doing this. Not with, with–”

He stared at her, wide-eyed. This feeling, oh this feeling, it was happening, it was real, it was on him, it was something that could happen to him, even though his people were locked away from him, it could happen with a human. He’d Recognized a human.

He let go of her hand and scrabbled at his shirt collar. He unbuttoned it and breathed deliberately, deeply.

“What?” she said. “Doctor?”

It was her. It was happening again despite anything he had ever been told and it was her. She would never understand this. No one who wasn’t Gallifreyan would ever understand it. It would be one thing if she were sharing this feeling, but she couldn’t ever. It was him. One-sided. Misery. Oh damn him to hell, he couldn’t do this to her. Couldn’t.

“Doctor, you’re scaring me. What’s happening?”

“Sorry. Sorry. I just– it’s– I’m ill.”

“You don’t get ill.”

“I do. And I’m ill. Stay away.” To punctuate this, he let go of her hand and marched up to the console. His knees buckled under him and he clung to the edge for life. He drew a deep breath, centered himself. The controls that sent the TARDIS into the vortex were something he could manage in his sleep. He managed them. Drew another breath. She was beside him now, looking at him with some concern. He had to get away, or he would give in.

He flailed a hand at the flight lever. “Here. Take yourself home. First solo flight. You’ll do perfectly well.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’re ill.”

“I’m going to my room to rest. Sleep. Take my vitamins. No need to follow!”

He jabbed a finger in her general direction to punctuate this announcement, then marched out of the console room. It took every bit of concentration he had to manage it. He was moving away from her. Away. His body knew it– body, brain, they were one, united on the topic of the need to take Clara Oswald, rip her clothing from her, and make her his.

“Zero room, old girl. Please make it easy.”

She complied, thank goodness, and he had only two corridors to stagger along until the round door of the zero room presented itself. In. Door closed. Gravity off. Fields adjusted to nudge his mass into the exact center of the room.

He floated there curled into a ball. Neutral light, neutral temperature, all sensory input damped down. He spoke a few commands at the TARDIS and the lights dimmed further. Blessed peace. No sensations to keep him aware, awake, active. Nothing but his own mind, which was full enough of nonsense.

He reviewed their time together on the planet of brass, and the signs were clear. It had been building for days. It had happened when she’d taken off the goggles, welding torch in hand, and smiled at him. Something had shifted in him, but he’d ignored it. Told himself it was mere exhaustion after several sleepless weeks.

He’d been lying to himself from the very first moment.

Couldn’t lie to himself any more. The changes had already begun. Hyper-sensitivity, everywhere. His trousers confined him. His shirt collar choked him. His whole body was remaking itself, betraying his mind in service to brute biology. It would consume itself doing this if he didn’t give it what it wanted. The curse of the Gallifreyans. The curse of the Time Lords, the ascetics in their high towers, self-inflicted. They refused to cure it in themselves. And so his body would eat itself until he scented his mate– his gravid mate, as the oh-so-romantic textbook of his youth had put it. Something to be endured for the sake of the species. One didn’t speak of it. One mated, did one’s duty, handed the resulting child over to the creche if one wanted it to be a Time Lord, lived.

Bloody Gallifreyans.

Heat rippled over his skin. Desire, arousal. Had it been this bad last time? No. It had been rather boring last time. Mild. Well-mannered. Decorous. Controlled. Quite odd considering who it had been with. This– this was going to be wild. It had begun and it wouldn’t stop until he’d acted or was dead.

It had been joyous when it happened before, the handful of times. The first time, he’d been fortunate enough to share it with someone he cared about, his first wife, someone who was already his partner, someone with whom he was already considering having children, outré and old-fashioned though it would have been. Several frantic sweet nights of coupling, and then a year later a child, the joy of their lives together. This time nothing like that could happen. Clara, it was Clara, but she was human and she was not his partner and she couldn’t feel it and he couldn’t ask this of her. Could not rut with her unwilling, get a child on her, just to save his worthless life. Save his face. His sense of self.

He would die and another man would walk away with his memories, in his TARDIS, and probably with his Clara. And that would be better than the alternative.

Save the feeling sorry for himself for later, when his body had truly begun to fail him.

He floated, allowed time to pass. The TARDIS shifted around him, swam through time and space. Clara was obedient for once, then, taking herself home. Good. He felt it come to a halt in a pocket of space-time he knew well, a place this face had called home. She would be leaving him now. He should send the TARDIS back into the vortex. Should, if he could bring himself to leave the safety of the zero room.

He floated.

A knock on the door: unbearably loud in the muffled quiet of the zero room. He flinched. Then Clara’s voice, calling for him.

“Go away!”

“Not until I know you’re okay.”

Another bang at the door.

“Don’t let her in,” he said, to the TARDIS, in their shared language.

“I’m coming in.”

“I’m ill!”

“Is it contagious?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then I’m coming in.”

“You can’t.”

The door hissed open. The TARDIS had betrayed him. The lights came up. He blinked painfully. Light, noise, but worst of all her scent. Clara had changed her clothes, he saw, done something different with her hair. No! He squeezed his eyes shut. It was no help; he could still smell her. Perfume, soap, her body, her being. Heat washed over his skin again. Profound arousal.

A touch on his shoulder. He flinched away, but she gripped his coat and steadied herself next to him in the center of the room. A warble, distinctive: Clara’s sonic screwdriver. A screwdriver he’d helped her build, explaining in careful detail what it did and why, piece by piece, attuning it to her mind. Their deepest project together thus far, their most intimate. Working on a gadget. She seemed completely content with their relationship as it was. She wanted no more from him. She wouldn’t want this. Courage, old man.

He opened his eyes. She was frowning at her sonic.

“You’re– you’re– these readings.”

Last chance at misdirection. “I’m ill.”

“Recognition,” Clara said. “That’s what it says. What does that mean?”

“An incurable ailment of Time Lords. I’ll weaken, I’ll die, I’ll regenerate, and I’ll be fine again. All right? You got it out of me! Now just leave me alone until it’s over.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said. And she was out of the room again. The door eased shut and there was blessed silence around him. A blessed easing of the urge to seize her and have his way with her. Over and over and over until–

Pin-pricks all over his palms and the soles of his feet, running up and down his legs in waves of pain. Like brambles stuck into him. It would ease if he touched her. It was like addiction, like when he had tried the human custom of smoking tobacco. Ah, the buzz, the rush, the pleasure of blowing smoke through his lips. He’d come down and craved more, made excuses to get more. More. Until he’d locked himself in the zero room for a fortnight and emerged half-starved and clean, rational.

He’d emerge from the room this time a different man.

Time passed. He floated.

The door sighed open again. Her scent, more powerful than before. Sweat sprang out on his temples from the effort it took to remain where he was. Clara pushed herself through cautiously, swam in through the zero-G more gracefully this time. She used her sonic on him again, frowned at it.

“Yeah,” she said. “So. Recognition.”

“What about it.”

“The library data banks on it were locked, but the TARDIS helped me break them.”

He jerked out from his ball of of misery, jabbed a finger at her. “You invaded my privacy! What gives you the right?”

“My best friend is dying. That gives me the right. You idiot. You stupid idiot.”

Her face, her face. Pity and something else. He cupped his hands over his face. Her pity was humiliating. That’s what it was. His people did not reveal this to outsiders and for good reason.

“Leave me. Please. If you read about it, you know how seeing you makes me suffer.”

“Did it occur to you to ask, you idiot? You stupid, stupid man? You can ask.”

“No! No, I can not ask you to do this! I cannot have you do something stupid to save my life.”

“Me. Me do something stupid to save you. Me, the person who split herself into a zillion copies in your timeline and died over and over saving you. Me. The person who begged the Council to give you more regenerations. Me. Do something stupid. Yeah, okay, you got me there.”

“Stop.”

“No. You stop. You big bloody idiot. You don’t get to make decisions for me any more. You know this.”

“I can’t ask this of you. It’s monstrous.”

“I decide that. Ask me. Ask me now.”

He looked at her feet, floating there so near him, not at her face. If he looked at her face, if he looked into her eyes again, he would be gone.

“Dear Clara, my friend, I am in rut. Will you consent to be raped by an alien over and over until you get pregnant with his child? No? Right. That’s what I thought. Leave.”

He wrapped his arms around his head so he couldn’t see her. He could smell her, though. He knew exactly where she was. Knew she wasn’t fertile, not yet. Shame and misery and longing washed through him, left him limp and dripping with sweat.

Clara did not leave, did not give him any reprieve. She was there, floating next to him, silent, for long minutes.

“The TARDIS has a lot of information about this. About Recognition. I read quite a lot,” she said, eventually. “It was… surprising. I think that’s the best word.”

That was one way to put it. He smiled bitterly into his sleeve.

“I didn’t know you bonded like this. Life matches. Like, like–”

“Don’t compare me to an animal.”

“I was going to compare you to elves.”

“Based on us. I knew him.”

Clara made a huffing sound and cuffed his head gently. “Yeah, so if that’s accurate, then you know you’re trying to mislead me. But you can’t. I read it. You don’t just go into heat. Your brain knows when you find a potential life partner. It does this to you because you already feel it.”

More humiliation, and a sort of grief. “A feeling I am well aware you don’t return.”

“Are you aware of that. Are you really.”

“Yes. Really. It’s been months we’ve been together again, and you’ve given me no sign.”

“You idiot. I told you at Christmas. I told you you were the one other man I’d even considered marrying.”

Oh. Right. She had said that.

“I thought you were the one who was giving no signs. Affection, yes, hugging me back, holding my hand, but zero interest in sex. I thought you might even be asexual in this regeneration.”

“It’s the usual thing for us. No interest. Until this happens.” Or until he fell in love, which did happen every few decades, usually to his utter heartbreak.

“Jesus, you idiot.”

“You’re using that word a lot.”

“You deserve it.”

“I deserve to be left alone until this is over.”

“No! You deserve– I’m exactly what you deserve. Isn’t that what you said to me once? Well, it’s true now too. We deserve each other.”

She sounded as if she were near tears, and that ripped at him in a way he couldn’t endure. She was hurting. He had hurt her. His beloved. “Clara–” he said.

“You’re my best friend. More than that. It’s more. So complicated. You’re the most important person in my life. You drive me crazy and sometimes I hate you but I love you and I understand you and alien as you are sometimes I think you’re the only person in the universe who understands me.”

“Clara. Clara, please.”

“I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you again.”

“It isn’t fair to you.”

“What if I wanted to? What if I would have done it if you’d asked me properly, the way a human might do?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I would have. You’re everything to me.”

“Clara Oswald. You are everything to me too.”

He reached out a hand to her, hesitantly. She grasped it and laced her fingers together with his.

She said, with a shaky voice, “Ask me again. Ask me properly.”

“Clara. Will you recognize me? Will you accept me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will. I’ll have a child with you. It’s okay.”

He closed his eyes. “Say the word. I need to hear the word.”

“I recognize you.”

He shaped the Gallifreyan word in his mouth, said it to her, let it roll out into the room untranslated, so his youngest self, his innermost Gallifreyan being, would understand it. Recognition. They had seen and accepted each other. There was something more– He opened his eyes to see hers, her face so close to his. Wet eyes, wet lashes, wet cheeks, oh Clara.

“Traditionally I tell you my soul-name now,” he said. “My secret name.”

“Are you going to?”

“I’m not sure. That is– I’m not sure it’s my soul name any more. It’s secret, but–”

“But?”

“It’s changed,” he whispered. It had changed. It was not what the schism had told him. It was something else. Something he’d learned on Skaro. On Trenzalore. At the Heart of the TARDIS. He couldn’t say it even to himself, not yet. But he had to give her something.

“Theta Sigma.”

Her eyebrows came together. “Theta Sigma. The Greek letters?”

“Translated. The name I chose for myself as a boy. Not my soul name, but a name only a very few know. Now you know.” Now she had as many of his secrets as the Master had– Missy. He hadn’t told her the name that had come to him in the Untempered Schism either. “Now you.”

“Me? I don’t have a soul name.”

“You do. Everyone does. How do you know yourself inside? Clara, maybe it’s Clara–”

She shook her head. “Oswin. I’m Clara Oswin Oswald. Oswin. I called myself that as a kid. When I had adventures. Before my mom– I called myself Oswin the Brave. Oswin the Clever.”

The Doctor closed his eyes. Oswin. The very first of her echoes, to him, the screaming genius who’d rescued him from the graveyard of the Daleks, the girl who had retreated into her mind rather than live in the horror of reality. No wonder he loved her. No wonder she was the one his body had chosen. He opened his eyes and let the tears spill out.

“Oswin,” he said.

“Theta Sigma.” Hesitation in her voice, then she repeated it, more certainly.

He reached for her hand, touched her, and was lost. He kissed her frantically, messily, fingers dug into her hair, legs wrapped around her. They tumbled, bounced, drifted across the room, while he pulled at her shirt, ripped it until it was open and he could nuzzle his face into her neck, breathe in her scent, taste her. His body knew that he had consented, as it always did, and he felt a flood of something rush through him. Energy, well-being. Adrenaline. Enough to get him through it. His body knew he was trying. He wrapped himself around her tighter.

“Hey hey hey, slow down.”

“Can’t.” He licked at her. Bit. Pushed his hips against her. He needed to be inside her.

“Can you hold off long enough for us to get to a bedroom? Not sure I can do it here without losing my cookies.”

“Yeah. Yeah. She’ll move it next door.”

He said a word to the TARDIS, but the gravity had already begun to return. They came to rest on what the TARDIS had chosen as the floor, more or less facing the doorway to the corridor. Clara untangled herself from him and took his hand. He stood, with her help, and clung to her. He was trembling head to toe. He’d let it go a long time, far longer his body was happy with.

She led them out and into the corridor. The door of his room was there before them. It swung open as they approached. His bedroom, a place where he spent very little time in this form, because he slept as little as he could manage. Book cases, quiet lighting, wall covered in plants, all surprised him. She’d changed it since the last time he’d been in, perhaps in the last few hours. The bed was huge and covered in deep red silk sheets. Clara laughed and he scowled.

“It’s the TARDIS, not me,” he said.

“Of course it’s her,” Clara. “Because nobody would ever mistake you for a romantic.”

She had taken her shoes off already. He watched her undressing for a few breaths, dumbfounded, then came to himself. He should undress as well. He reached for his coat buttons and could not control the shaking of his hands enough to undo them. He stamped his foot. “Can’t. Dammit, I simply can’t.”

“I recognize you, Theta Sigma. We’re going to do this. Breathe.”

Breathe. In. Out. “Okay. Okay.”

She had to unbutton his jacket for him, unzip his hoodie. He stood there like a child, hands trembling, while she stripped his clothing from him, layer after layer, until he stood before her in pants. Blue pants with stars on them. He couldn’t even remember putting them on. Days ago. He must be a mess. These he could manage on his own. He pushed them down to his ankles and kicked them away. He’d once feared her face if she saw him, saw how gaunt he was this time around, saw his narrow shoulders. Now he knew she wouldn’t mind him. He kissed her hair, got in her way as she removed the last of her own clothing. He whimpered to see her. Closed his eyes and breathed and tried to hold onto the last of his self control.

The bed, sheets pulled back. He crawled up onto it, following her.

“Let me control this,” Clara said.

“Yes, boss,” he murmured.

He lay back obediently and waited for her. His hands were wet and trembling. Those ripples of fire ran over his skin again, from his sex out to his fingertips, the soles of his feet. He had been aroused since the moment she had touched him. He was beyond aroused now. His body, his whole body, awake and on fire and tense and nerves sending shocks of pleasure through him every time her fingers touched his skin. She straddled him, rose over him. He took himself in hand to guide himself into her. Her face was intent on something, not him, as she descended over him. She was somewhere else. He was not going to notice or complain or say anything at all; the gift she was giving him must not be caviled at.

How did it feel? He’d loved sex with River, so very long ago. He’d loved sex with all of his partners, his lovers, his companions. The ones who’d coaxed him into it. This was not merely sex. This was Recognition. It was compulsion. It was bonding. It was the universe showing two people that they might be soulmates if they wanted. And it was sex, yes. Mind-blowing sex, with a body that had spent days reconfiguring itself into a sexual being.

It felt bloody amazing.

Clara, riding him gently at first, with two fingers touching herself. Clara, who was his soulmate. Clara, who he loved in simpler ways. The simplest. The most complex. Otherworldly. Spiritual. Base. Bodies joined, moving against each other. A steady rhythm, slow, building. He reached up and touched her face. Sweat on her temples, under her arms. He got his feet under himself and rose to meet her on her way down. More friction. More. The first moan from her. Her eyes were closed. He needed– he needed–

“Clara, my Oswin, look at me, please. I need to see you. I need to.”

Brown eyes, endless depths in her pupils. His soulmate. He accepted her. He recognized her. She was his and he was hers and his name would be hers and everything that made him a unique being in the universe would be hers. She would bear his child and his people would not be lost.

He let himself go, yielded himself to pleasure at last. Cried out, emptied his soul into her. She brought herself off while he was still gasping, and it sent him over again, tumbled by a wave of pleasure, rising and cresting and rolling and crashing and leaving him limp and wet on the beach in its wake. Oh, he’d forgotten what this was like, coming over and over, his body tuned for one thing, one thing only, his one reason for living.

He laughed. He turned into a maudlin purple sentimental idiot when he was in the throes. He remembered that much from his last time, at least, little as he wanted to remember that incident. Mindless biology was a fool. He was a fool. A satisfied fool.

He closed his eyes and slept.

When he woke again, Clara was there, dressed in a robe. Her hair was wet. She’d showered, then. He sniffed and knew one thing, that she was not yet carrying his child.

“Hey,” she said. “You hungry? You’re supposed to be, according to the books.”

He was. She’d brought him a tray with breakfast: porridge with cream and sugar, ripe figs, yogurt, pulpy orange juice, tea. Breakfast.

“Is it ship’s morning?” he said.

“It’s Clara’s morning. I have my phone set to remind me when meals are supposed to be. More or less. Phone says it’s breakfast time, so breakfast is what you get.”

He made no answer, for he was far too occupied shoveling porridge into his mouth. He’d been in the zero room long enough that he’d have been starving ordinarily, never mind with Recognition upon him.

“Better?”

“Much. So much,” he said. He poured himself tea with hands that were almost steady. But then, they would be. He’d accepted the recognition, joined with her, and he would be able to function almost normally. Tea, delicious sweet tea. He drank, look up over his mug, and saw Clara watching him. Her arms were folded and her robe done up tight. He regretted it. He hadn’t been able to pay attention to anything earlier, hadn’t been able to look at her and appreciate her the way she deserved.

She smiled at him, seeming relaxed. “What happens next?”

“We do this again until you’re pregnant. Sex, sleep, food, repeat.”

“You can tell I’m not pregnant. How is that even possible?” Ah, there was his Clara, intent on understanding everything around her.

“The cascade of hormone release starts within a few hours.”

She said a series of extremely bad words and he furrowed his eyebrows at her. “No. You don’t get to lecture me. Not after that.”

He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you going to be okay if I don’t get pregnant right away?”

“I’ll stay alive so long as I’m trying. My body knows. It knows what we just did. That you are potentially, potentially– a breeding partner.” That word, again from that textbook. Odd how it came up in his memory now. Terrible word, given how he felt about her.

“You’re lucky I went off the Pill a while ago.”

Her face changed at that. A moment of sadness. Oh. Danny. She hadn’t been planning on – she’d been staying celibate while mourning him. Perhaps forever. Humans could do that too, though not as maniacally as Time Lords. Ascetic idiots. Like him. He was an idiot. He bit into a fig. Sweet, delicious. He licked his fingers.

Clara was watching him, smiling at him oddly.

“You will be fertile,” he said. “If you spend time with me like this. I am pumping out pheromones.”

He saw her nose wrinkle as she sniffed, but she would detect nothing. Human nose, numb nose. She said, “This is crazy. Crazy. The whole thing.”

“Sorry.” He ate the rest of the fig. He was craving protein now, however. He’d have to have the TARDIS make him something later.

“And after I’m, I’m pregnant? Will you be okay again?”

“I’ll be in protector mode. Difficult to describe. More testosterone than usual. Hyper-masculine. For the duration of the gestation. Which, by the way, is likely to be close on to a year.”

“That sounds like–”

“Like you’ll hate every moment of it.”

Clara laughed. “Yeah. You’re gonna be intolerable. Macho idiot.”

“After you give birth and the child is safe, I’ll collapse back into my usual hollow-chested self. What did you call me? A space hobo.”

“Evolution is weird.”

“It works with what it has. In our case, children were rare. The gestation takes so long. Predators, food– many challenges. Later on, when we had the power to meddle with our genome, we chose not to edit it out. Instead we– they– intensified it.”

“Why? Why put yourself through this?”

“Not enough babies without it. A disease of civilization. If you don’t choose Singularity, if you stay in these meat bodies, you tend to dwindle. We Gallifreyans denied the Singularity. We stayed to watch.” To watch the Universe thrash and burn.

“I’m not sure I like your people.”

He laughed bitterly. “I know I don’t.”

“You hate this?”

“Not this. There are– other things about them. But still–”

“Still you saved them.”

“Most of them are not to blame. And some of them are my family.”

Clara was pensive. “How many times have you done this?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, remembered them. Three faces, two beloved. One… more complicated than that. “Three times. You can’t predict it. For some of us it never happens. For some, over and over.”

It had never happened with River or Rose, both of whom he’d loved deeply, and that was why he’d been convinced it couldn’t happen with humans. But maybe there had been another reason. Biological? No. He would not let himself dwell on that now. Later. Now his attention was for Clara, his beloved. His soulmate, until one or the other of them should yield to the end that all mortal beings must eventually meet.

He kissed Clara Oswin Oswald. What would their children be like? Straight hair, curly? Short or tall? Would they have her nose or his? He rather hoped they’d look like her. Somewhere on Gallifrey was a skinny girl with a coxcomb of brown hair, the one good thing that had come from that year of paradox. Their daughter, still alive, possibly. The creches were protected as if they were Gallifrey’s most precious treasures. Which they were. He would cherish his child with Clara as fiercely.

He kissed Clara Oswin Oswald tenderly. He slipped his hand into her robe and cupped her breast possessively. He would be calm enough this next time that he would be able to help with her pleasure, which would be lovely. Her nipple stiffened under his fingers. Yes, it was rising in him again.

He pushed her back onto the bed and tugged her robe open. She held out her arms to him. He rolled himself onto her. Oh, sweet feeling, his heart’s ease, knowing he was inside her, would soon be bringing them both to orgasm. He felt no urgency to move just yet, though. He lay over her, around her, inside her, and kissed her. His name. His name was not what it was. Once it had been a secret that would shatter the universe, open gateways, destroy everything. Now it was nothing. Now it was something he could choose again.

He said, “I think my soul name is the name you call me when we’re alone.”

And now she knew that secret, his greatest thus far.

“Doctor Idiot?”

He kissed her forehead. “I think that’s it. I’m an idiot.”

“My idiot.”

Hay and Elephants

2015-08-31T21:00:00+00:00

The dire wolves had been beaten back, at some cost. The TARDIS was not reachable, not now, not with Clara bleeding from their teeth, not with the howling blizzard the Doctor could see coming in fast from the west. Nightfall was upon them, and the snow, and it would be death to carry her through this. He ran for the barn, with Clara slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The barn was whole, and had been built to shelter animals through bitter storms like this. It would do for them.

The sonic made quick work of the door. The Doctor stepped inside. Such eerie light outside, the light of night with the snow falling. So dark in the barn, with the door kicked shut against the wind. He flicked the sonic into illumination mode and raised it high to see what he had run headlong into. Quiet. Nothing moved in the corners to disturb the darkness. His breath plumed out before him, eerie green from the sonic’s glow.

An open space; a hayloft, a line of stalls. They would have to do. He made his way to the nearest stall, with Clara still slung over his shoulder. Clean, thank his luck, with deep sand on the floor and hay piled in the corner. He lay Clara down on the hay.

Blood still flowed from the bites, though they had already begun to clot. He treated her injuries quickly, carefully, with the kit he always kept in one of the inner pockets of his coat. Bigger on the inside, those pockets were, and he had thoughtfully provided himself with tools. No need to give away all his tricks to her, though no doubt she’d figured this one out long ago. Too clever by half, his Clara was. A screaming genius, one of her echoes had called herself, and it was true of the original as well. Antiseptic on the wounds while she was still unconscious, a little gauze wrapped around. A screaming genius who’d flung herself in front of the largest wolf rather than let it bite him. What sort of genius was that?

He frowned at her while he bound up the last of the bite wounds. A last flick of the sonic, scanning for vitals: blood loss was survivable. Shock was still a risk. He wiped his hands off on a handkerchief while he considered the problem of shock. And the cold.

Clara came awake again, blinked up at him.

“Well, well, sleepyhead,” he said to her.

She smiled weakly at him; it was a running joke between them now. She said, “Wolves?”

“Scared of fire, as it turns out. We’re safe for now.”

“TARDIS?”

“About a mile away. We’ll find it in the morning, when the storm has passed.”

“Storm?”

“It’s snowing. Quite a lot. Can’t see but a few feet ahead through it.”

She blinked at him and tried to sit up. “Ow,” she said.

“Are you cold?”

She shook her head. Now that concerned him. She ought to be cold. He pulled off his jacket and helped her into it; it had many surprising qualities. It wouldn’t be enough, though. He dug out a nest in the hay and tucked her back into it. She hissed in pain when he tweaked her bandages by accident.

“Sorry, sorry.” He stroked her arm above the bandage, in a fruitless attempt to soothe away the pain. She’d be sore until they got to the TARDIS; he didn’t carry painkillers safe for humans in his pockets. Terrible omission.

“Not your fault.”

“Clara, Clara, I think ninety-nine out of a hundred people would disagree with you on that point. Now, let’s see.”

He stood and rubbed his hands together against the cold. It was sheltered in the barn, but not by any stretch of the imagination warm. Below freezing for certain. Could he light a fire? Not and have the barn survive it. He whirled into motion and made a methodical search along the line of stalls. Blanket. Horse blankets. Or some horse-like animal, anyway. They smelled horsey, not unpleasantly so, and were otherwise clean. Blankets, yes, and that was tack hanging neatly on hooks. The barn had been cleaned before the animals had been taken away. Perhaps it was not abandoned, but simply moved away from for the winter. Because this winter was indeed dark and deep and profound, and he wouldn’t have wanted to stay here for it. The dire wolves ruled these plains in the winter.

The Doctor returned to the hay pile where Clara waited for him. She was shivering. He burrowed down into the hay with her and pulled the horse blankets over them. If he didn’t do something drastic, something more than this, she would not make it through the night.

“Clara. I’m going to need skin on skin contact to warm you. Please forgive the intimacy.”

She laughed at him, weakly, but it was assent. He unbuttoned his shirt, pulled hers up, and pressed himself close to her. He wrapped himself around her as completely as he could. Eventually they would warm up the hay, would turn their little nest into something cozy, but not yet. He went inward and adjusted his own body temperature upwards. He would need to eat and sleep more than usual after they were done with this, but that would be a mere inconvenience.

Skin to skin. He felt her mind near his, brushing against him, like little sparks against his skin, bright little reminders of her Claraness. At one point, when he had been raw from regeneration, it had felt like electric shocks. He’d pretended to hate touch rather than endure the pain of bursts of emotion from her, much as he craved touch. Eventually he’d learned control, and he’d begun to be able to hug Clara the way she wanted him to. To hold her hand, to stroke her thumb with his, to let her know his affection. But this level of contact, skin to skin, bodies pressed together from head to toe– He couldn’t control it. Not shocks, at least, but sparks. Tingles. Little flashes of her mind, no matter what he did to try to turn it off.

“Ah,” he said. “You remember once I told you about telepathy and Gallifreyans.”

“Yeah, I remember.” She sounded a little better already, he fancied.

“It’s difficult for me to, um, control it, when we’re this close. So you might want to avoid thinking about, um, anything you don’t want me to know.”

“You realize that is the worst possible thing to say to a human, yeah?”

“Oh?”

“It’s like telling me not to think about elephants. Suddenly all I can think about is elephants.”

He grumbled, because indeed she was thinking about elephants now and perforce so was he. “Pink?” he said, with some outrage. Pink elephants, in tutus.

“You get what you deserve.”

“Clara,” he said, and then stopped. There was no point trying to explain. And she wasn’t angry with him, he could feel that. The damnable touch telepathy was telling him that she was the opposite of angry with him. She was teasing him with affection. More than that. With love, even. Oh, Clara. Screaming geniuses did not fall in love with him. He tended to get people killed rather too often.

Don’t think about that. Think about … elephants. He’d met a lovely fellow once who’d kept a white elephant in perfect happiness. Pretty thing, that elephant had been. A little small for its species. It had liked .

“Now I’ve got you on elephants too,” she said, with some amount of satisfaction. “I can see them. You saw an actual white elephant once.”

“Ah.” It was going both ways. That was unusual for a human. Ordinarily their brains couldn’t handle it. Of course Clara was an exception. Of course. So much time in the TARDIS, so much time close to him, her self-sacrificing plunge into the heart of the TARDIS– all of these things would have changed her.

“Now I’m reading a lot of guilt. Big fluffy mounds of guilt.”

“Sorry.”

“Why sorry?”

“It’s an invasion of privacy. I try to keep the door shut but it’s difficult right now.”

“Better this than me dying of hypothermia, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything you read is something I probably don’t mind you knowing anyway.”

“You say that now, but–”

“But what? Are you surprised to learn I care about you? You hadn’t figured it out.”

“Well. I had been, um.” Refraining from speculating, lest he be forced into doing something about it. Which he now would be. Would it be the worst thing that happened to him? Possibly not. The pain would come later, and he’d already signed himself up for that misery, hadn’t he. Might as well taste the pleasure as well as the pain.

And that was Clara, agreeing with him.

“What have I done,” he murmured.

“You let me into your head, you silly man.”

“And now I’m stuck with you here.”

“I’m afraid I’m exactly what you deserve.”

He hugged her tight for an instant. Throwing his own words back at him, she was, but he knew what she meant by it, and he was in no doubt. Whatever he had let himself in for, at least it had paid off. She was much warmer to his touch now, and had stopped shivering.

“Anyway. Now you know. What I want.”

What she wanted– he had a vivid image of it suddenly. He blushed. The kissing part, he was certain he could manage that with a minimum of fuss. As for the rest– “I know you’re tired and cold and injured.”

“And?”

“And that is all that matters right now.”

Clara sighed. “Why do you have to develop a conscience all of a sudden.”

He laughed into her hair. “Because I know what you’ll do to me later if I don’t.”

“If you pretend this didn’t happen, so help me, I’ll–”

“Clara, Clara, Clara, I know better. I shan’t.”

“I’m holding you to it.”

“Bossy,” he murmured.

He eased himself further down into the hay, let his hand rest against her hip inside his coat. Dire wolves and snow outside, temperatures plummeting, the TARDIS a mile of whiteout conditions away– it was fine. They were warm now, in their nest of hay and horse blankets. They’d sleep and wake in the morning to a transformed world.

The Wall

2015-08-29T12:00:00+00:00

The staircase wall was clean at last. They’d finally got round to scraping off the layers of paint from that idiot exercise in filling balloons with latex paint and launching them at the wall. Peter had admired the contraptions they’d built for throwing the balloons even though he’d hated the results. And hated the fact that the balloon launchers had beat him to the wall by half an hour. But now it was a brilliant, pristine white of stunning clarity.

Peter paused at the top of the staircase long enough to exult then swung himself down the steps. Class waited for no one, not even the hung over. Eager artists had to wait, however, for no one to be around. He’d wait for the night, stash himself and his supplies into one of the studios until long after most people would be out drinking or asleep, and then do it. Paint it.

The wall would be his.

Craig texted him to badger him into going out drinking, but Peter was determined. He hid himself and his satchel in a studio and tried not to gnaw on his thumb. He did some work for a class, of all things, to keep himself distracted. That paper did ought to be written at some point, and now seemed like a moment.

And then, around midnight, he heard the caretaker do what was usually his final round. Peter grinned, packed up his satchel, and hustled. Out, down the hall, down the steps, out to the covered quad. Paused, looked around. Nobody else there. The wall was his, free and clear. He did a little dance all by himself, a fast shimmy around. He’d done it.

Now for the hard part, the work part. Peter ripped opened the satchel and poured his stuff out onto the flagstones. He lined up his cans of spray paint. First stencil: the dance, where the boy alien meets the girl alien and takes her hand. Light colors first. Where did he put that tape?

“You looking for this?”

Feet appeared in front of him: feet in black leather boots with chunky heels. The boots were on the feet of a girl in a hoodie. Peter looked up and blinked; the girl, whoever she was, had the light right behind her head. She moved and her face caught the light. Brown hair. Cute nose. She was holding out his roll of masking tape. “It rolled off,” she said.

She had a paint-stained bag slung over shoulder. Peter knew what that meant, but he’d got here first. The wall was his. He nodded and took the tape. “Thanks.”

He turned his back on her. His wall. No mercy.

She said, “You going to use the whole wall?”

“Probably.”

“Oh.”

Peter turned and looked at her again. There was something about her round face, her hair. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

“Yeah. We were in the same photography workshop last year. I’m Jenna Coleman.”

“Oh, you’re the one with the Mamiya! I remember you. I’m Peter Capaldi.”

She waved a hand at him. “Hi. So, yeah, about the wall.”

“What about it? I was here first, fair and square.” Peter bent and shuffled through the stack of stencils. He’d done it right this time. He had a plan. He was going to tell a story on this wall. His wall.

She came up and set down her bag next to his. He heard the clink of cans from inside. She said, “You made stencils?”

“Yeah. Been waiting a fortnight at least.”

“So have I. I was five minutes too late last time, too.”

“Oh.” Peter straightened up again and looked at her more closely. She’d sounded disappointed in a way that made him feel bad, which made him upset. She didn’t have a right to make him upset, but he wasn’t a bad sort. As a rule. “Look,” he said, “What were you planning? Maybe we can collaborate.”

“Collaborate?” Jenna’s hands were stuck into her hoodie and she looked dubious.

“Just show me,” Peter said, impatiently. Jenna bent to her satchel and dug out a sketchbook that looked hardly used. It was, improbably, not stained all over with oil pastels or anything like that, the way his always were. It was nearly filled up, however, with unbearably tidy patterned designs done with technical pens and markers. Close to the end there was an almost architectural drawing of the wall, and a pattern methodically drawn over it, with measurements.

“Interesting,” he said, to be polite. Then he looked more closely. It wasn’t a boring regular pattern the way he’d thought, but it shifted subtly and twisted on itself. It was actually cool, the way it interlocked but wasn’t the same until it meshed with itself at the edges. “That’s stonking.”

“Stonking?” She sounded doubtful. “Not sure how this is going to work.”

“Look, it’s obvious, isn’t it? We do yours, then mine over the top.”

“Oh! Tessellations as a background, then your figures at interesting places.”

“How big you want to make these?”

“Maybe three meters each way? Nine copies.”

“Yeah, that’s loads of room for these little blokes.”

“How many you got?”

“Five.”

“Yeah, that’s enough space.”

“We’ll need a stepladder.”

Which Jenna, it turned out, knew how to get by lock-picking the caretaker’s supply closet, which was a thing Peter had never seen done in person before. She dragged it out, set it up, and they got to work. They had maybe four hours before the early morning caretaker arrived. First step: cover the wall with her patterns. A tessellation of the plane, she told him. It looked like Escher but was, she said, mathematical. Once that was marked off, fill the areas with color. She had a pattern in mind but Peter pshawed her and then took out the three different colors of green he had in his bag. He wanted it to be a romantic lush wild landscape all contained within those severe mathematical borders. Jenna thought it over, and agreed if he’d let her do the coloring for his figures. She took his cans and proceeded to do the most stunning job of shading his pair of lovers as they danced and flung each other across the wall.

Some time around three in the morning, they set down their cans, stood back, and looked at their wall. It was covered in her geometric shapes, from which his pair of figures burst in violent action. It was fucking gorgeous, and Peter told her so.

“Yeah, came out okay,” she said. “Think it’ll dry enough for another pass for shading tonight?”

“No’ enough time,” he said. “Need at least a couple hours horizontal before I face class.”

“What time is it, oh shit, I’ve got to get home too. Need sleep so badly.”

First they had to return the stepladder and set everything to rights. Leave no trace but their art, was Peter’s philosophy, and it was Jenna’s too. Eventually they made their way out of the quad to the street. Dark skies, cloudy skies, wind gusting, rain spattering down onto the pavements. It’d not been raining long, but it looked like it was settled in.

Jenna zipped up her hoodie and wrinkled her nose. “Dammit, I’m going to get soaked through.”

“You far?”

She nodded. “Stayed later than I planned. No bus. Have to leg it.”

Peter bit at his thumb. Here he went again, doing ridiculous things for this girl, who was an utter pain. And yet something about her made him feel soft in the head.

He said, “Stay at mine. Three streets away. I’ve got a sofa. I wouldn’t bother you, I swear it. I’m too tired anyway. Not that I would.”

Jenna turned and looked up at him, studying his face in the light of the street lamp. She smiled for a moment. “Yeah, I trust you. Lead on.”

Peter led her to the house where he rented a room, all full of art students and actors and one very strange opera singer. He let them in quietly, because while they all kept late hours, this was extreme even for his roommates. They tip-toed up the stairs to his room. Peter stared at it with new eyes, somewhat alarmed by its state. He had drawings tacked up on all the walls. A messy cloth with all his acrylics covered his entire drawing table, and he’d left the stuff he’d cut out of the stencils on the floor. At least his pants weren’t also scattered all over the floor. He’d done laundry earlier in the week. He wasn’t that much of a wreck. Barely.

Jenna ignored the wrack and ruin of his life and pointed at his sofa. “That it?”

“Yeah, let me just–” He lunged for his bed and took the heaviest blanket off the top and handed it to her. There was a cushion that would do as a pillow, so he didn’t have to go without a pillow for her sake. He had to draw a line somewhere. First his wall, now his sofa. Peter stole a look at Jenna, who was kicking off her trainers. Red socks. Very cute.

Jenna wrapped herself up in a blanket and fell onto the sofa with no ceremony. Peter took his shoes off but nothing else and climbed into bed. Light out. Ceiling. What was that on the ceiling? Oh, right, he’d painted stars on his ceiling months ago. There they were, glowing faintly.

He said, “You, um, you do this often? The wall thing?”

“Trying to make it a project. I know, I know, it’s cliché, but I have four different tessellations I want to do. At least. For a project.”

“Yeah. Me too. Not tesselwhatsits, but a story. Showing those little aliens doing things.”

“Huh. Look, Peter, I gotta sleep.”

“Sorry, yeah. G’night,” he said. He stared at the ceiling. He was never going to fall asleep. Never. Not with a girl in the room with him. It was impossible.

His phone woke him up, buzzing in his pocket where he’d forgotten it the night before. Peter turned off the alarm and sat up. Late night, no drinking, lots of spray painting. Right! He found his specs on the desk and stuck them onto his face. Jenna was asleep on his half-broken sofa. There was green paint on the end of her nose and smudged over her cheek. She was, he thought, prettier than he’d taken her to be in the night, all wrapped up in the hoodie. She was adorable, in fact.

He edged out of his room quietly, so as not to wake her, and made his way to the kitchen. His landlady was there. She was a terrifying and fascinating woman in theater who knew all the most interesting people in town, because she designed costumes. Dreadfully aged, at least forty years old, and she always knew everything that was going on. She was forgiving of him when he was late with the rent, and only bothered his parents for it when he was drastically late. More importantly, she made him tea now and then and listened to his wittering.

“Tea, love?” she said.

“Second cup, please, Ms McCrimmon.”

“Oh? Somebody stay the night?”

Peter shoved his hair away from his face and scratched at his ears, which were feeling unaccountably hot. “A friend. She’s just a friend. We, um, we painted a wall together.”

This did not slow down his landlady in the slightest. “Lovely! Did the work turn out well?”

“I think so! Need to look at it today.”

Peter balanced one cup on top of the other and danced his way back to his room. Jenna was still wrapped up in his spare blankets, but her eyes were open and she was blinking at him.

“Morning,” he said to her, and when she smiled he felt pleased with himself though he wasn’t sure why. He held out a cup of tea to her with a flourish. She sat up and took it and bobbed her head to him.

“You are a marvel,” she said.

Peter grinned and buried his nose in his own tea to cover it up. Strong tea with milk, one sugar, as Ms MacCrimmon took it and he had learned to like it. Morning tea. Jenna drank her tea, asked where the bath was, then came back a few minutes later with the green paint gone from her face. There was of course serious paint removing soap in the bath, because Peter often had his own problems with paint on his hands.

“That was fun last night,” he said, tentatively.

“Yeah! Yeah it was. Thanks for sharing the wall.”

“No bother. Anybody would have done.”

“No, not anybody would have, and not anybody does. The last time I tried that wall I here at the same time as this team of people with a trebuchet and this absolute wanker had his friends carry me away from it. They threatened to fire balloons at me if I complained.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“That’s– that’s fucking unacceptable. Excuse my French.”

“I wasn’t best pleased,” and that sounded like the biggest understatement ever. She looked as if she’d done her own streak of swearing at those arsewipes.

Suddenly Peter was very glad he’d been a gentlemen instead of an arse. “Well. That’s not me.”

“I know. You were sweet to share.”

Peter’s ears burned. He buried his nose in his cup of tea rather than look at her. “Was nothing,” he said, around the tea.

“Won’t forget it,” Jenna said.

Peter swallowed. Hot. The roof of his mouth was burned, damn it. “Hey. Should we meet some time to put on some final touches?”

“Yeah, sounds great.”

“How will I find you?”

“Hand over your phone.”

Peter handed it over obediently. Jenna frowned at it and handed it back.

“Unlock it first, dimwit,” she said. Peter stared, then said, “Oh!” He unlocked his phone and handed it over. She poked at it. “There. Now you have my number. Text me.”

“Okay,” he said, and grinned. “Tonight? You free tonight?”

“Maybe. Ask me again later.”

And with that she was out the door and running down the street toward the uni. Peter watched her around the corner, then got himself back inside, rubbing his bare arms against the cold. Jenna. He’d painted a wall with Jenna. She was annoying. She was bossy. She was ridiculously short. If he kissed her he’d have to stoop down or she’d have to stand on a box. Now where had that thought come from? He wouldn’t be doing any kissing. He disliked her art, her cold mathematical geometric approach that had looked so dead fantastic on the wall. Yeah. He had to get his head sorted out.

Peter showered and found clean clothes in the pile on the floor of his room. Today’s skull t-shirt was one of his own cartoons, which a mate had silk-screened onto a shirt for him. One of his better pieces, in his opinion, more witty than grotesque. Maybe Jenna would like it. Be impressed by it, rather.

He made his way to the uni and detoured over to the wall. Not ruined, not tagged, not cleaned up. Just about dry. It looked much brighter in daylight than it had under the street lamps last night. The colors popped out beautifully It wasn’t bad, to be honest. It looked like the cover of a scifi book, or like scenery from Doctor Who, with those figures on a geometric background. He liked it. He liked it a lot.

He took a picture of it and, on a whim, texted it to Jenna. An answer came back a couple minutes later: Brilliant! But we botched the lower right. They had, not that it ruined the piece in any major way. It was just something on a wall that the school caretaker would paint over soon enough. It would live on only in the photographs. Speaking of which– Peter snapped another set, this time using his proper camera, the 35mm SLR he’d found in a pawn shop. People ditched the most amazing things. Sure and it would be a bastard to get it developed, but that’s what friends in the photography lab were for. Come to think of it, Jenna should have an in with the lab.

He ran off up the stairs to his renaissance painting class, a lot of boring stuff when he’d rather be doing his own work. He had an idea for another series of drawings, featuring a boy and a girl doing daredevil stunts in a twisted cityscape at night. He also wanted to get to the library to look up that word for what she’d been drawing, tessellations or whatever. Or those giant wall paintings that American had done, by rules with string and nails and big areas of color. He’d always liked those.

Jenna texted him later in the day: not tonight tomorrow breakfast? Peter grinned, despite himself, and sent back an enthusiastic yes. They met for brunch the next morning. They both ordered omelets with chips, and Peter thought it was some kind of a sign. He ate his own chips then poached about half of hers off her plate, which she didn’t seem to mind in the least.

It turned out she was seeing somebody. Not exclusively, she said, not a serious thing, except maybe it was, she wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t the kind of thing that would get in the way of painting walls together. Or hanging out with friends. On which word she poked him in the arm, and that made Peter grin. Friends? Yeah, he liked that idea. He liked talking to her. She was smart and witty and fast and enthusiastic and she was kind in a way that made him embarrassed for himself. She knew more about photography than he did. He wanted to hang out with her more. A lot more. She made him feel strange and think strange things and have about a hundred ideas every minute.

“Hey.”

“Hey what?”

“You free tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Pub crawl, if you wanted to go with your Danny. My mate Craig organized it. Six pubs, one night.”

“Not my thing.”

“Do you not drink, then?”

“I don’t mind drinking. I mind drinking that much.”

Peter wriggled his shoulders. He had a name for what he was feeling and it was maybe shame. “Yeah. Point taken. Okay. No pub crawl. Hey.”

“What?”

“There’s another wall. The one near the archway. Covered with tags and obscenities right now.”

“What about it?”

“Let’s design another one. A proper one, where we plan it all out.”

“You mean not just slapping one of yours on one of mine.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Jenna gazed at him steadily. A smile crept out on her face. “I like the way you think, Mr Capaldi.”

“And I like the way you use color, Ms Coleman.”

“And I can photograph it properly. Let’s do it!”

It was, of course, far more work than he hoped it would be. It was a lot of work over several nights in the next week. A lot of brainstorming and sketching and critiquing until they hit on something that united their disparate strengths beautifully. Peter had a nose for motion and the dynamic; Jenna understood color in a way that made him want to cry. Together they came up with a series of designs showing a eerie tessellated alien landscape with a pair of figures doing mysterious things across it. Peter stayed up all night with a torch and a book, phone handy, noting when the caretaker made his sweeps past the spot. When they were ready, they got their gear together and stayed up all night spraying the wall near the archway, only having to run and hide once from passersby.

They came back the next day, in watery winter daylight, to look what they’d done. It was fantastic. It was twenty times better than the first one and he was almost proud of it. Peter picked Jenna up and spun her around. She shrieked and giggled and it was the most adorable thing ever so he spun her again. When he put her down she wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him.

He’d met her boyfriend Danny a few times during this. Danny didn’t like him, but Peter didn’t care much one way or the other. He was polite to Danny because that’s what gentlemanly people did, they were polite to everybody, even people who didn’t have the time of day for them. Jenna met Craig who was not completely sober at the time, and that didn’t go very well. The second time was better, because Craig was too broke to drink. Peter couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Craig in funds and sober anyway.

Beer hadn’t been interesting in weeks, if he was honest with himself. He liked his lager as much as the next man, but if you were insensible with it your painting was likely to be shite. And Peter’s painting had begun to matter to him. Quite a lot. And his photography. And his illustration. He’d remembered why he was in art school and it wasn’t to drink every night. It was to get better at his art.

Art school definitely was about planning out a series of stencils of a little alien bursting out of a hole in a pavement, however. That was what he lived for. Also for helping Jenna do her tessellations on any wall large enough to make them interesting. They had a lot of projects together, suddenly, and his days and nights were full. If he wasn’t hanging around with Jenna, he was texting her photos of his latest drawings and looking at her latest work in turn.

He’d developed a bizarre new habit of getting out of bed early, sometimes as early as seven in the morning, which was amazingly industrious of him. This morning he was up, showered and shiny and dressed in his second-best print t-shirt. Mrs McCrimmon was in the kitchen, as she often was at this hour. She had a cup of tea ready for him.

“You’re out and about early today.”

“Meeting Jenna,” Peter said. He buried his nose in his tea, because she was smiling and he couldn’t work out why. Painting wasn’t funny.

Painting in the morning, studying in the afternoon, and a bit of partying tonight. That was his plan. Craig had a new band, and it was opening for another more popular band. No cover, cheap beer. Craig was a better drummer than this band deserved, of course, but Peter was bound and determined to support him. And to have a good time. Craig had, with some justification, complained that Peter hadn’t been much of a mate to him recently. The least he could do was buy a few pints so the bar felt like having them back to play. He’d done more work in the last month than in the entire year of school previous. He’d call himself dull but he didn’t feel dull. His life had turned brilliant when Jenna had come into it. But all work and no play, after all. He could take a night off and relax.

He coaxed Jenna into bringing Danny along. She’d been working too much as well, and to his surprise Danny agreed with his argument on this point.

Craig’s band was terrible. Beyond terrible, if Peter were honest. The crowd certainly thought so and said so at top volume. Craig was okay, though, as always, steady when they needed it and when their guitarist was all over the place, showy to distract when the singer forgot the words. Which he did a lot. The next band, thankfully, played a lot of covers of seventies hits, so the ugly crowd lightened up and started dancing instead of threatening to throw beer at the stage.

Peter had a pint waiting for Craig when he got back from lugging his kit into the band van. He was red in the face and still dripping with sweat from his set. The pint went down the hatch immediately. Peter lined up another one for him.

“Love you,” Craig said.

Peter bumped his shoulder. “Love the brass in my pocket, you mean. That was– well, you were brilliant.”

Craig made a face at him. “ You don’t have to lie. We just sacked the singer.“

“Good. He was bad. Beyond bad. He was a world of shit.”

“You should be his replacements.”

Peter lit up for a second, then shook his head vigorously. “No, not me. Haven’t the time.”

“What have you been doing anyway?”

Peter shrugged. “Painting.”

Craig smirk. “Painting. Doing the pavements, you mean. I was putting a cone on the Duke the other night and there it was, one of yours, right under him.”

Peter grinned. “We admit nothing.”

“We? Oh. You and Jenna. Where is she?”

“Dancing. With Danny.” Peter looked over at the dance floor and yes, there she was. In a clinch, her head against Danny’s broad chest. He was well fit. Ran, lifted weights, brilliant maths student at the real uni. Hard to compete with. Not that he was competing. He wanted only the best for Jenna. Danny was it. Some body was in front of him, waving at him. Peter grimaced, turned away, looked back at Jenna, who now had her back to Danny and her hands over her head.

Craig poked him. “That girl just made a pass at you.”

“What?”

“And you didn’t even notice.”

“Pull the other one.”

“No joke, mate. You were too busy watching Jenna get felt up by her bloke.”

“I wasn’t watching that.”

“You were watching that.”

Craig bought him another pint and Peter drank it in one go, because he didn’t feel very happy for reasons he couldn’t explain. Jenna was happy, so he ought to have been happy too. And he was. He truly was. He let Craig drag him onto the dance floor to let that girl have another shot at him. Jenna was grinding over there with Danny. She looked like she was having a great time. Danny didn’t tower a foot over her head the way he did. Peter didn’t have to worry about her. He could find his most charming smile for this girl whose name he hadn’t caught and hold her close and let her suck at his throat and let her take him home.

He woke in the morning in a strange bed, hungover, with a bite mark on his neck, and feeling smug with himself. He had forgotten the girl’s name, which was bad, but she’d forgotten his too, so it was okay in the end. They had sex again and he made her come twice, which meant he was getting better at it. Not bad for a geeky boy who wore specs and was rubbish at sport. She gave him her number and he gave her his.

He wandered home with his hands in his pockets, whistling, thinking hard. He’d been working too much, that was what was wrong with him. Too much work, not enough drinking. Jenna was great, he admitted that, and she was good for him. This term was going well for him. But what good was it if he didn’t have fun now and then? Drinking was fine. He was fine. Spending the night off on his own was fine. He should go out crawling with Craig more. Craig drank a little too much for Peter, now that he thought about it. Maybe he’d do it on weekends only. Or maybe this girl would like to go drinking. He’d forgotten her name again. Brown-haired, tall, sharp nose, liked Motown and Taylor Swift. Name started with M, he was half-sure of that. Well, his phone would remember her number.

Peter wandered his way up his front step. Key in the door, in from the cold, rubbing at his nose. He followed the smell of tea and toast into the kitchen, where his landlady was washing up. Tea was under the cozy.

“Nice night?” she said. She handed him a cup of tea.

Peter blushed. “Yeah.”

His landlady looked him over and nodded. Peter could discern no judgment in it, which was a relief. She wasn’t his mother. “Why didn’t you bring Jenna here? You know I love chatting with her.”

“Jenna? I– she’s off with Danny.”

Now that surprised her. Peter gulped down his tea and fled back to his room, because now he felt obscurely guilty about something that he shouldn’t feel guilty about, because Jenna had her own bloke and wasn’t into him, which was fine, because while he thought she was the best, he didn’t think about her that way. The thought of her in bed with Danny was upsetting, which meant she was definitely his sister or something like.

He didn’t see her for a week, though, because he was spending all of his time with the girl, Michelle or something, whose name he did manage to learn eventually. He put Jenna off with texts for a while, feeling obscurely more and more bad about it, until he finally had to take a night off from being in bed. He was finally a little tired of the constant sex, which was not something he would admit except on pain of death. He missed painting.

It was clear and not raining, so it was not a night to waste. Jenna summoned him to head out to paint another few spots in the city with a text that was so to the point he felt terrible abou thte last week. It was the last clear night forecast for simply ages. That meant tonight was their only chance to finish the pavements in time for Jenna to get her photographs in a student show.

They met in the studio space where Peter did his painting. Jenna was there already, all set up. She was happy to see him and gave him a hug. He hugged her right back. Then she teased him unmercifully about his new squeeze.

“Are you taking time off to eat?”

“What? Oh. Yes, oh don’t look at me like that!”

“You serious about her? Wedding bells on the way?”

“Why?” Peter said, and he glowered at the idea.

“Only reason I can think for you to miss our painting dates. Has to be serious.”

“No, she’s just, she’s just– we’re having some fun.”

“Oh,” Jenna said, and she flipped her hair away from her face.

“What does that mean?” Peter said.

“What does what mean?”

“You flipping your hair like that.”

“Nothing. It means okay, great, you’re seeing a girl you can’t remember the name of.”

“Yeah, I can remember her name. It’s Missy.”

“Last time you told me it was Michelle.”

“Remembered it began with M.” Peter let his hair fall down over his face and turned away to stare at the stencils he’d been cutting. They were done. He didn’t know what there was to stare at. He shuffled them around, pretending to inspect the corners.

Jenna touched his elbow. “Look, let’s not fight, okay?”

“We’re not fightin’. We’re good. Right?”

“It’s okay by me. That is, it’s none of my business. You can date whoever you want. If she makes you happy she makes me happy. Okay?” And Jenna bumped her shoulder into his arm, which he understood to be an apology.

Peter smiled. “Yeah. Okay.” She wasn’t making him happy though, that was the thing he’d just realized. He liked drinking. He liked having sex. He also liked talking, and he didn’t like Missy all that much to talk to. He liked talking to Jenna more. Did that have to mean anything? Probably not. Except– well, leading Missy on was no good.

“Dammit,” Jenna said.

“What?” But he saw it as soon as he went to the window. The weather report had been wrong, as per usual, and the gray clouds of the day had decided to empty themselves on the city in the night.

“No painting tonight,” Peter said. He felt completely and utterly gloomy. If death could take him now, he’d be all for it. He’d ruined her shot at the show.

“Look, it’s not a big deal. There’s another one next month. Don’t look like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying that. Hey. You want to work some more or are you going out with Missy?”

“Blew her off earlier.”

“Aw, so I ruined your night too.”

“No! Not in the least. Hey.”

“What?”

“Come back to mine and watch some telly? I torrented City of Death and haven’t watched it yet.”

“What’s that?”

“Seriously? What’s that? You really don’t know?”

“I really seriously don’t know.”

“You seriously don’t know about the script Douglas Adams wrote for the Fourth Doctor. The one that has John Cleese in it.”

“Nope, sorry.”

“Well, come on, then. Got a treat for you.”

He took her hand and they ran the three streets over to his place, jumping over the water running down the streets and gurgling in drains. Up the familiar stairs, into his room. Which was, he was proud to note, much neater than it had been. The walls were still covered in his drawings, but they were all better than they’d been. His style was developing nicely.

They sat on his broken-down rat-chewed sofa, huddled together over his second-hand laptop, and they watched the Fourth Doctor run around Paris holding Romana’s hand, giggling. John Cleese mistook the TARDIS for modern art and Jenna found this so funny that she giggled into his shoulder until she was nearly sick.

Afterward Jenna fell asleep on his broken-down sofa again. Peter wrapped her up in half his blankets and climbed into his own bed still dressed, so as to be polite. He felt warm all over anyway, despite the rain on the windows, safe in his own bedroom, with Jenna in the room with him.

He spent the next month religiously dedicated to making up for his sloth the month before. If Jenna summoned him, he was off with her, holding stencils, spraying, setting up tripods for her camera, or mixing photochemicals. He skipped out on more nights with Missy than a gentleman like him ought to, and she was getting testy. He apologized, but he had his priorities straight now. Work first, drinking with Craig second, sex third. It was good this way. Better.

Jenna’s project for the show was looking good, and she’d even talked him into doing a set of photos of his pavement aliens. He wanted to get one or two more down before he called it truly finished. Tonight was a clear night, cold. His phone said chance of rain, but when he went out and looked at the sky he saw stars. Peter texted Jenna: Now?

He got back the answer he wanted, packed his satchel, and headed out into the cold night. Prince Albert needed an alien coming out of his plinth to greet him and they were going to make it happen. They had the stencils. They had the paint. They had the black clothes for stealth when the police tried to catch them, or when one of their new fans around the city tried to be the first to tweet photos of their latest project.

They met up, hugged, and got to work with the efficiency they’d developed over the last few months. Peter had just finished spraying the dark blue layer. His pocket buzzed. He pulled out his phone. Text from Missy. He stared at the text. Finally he tapped out a reply: don’t feel like drinking.

M: come here P: don’t feel like that either M: ’what do u feel like* P: hanging with Jenna

There was a delay of a few minutes, long enough for Peter to put his phone back in his pocket and tape down the next stencil. Then:

M: c u around maybe some day P: ok

And that was that. He stuck the phone in his jeans pocket. He’d been dumped. He felt relieved not sad. Okay, he’d miss the sex. He’d liked that part. But if she was going to get shirty about him hanging with his best mate, he was going to have to move on.

Jenna was also staring at her phone, he noticed. “Everything okay?” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all good.”

And then she was shaking the can of silver and aiming at the mask he’d taped down. Last layer, and then they were done with it, and he was packing his satchel with paints and they were off, racing down the street together, giggling madly. Down the hill and up, over the river, running the whole way, until they reached his room and collapsed together on his rubbish sofa.

“Paint on your face,” Peter said to Jenna.

“Yours too, silly boy,” said Jenna.

And that was it, they were giggling again, holding onto each other and laughing themselves sick. Jenna’s head rested on his shoulder and Peter snugged his arm around her tight. She was a lovely human being. She was his best friend. She was his salvation as an artist. He wondered if he could find a way to tell her that, or if he should just press his lips into her hair again and hope she understood what he meant by it.

“Let’s celebrate,” he said to her. “A pint. Just one, mind. And then home.”

One pint, that was okay. One pint each at his local, and a bit of dinner, and noses together over his latest set of drawings. They didn’t have a wall in mind yet, but it was best to plan ahead, in Peter’s view. Plan ahead, leading over his sketchbook together, discussing ideas. Brainstorming. His hair kept falling into his face, and Peter’s left hand was occupied holding it back. With his right, he snatched the charcoal stick from Jenna and slashed out a running pair of figures on the paper.

“Like that,” he said. “Needs to be dynamic. Like they’re bursting out of the hole in the wall. Like it’s, it’s a portal to another dimension.” He shoved his hair back again in irritation.

Jenna giggled at him.

“What?”

“You have a lot of hair.”

“What about my hair?”

“There’s just a lot of it.”

Peter shook his head and Jenna grinned at him. “I was thinking about cutting it. Or doing an undercut.”

“An undercut?” She reached up and held back the hair on the sides of his head and stared at him critically. His heart was pounding. Was he dying? What was this going on in his chest? Because if he wasn’t dying it meant he was in love and he couldn’t be in love, not with Jenna. Not with her. She was his best friend. “No,” she was saying, “Don’t cut it. I like it when it’s all long and standing up like this.”

Peter immediately swore never to cut his hair again, not ever. What he said out loud was, “Going to need a hairband when I paint.”

“Or a hat.”

“I look ridiculous in hats.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“No, but–”

“Hat.”

Peter mock-glowered at her then had another swig of his pint. He wasn’t thirsty for it tonight, but it was okay. “Where’s Danny anyway?” he said.

“Oh. Yeah. Him. He dumped me earlier tonight. Remember that text I got when we were painting?” Peter nodded. “That was a dump-o-gram.”

“Fucking wanker,” his mouth said, but there were far more confusing things happening in his stomach just then. He looked at his glass of lager suspiciously but he knew it wasn’t that. He knew.

“Yeah, no. Can’t blame him. I’d just stood him up for the third time in a row.”

“Stood him up?”

“To do something with you instead. He got this idea in his head about you and me. You know, after I spent the night at yours the other day.”

Peter blinked. “What, that we’re–”

“Yeah. That.”

“Except we’re not.”

“I was going to tell him you were with that M girl, Missy or whoever, but then I thought, well, I’m tired of this. It’s been over. Might as well make it official.”

Peter sat back in the booth and fidgeted with the coaster. BrewDog, it said. What did that mean? Whatever. He had to confess now. He felt strange.

He said, “Yeah. About Missy.”

“What?”

“She dumped me tonight too. I told her I’d rather chill with you. And.”

“Oh.”

Peter had a healthy gulp of lager, because he hadn’t the faintest what to do with his hands or his face just then. Jenna looked like she was thinking hard.

She said, “Ever wonder if they have it right?”

Peter set down his glass and wiped his mouth. “What, our exes?”

“Yeah.”

“That we’re– we’re–”

“Aren’t we? I mean, think about it.”

“This is mad.”

“I know, right?”

Peter’s heart started doing that thing again, where he was either dying or in love and this time he was sure which it was. He smiled at Jenna and put his hand over hers, because that was settled, then. She scooted right up next to him on the bench. He put his arm around her. He should probably kiss her next. He’d work himself up to it. He would. Yeah, there it was, he was kissing her, nothing too mad or deep because they were in a pub, but it was a proper kiss. His beer wasn’t interesting to him any more. Press his forehead to hers, rub his nose against hers, then let his lips find her again. Oh, nice. Tingling, nice. His heart was going so fast, it was if he’d run a mile.

He broke away from her to see if she was okay with being kissed, but she was smiling at him. She turned away and fiddled with her rings, still smiling. Okay. All right. She was– she liked him too. Maybe she would come home with him tonight. Maybe she would stay with him. Maybe she’d let him make love to her. Peter gnawed on his thumb. Now that he’d thought about that, he couldn’t think about anything else.

“Come home with me?” he said, blurting.

Jenna narrowed her eyes at him. “That was awfully fast of you, Mr Suave.”

“Sorry, I just thought, maybe we could talk– I didn’t mean–”

Then she grinned at him and he understood she’d been teasing him. “Yeah, I’ll come home with you,” she said. She laced her fingers with his, and flicked a glance over to the bar door. Peter grinned, and they were off.

Outside, into the cold night, under the flickering stars. They ran, hand in hand, through the streets, around and up the steps to his front door. Peter fumbled for the key with his off hand, because he didn’t want to let go of Jenna’s hand. The door popped open and they ran giggling past her, up the stairs, to his room. Door on the latch, Jenna switched on the light by his drawing table, and then they were falling onto his rubbish sofa together. Peter got his arms around her properly at last, held her close enough to him at last. Oh, this, this was what he’d been wanting all that time, her nose rubbing against his, her mouth opening under his, the touch of her tongue against his. Kisses and sighs and her fingers tugging his t-shirt out of his waistband, tugging it up so she could slide her hand over his bare back and make him shiver. Dared he? Oh yes, he dared. Jenna, pressed against him. Jenna making a happy sound as he wound his fingers into her hair. Jenna, nibbling on his earring and driving him crazy.

They did it three times, which was some kind of a record for him, not that he cared, except that if she’d wanted to do it a fourth time he’d have been ready and willing to do whatever she wanted because God! he was head over heels and all she had to do was smile and he was out of his mind over the moon mad. And then he had to do the usual uni things the next day, go to class and paint and talk to people who weren’t her, when all he could think about was how she’d felt when she’d shuddered underneath him and the sounds she’d made and the way she’d said his name as if it were the most precious thing ever.

Somehow he got through it, and then he was on the staircase again, that special staircase, rattling down the steps to look at it again, their first project. The night with the green spray paint. And she was there already, standing with her fingers over her lips, thinking. Peter ran down the last few steps and stumbled and landed at her feet, satchel sliding out away from him, elbow skinned. Jenna laughed and helped him up. He looked at his ripped shirt and bleeding elbow and laughed right back.

He kissed her because she was smiling at him and that was what you did when you were together with someone. He kissed her and did not collapse into a heap on the floor, which was something he should draw, shouldn’t he? He could see it. A grotesque scarecrow of a boy, all hair and bleeding elbows, disintegrating after a pretty girl touched him.

“Overheard the caretaker talking,” Jenna said. “They’re going to paint it over soon. You got photos?”

“Oh.” And, “Lots.” He couldn’t help but feel sad. The reason they were together, painted over.

“We knew this wouldn’t last. But I was thinking–”

Peter saw the smile on her face and felt himself burst out with his own grin. “Same thing I’m thinking?”

“Yeah. This time–”

“This time we do the whole wall.”

“One night to put the background up–”

“Second night to do the main work–”

“And then a third for some fine detail.”

“I’ll photograph the whole thing.”

“We’ll both get something for our portfolios.”

Jenna stretched her hand out for his and Peter laced his fingers through it. Their wall. The best wall ever.

The Deep and Lovely Dark

2015-08-21T12:00:00+00:00

In they ran, through the TARDIS door, hand in hand, stumbling as the gravity changed, laughing and coughing in equal measures, waving goodbye to their latest set of best friends ever whom they’d never see again. The Doctor pulled Clara through, waited until she’d turned from the door, then snapped his fingers. The door swung shut; the air cleaner whisked away the last of the smoke. It was over at last. His smiled died. He ran his hand over his face. That had been a long and weary combat with the Venturi navy; ultimately successful, with the war at a likely end for this pass of the comet, but it had been a close thing. They’d lost their engines and had only been saved by eighteen hours of hard labor from him and the engineering crew. And it had been tricky, figuring out how their engines were powered, what the best way to redesign them on the fly was, and then fabricating the parts.

He held the railing on his way down toward the console, for otherwise he might have stumbled. He was weary down to his bones, and his mind was nearly as weary. Not quite weary enough, though, not weary enough to close his eyes and find what dreams may come. He had more days left in him. Another adventure with Clara, perhaps two. He braced himself with his left hand on the console, let his right dance over the buttons. The TARDIS lights shifted to oranges and reds. One lever thrown, and the rotors turned over his head, sending shadows in motion over the console. They dematerialized into the Vortex. No destination as yet, but they didn’t need one. He would eat something, drink some tea, and plan the next distraction for when Clara was ready for it.

Clara, sweet Clara, was still on the upper level, leaning over the railing. She lifted her hair up into an impromptu ponytail. She had soot on her face. The Doctor crooked a finger over his mouth to hide his smile. She was lovely as ever, and she’d been clever five times at least during the combat.

She said, “That was a tough one. I’m shattered. Going to go say some very nice things to my pillows and hug them a lot.”

He jabbed a finger at her. “Might want to have a wash first. Not that I’m criticizing. Maybe all those black marks are normal for you. You do color your face in every morning, after all.”

Clara grimaced at him, as he’d predicted, and swiped at her face. She looked at the soot on her fingers and frowned. “What about you? That was, what, three days straight in that star frigate? I cat-napped but you–”

“Also cat-napped.”

“Right,” she said again, drawling it out, and that voice meant that he had trespassed beyond some boundary in her head and had aroused her suspicion. What had he said? He could recall nothing.

She came down the steps toward the console. He glowered at her but she kept coming. He turned his back on her, stood up straight, and gestured extravagantly.

“Go rest. I’ll have a planet waiting for you when you wake up.”

“And you? Are you going to rest?”

“Too much to do,” he said. He busied himself at the console, pulling the viewscreen toward himself, pressing buttons rather more emphatically than necessary. Readings to be taken, data to feed into the memory banks. Repairs to be made somewhere, always.

“Doctor.” Her voice, from directly behind him. “I know you sleep less than I do, but that doesn’t mean not at all.”

He waved his hand in dismissal. “Course not. Don’t happen to need to sleep right now.”

“Yeah? ’Cause I haven’t seen you sleep since I got on board with you. Three months ago.”

“There’s a lot you haven’t seen. When you sleep, for instance, I do all sorts of things. Catnap. Repair the TARDIS. Read the entire literature of ancient civilizations.”

Clara made a non-committal noise. Her arms came around him from behind. He let himself lean into her, let his hand rest on her arm apparently casually.

She said, “When’s the last time you slept? Properly. In a bed.”

He shrugged. This was becoming uncomfortable; he was going to have to start outright lying in another moment. “Can’t remember. Recently.”

“Can’t remember or won’t say?”

He flashed a rueful smile at the console. She always knew when he was dissembling. Sometimes she let him get away with it, but not now apparently. “What’s this about?” he said.

“I’m worried about you. You look like you’re exhausted. If you were a human, you’d be unconscious on the floor right now. You’ve looked like that for weeks. So tell me. The truth.”

“Clara.”

“Doctor. You said no more lies. You said interrogate everything.”

“Not everything.”

“Everything. All the time. The truth, Doctor.”

He sighed. “The truth is– The truth is I can’t. Can’t sleep.”

She hugged him closer for a moment. Her head came to rest against his back. He shifted his hand to find hers. Warm, as she always was to his touch. He let his thumb caress hers.

“Can’t,” she said. “Tell me?”

“I try, but I wake up. From dreams. Quite bad ones. So bad I’d rather not.”

“The Kantrofarri?”

“Predates them, by quite a while. In fact– In fact I think they got to me so easily because I was– because I was so sleep-deprived.”

Admitting that was rather painful. It was a bad sign and he knew it. It meant he was weakened. Which meant he had to find a way to cope. There were drugs. There were always drugs. But they had side effects on Gallifreyans, worse ones on Time Lords, and he hated those. He sighed, and hung his head, clung a little tighter to that arm around his waist.

“What is it, Doctor?” she said. There was no lecture in her voice, just sympathy and something that made him soften a little inside to hear. Clara. Clara, holding him. Clara, asking him because she cared. Tell her, you fool. Why not?

“Trenzalore. The Time War. Everything. But mostly Trenzalore. The attacks came at any time, you see.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

He shrugged again and said, “I’ll eventually collapse. I go until I can’t any longer. I can keep going right now, so I will.”

“That’s not acceptable. You know that. You know– Oh damn you.”

Silence. His thumb caressing hers, her body pressed up against his back. Did she know how much even this helped? Probably not.

“Can I help at all?”

“Yeah. You, you help. Being near you. Can’t explain it.”

She shifted against his back. Clara had come to a decision, apparently. The Doctor braced himself for whatever she might say.

“This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to go to my room, and we’re going to get into my bed, and you’re going to sleep with me right next to you. I’m going to wake you whenever you have nightmares and tell you it’s okay.”

She squeezed him around his middle for a moment, then stepped back. She held out her hand. He took it– this was getting easier, so much easier, since that night of shared dreams– and allowed her to lead him down the TARDIS corridors toward her room. He had a bedroom that he never spent time in; he took his catnaps in his armchair in the console room. Clara’s room, however, was a place she spent time in. It was a cozy space, created specially by the TARDIS in response to her wishes and dreams and secret needs, without reference to anything she said she wanted. Which was how the TARDIS did everything she did with Clara, sometimes to her frustration.

The result was that the room felt wonderful to him, always, on the few occasions he’d been in it. It was essentially Clara in its heart. Plants, colorful objects, a wall of books, battered-looking leather furniture, a carved wooden sleigh bed mounded high with blankets. It made him feel better just to walk into it, to stand in its center. He breathed in in a hint of lavender, book paper, leather, roses. Flowers and books, his Clara, oh Clara.

He wandered toward the bookshelves, touched a finger to the spines. Perhaps he could read himself to sleep. Something soothing.

“Get undressed,” she said. He turned to her, arms folded, glaring. “Not like that, you idiot. Take off some layers. Down to one shirt and your trousers. No jacket, no hoodie, no jumper, no boots. Like you were a sensible person about to take a nap.”

“Yes, boss.”

He shed more of his clothing than he was comfortable with and piled it neatly on the chest at the end of the bed. He then climbed into the middle of it and sat cross-legged, watching her move around her bedroom. She cleaned off her face and changed herself out of her smoke-stained clothes. She was now in leggings and a pullover shirt. Bare feet. She had colored in her toes, he saw, this time with a rainbow glitter. It was pretty. He liked it. He wriggled his own toes in their warm socks.

She padded over to the wall and touched some controls. The light in the room dimmed down, changed color. The walls and ceilings changed. The shadows of trees against a starlight sky; moonlight shining through. The sound of running water and leaves rustling. An owl hooting. A woodland park at night–a night of quiet. He’d made the recording himself, untold ages ago. England before its industrial revolution. Before the machines came. Not a perfect place, but a safe place. He’d come across deer in a glade, grazing, sleeping, he remembered. The owl had swooped across feet away from him, utterly silently, intent on something that was not him. The TARDIS must have remembered this recording, as she remembered everything, and given it to Clara.

Clara climbed into bed next to him. She nudged him around until he was on his side, facing away from her. She moved close up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“Need a blanket?” she asked.

“No.”

“Let me know if there’s anything.”

Close, he could feel her close to him, but not yet part of him. Not yet joined with him. Joining might help. Would she? He could ask. He could let her in. If he was going to be truly safe, he would need someone joined with him, the way he used to when his people had been around, when he’d felt like he was one of them. If he was going to yield to this hunger, he was going to surrender completely.

“Touch me?” he said. “Skin on skin. I don’t mean– I just– I told you once, I think–”

“Hush. How would you like me to touch you?”

“A hand on me. Somewhere. Doesn’t matter where.”

Clara pulled up his t-shirt and let her hand rest on his belly. The Doctor felt warmth spread out from the place where she touched him. Touch. Joining. The whisper of her mind nearer to his than it had yet been. He whimpered and laid his hand over hers and pressed it tight. Throttled it down to just the barest trickle of feeling, so he couldn’t accuse himself of weakness. Of hurting her by flooding her with himself. How long had it been since he’d let himself feel this? Years and decades and centuries. So alone for so long.

Trenzalore. Nobody had stayed with him. Ever. They were a flicker– growing changing aging– and then gone. He’d been unable to tell them apart after a while. After the first few decades. He hadn’t wanted to. There and gone, killed by his failures or by simple old age. Clara. Clara had come for him. Had pleaded for him. Regeneration energy, her doing, and he’d regenerated with her face before him.

“Hey hey hey,” she was saying. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Right,” he said, “didn’t think you were.”

She made a soothing clucking noise at him that might have offended him in other circumstances. But he was here to be soothed, wasn’t he. Here to to have his head petted, here to let his friend hold him and comfort him so he could sleep. So he wouldn’t go mad.

“Breathe with me. Slowly. In. Out. I want you to concentrate on the palms of your hands. Let the tension in them just melt away. Let them relax. Let the tension flow out, through your fingers.”

He knew what she was doing, knew the trick. He’d used it himself on the unsuspecting. Put his children to sleep this way himself, so long ago. He could fight it, but why? Relax his palms, relax his fingers, one at a time, let the ease flow up and through him, radiating out from the place where her hand rested against him, so warm. From the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, let the warmth flow.

Dreams, he was sliding into dreams, and she was with him still. His telepathy was no longer in his control. She took his hand. Dream Clara, walking with him into the war zone of Gallifrey, bombed out cities, dreaming spires in rubble, the burning pits that were all that was left of the highest civilization of all. The great Time Lords with their great machines, locked away in their towers watching the universe, until the treasures of their technology were too valuable to be ignored. Until the Daleks feared them enough to rival them.

He turned to Clara, standing by his side in his dream, and said, “The horror of war. That’s what we call it. It’s a euphemism. No word would be enough for this. Look at it.”

Here, the burned bodies of a family caught by a death beam. There, the corpse of a family pet, dead from starvation. The stench of death thick in his nose, of things burning that ought not, of metal and plastics and flesh. This was the reality that he had preserved. He did not kill them all, as he’d once thought, to spare the rest of the universe, but the war had still happened. His people had still died.

Around a corner, and into the cold and snow. A town called Christmas. Attacks in progress, a dozen attacks in a dozen places, and he couldn’t stop them all, couldn’t get to them all in time. They would win and it would be over and they would all be dead and that would be the end of it all.

A blast, and a body flying past. Barnaby? A child. Perhaps Barnaby. He took a step closer, to see. Clara caught his arm and tugged him to a halt.

She said, “Is this what dreaming is like for you?”

He shrugged, looked away from her. Flinched at what he saw, looked at his feet instead.

“This dream– it’s very detailed.”

“Lucid dreams. Time Lord dreams.” He smiled at her briefly, bitterly. “My brain is a lot like yours at the core. It processes memory the same way. It clears away the clutter and sweeps the floors in dream. It’s just that I collect more– clutter.”

Clara’s face was intent. Thinking. “If it’s lucid, that means we can do something different.”

She reached out for his hand and took it, firmly. He let her lace her fingers through his, without a single flinch. She led him down an alleyway, dodging the fallen beams and rubble, and around a corner to– to a field. A grassy field, sweeping down a gentle hill away from them. In the distance was a city. A breeze swept away the charnel smell of burned flesh and brought the smell of mown grass. The sun was warm on his face. Somewhere nearby a blackbird sang.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“I was trying for Hampstead Heath on a summer day.”

“Good. Right. Okay.”

Clara sat down on the grass, decisively, and pulled him down with her. She settled him so he was on his back with his head in her lap, with her hand clasped in his over his hearts. He stretched out his legs and looked up past her face. A few clouds in the sky, deep blues, the grass lush and green. Nobody there with them. Hampstead Heath it was. And the city in the distance was London. London at a peaceful, prosperous moment in its long history. No planes in the sky. No rockets. No–

“Shh,” Clara said. “It’s a lovely summer day in 2013, because that’s when I had my picnic, and nothing interesting is going to happen. At all. Some ants will investigate our tea. That’s the worst.”

“Okay.”

“You can nap if you want. I’ve got this.”

Sleep, in a dream? But he knew what she meant. “Okay.”

He was safe in Clara’s lap. Safe. She had him. He was on the heath with her, and nothing would happen. He let his eyes close.

When he opened them again, it was dark. They were in a deep and quiet forest, curled up in moss in the roots of a great oak. An owl hooted. It was his forest, the one he’d recorded, in neolithic Britain. The name of it was lost to time and he hadn’t wanted to disturb anyone to ask. He sat up. Clara stirred and woke, sat up. She rubbed her face.

“We’re in the forest,” he said to her, happily. “There’s an owl. Can I show you?”

He took her hand and walked with her along the deer track. There was a copse ahead, the copse where he’d seen the owl. It was exactly as he had remembered. Moonlight, silver light and deep shadows, magic and mystery lurking. The deep and lovely dark of the night.

The owl swept past, and he ducked. It was gone, into the trees, in pursuit of something that was not him. The universe reeled and spun onward, supremely indifferent to him. It was and would ever be.

He opened his eyes. He was in Clara’s bedroom, and time had passed. He had slept. Clara was holding him, warm against his back. She was breathing slowly, but was waking, swimming up toward the surface of her mind. His mind and hers were still joined, and his waking had drawn her with him. She stirred, whimpered out a sleepy protest, then came awake. He felt her tighten against him, still for a moment, and then relax.

“Clara,” he said.

“Hey. Did you sleep?”

“Yeah.”

He turned around in her arms and pressed his face into her shoulder. One hand was on his hair, stroking him, the other against his back, pulling him closer. So much warmth coming from her, not just the physical warmth, but the waves of emotion coming to him, through his awakened empathic sense. Telepathy, empathy– they were the same, but one was deeper than the other. The one frightened him. Had frightened him. Now he knew what she felt. Love, he was bathed in love.

He wanted to kiss her, and he knew she would accept it, so he kissed her– a feather touch of his lips against her. Then he turned in her arms again, tugged her hand until it rested on his bare belly once more, and curled himself up. Made himself as small as he could, so he could feel her all around him. Her lips touched the back of his neck. He shivered but it was a good shiver, a sweet shiver. She had him, she was holding him safe.

Complicated

2015-08-16T12:00:00+00:00

They were out for dinner– expensive plates of trendy food that Malcolm was completely uninterested in eating, from a trendy pub near his house. Only water for them, to the waiter’s disappointment. Not that Malcolm ever drank anything, but he’d been willing to indulge in a bottle of wine with Clara on this, their first date. First real date. Real, public, no hiding date. And then home for their first night of for-real, negotiated, kinky sex. The sex of his fantasies, at last. If he was getting nervous about it, he wasn’t going to admit it. He’d been waiting for it all his life. And at last he’d found a woman who wasn’t afraid of him.

She was afraid of fucking nothing, it turned out, for sitting right there, in the loud fucking pub, Clara leaned close to him and said, “Did you buy a plug like you were told?”

Malcolm nodded, almost reflexively, and then flushed and looked around them. Yeah, nobody close enough to overhear, not that they could hear anything in this damned place.

Clara smiled, damn her. “Tell me about it.”

“I got, um, three.”

“Three?”

“You said you’d do something terrifying if I finked it, and I wasn’t sure what the fuck you meant, so I got three.”

Clara tilted her head in thought then nodded. “Okay. You could have asked, but I like the ambition there. Tell me about them.”

Malcolm put his fork down. “Not sure what to fucking say. More variety than I thought. Fucking ridiculous colors. I didn’t fancy having a tentacle up me, so I passed on that one. Got a range of sizes. Ridged for his fucking pleasure.”

Clara laughed and drank her fizzy water. “Right. I’ll have to look at them later. How much experience do you have with anal play?”

There was that word, right out there in the pub. Malcolm flushed. Normally he was the one shouting out penis at inappropriate moments. At least when he did it, nobody would suspect him of talking about actual sex. Well, sod it. If she was going to play this game, he was too.

He said, “None.”

“Nobody’s ever–”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. The only time anybody’s ever done that to me is in the sodding MD’s office, paper gown, rubber gloves. Didn’t even give me a reach-around, never mind a nice kiss.”

She laughed, as he’d intended. He spread his hands wide and continued, at a normal volume. “Never touched me arse. Or had a woman touch it.” And because her eyebrow was cocked at him, “Nor a man either. Kissed another bloke once, to see what it was like. Didn’t raise my temperature a whit. “

“Well,” she said. “Tonight is going to be interesting, then.”

And if his nerves tweaked him, Malcolm was going to give her no sign. Damned if he was going to give in to her easily. He nodded coolly, and returned to playing with his food instead of eating it.

His nerves were in a proper state by the time they reached his place. Inside, door locked, blinds drawn, mobiles switched off, safe from the rest of the world now, and his heart was pounding and his hands were wet. He had no idea what to do, how to handle this. He led her up to his bedroom and stood there like a fucking schoolboy, all elbows and awkward boner, until she pointed at the floor and told him to get down on his knees and show some manners. Manners, okay, if manners meant kneeling, he would do that in a fucking heartbeat. Kneel, put his hands behind his back because he remembered her asking for that the first time.

“Where are these plugs?” she said.

Malcolm nodded at the nightstand. “Second drawer down.”

Plugs, condoms. He’d bought more slick as well, because he didn’t want her getting any ideas about doing him rough. Clara rummaged through it all and laid them out on his bed, in a neat row. Silicone, bright purple and black, not a one of them flesh-colored or realistic. He hadn’t been able to cope with the idea of those.

“Nice,” Clara said, pointing to the biggest one. “You’re going to enjoy that.”

Malcolm smiled crookedly. “Not sure it’s humanly possible to take that up the arse.”

“Oh, it is. And you’ll like it. See this knobby thing? That’ll feel good.”

Malcolm shook his head. His erection was flagging, if he had to admit it. Thank Christ for his tie, hanging down over his flies.

“This one, this middle one, this is good for wearing. See the flat base? Great under clothes.”

That had not occurred to him as a thing one could do in this reality. He’d thought that was pure fantasy, pure stroke fodder for the skin mags. And he’d bought one of them. Shit.

She was holding up the third one, the one with the two nubblies and the ring on the end. Easy to grasp, or so the site had claimed. Also: “The web site said that was a beginner one,” he said.

“Yeah, it is. Would you prefer to start with this one?”

Malcolm opened his mouth, shut it again, and considered her carefully. He was in danger of finking it, to use her phrase. There was an etiquette to this, wasn’t there? According to the pornos he’d rented in hotels far, far away from home, there was a way to behave here that mistresses liked.

“I’ll take whatever you want me to take. But I’d fucking appreciate the beginner one. To start with. If it pleases you.”

Clara laughed. “Well said, Mr Tucker. I almost suspect you of having done things like this before.”

He merely showed her his teeth in a smile he hoped was charming instead of terrifying. Not that she was ever terrified.

“The beginner it is. But first I think we start with something easier. Okay?”

Malcolm tried to hide his relief. “What?”

“A shower. Together. And this.” She held up her forefinger.

Malcolm stared at it. A finger. Okay. He could start there. And a shower. With Clara. He could do that. And he did it, almost automatically. Undress, run water, look at her body as much as he dared while hoping she wasn’t judging him for having no muscle worth mentioning. Into the spray. Soap her up, copping a feel of her breasts while she laughed at him because she knew exactly what he was up to. Let her soap him up, still playful. This was okay. This was something he could do. Let her turn him around, ease his legs apart.

Yeah, his nerves were at it again.

He leaned against the shower wall and tried to stay calm. It was supposed to hurt, that was all he knew about it. It hurt straight men and gay men liked it. Fucked if he understood the rules. A finger up the arse was supposed to feel good, especially if you were being blown at the time. That was the other thing he knew. Sodding humiliating to have had to admit he’d never had that done for him. The finger, not the blowjob. He’d had those. In quantity. A decade ago, when he’d had a life.

She wasn’t going right for his arse, for some reason. She was touching him everywhere else. Washing his back. Stroking his thighs. Reaching around, cupping him. Felt good. Malcolm rested his forehead against his arm and breathed, let his shoulders drop. He was getting hard at last. So easy to be hard with Clara’s hand on him, her fingers stroking behind his balls, so nice. So good. And then her finger was there, on his arsehole, sliding over, around, and he was moaning because fuck him, it felt good. Strange, good. Clara touching him. He might have moaned if she touched him anywhere, but fuck, oh fuck, that was good.

And then she was pressing against him directly with a soaped-up finger, pushing and wriggling and fuck, she was inside him. Malcolm tensed up. Clara went still and said something soothing to him, he wasn’t sure what. Relax, she was telling him. Breathe. Push back. He breathed, pushed, and yeah, okay, this was okay. This was better than okay. This felt good, Clara moving inside him, touching him in a completely new way. It was nothing like he’d feared. Yeah. Yeah, he could imagine wanting more of this. He could imagine his cock in her mouth with her finger up his arse, driving in deep to find the back of her throat, her tongue on him. Yeah.

Then her finger was gone, and he was protesting, and then it was back again, huge, forcing him open further.

“What–”

“That’s two fingers.”

“Fucking fuck.”

Clara moved her fingers inside him somehow. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to flinch away or push back onto her. He’d couldn’t think about anything else but that. Clara’s fingers. Inside him. Moving. That was him making noise, wasn’t it. Damn it. He was fucking whimpering at her.

“Some day,” she said, “some day you’ll have my whole hand inside you.”

“Fuck!”

She laughed, fucking fuck her. “Do you know any other words right now, Malcolm?”

“Fuck me, no. Oh God.”

“No words to beg me for more?”

“Fucking hell, I could– I– you want me to beg?”

“Begging is always appropriate.”

He wasn’t sure how to start. He liked begging. He liked begging to be allowed to come. He knew how to do that, so– “Clara.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Clara. Please. More.”

“More what?”

“More of you inside me. Like that. Want you to, to, to fuck me. Shit.” Because he did want it, suddenly. As much as he’d wanted anything. He’d gone from rigid terror to gagging for it. Gagging to be shagged up the arse by a woman who was five-foot one in her stockings. Oh, fuck.

And then her fingers were gone. “Well, then,” she said, “Let’s take it to the next level.”

Water off, out of the shower, and a scheme to please her occurred to him. He went down on his knees, took a towel, and dried her off. Started with her lovely calves, worked his way up, until he was standing behind her, dabbing at the back of her neck. They’d showered together before, after that first time, but he’d been too flustered and too post-coital to pay as much attention to her body as he’d wanted. He’d won some kind of lottery here. He’d always admired her, from a safe distance, yeah, but now here he was, naked with her. Lovely body. Gym-fit. Trim. She wasn’t a scrawny stick-figure, thank goodness. Nice breasts, looked fantastic in a dress, looked fantastic bare like this in front of him, nipples erect. He wanted to kiss them, but didn’t dare.

When she was dry he went back down onto his knees and dried himself off. Wasn’t sure what else to do, but she seemed to approve so he must have got it right. Right, when in doubt, go on his knees and do something submissive. Okay. Noted.

Follow her back into his bedroom, starkers, hands behind his back, stiffie preceding him. Kneel up on the bed at her command. Hold out his wrists to her. Sigh with something like satisfaction as she buckled the cuffs tight around his wrists. Strap around the headboard, through the rings. Clipped into place with something she produced from her own back of tricks.

Malcolm was almost panting. Fuck. He was kneeling on his bed, hands cuffed to the headboard, naked. He tugged at his wrists. Solid. He was helpless. His cock rose even further as he thought about that. She could do anything to him. She was likely to do only the things she’d asked for consent in advance about, but she might not. She might do something else. Anything. He was bound. God. This was what it felt like, then, to be bound for real, with a mistress standing over him. Why had he waited so long to do this?

He hadn’t known. Idiot. Cowardly idiot.

She arranged him to her satisfaction, down, almost stretched out, with his knees spread wide. He felt a right twit, with his arse in the air like this, everything exposed. He could feel his cock dangling down. That was the point, probably.

Here it came. He was going to take it up the arse now.

Lubricant cap coming open, the sound of the bottle being squeezed. His cock jumped. He knew that sound well, and it usually meant he was about to stroke himself off. Not this time. This time it was his arse, and Clara’s fingers, cold and slippery, pushing inside him again, so easily this time. His dignity was as fucked as he was; he was whimpering and making sounds he didn’t know he could fucking make.

She was gone, and he opened his mouth to complain, and then he felt it. The plug. Bigger than her fingers, harder, unyielding, forcing him open even further. It hurt and it didn’t. Breathe. Bear down. Oh, there it was, pleasure not pain, that thing he’d never felt before that night. She crooned to him and played with it, moved it inside him. God, so fucking huge. How was he supposed to have known these things were so big? Beginner plug, his left bollock this was the beginner plug. How did men take other men up their arses? But oh God, it had to feel good, because this felt good, tickling him somehow up inside. He was, he realized, pushing back against it when she moved into him. She was fucking him, he was fucking himself on it, God, his cock was dripping, he was a fucking wreck, God only knew what was coming out of his mouth right now.

“How’s that?” she said.

“Beginner plug. We agreed on the beginner.”

A little laugh. “That is the beginner plug.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Does it feel big?”

“Like a fucking horse cock up me arse. Splitting me open. Fuck.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Fuck me. Oh Christ, you are fucking me.”

She kissed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m fucking you. This is me, inside you.” She moved the plug and he swore again. “Going to go wash my hands, okay? Back in a minute. I can hear you if you need to call for me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fucking fine.”

Hands still cuffed, still couldn’t tug his way out of them, he still had a fucking scots pine shoved up his arse, and the most gorgeous woman he had ever guiltily wanked over was in his loo, washing her hands because she’d had her fingers fucked straight up him. What had his life become? And why hadn’t he done whatever damn-fool thing he’d done to make this happen years ago instead? Fuck the diem, as the Poxbridge nancies said. He’d enjoy it now he had it.

Plug in his arse. He could tighten around it and feel it inside, that big heavy thing, inside him, hold him open. What would it feel like to come with this inside him? Malcolm wanted to know. Maybe it would be nothing. Maybe it would be amazing. He was going to find out, that was sure. He was going to find out tonight.

And yes, he was going to get his wish, because she snugged up behind him and got one hand on the handle of the plug and the other on his balls, playing with them. Teasing him. Warming him up, fucking him and toying with him. And then because he was begging her so nicely, she played with his cock. Not enough friction, but it was good. A little more slick on her hand, and oh here it was, she was going to do him now.

Malcolm let himself fuck her hand. A hand, not a cunt, not her sweet cunt, but at least it wasn’t his own hand. And that thick plug was inside him, feeling so good, so good.

“Clara, love. Oh, so close. I’m gonna–”

But then her hand was gone and he was left pumping his hips fruitlessly, clenching himself around the plug. She was watching him carefully, watching him calm down, watching him until he was away from the edge. Teasing him by moving that plug inside him while his heart rate slowed. Then her hand was there again, around his cock, bringing him up and up, until he was close again. He was well desperate and digging deep into his creative stores to find new ways to beg her to let him come, have mercy on him, let him empty his aching balls. But she was ruthless. Relentless. Fucking cruel. He loved it, but it was time she let him come. Surely this time. This time. How much did she expect him to bear?

Hand off him again, and this time he was fighting against the cuffs he was so out of his mind.

“Malcolm. Are you mine?”

He whimpered and tried to keep himself still. “Yeah. Clara. I’m yours.”

“It’s time for you to prove that to me.”

“How?”

“You don’t get to come tonight. Friday night, if you’ve been obedient and haven’t masturbated without permission, I’ll consider it.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No!”

“Malcolm–”

Her voice had a warning in it, but he was past caring. “Fuck you, Clara, you can’t do this to me and not let me come. It’s fucking inhumane– Shit!”

Her hand came down on his arse, once, twice. Hard. Malcolm clenched his jaw around his urge to swear even more. She’d actually spanked him, not hard enough to truly hurt him, but hard enough that she had his complete attention. She had more strength than he’d expected.

“I think you need a reminder,” she said to him.

“Of fucking what?”

“Of what you agreed to when you agreed to this.”

And her hand came down again. Malcolm yelped. She smacked his arse, then his thighs. Hard. How the fuck could she spank him that hard? She had the right to spank him. They’d discussed it. He’d said yes. Why the fuck had he said yes? She was fucking spanking him with her bare hand. He was outraged and he said so, and she paused, and he opened his mouth to complain some more, and then her hand came down again. He jerked against his cuffs. Oh, fuck, just as helpless as he’d wanted, and God, she was still at it, fist in his hair, yanking his head back, hand coming down on his backside.

And oh God, he wanted it.

It wasn’t that he liked it– he didn’t; it hurt; he was keening and writhing– but that he loved that she could do it to him. He was helpless and he belonged to her and she was fucking spanking him because she wanted to and he was hers. He’d handed himself over and this was how he knew it. She was doing what she pleased with him. This was it. This was what he’d been wanting. He stopped fighting it then, stopped trying to shrink away from her, and started begging her to – he didn’t know what, do something to him, do anything to him, take him somehow.

He’d surrendered to her, somehow, he had no idea how, in the middle of all that, but he knew it. And she saw it too, for she stopped, knelt up next to him, and got her arms around him. He leaned against her and tried to catch his breath. He was about ready to explode with something. Or he had exploded. He felt like maybe he’d come, but he hadn’t. He felt light and airy and good, so good, just then. And so very sorry he’d defied her. What had he been thinking? Never do that, Tucker, you fucker.

“Malcolm,” she said.

Did he have enough control of himself to talk coherently? Yes. “Clara. Mistress.”

“What do you have to say?”

Malcolm blinked. Something in his eyes. He took a moment to make sure he sounded as humble and submissive and contrite as he felt. “Not sure. What should I say? Please?”

“You say, I’m sorry, Clara. I’ll obey you, Clara. I only come when you allow me.”

Malcolm swallowed. “I’m sorry, Clara. I– I’ll obey you.”

“And?”

“I only come when you say I can.”

“You are forgiven.”

“Thank you.”

Oh, God, he hadn’t meant it to come out so raw and sincere, but apparently he fucking meant it. He was grateful, so grateful, fucking amazingly grateful to be here, to have Clara holding him, wiping the sweat from his face. Tears and sweat, admit it, Tucker. He’d cried. He’d stayed hard through the whole thing, and that was a revelation to him. What a fucking bent sod he was, to be this worked up because his mistress had spanked him.

She showed him her hand: reddened, just as hot as his arse was. He kissed it with as much reverence as he could manage. She’d done that for him. Suffered for him. He kissed her, because she was right there, with her hot palm cupped against his cheek and her nose rubbing against his. Kissed her and wished he could put his arms around her and hold her.

And then Clara was undoing the strap holding his wrists in place, unbuckling the cuffs, rubbing at his wrists with him, easing him down onto the bed. She helped him stretch himself out. His legs ached and he hadn’t even realized it. He lay unbound, on his stomach on his bed, with his face pressed against his hands. His arse was still plugged, still glowing hot. His cock was as as hard as it had been in the shower. God, his miserable balls were going to ache. Hadn’t planned on this end to the evening, had he. Did he mind it? Yes, and yet: fuck, no. He was hers. He was proving it. Oh, God.

Clara’s hand stroked through his hair.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Yeah. I– yeah.”

“Was that too much?”

“No. Was good. I’m good. You? You haven’t come.”

“It’s not always about that, Malcolm.”

“Oh.”

Her hands parting his burning buttocks, and taking hold of the plug. Moving inside him, fucking him with it for a moment. He groaned. And then it was sliding out. Loss, loss as it left him, of all the fucking goddamned things to feel. Like she had left him. Fucked if he understood that.

Footsteps leaving the room, water running for a while, then Clara was back. She sat down on bed and pushed him down when he tried to sit up.

“What’s this about?” he said.

“Aftercare. Me making sure you’re really okay and the worst thing you’ll feel tomorrow is a little soreness.”

She had a tub of some expensive body lotion in her hand. Unscrewed it, scooped some out. It smelled like almonds or some shite. Malcolm twisted around to watch what she was up to with it. Right onto his buttocks it went. Cool, smooth. Felt wonderful. He rested on his elbow and watched her side-eye. She was taking it seriously: that was a lot of lotion going onto his skinny arse.

“It’s a lot of work for you,” he said.

“Yeah, sort of. Sort of not. This is part of the experience, for me.”

Malcolm was silent, thinking that over. Hadn’t occurred to him that she might get something out of this beyond sex. She hadn’t come; she liked fussing over him. Complicated, this shite was. Far more complicated than he’d thought, back when he’d lain here all alone with a skin mag in one hand and his cock in the other. Fuck him, he was still hard. And he was going to go without. It was messing with his head, that thought. Everything was erotic, everything. Her hands on his tender arse, rubbing lotion in. The sting where her hand had come down on his thighs. The spots on his wrists where the cuffs had bit in when he’d struggled. The burn in his arse, the memory of the plug opening him up.

He groaned.

“What’s up?”

“Want to come so fucking much. Can’t.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a cruel laugh. It was sympathetic, somehow. She rubbed a soothing hand over his back. “You’ll get the payoff when you do finally get to come. Trust me, Malcolm.”

“If you fucking say so.”

“I do say so.” She capped the jar and set it on his nightstand. Malcolm blinked at her. She was standing up and fussing with her bag. Her bag of toys. Packing it up. His plug, all scrubbed and clean, went back into the drawer where he kept the lube. Was she leaving? What did she expect from him? He wanted her to feel appreciated. Welcome. Worshipped, even. But what was this relationship? Tie him up, roger him, spank him, and then back to cool nods in the hallway?

Time to put it to the touch. Malcolm said, “Staying the night?”

Clara hesitated. “I could. If you wanted me to.”

“Yeah. Please.”

He reached up, took her hand, and tugged her back to the bed. She came to him willingly. He stood up and kissed the hand he held, because it seemed like the right gesture to make to someone he’d done all these things with. And then they were in bed, and the lights were out, and she was allowing him to snuggle up behind her and pull her against his chest, tuck his hard cock against her backside so she could feel how much he was suffering. And he was fucking content to do it. Exhausted, drained, desperate, content. Was it complicated? Maybe. This felt simple.

Malcolm kissed the nape of Clara’s neck softly, tenderly. Gratefully.

A Bottle of Pol Roger to the Cheek

2015-07-29T12:00:00+00:00

“We fucking won,” Jamie said. He had an unopened bottle of Pol Roger in his fist. He waved it at Malcolm vaguely.

Malcolm let his gaze travel deliberately down to Jamie’s crotch and back up to the crooked tie. “Yeah. We won. Put that bottle down or I’ll uncork it and shove it up your arse.”

The bottle was jabbed at his face. “Have you had anything to drink at all? Or are you just skulking around the corners glowering at everyone?”

“Christ,” Malcolm said. He turned away from Jamie, but a hand on his shoulder spun him around. The bottle, in his face again.

“Drink, you skinny old fuck.”

Malcolm planted a hand in the center of Jamie’s chest and held him at bay. “You’re fucking rubbered..”

“Am I? Going to put me to bed?” A little bit of a smile on Jamie’s face. He wasn’t particularly drunk, and Malcolm knew it. Jamie knew he knew it. Oh, fuck yes, the game was fucking on.

Malcolm said, “Yes. Fucking out of here. Now.”

Malcolm got him by the collar of his black jacket and dragged him bodily out of the ballroom. Up the corridor, to the elevators. It was a show they put on, sometimes. Malcolm manhandling Jamie, kicking him around. Malcolm in charge of everything, even the rabid wolf.

In the elevator, it turned around. Malcolm let go. Jamie got his fist knotted into Malcolm’s shirt and backed him up against the wall. He pulled, very deliberately, at the bow tie Malcolm had so carefully knotted earlier in the evening.

“Posh,” Jamie said.

“You’re just as fucking posh.”

“I don’t look as good as you do.”

Malcolm spread his hands out. “I fucking look amazing, don’t I.”

“I fucking want to eat you,” Jamie said. He lunged up and bit Malcolm’s lip. Malcolm swore and shoved him away, which was all the signal Jamie needed. He was shoved back against the elevator wall so hard he bounced. Right back into Jamie, who caught him and pulled him down and kissed him again. This time Malcolm didn’t fight back. Let Jamie get his tongue into his mouth. Taste the champagne he’d been drinking.

Elevator door sliding open, onto a thankfully empty hallway. Jamie half-dragged him down to their door, kicked him to the floor. Let him go long enough to fumble in his jacket pocket for the card key. Malcolm turned away to hide his triumph while Jamie swore at the lock. Fucking winner tonight. Everything going the way he wanted. Everything. For one night, one sweet night.

Door open, half-dragged through, fighting the whole way, pointlessly, just enough to keep Jamie hot.

“Skinny old fuck, nothing to you. Couldn’t fight back if you wanted.”

Malcolm swore at him, swung wildly. Jamie caught his arm, shoved him down easily. All the way to his knees, where he fucking wanted to be, oh fuck yes. Hands dug into his hair. Malcolm undid Jamie’s flies on command, took him out, took him into his mouth. Jamie thrust into him, driving in deep, until he gagged, holding himself there, until Malcolm relaxed enough to take it. Closed his eyes, let Jamie use his mouth. His bleeding fucking mouth. Shit. Blood on his shirt? Probably. Malcolm ignored it. Concentrated on the taste of Jamie in his mouth, cock in his mouth, the feeling of being on his knees, sucking.

That wasn’t what Jamie wanted, though. Never what he wanted when they had a bedroom and a door that could be locked. Malcolm knew what came next, though he didn’t know exactly how Jamie would get it.

Without ceremony. He yanked Malcolm’s head back by the hair and shoved him over to the bed. Jamie stripped his trousers off, bent him over the bed with an oath and a hard hand on the back of his neck. Malcolm waited, licking the blood from his lip, listening. The slither of Jamie’s coat landing on the bed next to him. The sound of shoes hitting the floor. The undignified sound of a tube of slick being squeezed with an impatient hand.

Then Jamie’s hand was on the back of his neck again, forcing him further down. A foot kicking his feet further apart. Fight more? Or wait for it? Too late, there it was, Jamie’s prick, forcing its way into him. Pain, fuck yes, pain that made him arch up and cry out, and then Jamie’s hand was across his mouth, silencing him. He pushed back into Jamie, just to feel that cock even deeper inside, feel that burn as intensely as he could for as long as it would last. Because it never lasted, no matter how rough Jamie was. It felt too good, reminded him too much of the other ways Jamie would take him. And Jamie’s hand was on him almost right away, the caress completely giving the lie to the obscenities pouring out of his mouth.

Jamie, slamming into him, grunting, slap of flesh against flesh. Malcolm let himself feel it. Pain, pleasure, pressure, friction from a slick-wet hand on his cock, the fingers clamped over his mouth, silencing him, freeing him to whimper and cry out and beg incoherently, unheard. Jamie swearing, losing his rhythm, driving into him, going still, coming, coming inside him, no protection, oh God, he fucking loved this feeling, of Jamie filling him up, of Jamie leaving something with him. Jamie slumped over his back, inside him still, hand no longer clamped over his mouth.

Malcolm didn’t move. He would wait. Find out which way the madness would take Jamie this time.

Jamie stirred, straightened up. Gripped the back of his neck again, hard enough to bruise. His voice, in Malcolm’s ear. “Bring yourself off, now. While I’m still hard.”

Hand down, on himself, moving frantically fast. He was close already, and it had been days since they’d last fucked, and fuck yes, he was there, with Jamie’s voice whispering obscene encouragement in his ear, yes, coming, coming onto his fingers, the bedspread, his boiled shirt. Collapsing down, across the bed. The grief of Jamie pulling away, abandoning him, leaving him empty again.

Tenderness was not something Malcolm had ever expected, but Jamie gave it to him afterward. Every time. Tonight more so than most nights, more tenderness, more solicitous quiet care. A good night; a night to celebrate a win; a night to be be caressed and fussed over and undressed carefully by your lover, who tutted over the bruises he’d left on your body. Wonderful bruises, cherished bruises. Nobody else dared do this to him. Nobody else.

Jamie laid him down on the bed. Malcolm let his head fall back against the pillows. There was the bottle of Pol, sitting on the floor. Jamie thumbed the cork out, tipped it up, caught the foam in his mouth. He carried the bottle into bed. Malcolm lay back against Jamie’s chest, let him hold the bottle up to his bitten lips. Drank as much as Jamie wanted him to; too damn much, but what a taste.

A Clear Head

2015-07-27T12:17:00+00:00

One

The first time had been after the news of the attack on Freddie. They’d gone to the hospital, and nothing Randall had said had got them in to see Freddie. Lix had cried on his shoulder, and he’d taken her to his home and put her to bed between his clean sheets. They’d clung to each other, and at some point in the night, it had turned to a gentle, comforting lovemaking. So different from how it had been in Spain, in his memory. He’d been drunk the whole time. Now he was sober, with all the edges of life unblunted. He knew it was touch-and-go for Freddie. Saw in Lix’s unspoken words that there had been something between them at some time.

It didn’t matter. Lives were long, and hearts were complex, and a man who’d run as far and as fast as Randall had had no business criticizing.

He’d held her, and loved her, and let himself go as much as he ever did. The love of his life in his arms, the sound of her pleasure in his ears, the feel of her body surrounding him, her scent on him: it was heaven in the wee hours.

Heaven was revisited often in the days that followed. No words spoken between them, but they were together again. Randall’s heart was on his sleeve with her. It had always been, even when he’d run. When he’d known he could live that life no more. When he’d known that it was stop drinking or die.

He said no words about Lix’s drinking, but one day she too stopped. “Coffee for me,” she said, to him, and he came back to their table with two coffees. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Don’t feel like it,” she said. “Scarcely have the stomach for coffee.”

“Are you ill?”

“Never better,” she said. But he caught her asleep in her office the next day. Up too late making love with him, perhaps. He resolved to give her some respite from his attentions, not that she seemed to want such a thing.

“Randall,” she said to him one day. “I think we need to talk. Tonight?”

“Of course,” he said, puzzled. They were together every night. Why would they not be tonight? But to his surprise she took him to her flat, not out, and made him a bit of dinner with a candle on the table and sat afterward gazing at him.

“Randall, dearest.”

He said nothing, but took her hand. There was fear in his heart, though she seemed affectionate enough.

“I think we have a bit of a situation. An issue.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m in a bit of a situation.”

He clung tighter. “You mean?”

“Yes.”

“Lix.”

“I’m not sure what you want.”

“What I want! Lix.”

“I need to hear it. In words. Preferably good Anglo-Saxon monosyllables if you can. Because I’m not sure I’m capable of understanding anything more complex just now.”

There were tears in his eyes. Randall swallowed, composed himself. He framed his speech as best he could, given the emotion in him. Simple words. Simple concepts. The candle on the table. Their dirty plates. The water glasses. The night in Spain when she’d told him, over a bottle already emptied, another to follow. Tonight his mind was clear. His heart was clear. His hands were shaking, but they were clear as well.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

Two

They were married quietly in a little church in Edinburgh, because that was where Randall’s aged mother lived now. His older sister came in from Glasgow to be there. Bel came in support of Lix, with a much-battered but recovering Freddie sitting in the pews behind, because he could not stand comfortably for very long. It was a quiet wedding because that was Randall’s preference, but it was a happy wedding nonetheless. The groom could not contain his glow of joy.

Lix told him afterward that it was the brides who were supposed to be radiant, not the grooms. He merely smiled, unzipped the back of her dress, and took her to bed tenderly, cautiously.

“Mrs Brown,” he said to her, afterward, rolling it around in his mouth.

“Most boring name ever, darling,” she said. “You ought to have taken mine.”

“Randall Storm.” He tilted his head, considering, then nodded. “Our child shall take it as a middle name.”

“Dougan Storm Brown. Sophia Storm Brown. A trifle lopsided.”

“Dougan?”

“Your mother is set on Dougan.”

“No. Peter.”

“All right, then. Peter Brown it is. If it’s a boy.”

Neither one of them commented on her choice of a girl’s name. There was no disagreement between them on that point. Lix turned on her side, Randall curled up warm behind her with a hand resting on her belly. He woke her in the morning with urgent kisses and her new name repeated with a rough voice. Randall had, she thought, been waiting a very long time for this. She was sorry, sometimes, that she’d made him wait. But he was a better man now than he had been, a better man now for having gone through the fire and emerged purified and sober on the other side.

The couple spent a quiet week in a cottage on the coast, and returned to London afterward in amity. Lix intended to work her way through in the evening news writing department until forced to stop. Randall quietly pulled strings to make it so.

Lix had, to her surprise and Randall’s continued disbelief, a serene pregnancy, an easy pregnancy, a boring pregnancy. She’d done it once before, little though she liked to dwell on that. She knew what she was in for. And when her water broke and labor was on her, she was perfectly calm as she informed Randall that he might want to fetch a cab.

Three

Randall had command of himself in a crisis. He told himself this but he knew it was true from his experience through two wars. Was pregnancy a crisis or normality? He asked himself that question as he helped Lix– his wife, his Lix, his life– into the cab. She was calm enough in the minutes between bouts of labor pains, but he could not be. Her face, her bitten lip, her hand tightening on his– Lix ought not feel pain ever, never mind that much. And he could do nothing but give the cabbie directions in the steadiest voice he could summon.

She gripped his hand tighter during the ride. Randall consulted his watch, counted minutes. Ten between the first in the cab and the second.

Great Ormond street, the hospital, up and in. Lix tucked onto a bed, wheeled away from him. He attempted to follow and was diverted by firm nurses into a waiting room near the obstetrics ward. He was alone in the ward, save for an abandoned tea cup, left half-full. Some poor brute of a man, waiting, called away with his tea half-finished. Randall remembered, almost wistfully, the dizzy feeling of brandy in his blood. It was the first time he’d wished for it since the fall of Paris.

He paced. Command, command, stay in command.

Lix, pregnant with his child. His wife, giving birth to his child. The inevitable consequence of union of man and woman. Not inevitable. Frequent. Nature demanded it. Capricious nature, granting him two children with Lix. He was not a religious man, but he considered now praying that he might be allowed to hold this one in his arms. That his wife be allowed to live.

There were sounds in the ward behind the door he was not allowed not pass. His wife’s voice, not speaking words but crying out in pain. It was madness that they kept him from her at this moment, madness that he could not be with her, holding her hand, or sponging her face. He could be of some use. The sight of blood did not affect him. Hadn’t since his first shelling, when he’d found himself able to load film into his camera and document what lay before him that he could not help.

Not a thought he wanted at a moment like this.

He turned himself to the arrangement of the waiting room. Chairs, tables. The order of the magazines laid out for reading by other husbands waiting as he did. Alphabetized, in order by time. Arrayed upon the tables with tops aligned. It was, he knew, useless and no longer a comfort, but it was habit. Something to fill his time. Something to occupy spaces between dim cries from the ward beyond.

He had command of himself in a time of crisis, he reminded himself. Not all of his resources, but enough of them. His resources, in this moment, need only keep him from breakdown, tears, or an assault upon that door at the sound of his wife’s voice. Silence, then feet rushing around, then the sound of squalling.

Randall covered his eyes with a hand and allowed tears to fall.

By the time they came out to fetch him, he’d regained his composure.

It was a boy, they told him, and invited him into the room beyond. He stumbled in, saw Lix sitting in the bed, hair a ruin, face still sweaty, but serene now, looking down at the bundle in her arms. Cap, red wrinkled face under, a wise expression on its– his– face. Murky eyes, no color he could distinguish.

Randall found his self-command now, with Lix smiling wearily at him.

“Hello, Randall,” Lix said to him. His wife, holding his son. “Meet Peter Storm Brown.”

“Delighted to meet you, Peter Storm Brown. I think we shall get on famously.”

He touched a finger to the tiny tiny hand curled against his son’s chin. His son.

Proposal

2015-07-27T12:17:00+00:00

On the way home from hospital, where Freddie lay half-dead, in a cab, while clutching Lix’s hand for the second time that day– that was when Randall knew. The inflection point of his life was here, and if he could command some fraction of the resources he had at a calm moment, he might yet twist it where he wished it to point.

“Lix,” he said. Her fingers tightened in his. Palm to palm, fingers intertwined, close against each other on the broad back seat of the cab. The lights of London going past, poor battered London. Bombed nearly to destruction, shabby now, but somehow still breathing. As he was. He had survived learning what had been truth undiscovered for fifteen years. Survived it with Lix’s hand on him.

Death might yet take this boy, this brilliant brave boy.

“Lix,” again, and this time she turned to him.

“The ring,” he said, and further words could not come to him.

“Yes, Randall?” she said, gently.

“The one around your neck.”

Lix, so clever, understanding what he meant to ask. “Yes, it’s the one you bought. Back then.”

“Would you let me put it on your finger?”

She pulled back from him and studied him. He did his best to hold her gaze, though he wished to duck away, to find something to realign. Her brows together, puzzled, though he suspected she knew exactly what he meant.

“Why?”

“We made a start,” he said. “Let’s make a finish.”

Silence, but she didn’t let go of his hand. Lights going past, the studio building looming before them. The cab came to a halt.

“All right,” she said.

Straight Lines

2015-07-27T12:15:00+00:00

Straight lines. His life must run in straight lines. Fidget, touch, arrange, neaten. Maintain control. If Randall sees straight lines, he is safe. His secret remains where it is, under his suit jacket.

The drink had helped, once, until it had done the opposite of helping. He’d discovered then that drink was a crutch that caused its own trouble. Lix, he noted, had not yet given it up.

He did not judge. He never could judge, with her, only pine for her from afar. Only flee when he discovered he might have caused another monster to become.

Lix said, “Do they know?”

“They?”

“Your superiors at the BBC. Anyone here.”

He sighted through the viewfinder, focused on the cork board on the far wall. He said, “You are the only living being who knows.”

Lix’s hand tightened on whatever it was she was holding, then relaxed.

He made a clucking sound. “Dust on the lens,” he said to her, and set her neglected camera down on her desk, aligned with the edges. Their child, if it lived, might also have his curse.

Or his blessing. Lix had always argued for this interpretation. A blessing, his wings. White wings, magnificent angelic wings, so pure they glowed in moonlight. She’d loved them as she’d loved him, had coaxed them out of his skin just as she coaxed him out of his clothes and into her bed. Her hands on them, stroking. The feeling of sweeping them around her, holding her safe in his arms, sheltered.

Until she’d told him of the child on the way.

Would she ever forgive him? He had to know. He had to find the child, if she would let him, and find out if she could forgive him. Randall straightened up and looked at Lix. She wasn’t looking at him.

Not yet. He couldn’t ask yet.

Joining and Other Puzzling Habits

2015-07-27T12:10:00+00:00

One

He isn’t sure entirely about this human custom of sex. He does it with Clara. She likes it. She is happy afterward. He enjoys it himself, though in ways that he finds difficult to explain to Clara. He tried to once, and she seemed upset, so he stopped. Bodies moving together, skin touching, minds touching, comfort requested and given and shared, and then some kind of moment of fulfillment: what more could anyone want? He gets everything he ever dreamed of receiving from her, and she seems happy with what he gives her.

He knows she also does the same things with PE. Danny. The maths teacher. The one who protects Clara but doesn’t want to travel with them. She was very nervous and upset when she told him this, but he didn’t understand why. He was deeply hurt about Danny until Clara showed him that she loved him too and wouldn’t stop loving him. She could love two beings at once. He’s fine now. Clara needs more of this sex thing than he does, so of course she should get the rest of what she needs from PE. Danny.

It’s all strange and emotional and it upsets him sometimes, but he does what he can to keep Clara smiling. He watches her and takes his cues from her and mostly she seems to glow in that way she does that means well-being.

Danny is a part of his life now. Danny doesn’t travel with them, refuses to come onto the TARDIS, so he spends evenings with them instead, in their flat. Weekends sometimes. They watch movies, play games, go for walks. He tinkers with things in their flat, fixes things, improves them. Tries not to watch when they go into their bedroom together, the one place he isn’t welcome to go with Clara. Hides himself in his TARDIS when they leave, rather than feel himself apart from her.

Danny hates him less than he used to. “Danny never hated you,” Clara says to him, but he finds it difficult to believe. He felt the waves of animosity. The hatred of soldier for officer, though he would deny with his last breath that he was ever an officer. He fled rather than be one. He could not bear what his people wanted him to be.

The animosity is something else now. Danny has shifted into something more welcoming. He feels comfortable now when he is with the two of them. He can say things to Danny now, tell stories, explain what is wrong with the universe today, for sufficiently vague values of “today”. He can kiss Clara in front of Danny now and it’s okay. What he feels in response is a wave of something he might call friendship if it came from anyone else. Camaraderie. They are united in their love for this woman, who wants and feels and lives in far brighter colors than either of them.

Clara is nervous again, telling him about something she wants from him. She wants him to come to her bedroom with her and do the thing she calls sex and he calls joining. Of course he will. Only Danny will be there. He looks askance at Danny, who is standing over to the side, not looking at them. Waves of ambivalence. Uncertainty.

“He’s not sure,” he says to Clara. “Danny.”

“He’s said yes.”

“He’s still not sure.”

“Danny,” says Danny, “is happy to do what Clara wants but is not completely sure he’s ready for sex with another man.”

“Are you?” Clara says.

He stares at her, puzzled. “I’ve done this before,” he says. “Rose and Jack. Though Jack was a lot more eager than he is.” And a gesture toward Danny.

And then they are in the bedroom, because Clara wants to be with both of them, and they are agreed on the topic of making Clara happy. And all he has ever wanted was to be with Clara. Near, touching, joined with. He is perfectly happy to be with them, in the same bed, while they touch each other and do those things. He’s happy to watch, to let their feelings flood over him and comfort him. He learns some things he might do to make Clara even happier when he is with her alone, and he is content. After Clara reaches her moment of fulfillment he lets himself reach his, riding along with her on the aftershocks.

Afterwards Danny is puzzled but Clara tells him not to worry about it too much. The Doctor isn’t human. He doesn’t want to be human. He wants to be with humans but he doesn’t work the same way and it’s okay. Which is so very right that he kisses Clara and then Danny to show his happiness, because at last, at last, he has someone who understands.

Two

“It’s an empathic connection, you pudding-brain.”

“What did I tell you?” Clara said.

She was frowning at him and the Doctor didn’t need to touch her to feel her disapproval, all sharp and brown. He sighed and tried the sentence again. “It’s an empathic connection, Danny. Not telepathic. It would be telepathic if I were with my own species.”

“Which is a hive mind.”

“Sort of. Sometimes. At its worst.”

“And you’ve recreated this hive mind experience with us.”

“As best I can, given that you’re aliens and you don’t have the same senses I have. It’s different.” But it was close enough that it wasn’t being alone, he did not say. He’d explained that to Clara, once, and then she’d cried, and he wasn’t interested in making Danny cry right now. He wanted another feeling from him instead. More of that curiosity, more of that warmth. Maybe later the feelings that would let the Doctor touch him in ways that pleased him.

Maybe. If he would do this tonight.

“Sex. Human sex is what does it.”

“Connection. Skin to skin. Sweat helps. Sweat, saliva, semen. I can’t explain it. I could explain it, but it would take all day. It’s the DNA, basically.”

“You miss your hive mind family, so you’re with us.”

The Doctor shook his head. He still hadn’t managed to say it.

Clara said, “We are his family now. When you let him, you know, kiss you last night, that sort of cemented it. Inside his mind.”

That was close enough to how he felt that he let it stand. They were family, yes. They were his partners. It wasn’t usual for Gallifreyans to partner with so few others, but he’d never been normal about that. He’d tended to pair off, even as a boy. His own genetic background was to blame, apparently, if he believed the rumors told about him.

But genetics aside, it was his basic nature. It had always been difficult for him, as an individual, to let himself be open to others like this. Half the reason he’d fled his home world was his inability to let himself reconnect after he’d lost his first wife. It was painful again now, looking at the uncertainty in Danny, feeling it leak out from his skin in a sort of flickering yellow-green. The Doctor wrapped his arms around his knees and tried on a glower.

“And so you want me to make love to you. Which you don’t think is a big deal, because all Gallifreyans are bisexual.”

“The word is meaningless.”

“But you want me to.”

Danny. PE. The soldier-man, who’d killed and felt crippling guilt about it. The Doctor understood that, now. Understood what drove him to teach children. The man was worthy of Clara, which was why the Doctor had agreed to even try with him. And last night he’d allowed the Doctor’s touch at last, and the feeling of warmth all over had been glorious. He’d been enfolded by love at last. He’d been emotional about it. He was still emotional about it. It was frustrating that he had to say it to make them know. Clara knew more often than not, somehow. The connection had gone both ways with her a tiny tiny bit. Danny was not receiving anything, though. That was certain.

Well, perhaps time would help. Time on the TARDIS, perhaps, exposure to to the flux and warp of the vortex. Or not. Maybe he’d always have to find words to use to communicate with Danny.

Words. Yes. He needed to find some now. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like you to make love to me. I would, um, enjoy it.”

“And?” Clara said.

“Clara would enjoy it. And yes, presumably you would too.” He glowered again, as if to tell Danny that it didn’t much matter to him.

“Yeah. Okay. I will. Because you’re a good man despite everything, and Clara loves you, and I don’t know. You seem to be a good thing for the universe.”

And that was acceptance, signaled with a shift in the glow around Danny. Warmth now, reds and oranges. Much more welcoming.

Clara led them both into her bedroom. The Doctor undressed himself without hesitation. He watched Clara undress, knew that the fact that two men were watching her was exciting to her. Then last Danny, who stood stoic and silent while the Doctor and Clara cooperated to lay him bare.

A lovely body, this man had. Muscles, which Clara loved. Latent power everywhere, in those hard thighs, those biceps. The gentle touch he had despite the power. A cock that had been heavy and satisfying in the Doctor’s hand last night, and which he knew would feel good inside him tonight. Clara kissed Danny, and then him, and without prompting Danny came to him and kissed him. It was good. It felt good. The Doctor let Danny’s tongue slip into his mouth, let his own hands wander and find that firm backside. Let the blood heat, let the bodies rouse, until they were both panting.

Onto the bed. Clara’s hands on Danny, slicking him up, then on the Doctor’s body, doing the same. No hesitation, no embarrassment. She enjoyed touching them both, that he could feel. It warmed him to know it. He kissed her in gratitude. Went to hands and knees before Danny, because that was how he expected it to go. It would do for now. A deep breath. The last moment of uncertainty from the man behind him, ended with Clara’s kiss and whispered encouragement.

Clara’s hand clasped in his, her lips against his. Danny’s body, pushing against his, entering him. A moment of something that was almost pain, most definitely pleasure, followed by a flood of emotion, Danny’s emotion. The connection he craved, here, almost overwhelming him because Danny had no control at all, no concept that he needed control, no awareness of what his emotion was like to the person receiving. Pleasure, base physical pleasure, trepidation, determination, below it all a grudging respect. Clara held him, steadied him, told him it was okay. Danny was inside him, all the way. It had been a long time. He’d almost forgotten the feeling. He was hard, yes, it would be difficult not to be, with this much human sexuality all around him. Clara was aroused by the sight before her, two men making love for her because they loved her. But of course the Doctor loved Danny too, for his own sake, or he wouldn’t be here feeling like this, feeling utter satisfaction and safety because another man was moving inside him.

Danny’s hand crept around his waist, rested against his chest. The Doctor let go of Clara’s hand to take it. Comfort him, let him know he was doing it right, that he was wanted right here, right now. That was what Danny needed. To be loved, accepted, respected. Was this not what all sentient beings wanted? Even a lonely Gallifreyan.

Sweat, yes, from all three of them. Everything was flowing freely now, from Danny to the Doctor to Clara. Her eyes were wide, swimming with emotion. She could feel it strongly enough to wonder, he knew.

“Yes,” he said to her, and trusted she would understand. She kissed him, then leaned over his shoulder to kiss Danny, Danny who was close to his moment of completion, driving himself faster now while the Doctor pushed against him. Let himself open up now as he could at no other time, let himself feel another being, know another being. Waiting for that moment when Danny would open himself up and let the Doctor inside in return.

Harsh breathing behind him, a little cry at the apex of every thrust. Danny was close. The Doctor let himself feel it at last, unfiltered. Raw pleasure. A man inside him moving, going still, climaxing. The Doctor did the same, in his own way, coming, opening, connecting, finding Clara’s mind and Danny’s mind and joining them together for long blissful moments.

Then he was on his face on the bed, with a blanket over him. Time had passed and he hadn’t noticed it. He’d slept, apparently. They were asleep as well, one on either side of him. Family now, at last. Truly. He knew them both. Thank goodness they slept, because those were tears on his face.

Three

The Doctor caught Clara’s jacket and tugged to her a stop.

“You forgot the beer.”

He took over the trolley and pushed it back into the center of the Waitrose, obediently not jumping on it to ride this time. She’d been most definite about that not being acceptable.

Clara chased after him. “Beer? Beer? That is not on our grocery list. Avocados, jelly babies, ginger beer, ginger candy– why is there so much candy on this list? No beer.”

“It’s a hot day. Well, for your rainy little island anyway. Three-hundred five degrees, goodness, it’s a wonder you aren’t wilting where you stand.”

“What?” Clara stared at him for a second, then said, “Stop wittering and tell me why you want beer.”

“I don’t want the beer. PE wants the beer.”

“Right.”

“Trust me. PE wants some beer. IPA, he says. He’s imagining what it would feel like after he’s come in from the footie field.”

The Doctor frowned. It was a disturbing sensation for him, all that bitter and cold that PE was so vividly wishing for. He was sweating, though, even more than he’d been sweating last night when they’d joined while Clara watched. Awkward at first, that had been, until PE relaxed. Then it had been rather nice. Very soothing. A lot of skin against skin, a lot of positive emotion. Not the sort of thing one talked about the next day, mind.

He went to the refrigerated case and took out a set of beer bottles with a specific label on them. American, checkered flag on the label. Racer 5. Imported at great cost. e set it into the trolley.

“This is what he wants.”

“Danny really intensely wants beer. Not you.”

“The ginger beer is for me.”

“This beer.”

The Doctor shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets. “Yeah. He wants that beer. Enough to visualize the label.”

“And you know this because?”

“It’s what he’s thinking about right now. Aside from kicking the ball and sweating.”

“You can read his mind?”

“As of last night.”

“Wait. What. Last night?”

“Last night, when he– when we– that is–”

“Stop. Just stop. We’re not talking about this here.”

“Thank God.”

“But you are going to explain it when we get home.” She fell silent and wheeled the trolley toward the front of the shop. The Doctor trailed after her, a little sheepishly.

When they were in line to pay, she turned to him and said. “Mine? Can you read my mind?”

“For ages now. Varying degrees of intensity, depending on what you’re thinking. It’s a side effect. Of the joining. And it’s not so much thoughts as feelings. Intense emotions.”

“Okay. Okay. All right. This is not weird at all.”

“Convenient. Danny gets his beer this way.”

“Ha! You slipped up!”

“What?”

“You said Danny, not PE.”

The Doctor huffed and started emptying the trolley onto the counter. He was not going to dignify that with a response.

Short Circuit

2015-07-27T12:08:00+00:00

His hands were trembling and he knew it. He was touching her at last– she wanted him at last– and he was shaking. How much sex had he had in his long life? An enormous amount of it. Certainly more than she had had. With men and women and beings who were neither and both. With beings he’d called his wife, and the mother of his child, and so much else.

But here, now, with Clara Oswald, he held her hands in his and he raised them to his lips, and he felt himself tremble.

He wanted to please her, oh how he wanted to please her. He wanted to see that smile, to hear her gasp in pleasure for the first time with him, to feel her shudder under him. To hear her tell him that he was the best lover she’d ever had. That he had shown her the heights of pleasure. The reality? The reality was that he had no idea how to begin. He hadn’t touched another being in a thousand years. He hadn’t touched himself in that time.

He hadn’t even asked her if she would go to bed with him. He opened his mouth but he couldn’t speak. All he could do was kiss her hands and clasp them over his hearts and look at her and hope she understood what he was longing for.

“Clara,” he said.

“Hey. What is going on in that big brain of yours?”

“I want– I’d like– that is–”

“One second.” Clara went up on tiptoes and he almost unconsciously bent to meet her. She touched her lips to his. A moment of sweet touch, and then she was looking up into his face, searching for something.

“Were you okay with that?”

He nodded.

“Would you like to kiss me again?”

An even more vigorous nod, for his brain appeared to be non-functional. Faulty.

“Come on, you.” She led him by the hand out of the console room, down the corridor to her room, which the TARDIS had faithfully kept for her. Dear old girl, who knew his heart better than he did sometimes.

More kisses, just outside her door, and then he was lifting her over the threshold because it made her laugh and made her face glow in that way that made his hearts ache with happiness. And into her room, and tumbling onto her bed together, more kisses, caresses, and fingers fumbling with buttons. He knew how to do this, yes, how to touch and kiss.

And then he was on his back, looking up at Clara astride him, beautiful, triumphant, trying to remember what to do, trying to keep up with her. He couldn’t, but she didn’t seem to mind. She simply smiled at him, and touched her fingers to his lips when he tried to apologize. And then she was on him, and around him, surrounding him, taking him into herself, and he was overwhelmed by her– her Clara-ness, her mind, her being, the sense of her through all of time and space, through all of his lives, all centered on this moment, on this touch, on his body inside hers, and he was fragmenting, shattering, splintering into a thousand pieces, one for every year he’d lived apart from her, longing for her.

When he came to consciousness again, she was there, leaning over him, pressing a cool cloth against his forehead.

“You okay?” she said. “That was scary. You started babbling about me and then you came and passed out.”

He caught her hand and pulled it to his lips. “Hazard of being barely in control of my touch telepathy.”

“Oh. Oh. That was why I felt– why I–”

“Did I carry you along with me?”

“Yeah. You could say that. I felt like I was going to pieces.”

“I’m sorry, Clara, I–”

“Shut up about being sorry. Please. Never say that again. You just let me know in a way I can never ever forget how much you– how much–”

“How much I love you.” His voice cracked on the words, but he got them out regardless. He’d said it. He’d probably never be able to say it again, not quite like that, but he’d said it once, and she would never forget that it was true. And there was nothing he wanted more than that.

Jammie Dodgers

2015-07-27T12:06:00+00:00

“Still not sure why we had to do this,” the Doctor said. “I could have put on a school uniform.”

“Trust me. You would not have looked like a student even in a uniform.”

He shook his head at her– his brown-haired shaggy head– and turned back to her kitchen cupboards.

“How long are you going to be like this?” Clara said.

“A few more hours. It was set to do the transformation for a full Earth day.” The Doctor said this with his head inside her cupboards. He had begun methodically rummaging through her kitchen almost the moment they’d returned from the alien-infested boarding school. “Haven’t you got any Jammie Dodgers?”

“Second drawer on the left.”

He ripped open the package and shoved three at once into his mouth. It was an absurd sight. It was still obviously him, still obviously the man she ran hand-in-hand with every day. She could still see him in the bone structure of his face, in the way he smiled, in the way those eyebrows moved so expressively. But his hair was brown, and there was so much of it springing up from his head, wild and wayward as the man himself was. And that face, unlined, unbearded, unfinished, so sweet and mischievous at once. A boy’s face, no longer merely boyish. And at this moment, it was a boy’s face stuffed with another handful of biscuits.

The Doctor really was a teenaged boy. At heart and now in body.

Her doorbell rang. Clara went over and pressed the button. “Hello!”

“Clara, dear, we were in the neighborhood and thought we’d stop by and say hello.”

It was her father. Clara buzzed them up reflexively, then realized what she’d done.

Clara stared at the Doctor. He stared at her and wedged the last of the biscuits into his mouth. “They’re on their way up!” she said.

“So?”

“They’re my family! Hide!”

“Why?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “You’ve had me pose as your boyfriend before. Why not just do that again?”

“Because! Because you’re sixteen!”

“I’m two thousand and five!”

“Yes, but you don’t look it.”

“There you go again, on and on! As if changing my gray hair to brown would fool anybody.”

Clara opened her mouth to argue, but it was too late: her door was opening, her family was coming into her flat. Father, grandmother, step-mother: all of them clutching bags from a day of London shopping, trooping right inside her flat as if they belonged there, as if they visited frequently.

Which they did.

And there her father was, shaking the Doctor’s hand, introducing himself.

“John Smith,” said the Doctor. “But we’ve met.”

“Is this one of your students?” her father said.

“Yes, yes it is.” at the very same moment that the Doctor burst out with an irritated “No! how could you think that? How could you think you’d get away with suggesting it?”

“You look like one of my students!”

“I look like who I am! I’m wearing the exact same clothes! I’ve met them before! Why can’t they tell I’m the same person? Are they defective?”

“You were wearing a tweed thing and a bowtie that time.”

“Oh! Right. Of course. Sorry.” He looked at her to verify that he had indeed apologized at one of the times he was supposed to apologize, and Clara nodded reassuringly. Then he turned to her father’s wife and said, most clearly, “I’m the same one who was Clara’s boyfriend that time she didn’t cook the turkey. I was naked because I was going to church.”

They turned as one to look at Clara, who shrugged helplessly. Either explain everything or explain nothing.

Just then her grandmother came into the kitchen. “Dear, why do you have a police box in your bedroom? It’s a lovely antique, but a bit large, don’t you think?”

“She isn’t an antique!” the Doctor said. His face was flushed.

“Yes, she is. Outmoded the day you stole her.”

“She stole me.”

“What?”

“She always said so.”

Her father said, with an air of infinite patience with a very simple child, “Why is there an antique police box in your bedroom, Clara?”

The Doctor said, quite casually, “Because I parked it there.”

“Her bedroom?”

“’Course it’s in her bedroom. I’m the only one who ever goes in there after all.”

“You’re, you’re sleeping with a student?” her father said, faintly. Linda looked like she was about to explode.

“Doctor–” Clara said. “This one’s out of control.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scowled at it ferociously. “Mind wipe?”

“Yes, please.”

The screwdriver whirred.

The Seventh Sense

2015-07-27T12:04:00+00:00

It meant so much to him. It meant everything to him, maybe. Clara could see that in his face, in his clasped hands held over his heart. It wasn’t a conscious gesture; it was every bit of him pleading. They’d exchanged rings, the token of her species; would she do with him what his species did?

It wasn’t a question, really. Now that she knew it was possible, that he wanted it, she was going to say yes to him. He had, after all, said yes to her.

“How do we– I mean, is there a ceremony?”

“Yes and no. It all takes place in our minds.” He gestured between the two of them, pointing at his chest where his hearts were and not at his head.

“Right here will do,” he said, pointing at their bed.

“Now?”

“Please.”

And there was such a note of longing in his voice that Clara could not have denied him for all the worlds of humanity.

“Okay. Now. Here.”

He sat them down on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other. He closed his eyes for some minutes. He looked at if he were meditating. Gathering himself for something. Clara waited for him to tell her what to do next. She was impatient, but she held onto it tight. This was meaningful to him, and she wasn’t going to mess it up for him.

The Doctor opened his eyes. Blue, so very blue, so intent upon her.

“May I take your hands?” he said.

Formal, so formal. Clara said, “You may,” and held her hands out to him. He clasped them in his.

“Will you join with me?”

“I will.” It seemed to have been the right answer. He closed his eyes and a great weariness settled over him. Clara had seen him like this before: when he was looking across time, when he was telling her what would become of them all.

And then she felt him inside her mind, reaching out to her, inviting her to join with him. Yes, she said again, and they were joined.

It was sexual and it wasn’t. It was emotional and it was rational. It was their minds joined and the Doctor weaving a golden cable that stretched between them. He was laboring over it, she saw. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose and wet the metal strands as he braided. A hot sun beat down on them mercilessly but he was resolute.

“Can I help?” she said.

“Just be with me.”

Clara stood beside him, stroking his hair, while he did whatever it was he was doing. Molten gold, fine wires, something running them and sparking. Energy, flowing from him into what he was building. From his hearts into this braid.

He was on hands and knees, breathing. Clara knelt beside him and wiped sweat from his forehead. He straightened up, with her help, and held what he had made up between them.

“Will you become one with me?” he said, in a language that wasn’t hers.

“Yes,” she said, in English.

He touched the wires to her chest over her heart. Metaphor became reality. Now it was sexual and it was emotional and it was nothing she had words for. It was something she had to invent an entire language for. They were wrapped around each other and they were sitting on the bed holding hands and they were showing each other their lives and they were laughing.

She had something she hadn’t before he’d touched her. She was more than she had been. And he had done it all, had touched her and changed her by pouring something into her. Metaphor was slippery but Clara knew it with certainty, just as she knew with certainty that the new sense she had was an awareness of him. Not of anyone else. Of him, the Gallifreyan with his hands wrapped around hers. The man whose name she now knew, because she was joined with him in his culture’s commitment ceremony.

“Now you understand,” he said, with a voice that was ragged and barely audible to her ears, ringing clear to that new sense. He released her and fell back onto the bed. Clara slumped away from him. Another sense. Sixth sense? No, a seventh. A seventh sense: connection to her partner, her life-mate, her husband, her other half. Metaphor? No. This was real. She was changed. They were joined.

“Always with me, now,” he murmured. The expression on his face– Clara wanted to weep, because she’d never seen him looking like that. She’d seen him happy, she’d seen him post-coital, but she’d never seen him beatific.

Beatific, and drained. He wasn’t getting up from the bed. Flat on his back, one hand flung out, the other clutching his sweat-drenched t-shirt over his stomach.

“Are you okay?” she said, and even as she spoke that seventh sense was giving her the answer. He had pushed himself past his limits to build that connection. It was something that they had been supposed to do together, that she was supposed to have done half the work for. But she hadn’t had the ability– still didn’t have the ability to create that.

He’d done it all himself.

“Idiot,” she said, “killing yourself for five minutes of telepathic sex.”

“Clara,” he said. His eyes rolled back in his head.

The TARDIS made a noise and to Clara’s utter shock she knew what it meant. It wasn’t words, not as such, not like a person speaking, but there was meaning and emotion. It was concern and a nudge to action, mixed with a bit of comfort: he’d be okay, but she had to help.

“Right,” Clara said. “First thing. Clean dry clothes.”

Six drawers and an entire closet full of identical copies of his three outfits. The closet was beyond huge; it seemed to recede back forever. Clara blinked, decided to think about that later. She snagged the nearest t-shirt and baggy plaid trousers, took the top pair of boxers from what seemed to be a drawer full of an infinity of boxers, and went back to him. He lay just as she’d left him, eyes rolled back in his head.

“Hey, you blazing idiot, can you sit up at all?”

No response. Well, that was – something she’d have to work around. But when she touched him, when she took his hand between hers, it changed– he was there, present, wanting to help, but needing her help to pull him back into his own body. To anchor him there. Clara didn’t know how to do that, but apparently holding his hand was enough to do it. Her mental energy supported him.

He blinked, and she could see his irises again. She tugged him up to a sitting position. He groaned, voice still faint, but managed to brace himself while she stripped off his sweat-soaked clothes.

Clean warm clothes on him, blankets swaddled around him, a sugary sports drink in a sippy cup set in his limp hand. The TARDIS burbled. It meant that this was enough for now. Clara touched the wall to thank her, then sat on the edge of the bed. The Doctor sucked at his cup and made a face.

“What flavor is this?” he said.

“Electric flavor. No idea what that means. There were about four hundred bottles of it in the fridge, though.”

“I liked the color,” he said. “Blue. Electric blue.”

“You would,” Clara said, fondly. She pulled the blankets up under his armpits and tucked them around him more tightly. She stroked the hair back from his face. Ridiculous hair, so long and so soft. Why did he ever cut it short? He looked so severe with it short, so beautiful with it curling around his ears like this.

He made a face. “Don’t fuss.”

“You love it.”

“Don’t.”

“Do. Don’t even try to lie to me any more, mister.”

He glowered at her, but this only made her laugh. He hadn’t thought this through properly. Or maybe he had.

Dissembling Timelords

2015-07-27T12:02:00+00:00

Gallifreyans were rarely taken sick, he’d told her once. Time Lords almost never. The genetic manipulation that had made them super-intelligent, that had tinkered with their biology until portions of it were unrecognizable, had also given them immune systems of great resilience.

So when it collapsed, it collapsed. And when it collapsed, the great Doctor, Prydonian Time Lord of Gallifrey from the constellation Kasterborous, felt himself a failure and a discredit to his long-vanished species. He felt less than perfect as a Gallifreyan. He was embarrassed.

Or so Clara theorized. It was the only rational explanation for why he was sick but hiding it. The irrational explanations all required him to be a stubborn idiot.

He wasn’t moving properly. That’s what she noticed first of all. He was stiff, careful, almost timid, and his normal casual indifference about where his elbows went had vanished. Then Clara looked more carefully and saw that he was wearing even more layers than usual: t-shirt, jumper, hoodie, jacket. He kept his hands pulled up into his sleeves.

“Doctor.”

“Mmmm?”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, the usual. Somewhere in the universe, the sky is burning. The tea is growing cold. Injustice everywhere. Why do you ask?”

As she had thought. No wild gestures, no planet that immediately needed their attention, no hand in hers. One more question to confirm.

She said, “Speaking of tea. Would you like some?”

He blinked and then shrugged.

“Right. Something’s wrong. Out with it.”

“Nothing is wrong. Nothing. You are, as usual, letting your human imagination run away with itself.”

That was, of course, when his knees gave out and he collapsed across the TARDIS console. The TARDIS squawked, blinked furiously, then shut its console down. Clara noted this with part of her attention while she ran around toward him. She caught him–nothing to him, such a wisp of a man– and got his arm around her shoulder.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he said, even as he failed to get his feet under himself. “Go make some tea.”

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

She staggered along with the Doctor leaning on her, complaining the whole way that he was fine. He was, in her opinion, the most annoying being in the universe, and she didn’t mind telling him so the whole way across the console room to the corridor leading deeper into the ship.

“Give me some help here, would you?” she said, to the TARDIS. “I need to get him to a bed.”

The ship responded by moving her bedroom door along the corridor so it was the first thing she encountered. Thank goodness. She half-carried him across the room and dumped him unceremoniously on her bed. He blinked up at the ceiling and seemed disinclined to get up and bolt out of her room, as he would normally have done. She fished around in his jacket pocket and found the screwdriver. Setting fifty-six, scan. She scanned, listened to the warble, brought up a readout on the wall nearest her.

“You’re running a raging fever. For you, anyway. If it were me I’d be dead. Or a zombie. Or something. Also you’ve got an inflamed throat. In other words, you’ve got a plain boring viral infection. Nothing spacey. Nothing important.”

“Oh.” He seemed to have given up on pretense, which was a relief.

“I’m going to make you some tea with honey. And maybe some dry toast. You can try the toast.”

“Okay,” he said.

When she got back to her room, with tea tray in hand, the Doctor was exactly where she’d left him. He had not made any moves to take off his boots or get under the blankets on her bed. He was, however, huddled up on himself. Clara sighed, set the tray down, and pulled all the blankets out from under him. Piled them over him, tucked them under. Then she burrowed in at the bottom long enough to get at his boots. Unlaced, off, revealing socks with glow-in-the-dark spiral galaxies scattered all over them. Clara smiled, then, because the socks were adorable and that reminded her that she liked this bizarre, absurd, annoying man. Loved him, even, although he tried her patience now and then.

Feet in their socks wrapped up again. Now for the head area. His eyes were open and he was shivering less. She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Scratched his scalp a little, rubbed circles over his temples. He almost never allowed this kind of touch, but he responded to it now as he did every time: with his eyes half-closed and an expression of utter bliss. How hungry for touch was he? The more he protested against it, the more he craved it. Or so her theory was. Sick Time Lord. Idiot.

“You want your tea now or later?”

“Later.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t go.”

Clara touched her lips to his forehead. “Don’t you worry.”

Mad Dogs and Scotsmen

2015-07-27T12:00:00+00:00

One

They’d been drinking when it happened, of course, because they drank a lot these days, together more often than not. Cheap lager, cheap whiskey, cheap suits, cheap cigarettes. Tonight it was a bottle of blended whiskey, pure shite, undrinkable except with a lot of ice, not that they had ice. Malcolm’s freezer was empty, and he had refused to let Jamie go to the pub. Not after that afternoon in the tenements. The corruption story was going to ignite the paper it was printed on when it was written, but to write it Jamie first had to stay out of the dock. No carving up faces with a shattered pint glass.

Not that Malcolm put it that way. He’d just grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and hauled him home. To Malcolm’s flat. Less said about Jamie’s the better. Jackets slung onto the floor, shoes kicked off, bottle cracked open, two glasses splashed full. No ice. Fucking rotgut blended shite. The kind of whiskey journalists like him got through by the gallon.

“Ever want to do something about it?” Malcolm said.

“Other than fucking write about it?”

“Stop it. Elect somebody to stop it.”

“Fucking impossible.”

“Think I could do it.”

Jamie stared at at Malcolm. He looked perfectly sensible and calm just then, as if he were serious. Jamie waited for him to go on, but he seemed to have said all he had to say on that topic. He refilled their glasses. Jamie watched him slug it down. He’d thought he was the one on the verge today, but Malcolm might be worse off. Fucking strange man. Wire-thin, wire-tight, something innocent in his face, too fucking much hair haloed around his head. Saint Fucking Malcolm. Saint Malcolm, tied to a tree, arrows shot into him.

Wrong saint. But he was still a saint. A foul-mouthed saint. A saint whose knee was touching his.

Jamie’d had it bad for a long time, but Malcolm had been married until last year. Not that Jamie thought a man had to pick one or the other, pussy or prick, but Malcolm seemed not to notice anything or anybody any more, not after that divorce. No life, no fucking. Nothing but the work. But here he was, on the couch next to Jamie, sitting closer than he had a right to. Knees touching. And he knew Jamie liked cock.

Jamie would be the first to admit that impulse control was not one of his best features. Or any of his features. Impulse control was something for other men, ones who weren’t this angry with the world. Or carrying this much of an idiot’s torch for a man like Malcolm. Or this far down the slide with the drink. Give him the least shove and he’d do something about it. That knee was a shove.

So in the next moment the whiskey was drained and his hand was dug into Malcolm’s shirt front and his tongue was down Malcolm’s throat. And Malcolm was kissing him back. Hard. Viciously. Desperately.

A struggle, hands on throats, fingers in hair, and Jamie came out on top, Malcolm pinned beneath him on the couch. A knee stuck firmly between Malcolm’s thighs, to give him something to grind against while Jamie bit at his throat. He was aware, even as he bit, that he’d only ended up on top because Malcolm had wanted him to.

“What the fuck are you? A fucking mad dog?”

“Slipped my fucking leash.”

“Slow the fuck down. I’m not fucking going anywhere.”

Yeah, okay, he could do that. Slow down, turn it down a little bit, lose that fever pitch of desperation. He could just kiss Malcolm, hold him down and kiss him, with his knee up between Malcolm’s skinny thighs. him until Malcolm was groping at Jamie’s belt, undoing it, getting his hands in.

“Here or the bedroom?”

“Let’s fucking well be comfortable.”

Into the bedroom, then, the little hole where Malcolm slept when he slept, if he slept. Stack of books at the bedside, bed unmade, pillows all stacked on one side. Jamie pushed Malcolm down onto the bed, shoved him onto his back. Got his hand on Malcolm’s belt, undid it. Unzipped his flies. Boxers, an erection inside them. Jamie laid his hand on it. Malcolm moaned, outright moaned.

“Yeah?” Jamie said. “Like that, is it?”

“You look a right twat with your cock out,” Malcolm said.

“Gonna shove it inside something in a fucking second.” More threat than promise, but now he’d said it, he wanted that.

Malcolm’s throat worked, and his face changed. “Okay. Jamie. Jamie.”

Jamie’s heart turned over. Malc was offering him something. What he wasn’t sure, but it was something he hadn’t given to many people. Or anybody. “You’ve never done this?”

“Not this,” Malcolm said, and looked away while he said it.

“How far do you want me to go?”

“As far as you want to,” he said, gaze back on Jamie, and Jamie saw something in his face that he’d never seen before, not ever, not even when they were deep in their cups. Desperation, desire, deep longing, something he’d never let near the surface before ever. Had the poor fuck not realized he liked cock until this minute? Or had he known that and not let himself touch it? Or was it something else again?

“Get your fucking kit off,” was what Jamie said.

Clothes off. Condom on, because he’d fucked enough men to worry about it. Lube all over himself. Kneeling between Malcolm’s thighs, looking down at him. On fire with need for it, the need to take him, but God, once he did it would it be over? Malcolm was as like to throw him against the wall like that glass as let him stay in his bed.

“Get on with it, you wee mad dog,” Malcolm said. The desperation was winning.

Jamie wasn’t frothing. He was almost tender right now, looking down at Malc. Would always be thinking of this when he watched Malcolm rip into a story, drink whiskey, swear at a politician. This moment, when he took Malcolm and made him his. This sight, Malcolm on his back, heels hooked over Jamie’s shoulders. Fucking nothing to the man, nothing but Jamie’s hands holding him to this earth. Tension on his face, fear and nerves and anticipation and that something else, all on his face, no filters, no guard up. Thank God for cheap whiskey. Nobody else was ever going to get to see this, not if Jamie had his way, nobody else was ever going to get as close to Malcolm as Jamie was now, bursting through those nerves, right past it to the raw desire underneath. That something else.

“Push back,” Jamie said. “Fight me, you fucker.”

Malcolm nodded and Jamie felt him tense up for a moment and then relax. His face changed, smoothed out. “Yeah, there it is,” Jamie said to him, crooning it, soothing him. “Feels amazing, yeah? Pure dead fucking amazing.”

“Fuck.”

Malcolm’s eyes were closed now and his face intent on something. He’d better be appreciating the self-control Jamie was showing right now, not slamming into him, not just fucking that tight arse into oblivion. He wanted to do this again, though, so it had to be good. Again and again and again, with Malcolm looking like that, so open for once, no fucking insults on his lips, no bitterness, just that look of wonder.

Malcolm’s hand was on himself now, squeezing, stroking. Jamie pushed in, all the way in, and Malcolm moaned and oh fuck fuck fuck, it was taking everything he had to hold himself motionless, hands on Malcolm’s thighs. Slide out, slowly, listening to the man under him make that sound again. The man under him belonged to him, belonged here, underneath him. Jamie knew it at that moment and swore he’d always know that. He’d follow Malcolm wherever the fuck the mad taut coil of nerves wanted to go in daylight. He belonged to Malcolm when when they were out there. Here, in bed, Malcolm was his. His.

He said it. Said it again. Listened to Malcolm swear incoherently under him.

“Fucking tell me I’m wrong, fucking tell me you’re not mine and I’ll stop.”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m fucking yours, you mad dog.”

Call him a fucking sentimentalist, but that was what he’d needed to hear. Jamie let it happen at last. Slipped the leash for real, fucked him hard, watched his face change, watched his hand move on himself, watched him come, watched him forget himself, watched him let go of whatever it was that wound him up so– Then and only then could Jamie let himself go.

Two

Jamie walked, shoulder to shoulder with Malcolm. Friday night, their usual night for a quiet drink or three or five. Their night out. Malcolm had summoned him out for it with a jerk of his chin at the door. Not talking much tonight, was old Malcolm.

“Come round to mine?” Jamie said. “I’ve got a bottle. Or we could go out and drink.”

“Spend cash I don’t have.”

“What it’s for.”

“Look, don’t much feel like it. Let’s go to mine, make some dinner.”

And go to bed, was the unstated sequel. Jamie looked up, caught Malcolm’s look, nodded. Whatever the man wanted. He was in charge, as always. Smarter, faster, stronger, more desperate. Had more opinions, anyway.

Malcolm could cook, and sometimes even had the time to do so. Why he was the scrawniest thing Jamie knew was a mystery, because Jamie would eat all day non-stop if he could have Malcolm cook for him every day. But it wasn’t an every-day thing. A couple of times a week, they’d go drinking and then go home and fuck. Never entirely sober, Malcolm was, when he let Jamie into his bed, and Jamie was okay with it. The man had yet to come to terms with himself. It was something that happened. He’d seen worse.

No drink tonight. Water or ginger beer or Fanta, those were his choices. Jamie took the water, set the kitchen table for two, and sat to watch Malcolm chop vegetables. The smell of oil and butter, of onions browning, of spices and tomatoes heating. Malcolm filled a pot with water. Pasta, then.

“Was a good week,” Jamie said. “Sunday’s story will be good.”

“Needs some last edits. A wee bit of obscuring where that data came from.”

“You liked that stunt with the screwdriver in the lock? Only works with shite that’s as old as that was.”

“You’d think the greedy bastards would keep things like that under real lock and key.”

Jamie shook his head. “It’s arrogance. They think nobody can touch them. That’s until they’ve had the hide lashed off them by you. You and your writing.”

“Doesn’t do any fucking good. Nobody touches them. The sell-off of the national assets continues. I can write all the fucking stories I want. It’s all just shit without power. Fuck!”

The water had gone on the boil. Malcolm cracked the pasta and threw it in, and for the next minutes he was too busy cooking to talk. Jamie watched him move. Malcolm in his shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled up to expose narrow wrists. Lovely hands, he had. A lovely slim body. It took him a while to relax enough to trust pleasure when it was offered, but once he’d yielded it was complete. He gave all of himself.

Probably why it took the drink to do it.

“There’s news,” Malcolm said, while he stirred the pot.

Jamie waited for it.

“Dewar needs a Media Director.”

Hand slapped down on the table, making the forks jump. “You mean needed.”

“Yeah.”

“You meant it, then. Getting your hands dirty yourself.”

“Been in politics since the moment I filed my first story. Everything’s fucking politics.”

“Politics is shit.”

“Everything is shit. Quod fucking erat fucking demonstrandum.”

“Fucking politician now. Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“Gon’ta buy a better suit than that? Maybe one that doesn’t hang off you like a shroud off a famine victim.”

“Fuck you.”

“After dinner.”

Malcolm stopped stirring the pasta and glared at him. He shook his head. Jamie drank his water. Water, fucking water, not even something sugary with fizz in it. No whiskey tonight. None of the water of life of his people. Was Malcolm saying that the fucking was going to stop? Was it that journalists could get buggered on the regular but politicians couldn’t have boyfriends?

Malcolm said, “I’ll buy a better suit once I’ve seen the checks into the bank.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“There’s another thing.” Jamie waited for it, watched Malcolm drain pasta. Eventually he said, “I’ll be hiring staff.”

“Staff.”

“Going to need somebody I can trust.” Malcolm’s eyes flicked to Jamie and away.

“Understood.”

“There’s some, well, possibility they might want me doing media for the main party. Not straight away.”

“Fucking London. Fucking English.”

“Yeah.”

Plates onto the table, sit together, eat. Jamie watched Malcolm shove pasta around his plate. He himself was beyond famished. He ate as rapidly as was compatible with the manners his mam had taught him. Date manners. Be on his best with this new touchy Malcolm who was moving on with his life.

Malcolm said, to his plate, “Would you come with me? In the eventuality.”

Jamie considered his answer very carefully. Tempting, fuck yes, but he had to know what Malcolm wanted. Clearly. Now. If Malcolm himself even knew. “In what capacity?”

Fork down. Malcolm wasn’t looking at him. “My assistant.”

His assistant. Not his partner, not his boyfriend, not his friend.

Then Malcolm said, “I’m not ready to be on any fucking posters.”

Jamie threw his fork at the table. “Nobody wants to be on fucking posters. What’s that mean? How do you want me? Because if we’re not fucking together I’m not fucking bothering. I’ll stay up here and drink until I fucking forget the sound of your voice.”

“Jamie. Fuck. You’ve got the wrong idea. I wouldn’t– of course we’d be together. What did you think I meant?”

“You said you didn’t want to be a poster boy. What am I supposed to think?”

“Not– not that. Wouldn’t be a fucking scandal. I’m divorced. You’re single. We can do what we want. I’m just not – not ready to be, to be out. Fucked if I know why. Don’t want it to be my defining characteristic.”

Now Malcolm focused on his food and ate. Jamie watched him. Defining characteristic. Nobody would ever define Malcolm by anything but his writing. Or his swearing. Or his temper, his oh-so-carefully controlled temper, the rage that was only expressed in those words. When Malcolm felt let down. Betrayed. By people who ought to have done better. Politics was going to fucking eat Malcolm alive, even more than journalism had. There was no way he was going to do it alone.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, on those terms, in that capacity. Okay.”

Malcolm’s shoulders relaxed and he smiled. Briefly, but it was genuine.

Jamie said, “I can see the poster. Scrawny Scot takes a monster cock up the arse.”

Malcolm shot him two fingers without hesitation. “Not yours then, you wee little man.”

“See what you have to say about that later when you’re on your back, boyo.”

Never

2015-07-12T12:00:00+00:00

Malcolm Tucker. The dark lord of Downing Street, the PM’s enforcer, the psychotic Glaswegian bully– asleep peacefully in bed. His face was different when he was relaxed, not snarling. It was still beaky behind that nose, still alarmingly like a bird of prey, but Clara could see the smile lines around his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t a man who wanted to snarl. That was, perhaps, his greatest secret.

Malcolm. There he lay, sleeping, the dog-tag around his neck. She’d bought it on a whim, when she’d ducked into the sex shop to buy something for him. She hadn’t had any ideas about what, maybe a bigger plug or a new flogger, but then she’d seen the jewelry. “Make me yours,” he’d said, that first time, when asked what he wanted. Clara suspected it was what he wanted most. All of the rest of it was about proving to himself or to her that he belonged to her. Everything in pursuit of that one goal. So she’d bought it, and had waited a long time until it felt like the right moment to give it to him.

Malcolm. Her colleague with benefits no longer. Her boyfriend, now. Her partner, even. The man she would go on holiday with, would worry about, would be with exclusively. A sleeping man who looked to be nowhere near waking up. She needed coffee. A bit of breakfast. Clara pulled the bedroom door to quietly on her way out, so she wouldn’t wake him.

While the coffee brewed she cleaned up from last night: threw out the remains of the bottle of wine they’d forgotten, picked up Malcolm’s shirt and jacket from the floor. He’d been so eager. So eager. She’d shown him the necklace and he’d been overwhelmed by it.

Clara poured herself a cup of coffee. Cream and sugar, spoon tinkling in the mug. She tasted it. Not bad. A little gritty from the press, but the beans were good. Malcolm’s money had bought them a swank holiday. She had no regrets about that.

On holiday with Malcolm. She hadn’t predicted this. She hadn’t predicted fucking up so badly the other night, either. Fuck up she had, though, and she was still shaken by it. Malcolm wasn’t a masochist, she’d learned that fairly early. He endured pain for her because he wanted to please her. To prove himself to her. He would do ridiculous things to prove himself. It was a constant temptation to her, his willingness to submit to her. To do whatever she asked. She could ask him to do insane things, and he would fling himself into them with the same savage joy that he flung himself into being the Party’s enforcer.

The flogging had been a wonderful experience for both of them. She’d taken her time with it, worked him up slowly, and brought him into a trance state that apparently had been deeply meaningful to him. He’d wanted it again, she’d wanted it again, and she’d muffed it. The belt had broken him. The sight of him curled up on the floor of the bedroom, shoulders heaving almost silently– she’d wanted to cry with him. She’d stayed strong for him, because what else could she had done? The poor bastard had successfully kept the lid on that for years, and then she’d gone and clumsily ripped it off.

She’d been impatient. She’d been selfish. She’d wanted to hear him made those sounds he made when she hurt him, those desperate whimpers, her name said with such raw intensity. She’d rushed to the moment instead of giving him the time she knew he needed to relax into it.

Though it would have come out eventually. That was the thing about doing intense scenes. Eventually the buried things came up. Eventually Malcolm would have cracked open anyway. She just hadn’t predicted what it would be about.

She hadn’t predicted any of this. Not one single bit. Hadn’t predicted she’d feel like this. That he’d feel like this. She’d meant it to be just sex. Great sex, the kind of sex she liked and had a difficult time finding, that’s all she’d wanted. And now she was– She was backed into a corner, that’s what she was. She had to find a way out that didn’t make her a liar to Danny’s memory.

This was too much for her on a morning like this, a sunny late winter morning in the south of France. She was on holiday with her boyfriend. She didn’t have to think about heavy things. Drink coffee, read a book, relax. That was her agenda.

Clara found her carry-on bag and dug out the book club novel she was dutifully working her way through. She’d probably never manage to finish it in time for the meeting next week. Her career was kicking up its heels these days. The book club might not be interesting enough to make the cut. She might as well try to keep up, though.

Some time later she heard footsteps from the bedroom, water running. Malcolm was up and about. He padded out to her in boxers and nothing else. Her necklace was dark around his neck, against that pale, pale skin. Clara swallowed. She hadn’t thought looking at it would make her feel so, feel so–

Malcolm was before her, taking her face in his hands, kissing her, lingering, running his fingers through her hair.

Clara pulled back from him and kissed the end of his nose. “Nice of you to join the living.”

“Needed that lie-in.”

“What holidays are for.”

Malcolm scratched his unshaven chin. “Still waiting for the sex you promised me.”

“Will you settle for coffee?”

“Fuck you, darling.”

“Or not, as the case may be.”

She grinned at him, to show she didn’t mean it, and he flashed her two fingers for an instant. Then he was investigating the coffee pot. Clara watched him from the corner of her eye. Malcolm, the Dark Lord of Downing Street, in boxers, drinking coffee with one hand, holding a croissant with the other. He bit into it and crumbs landed on his chest. Clara smiled a tiny smile, hidden behind her paperback. Oh, she’d never get tired of looking at him. Malcolm, tall and slender and so fragile-looking, standing there bare-chested, coffee cup to his lips. Dark blue boxers, silk, her gift to him, so dark against his pale skin. The hair on his chest was graying, but the dusting of hair on his belly was still dark. Nothing to him, just wire and nerve and will. Ferocious will, driving him forward, driving their Party forward. Sometimes she thought he drove the nation itself forward, in the Party’s more pusillanimous moments. The cost was how thin he was, how exhausted he’d looked yesterday, how deeply he’d buried everything personal.

“What are you lookin’ at?” he said. He looked down at himself, saw the crumbs, dusted his chest off. Clara smiled a little wider.

“Looking at my man.”

Malcolm set down his mug. His hand went up to the necklace, and he fiddled with the tag. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“Still feeling good about that?”

“Yeah. Clara–”

“What?”

“Never going to regret it.”

“Never? That’s a long time.” Don’t say never, she thought, but did not say. Don’t say it out loud, because then you’re trapped.

“Never. Fucking know what I want, and it’s this. You.”

And then he was in front of her, gently taking her book from her hands, and kissing her again. She didn’t pull away this time. If he was going to say never, if he was going to make her mistake– What could she do? What could she do but kiss him back? Who was she to reject this gift? This gift of himself to her. His whole self.

He was all over her right now, kissing her everywhere, repeating her name, biting at her neck, licking her ears, almost frantically. Clara let him do it, let him kiss her, let him pull her hard against his body and put his tongue in her mouth. His prick was nudging against her. Poor Malcolm, always hard, so often going wanting, exactly as he wished. Nothing to him, so spare, and yet that cock was so satisfying, so thick. Clara’s body knew what it made of that, what it wanted right now. She wanted more than Malcolm’s tongue inside her. She wanted all of him.

She broke away and took his hand, led him to the bedroom. Stripped him of his boxers with impatient hands, pointed to the bed. He was on his back an instant later, splayed out, hard cock resting on his belly. Clara looked at him, lying with his palms up, the cord around his neck so stark against his skin. He breathed once, twice, deliberately.

“Grab the headboard,” she said. He obeyed.

“Who do you belong to?” she said, and was rewarded by the sight of his cock twitching and the sound of the headboard creaking.

“You,” he said. Husky voice, like rough silk, all burr and decadence, so much emotion in it. He loved telling her that; she loved asking him to say it.

She undressed herself as slowly as she could bear to, not looking away from Malcolm any more than she had to. Her Malcolm. She owned him. It said so on that tag resting on his chest. He’d given himself to her, voluntarily, because he, because he– Don’t think about it. Think about what that cock was going to feel like inside her. Think about how wet she was. About how much she loved sex with this man.

She straddled him and took him in hand. He sucked in a breath. Clara poised herself over him, let herself brush against him. There, just there, teasing them both with the promise of what came next.

“Don’t you dare come before I do.”

“Won’t. Oh fuck, please, love, Clara, please. I need you.”

Since he asked so nicely, since he begged so beautifully, and since she wanted it too, Clara shifted and let him inside. Sinking down on to him slowly, a little painfully, not quite enough foreplay, for she was wet but not all the way aroused, but she couldn’t wait for this. She wanted him, wanted him underneath her, wanted him inside her, wanted this man who’d given himself to her moaning beneath her. It felt good anyway, felt good to feel herself opening for him, felt good to hear him gasping, to see the muscles in his arms tighten as he pulled at the headboard.

Clara settled herself all the way over him and let herself rest on his hips. His eyes were half closed and he looked desperate already, face flushed. Why not give him a little more to think about, a little teasing, a little taste of what he loved? She let her fingers find his nipples, brushing over them at first, then taking hold and squeezing. He moaned, swore, moaned again. Clara twisted. No mercy, no relenting, because that was what he needed. He gasped out obscenities mixed with endearments, with pleas to her to do something incoherent, with fervent oaths declaring himself her property. Clara grinned down at him, at his screwed-up face, at the sweat springing out on his temples.

“You like this?”

“Fuck.”

“Tell me you like it or I’ll stop.”

“I like it, I like it, fuck me, fuck me, Clara, don’t stop, please, I’m yours.”

Let him prove it, hurt him just enough to turn him on even more, hurt him just enough that he felt he’d proven himself to her, because that was what he needed, that was what he craved, and giving him what he wanted so badly did something to her she didn’t have words for. Didn’t dare name because, because–

She let go of him and sat back, touched herself for a moment while she watched Malcolm catch his breath and recover. Nice lazy touches on her clit, enough to work herself up, enough to get Malcolm watching intently, mouth open. Touch her fingers to his lips, let him lick her, let him taste what he loved so much. Now time to fuck. Fuck him? Be fucked by him, while he held onto the headboard desperately.

Narrow hips, rising to meet hers, that wonderfully heavy cock moving inside her. Clara knelt up over him to give him more room to thrust, to give herself more of that feeling. Two fingers down, on her clit, just brushing it. No sense rushing this. Give him time to catch up with her, watch his face, that sharp dangerous face, now with eyes closed in concentration. Mouth just open, his breath coming rougher now, a little moan when she tightened herself around him, oh yes, watch the pleasure spread over him, watch his face and chest flush red. He had to be close now.

Clara had no intention of allowing him to screw up. Not on this holiday; not after his breakdown. He was going to have a good time; everything was going to be perfect. He was going to come this morning and he was going to know she wanted him and he was going to be happy. So she slowed down, slid herself down onto him, held him in place, and touched herself in earnest. He was watching her now, intently. She brought herself close, so close, then rose up over him again. Slammed down. Fuck him into the mattress, while he tried to fuck her off it, and there it was, the taste in her mouth, the build-up, a moment of hovering, then shuddering, the release, holding herself in place with what remained of her brain while he thrust up into her desperately. Then the sound of Malcolm coming, crying out her name, his cock inside her pulsing, and she collapsed forward onto him.

Malcolm. Cuddling her in a post-orgasmic haze. Cuddling afterward was almost her favorite part. Not that she was knocking orgasms, not by any means, but it was a surprise to her that cuddling with the Dark Lord of Downing Street had turned out to be so pleasant. So soft and slow and reassuring, her head on his chest, his fingers tracing patterns on her shoulder. Sweat slowly cooling, hearts slowing to normal, her body half on top of his, her toes tickling his shin. So good. Even better: no need to get out of bed any time soon. They could lie here for hours yet, bodies sticky, the smell of sex still on them, until they decided they wanted coffee, or a nice walk out to a cafe for lunch. Holidays were the best.

“Clara,” Malcolm said, into her hair, almost dreamily.

“Yeah?”

“Love you so fucking much.”

She tightened her arm around him and shifted so she could press her lips to his chest, just below where her name tag rested on it. Squeezed him tight again, and laid her cheek against him and tried not to cry because she couldn’t say it back. Wanted to; couldn’t. She burrowed her face into his chest and hoped it would say what she wasn’t allowed to.

Sexually Giving

2015-06-27T12:02:00+00:00

The man at the bar was Scottish, according to his accent, and a medical doctor, according to what he claimed. That had been a bit of a put-off at first, because Clara didn’t want to think about Scotsmen, or doctors. Or about much of anything really. Thinking was not on the agenda for the evening. Drinking, meeting somebody who wasn’t completely boring, and maybe some great sex. That was the agenda.

“Call me Ronnie,” the man had said, and he pointed at her with both fingers, and then at himself, and smiled in a way that was so fatuous it had to be ironic, which was exactly the kind of thing she wanted right then and there. He bought a bottle of wine and brought it with two glasses to her table and announced that whatever it was that was wrong with her, he had the cure. He was a giving man, he said. Sexually giving. And that made her giggle as well, because it was so ridiculous and so charming. Like somebody had never quite grown up. Though obviously he had. As had she.

She had perhaps had one too many mojitos already. Slowing down and drinking wine would be good.

He was good-looking, oddly. Wavy brown hair, a nose that was a little too big for his face, over-active eyebrows. And he was into her. Deeply into her. All she done was smile at him, and Ronnie was over the moon. He didn’t get a lot of action, was her impression, and his self-mocking jokes about how his heart had been broken by the wife of a friend convinced her it was true. A little old for her, maybe, forty-something, but one night stands weren’t supposed to be the kind of thing you thought about that way.

So Clara let Ronnie kiss her in the booth at the bar, let him take some liberties with a hand on her knee, said yes to him when he asked if she wanted to come home with him. Live a little. Find out what “sexually giving” meant from an older guy.

She snogged him to within an inch of his life in the cab. He flailed his hands around at first then got his arms around her and kissed her back. A little clumsy, a little bit of teeth-knocking, but his delight in her made up for it. He was thrilled to be kissing her. He thought the world of her. She turned him on. She made him want to sing. He told her that, then he sang the entirety of “Michelle” to her with a lovely voice that honestly made her swoon, and it wasn’t the two mojitos plus the half bottle of wine saying that, not in the least.

And then they were inside his front door, and he was intent on her, and husky-voiced, asking her if she was sure, if she really wanted to be ravished, because Pilfrey was a gentleman, he said, he would never want her to feel pushed into anything, Pilfrey wanted her to feel as if she’d had the best night of her life with him. Which was again so absurd and charming that Clara smiled, went onto her tiptoes, kissed him on the lips, and told him she wanted nothing more than to be ravished. “Ravish away,” she said. And to her surprise, Ronnie picked her up and carried her into his bedroom.

“Sexually giving”. Oh yes. He certainly took that seriously. She’d come once, courtesy of his questing fingers, before she was properly undressed. The second orgasm was from his clever tongue, before she’d managed to do more than undo the buttons of his shirt. She lay nude on his bed, sated already, while he undressed himself down to his socks. Which he insisted on showing her, and yes, they were indeed clever socks, with a pattern of foxes on them. And that was indeed a magnificent penis he was somehow managing to ignore while he lay over her and kissed her breasts.

A condom on– thoughtful gentleman, Ronnie was, not needing to be asked– and he was inside her, kneeling between her thighs, her heels hooked over his shoulders. Deep penetration from a magnificent penis, her favorite thing, and she told him as much. Though not with those words. She wasn’t articulate just then, with Ronnie thrusting into her, thumb on her clit. She squeezed him and the most amazing things came out of his mouth, declarations of eternal love though she’d known him only three hours at the most.

And then she was coming, and he was coming, and then he was lying beside her, holding her close, kissing her shoulder, telling her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever beheld. And why not believe him?

“Ronnie Pilfrey,” he said to her. “Remember my name. I’ll give you my number.”

“You can make me breakfast in the morning,” Clara said to him, thinking about that tongue, and he wriggled with joy beside her.

Icebergs

2015-06-27T12:01:00+00:00

The Doctor reeled into the TARDIS, shoved his fingers into the telepathic circuits, and pleaded for help. She was on his heels; she knew where he was running; she had let him go so that he could lead her to the TARDIS. His escape from torture was yet another of her plans. Please, old girl, he thought, send me to safety. Away. And do it now.

The door swung shut on Missy and the TARDIS moved. Into the vortex, spinning, and and he knew her destination as well as he knew anything in the universe. She was sending him to the place he loved best, because it was the home of the person he loved best. He tumbled out of the door onto the floor of Clara’s sitting room, where she was doing her marking.

She was at his side, helping him up, and then she saw him. Her first reaction was to laugh. “You look like you were in a fight. I’m afraid to ask what the other guy looks like.”

Then she met his eyes, and whatever she saw there made her laughter die. She wrapped her arms around him, solicitous, and he hissed in pain and flinched away, fell against the side of the TARDIS and flinched again.

“Doctor?”

He couldn’t speak. He tried, but something stopped him. Fear? Unsure. He clutched at her hand, because he didn’t want her going away thinking he was rejecting her.

“Are you okay?”

Head shake.

“Can you talk?” A shrug. “You can but you don’t want to?” Nod. “Something happened. Something bad.” He managed another nod.

“We need to get you to hospital.”

He shook his head violently and backed away from her. Two hearts. Never good. Two hearts, and a physiology that meant they’d kill him by accident. Again.

“The TARDIS,” Clara said. “And then we’ll patch you up.”

She took his hand and gently led him back into the TARDIS. Set the controls for the vortex, no destination in mind, and sent them into motion across the space-time continuum. The Doctor breathed out, then. For the first time since Missy had captured him, he felt he might be safe. He leaned against the TARDIS console and shivered. Everything hurt. He almost could not think it hurt so much. Not as badly as it had. Not as badly as during. He had survived this. He would find his way outside of his own mind soon enough.

He straightened up. Clara was looking at him. Her chin was set in a way that he knew better than to resist. And yet.

“Will you come to medbay with me?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Your room?” Head shake. “My room?” A nod. “What happened?”

He smiled faintly, bitterly, and shook his head.

Clara said, “It was bad. I don’t know what it was, but it was bad.”

The barest of nods.

“Okay. I’m here. I’m here for you. Whatever you need, whatever happened, I’m here. I’m your friend. You know that, right?”

He stretched his hand out for hers again, and let her help him down the steps into the corridor. The door to her room was, mercifully, the first one along. The TARDIS had anticipated their arrival. By her bed was a table with a basin filled with warm water. Bandages. A tube of cream. Clara looked at all this, then at him.

She said, “Are you willing to show me your injuries?”

He stared down at his hands. Willing? Perhaps. Eager? No. If only he could speak. If only he dared. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he opened his mouth. He’d scream, probably. Not Clara’s fault. Clara was the only safe person in the entire universe. He moved, suddenly, and shoved his jacket off his shoulders. It hurt badly enough that he hissed in pain. He undid the buttons of his waistcoat. More pain, from his ravaged back.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. He shrugged and winced.

She reached out for his shirt. He flinched away despite himself, hands before his face. Weak, weak, so weak. But Missy had started that way. Flirtation, he’d thought. And then he’d realized he’d been drugged.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said to him. “It’s okay. At your pace. I won’t touch you without your invitation.”

He wanted her to touch him. She was the only person in the universe he could conceive of allowing to touch him. He reached out and took her hand, laced his fingers in hers. Nodded to her, squeezed. Then he reached up and unbuttoned his shirt. She helped him pull it away from his blood-wet back, his sticky, ravaged back.

“It looks– it looks like somebody whipped you.”

He nodded. Bound to a post, whipped to unconsciousness, then she’d, then she’d– Dammit. He was weeping. She’d burrowed under his skin, made him think he could save her, and then she’d done the worst things she could think of.

“Sweetie,” Clara said. “I’m here.” More endearments from her, a string of ridiculous pet names, which only made him clench his jaw around his misery, because it was so unlike her to talk like that. He must be in a worse state than he’d thought.

“I’m going to clean your wounds and put this cream on. It might hurt at first. Stop me if you need to. Okay?”

He nodded, and set himself to endure it. Surely it would not be as bad receiving it had been. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared– the TARDIS had made him something that eased the pain. Clara’s fingers rubbed cream into him, and it stopped hurting quite so badly. She crooned to him while she tended to him. The Doctor closed his eyes and let himself pretend that it would be okay. Though of course it would. Time cured all. He had time. So much time. Let another thousand years pass and he’d forget even this.

She came around and touched his bruised face, rubbed cream into his blackened eyes, his swollen lip. Found the places on his chest where the whip had curled around, and tended to them. Then Clara’s hand hovered above his belt buckle.

“I think you’ve got more injuries,” she said. “But I’m not going to push. I’m going to offer. If you want my help, I’m here. If you want to take care of this yourself, I’ll leave the room.”

The Doctor breathed in. Out. Assessed exactly how desperate he was, how much he needed her, how difficult it would be to treat himself, how humiliated he was willing to feel. How much he trusted her. Then he took her hand and set it on his belt buckle.

She said absolutely nothing to him, no words of mockery, no comments at all, as she worked on the rest of his body, his ravaged buttocks, the backs of his thighs. Other places. He burrowed his face into her pillows and curled his hands into fists and let himself fall into her capable hands. Into her love.

She dressed him again in soft clothing, pajamas that felt like clouds against his skin. The TARDIS’s doing, of course, the two women in his life conspiring to help him. He lay on his face in her bed, and for the first time in days his body felt as if he could live within it.

Clara got up and went somewhere. He cleared his throat and found that he could call her name. Hoarsely, but his voice worked. She was at his side again in an instant, fingers brushed over his arm, carefully missing the weals.

“Hey, sorry. Was going to clean up. Do you need me to stay?”

“Yeah. No. Talk to me?”

She understood what he meant, and kept up a stream of chatter at him while she went into the bath and washed. She came back into the room with a glass of water for him. Not water; something viscous and sweet, something that soothed his throat. The TARDIS had insisted, she said. She helped him sit up and drink, then eased him down onto his face again. She had not made one comment the entire time about his injuries.

He cleared his throat again and pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Thank you,” he said. It didn’t come out quite so hoarsely. Certainly it no longer hurt to speak.

“You should rest.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“If you want me.”

“I need you.” Oh, how easy it had been to say that after all. How unburdened his heart felt now. He’d thought he’d feel more shame, but all he felt was relief, some kind of peace, deep gratitude that her reaction was to press her lips to his forehead.

Clara lay next to him on her bed, above the covers while he was underneath them. She stroked his hair. It was absurd that this simple gesture should help so much, but it did. Every breath he took in this place, with her warmth beside him, made him feel that much closer to sanity and survival.

“I should be almost healed after a night’s sleep,” he said, meaning to apologize for occupying her room.

“Your body, anyway.” There was a warning in her voice, a promise.

He smiled at her wanly. “I suppose you want me to talk.”

“I want to know you’re safe now. I want to know– as much as you’re willing to tell me.” He heard the anger, and knew how much she was leaving unsaid, how much she was controlling herself for his sake. Which she did not need to do. Her anger was a balm. Someone was on his side.

“It was Koschei,” he said. “Missy. She’s alive somehow. I don’t know how.”

Clara stirred beside him, but said nothing, for which he was grateful. He couldn’t explain any of it. He had never been able to understand how Koschei escaped any of the things she escaped. He had thought her dead so many times.

After a while, he went on. “I met her. To talk, at her request. About Gallifrey. Its location. How she knew. I wanted to, to find out if there was any reason in her. Any sanity.”

“Was there?”

“At first, I thought maybe. We talked. In a public place. She seemed contrite. Reasonable. Then I realized she’d drugged me. I didn’t get out in time. When I woke, I was, she had–”

Clara took his hand and squeezed gently. “How long?”

“Days.”

“Doctor–”

“I forgive her every time.”

“It’s happened before?”

He smiled at her bitterly. “Not quite like this. In a previous regeneration, he had me captive for a year. Tortured me daily.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Well. It was a long time ago. Hundreds of years.”

“Not sure that makes it any better,” Clara said, but her voice was utterly tender.

The Doctor tightened his fingers around hers. “This time there was something bitter in it. A deep grievance.”

And it had something to do with Clara, that much he’d understood by the end. Clara had been a scheme of hers and something about it had backfired. Clara was supposed to have betrayed him by now and hadn’t. Something like that. Her jealousy had been thick. Vicious.

“A sexual grievance,” he said to Clara. “It always turns that way. Between us. Because we were once lovers.”

“That kiss she gave you.”

“Tip of the iceberg.” And he forced out a laugh, to try to undercut it, but Clara had seen his body. No damage done that could not be repaired with a little time. No physical damage, that was. And even the mental damage would be repaired. Was already being repaired, by Clara’s mere presence. That, ah that was it. Why he’d been able to fend off her mind. Why he’d been able to hold himself aloof from the violence being done to him. Clara was always with him, in some way. And that had enraged her worse.

He squeezed his eyes shut. This was going to be difficult. He loved her. He had loved her all along. She was just a girl, the psychic woman had said, just a girl, and she’d saved him, and he loved her. That had to carry him through this next trial, as it had carried him through the last one.

“Clara,” he said.

“Doctor.”

“We need to know why she chose you. Why you. She told me she had. She said you were perfect. Why? And what went wrong with her plan for you?”

“Stop. Stop. Start at the beginning. She said what?”

And the Doctor opened his eyes, and told her everything.

The Strategist

2015-06-27T12:00:00+00:00

Her men carried in a man trussed up in chains. “Something to entertain you this evening, my queen,” her bodyguard said. “A Thornsman soldier for you.”

He was proud of himself, and Clara saw why: this one was perfect. Lean, tall, with a great mop of gray hair. An outraged look on his face behind the gag.

“A gag?”

“He wouldn’t shut up.” Her bodyguard kicked the man down to his knees. “Show some respect to your new liege-lady,” he said. The captive struggled for an instant against his chains, then subsided. He looked even angrier than before.

“Take the gag off,” she said. Her guards shrugged and took it off, then bowed and backed out of her tent.

Clara loomed over him. She could feel the excitement rising in her. A little struggle, a little threat, and this one would be doing his best to please her and earn his freedom, just like all the ones that had gone before him.

“Would you care for some wine?” she said. She filled a single cup and held it out to him. The step toward breaking them down: make them drink from her cup.

This captive turned his face away from the cup to glower at her. “I don’t like being chained up,” he said.

A lovely voice, with the accent of a land far to the north of the country of thorns. That was interesting. But he needed to be knocked into his place. Clara drank the wine herself, then said, “You’re a prisoner taken on the field of a defeated foe. You should be grateful my men know what I like, or you’d be in the pen with the rest of them.”

Clara walked around behind him to check on his bonds. Collar, chain down his back, arms folded and cuffed. He was helpless. He didn’t seem to realize it, however, because he was glaring at her, formidable eyebrows gathered like lightning bolts over a stormy face.

“I don’t much like where I think this is going,” he said.

“Too bad,” she said. She ran her hands over his body. Thin, wiry, barely anything there under the uniform tunic of the princeling she’d defeated earlier in the day. The princeling she hadn’t expected to defeat, because his father’s armies had given her the very devil of a battle until that week. They were rumored to have a man at their head, a man who was not a soldier but an advisor, a northern wizard, who always knew what his enemy was planning, who always had his troops in the perfect places, who could never be brought to battle except when he wanted to be.

It hadn’t gone like that today, however. Today had been almost easy: her enemy had been caught unprepared, and had unwisely risked its cavalry in a move that was showy, brave, and idiotic. Clara had shattered their lines and then mopped up. It had been boring, almost. The only upside was that her army had suffered minimal casualties.

“I’m feeling magnanimous today,” she said. “If you please me, I’ll give you your freedom.”

“Please you? How?”

“Surely you can think of something.”

The captive turned slowly, studying her tent carefully. Then he froze and nodded at the game board set by her bed.

“I see you play chess,” he said. “I can play chess with you. Or teach you the game the easterners play, with black and white stones on a grid. That’s a fun one.” He grinned at her, but it was a false grin, showing his teeth but not crinkling up his eyes.

Play chess with with her new prisoner? She had been planning on taking him to bed, enjoying his lean body and his gray hair for as long as he was willing to play along, then discard him like all the others once he got fussy or weepy or entertained ideas beyond his station. Young men were cocky and assumed they could seduce her; older men at least were canny enough to try to please her. But this one– This one was too canny. Too self-assured. This one was not a soldier. A man from the north, who played games of strategy.

“You’re the Thornsman strategist,” she said, in shock.

The man frowned at her. “That implies there’s only one.”

“We know there is only one.”

He smiled ruefully and shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“Whatever shall I do with you?” she said.

“I am of noble blood, you know. You could ransom me for quite a lot.”

“The prince died on the field. There’s no one to ransom you to.”

His eyes widened. He hadn’t realized, then. A moment of regret on his face, then he said, “Good.”

“Good?”

“He was a pudding-brain. Empty skull. No fit heir to his father. Didn’t follow my instructions ever. That cavalry charge he led–”

“Idiotic. I had archers picketed in the trees.”

“Of course you did. You are not a pudding-brain. You show some promise.”

“Some promise? I’ll have you know I have yet to lose a battle.”

“Luck. You have been lucky. The chance arrow that killed my lord at Gravesend was luck. Without it we would have taken the field and the harbor.”

Clara frowned, because he had a point there. “And you contend that without Prince Harold in charge, you would have beaten me?”

“Like a drum. But it would have been worth the contest. You have wits. With a little training–” He was standing now, and gazing at her intently, and breathing hard.

“Is that what you like? Not chains, but a contest?”

He blinked. Clara kissed him. He did not respond for a moment, then opened his mouth to her. Oh, yes, there it was, there was what she was always seeking, fire in his blood and challenge on his lips, pressing against her without fear. A man who did not fear her: how long had she been seeking that?

But then he pulled away, and wiped his mouth against his shoulder. “I don’t like being chained up,” he said, again.

Now the battle of wits began. “I will not unchain you until you consent to enter my service.”

The strategist smiled, and that was a genuine smile. “Is that all? I consent.”

Clara snarled at him. “I cannot trust that. Your capitulation was–”

“Too easy?”

“Far too easy.”

He looked at her closely. He was evaluating her and it made her angry. “Think it through,” he said.

“I conquered your king! I killed him on the field! Why would you serve me?”

“Think! How do our goals align?”

Clara got a grip on her anger and thought. Beyond the fact that he was bargaining for his life– and indeed he didn’t seem to care much about his life– what was the strategist known for? For his inspired set of battles holding the superior forces of Bran the Vicious at bay. For the mercy of his king over his defeated enemies.

“Bran,” she said. “I haven’t behaved like Bran.”

He nodded at her. “You haven’t sown the fields with salt or massacred the civilians. You seem to want to hold the lands you’ve conquered. If you were Bran the Vicious, I’d be dying right now rather than talk to you.”

“Bran’s probably next on my list, in fact.”

“Exactly.” The strategist shrugged. His chains rattled and he winced.

“I believe we understand each other. I repeat my offer. Enter my service, and I’ll unchain you. Will you teach me what you know?”

“Will you listen to me and take my advice?”

“I will. I swear it upon my sword.”

The strategist smiled at her. “Then I will teach you how to think, my lady.”

“Will you serve me in other ways? Willingly?”

He looked almost adorably shocked. “What? Me? That wasn’t just a game to persuade me to work with you?”

“You.” For he was even more attractive to her now than he’d been when they’d dragged him into the room, now that she knew him to be worthy of her time. She walked up to him and stroked that wild untamable mane of hair.

“I– “ His mouth hung open.

“I will only take it from you willingly.” Because he was that sort of man, a nobleman and a thinker, and she was that sort of woman.

He looked down at the floor of the tent, at the piles of carpets, and frowned. “I am not fond of dalliances,” he said. “But you’re interesting. I would enjoy talking to you in the evenings. I’ll be with you. Yes.”

Clara went around behind him and unchained his hands. “I can’t marry you and put you on the throne. I need a strategic alliance there.”

“Oh, right, of course,” said the strategist. “You’ll be after the fellow from Windflown, whatever his name is.” The chains fell away from his hands and he stretched and groaned.

“Need a buffer on my Eastern border.”

He flicked his newly-freed hands in a gesture of contempt. “Don’t even bother saying that sort of thing to me. It’s perfectly obvious. Of course you’ll marry him. Meanwhile–”

Clara smiled at her new strategist, her new tutor. Her new bed partner. “Meanwhile, I have an evening of celebration planned. Come and drink the wine I took from your last master. And tell me your name.”

He grinned at her. “You haven’t earned that yet. Ask me again after our first victory.”

Rope Marks

2015-06-06T10:30:00+00:00

Clara had a weekly routine with Malcolm Tucker now. Strange, bizarre, unpredictable, but true: she and the holy terror of the Party, the PM’s enforcer, were not exactly dating, not in the conventional sense. They played together. Had sex of an unconventional kind. And because Clara had a clear head about this and wanted no scandal, as far as the outside world was concerned, they were dating. On Tuesdays they did something quiet and then went to Malcolm’s home to do something less quiet. And on Fridays they did something more public, the sort of thing that a man in Malcolm’s position would be expected to do with a partner. It was a good routine, one that had made her week a lot more interesting. The sex was turning out to be more fun than she’d thought. All in all, taking that ridiculous risk and pushing him to confess to her, instead of just rescuing him, had worked out rather well.

Today was Friday, and this week it was the West End, Noel Coward, “Private Lives”, Anna Chancellor. Clara liked Chancellor, and Coward was always fun. Malcolm had never seen it before. He had his hand wrapped around the throat of current television, his fingers firmly on the short and curlies of the latest Internet memes, but had little interest in live theater. At least, not until Clara introduced him to it. He was enjoying himself, if the little bursts of laughter from his seat were any indication. At moments he even grasped her hand and squeezed in appreciation.

“Not fucking bad,” he said to her in the interval, and then he braved the crush at the bar to get her a glass of wine. That was the most she’d let herself drink on nights when she planned on tying him up. Malcolm drank very little, she’d noticed, so she hadn’t had to set a rule for him about no drinking on these nights.

Out with the scrum at the end, Malcolm fetching their coats from the check, and then plunging out of the overheated theater into the cold street. It was a vicious winter, snow on the ground even in London. Someone loomed in front of Clara and a flash went. Paparazzi on the fringes of the crowd, sharking for any recognizable faces. Malcolm did not snarl or flash them a two-fingered salute. He ignored them and offered Clara his arm. She could feel the tension in him; he was almost vibrating with it, and his jaw was tight. He was accustomed to journalists flocking around him, in fascinated terror, but not to being pursued by photographers. Being the focus of the story made him profoundly uncomfortable. But public was Clara’s plan, for reasons he agreed with, so public it was, and that meant ignoring the photographers, taking his arm and smiling at him, reassuring him that it would be fine. They were just another couple out after a nice evening at the theater.

Which they weren’t. They were friends with benefits. Kinky benefits. Definitely only friends.

An actor and his partner swept out of the theater behind them, and the photographers lost all interest. Malcolm let out a long breath, and they made good their escape down the pavement and into the crowd.

The Tube tonight, because Malcolm was feeling especially populist after a minor press incident involving a pair of back-benchers and misuse of an official car. Leicester Square, heat and press, crowded platform, no room to sit on the train. Too many drunk lads to count on their way home from bingeing. Clara wrapped her arms around a pole. Malcolm pressed himself up behind her, arms around her, sheltering her. Another one of his charming protective gestures, of which he was strangely fond. Clara enjoyed them. And if he sometimes kissed the top of her head while they were standing like this, well, it was under her instructions, and it looked good in photographs. Not that anybody was taking any right now.

They had a short walk once out of the Tube at Highgate. Not a fast walk, because she was in heels. A civilized walk, if chilly, up bricked pavements, to the leafy street where Malcolm owned a house. Had for over a decade, since before London prices had gone raving mad, he’d told her. Lucky bastard. Enough of the envy there, Oswald. She was making her own way up. She’d own her own place some day. She’d make her own mark on the nation some day.

Clara turned her mind to what would happen once they got to his place. What was on the menu for tonight? Rope bondage. Malcolm’s first experience with it. Everything was Malcolm’s first time; that was one of the pleasures of playing with him. He was probably going to love this, if she understood his preferences, and she thought she did. Would she explain to him ahead of time what she planned? He was always so frustrated with her attempts to be as safe, sane, and consensual as she ought. “Just fucking get on with it,” he would say. “I’ve already said yes.” Reckless bravado, she’d thought, but she’d begun to wonder if it was something else.

No matter. She’d surprise him with it.

She’d stashed a lot of rope at Malcolm’s place, in her drawer for clothes and toys. She had one of those, after the first time she’d brought things over to use on him. He’d shown her the drawer, and told her he would never look inside it. She had everything she wanted for tonight: cotton rope in several colors, bandage scissors just in case.

She hadn’t done anything interesting with rope bondage in a long time. All that rope had been lying around unused since before– before Danny. Not somebody who’d ever wanted to be tied up. He’d been the most vanilla of men, the shyest of men, the least likely of men for her to fall for.

No. No thinking about Danny right now. This was not the time. She’d done her five minutes, in the morning, and she was not going to cheat Malcolm by mooning about somebody else when she was with him. Move on, Oswald. Move on. Think about Malcolm. She had the rope, the plug she wanted to use, the lubricant. Nothing much else needed for tonight. She liked to introduce Malcolm to one new thing at a time, then give him a couple of sessions to get used to it. No fancy tricks needed with this man. He was almost absurdly responsive to anything she did, even something as simple as holding his hand.

To prove it, she took his hand in hers. He stared at her when she laced her fingers through his and looked as if he had no idea what to do about it. Then he squeezed back. Clara smiled at him encouragingly.

She hoped he wouldn’t get scared off by her any time soon. Her last play partner had told her he wanted a fun change of pace every couple of weeks, not a lifestyle thing. Then he’d dumped her, and he hadn’t bothered to hide his judgment. Her last couple of Tindr dates, half-hearted attempts to find somebody after Danny, had been disappointing milksops. She’d given up on finding anybody as interesting as Malcolm who wanted it as much as she did. But he seemed to be having a good time. Well, she’d enjoy it while it lasted. She was enjoying Malcolm’s company more than she’d expected from her work interactions with him. He had a quick wit and could be savagely funny. He also gave a damn about social and economic justice issues more than she might have expected from a man so close to that middle-of-the-road PM. When they talked politics, which they inevitably did from time to time, they were aligned far more closely than she’d feared.

She was, in fact, in danger of wanting more from this relationship than just sex. That might end up being a problem. Because she couldn’t. Never again. She’d sworn.

They had arrived. Up his little walkway, through his front door, into the warmth of his house. The door on the latch, the deadbolt thrown. Malcolm hung their coats and then stood looking at her. He wasn’t smiling. he looked hesitant, of all things. An odd expression to see on that sharp face. Best to take charge right away, then.

“On your knees, Malcolm. Where are your manners?”

A flash of relief, then he was on his knees, bending to kiss her feet. She’d never asked him to do that. He’d come up with it all on his own, and she wasn’t about to tell him to stop. Another one of those lovely, surprising, incongruous courteous gestures from this raging lunatic. He straightened up again and let his hands drift up over her legs. He was smiling up at her with one of his alarming bared-teeth grins, the kind that sent politicians running in terror.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“Been waiting for this, huh?”

“Since Tuesday.”

When she’d teased him and made him go without. When he’d begged and begged, to her delight, and then sworn himself blue in the face when she denied him permission to come. And he was, she thought, generally obedient about not touching himself when they were apart. Maybe not perfectly obedient, but close enough. He liked it too much, liked being denied so fiercely that he was disappointed if she didn’t. She’d discovered in herself an equally fierce appreciation for denying him.

“Have you been good?”

“Fucking evil. All week. I made a grown cunt at the Daily Mail cry.”

Clara opened her mouth to ask how he’d managed that, because those were truly hardened hacks, then got herself back on track. “Well, then. I think you’ve earned something special.”

“Can’t wait, darling.”

“Take ten minutes to get yourself ready. I want you in the bedroom, undressed, on your knees.”

That grin again, and a cheeky “Thought you’d never ask,” and he was in motion, rising to his feet and running up the stairs, awkward and elegant at once. Such an odd man. So arrogant, so confident in himself, with his quick mind, and so out of sorts in his own body. So different when he was tied up, so much more emotional.

Was that why he liked being tied up? Hard to say. She didn’t have much insight into his inner life yet.

Ten minutes. Clara spent them in his downstairs washroom, washing up, taking off some of her makeup, her shoes, her stockings. They’d only get in the way later.

Upstairs, quietly, on the ten minute mark, to see if he was ready and waiting or if he was being pushy. Sometimes he was; she hadn’t yet figured out whether it was his way of telling her he needed a taste of pain, or if he wanted a reminder of who was in charge. Or both. But not tonight: tonight he was obedient. He was in his bedroom, kneeling on the carpet beside the bed, nude, as instructed.

There was nothing to Malcolm, once you got him out of his clothes. He was a rail. No muscle, no fat, just whipcord under broadcloth. He skipped meals as a matter of habit. He’d eaten almost nothing at dinner, and that was how he’d been every time they’d dined together. Clara let her gaze trail down his chest, following the line of fuzz down his belly. He was hard, of course. He’d probably been hard since the moment he’d locked his front door. He had a nice penis, a good size, broad head, a curve upward that reminded her of his fingers. His hands rested on his thighs. He was looking at her, not quite smiling, but with anticipation.

“Hands behind your back.”

No hesitation, hands clasped behind his back.

“Good boy.”

His eyebrows came together. Did he like that or hate it? Probably he hated it. She’d have to ask him about it afterward.

Clara went to her drawer and pulled out what she needed. Red rope, her favorite. A nice long coil of it, because she’d be needing a lot. She held it up to show him. He tilted his head and his mouth quirked.

“Trussing me up like a turkey?”

“Careful what comes out of that mouth, Malcolm. I might decide you don’t deserve your reward after all.”

His face changed and he dipped his head. “Sorry. I’ll just shut the fuck up.” He sounded sincere. Probably he was sincere.

Clara began by touching him, running her hands over him, over all the places where her ropes would be wrapped around. The snark had been cover for nerves, because his shoulders were tense and a muscle in his jaw was pulsing. If she took the time with him now, it would pay off later. Touch, gentle, almost tender, her fingertips over his shoulders, his hips, avoiding anything overtly sexual. His eyes closed and his shoulders relaxed.

When he was breathing steadily and slowly she picked up the rope again. The midpoint of this one was already tied into a little loop. Five twists, then over his shoulders it went. Now the ends around his ribs, through the twist, back around, looped. Like doing macrame. Or so she’d thought back when she’d taken the class on it with that uni boyfriend of hers, the cheating slime one. Rick, that had been his name. This was one of the more complicated body harnesses she’d done. It used a lot of rope. Lots of rope, wound around and around, which was something Malcolm would like. He loved being bound tightly enough that he could pull against something. The cuffs worked, and were good if she just wanted to get his hands over his head and flog him, but tonight she wanted something more whole-body. Something that demanded his patience. Something profound.

Clara took her time with this. No need to rush. Get it right. Give her partner a good time. He was worth it. He appreciated everything she did so much. She was his first. What a wild ride this had to be for him. No wonder he was nervous. No wonder he was so eager, every time they got together.

Around his chest, each end around his thighs four times, snugly, leaving his arse free for later play. Over his shoulders, criss-crossing, in and out. Malcolm was silent, as promised. He was watching her work. His eyebrows were together and his lips tight, but he cooperated easily enough.

At last, the knot holding it all together, in the small of his back. Clara stroked Malcolm’s face and looked him in the eye. His temples were wet with sweat. She didn’t plan any pain for him at all tonight, just the rope bondage, but he was already as worked up as he got after a spanking. Bondage was his thing, all right. Bondage was his hot button. Made sense. He’d wanted it so much he’d done it to himself. Clumsily. Endearingly incompetently, in fact.

“Stand up and stretch,” she said, and held out a hand for him to grasp.

He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms while Clara watched to make sure he really was feeling comfortable, and wasn’t hiding anything merely to please her. He raised a hand and touched the center of his chest cautiously, with a glance to her to see if it was okay. She nodded. He ran his hands all over himself, over the ropes.

“Expected you to do my arms,” he said to her, tentatively.

“That’s next.”

He nodded.

“Let’s see how long you can bear this, yeah?”

“As long as you want me to.”

“That’s very bold of you, but I was thinking more like an hour for your first time. Tops.”

A little shake of his head, but no further bravado. He had to be feeling strange with all that around him. Clara wondered what it felt like. She’d been tied up once or twice, in that class, but never seriously and never for very long. Not her thing, subbing. Had never even tempted her. She was doing her best to get into Malcolm’s head right now, to figure out what made him bluster and swear and rampage around, what made him hard, what made him feel good, feel bad, feel fulfilled, but she’d never share that headspace.

Enough of a break. The clock had started ticking when she’d tied that final knot.

“On your knees again, please, and grasp your ankles.”

A moment, then he nodded, and he went down to the floor gracefully.

A second rope, this one black, wound around his right wrist, around his ankle, back again. Nice neat coils, around and around. Over to the left. Count the loops around, keep them even, keep them snug. Malcolm’s breath was coming fast now. Clara ran her hands over the ropes, tugging at everything, making sure nothing was too tight. Tidy work, snug but not cutting into him too much. She hadn’t forgotten how to do it. It was done. He was bound.

She cuddled herself up behind Malcolm and slid her arms around him, kissed the back of his neck.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

Malcolm struggled for a moment, pulling hard at his hands. He shook his head. “Fuck. This is–”

“What is it? Tell me.”

He groaned. “Shit, shit. Clara. I can’t– You’re here?”

“Right here.” An odd question, given that she had her arms around him, but she was going to reassure him all he needed. This was profound bondage, the real thing, not those toy cuffs he liked that deprived him of his hands and nothing else. The man was wrapped up in rope, tightly enough that he’d be marked by it, and he had to be feeling it. “I’m here, Malcolm.”

“You won’t leave?”

“I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“Fuck. I’m– You’ve got me– Fuck. Clara.”

She stood up and went around in front to look at him. His face was strained but it wasn’t pain or discomfort. He was still hard. She could see the muscles in his arms flex as he tugged against the ropes almost rhythmically. But he was breathing too fast.

“Breathe for me, Malcolm, okay?”

“Breathin’.”

“Slow down.”

“Fuck.”

She knelt between his thighs and took his face in her hands, stroked him. She touched her forehead to his. He shuddered, closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. She held his gaze.

“Breathe with me,” she said. “In. Out.” She counted out seconds in her head as they breathed, slowing him down deliberately. Finally he sighed and blew out a long breath on his own. Clara brushed a kiss over his lips.

“Breathe like that when it starts to get to you, okay? Long, slow breaths.”

“Yeah. Got it.”

“You okay now or do you need me to untie you?”

“Don’t stop. Don’t you fucking stop.”

Clara cuffed his head gently. “Hey, who’s in charge here?”

“You are,” he said, and grinned with one side of his mouth. It was, of course, a ridiculous question given the position she had him in, but his grin told her what she’d wanted to learn. He’d regained his confidence. Now to strip that away from him and leave him open, bare, vulnerable. Where he needed to be.

She settled herself behind him with what she needed next: Lubricant and the plug. Not a big plug, the same one she’d used on him last week. The one that had made him melt down. Malcolm Tucker, the man who liked being fucked. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone but her, but she’d made him admit it.

Strip it all away from him, all the bluster, and what would she find?

She parted his arse cheeks and took a look at him. Arse, balls, prick jutting down. All exposed for whatever she wanted to do. Malcolm tensed up and swore very quietly. Clara grinned. The problem for her now was being patient. He still needed warmup here, but it was getting easier for him. Some day soon she’d be pegging him with something as big as his own cock, while he begged her to do it harder. Not just yet. Not while he still melted into a whimpering puddle at the merest touch of her fingers on his backside. Slick on her fingers, generously, then on him. He shivered and made a tiny sound. The gentlest touch, circling around, teasing him, just for the pleasure of hearing that whimper. He knew what was coming next, and his anticipation was doing all her work for her. More lubricant, and she pushed a finger inside him.

“Clara,” he said, and then, “please.”

After the first time she’d done this to him, she’d smiled to herself, where he couldn’t see her, and gone off to buy him more toys, cut her fingernails short and buffed them smooth. It was too good to ignore, what this turned him into. How it short-circuited all his resistance when she touched him here, what he said to her when she did it. He needed this the way he needed the bondage.

His breath was coming hard and fast now, but that was good. He should be breathing hard. She had two fingers inside him, deep. He was moaning now as she moved inside him. So soft, so warm. So tight.

Time for the plug. Such a pretty sight, such a sexy sight, the tip of a plug pressing inside a man, stretching him open around it. Such a pretty sound, such a sexy sound, a man moaning, saying her name, whimpering a little as the flared part moved inside him. Another little sound from him as it settled into place. Buttocks clenching and unclenching. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed. She squeezed the back of his neck gently with her clean hand.

“How’s that, tiger?”

“Fucking hell. Fuck. Clara.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I like it.”

“You just wait here and think about how big that is, okay? I’m going to wash my hands.”

“Fuck.”

The advantage of this break was that it gave Malcolm time to stew in his own juices, but really it was that she wanted to touch herself soon. Couldn’t hold off much longer.

She was still almost completely dressed. Shoes and stockings gone, little black dress still on. She looked good in this dress. It showed exactly the right amount of shoulders and back, went down to her knees perfectly, and was easy to take off. Not that she was about to. Take her knickers off now or later? Later, when she could make Malcolm watch.

She saw him sigh with relief when she returned. Still worried that she would leave him like that? Maybe it was just that he craved her presence, her attention. He was watching her with an expression that was half eager, half wary. Probably acutely aware how vulnerable he was. Now came the part she loved best, the part that was the reason she did it. The part where she ripped the lid off him.

His shoulders rose and fell steadily, slowly. He was breathing the way she’d shown him earlier. Good. He learned fast. It was one of the things she liked about him. One of a long list of things. She might really be in trouble here: one could not fall for the PM’s enforcer, the psychotic Glaswegian, without consequences.

She stood in front of him and stroked his face. He closed his eyes and leaned into her.

“Now what should I do with you?” she said.

“Anything you want.” His voice was a little rough, and that again what was she’d wanted to hear. He was in the right headspace at last. She could probably do anything she wanted. He was putty. The Dark Lord of Downing Street, on his knees before her, bound, willing. Except– it wasn’t the Dark Lord she was interested in, not any more. It was Malcolm the man. The strange prickly man, who’d chose to hand himself over to her. She wanted to know who he was. Right now.

Drive him a little deeper.

“Who owns you?”

“You do.”

Eyes open now, looking at her directly. So very disturbingly blue, those eyes, under the ferocious dark eyebrows. He had ridiculously beautiful long eyelashes. Beautiful. That was the word. He was beautiful. What a shock that was.

“Say it again.”

“You own me.”

“Again.”

“I’m yours.”

There it was, the right pitch of utter desperate conviction.

“I’m imagining what it would be like to whip you right now.” A sharp intake of breath and a fruitless jerk. Probably both entirely unconscious. “Would you like that?”

“What– whatever you want. Fuck.”

“Would you beg me to do it?”

“Beg you for whatever you want me to beg for. Clara.”

“Beg for it.”

“Whip me. Please. I belong to you. Do what you want to me. Clara, please.”

Oh, so pretty, the sight of his face, strained and desperate, those blue eyes red-rimmed. He was completely unraveled now, completely open. She stroked his hair and he keened her name.

“You’ve been so good,” she told him. “So obedient. I’m going to give you what you want now. Tell me what you want.”

“Take me. Any way you want to take me. I’m yours.”

For that she kissed him, knelt down between his spread thighs and kissed him tenderly. He opened his mouth for her, returned every kiss. Groaned when she twisted a hand on the ropes crossing his chest and tightened his harness for a moment. Then she got her fingers on his nipples and squeezed, ruthlessly, while he made the most amazing sounds. Was there anything else in the world like this? Playing a man like an instrument, making him moan and quiver and beg from simple touches on his body? Nothing like it as far as she could tell. Her will, her whim, worked out on Malcolm’s body. His willing submission to her control. His utter delight in her control. He wanted it, he needed it, and oh fuck, she needed it too.

Clara let go of him. His eyes came open again. Sweat ran down his temples. Oh, yes, he was where she wanted him. She made sure he watched while she took off her panties, dangled them in front of him, then tossed them over her shoulder. All she had to do now was lift her dress, slide her hand down between her legs. Yes, that felt good. So wet already, jesus, already open. She was going to come too fast if she wasn’t careful.

Malcolm was watching, avid, while she touched herself. She gave him a taste. He licked her fingers eagerly. She’d never met a man who liked going down on her as much as Malcolm did. She’d learned that their very first time together, and it was one of the reasons this was fun for her. That, and his utter surrender to her. From that very first time, he’d handed himself over. Such a strange thing from this man, this shark, this bully, this monster. The man her colleagues were terrified of.

One hand on him, the other hand on herself. Just enough friction to tease him, no rhythm to it. He thrust himself against her palm, stealing as much contact as he could get. Clara allowed him to do it, because she had her mind on herself. She hadn’t let him fuck her yet. She was saving that for a special occasion, but damn, she wanted him inside her right now. Bound, on his back, while she rode him. Oh, that would feel so good. Next time, maybe, next time, with Malcolm forbidden to come, fighting the need to come, while she came around him, oh yes that would be fantastic, coming with that cock inside her–

She was there, it was there, she was coming. Nothing inside her, just her fingers on her clit, but more than enough, more than good enough. She let it happen, let it ride through her, just clung to Malcolm and shuddered. When she opened her eyes again, he kissed her. The expression on his face was strange.

“Clara, darling,” he said. “Love watching you come. So beautiful.” And he kissed her again.

She held her trembling fingers up to his lips. He licked her hand, closed his eyes and sucked on her fingers with a rapt look on his face. An idea came to her. First she had to check that he could stand it a little longer. Hands, feet, okay, still warm. He looked fine, if strained. And of course he was hard.

“How are you doing?”

“Goin’ a wee bit fucking mental here,” he said.

“Cramping up?”

“Naw. Want to fuckin’ come. Need to. All I can think about. Coming like this, with your ropes on me. Your plug up my arse. Clara, darling. Please let me.”

“You have been wonderful tonight. Would you like to come in my mouth?”

He whimpered. “Please.”

“Do you think you deserve it?”

“Oh, fuck, Clara, please. Don’t know if I deserve it, but I want it. Darling.”

That was a surprising yet fair answer. She smiled at him, kissed him, then laid her hands on his thighs and bent down to him. Kissed his cock, lightly, flicked her tongue over the top. He moaned. He was hard, so very hard, and dripping already. Foreskin pulled back. Clara licked the head. Salty, with the same taste as his sweat. Pure Malcolm. Clara didn’t mind the taste of women, but it was this that got her going. The taste of cock in her mouth, the way it felt on her tongue, the way Malcolm was thrusting into her mouth. She backed off for a moment and licked her lips. He swore above her. She shifted herself into a better position.

“Come when you’re ready to,” she said.

And she took him all the way in, deep throating him for a long moment, then coming up to use her hands on him. He was making a lot of noise above her. Good. He should be showing his appreciation for this, because she was putting herself into it. Tongue under the head, one spit-wet hand sliding over him, the other cupping his balls, squeezing just enough to give it an edge. Oh, listen to him, moaning and swearing, telling her how good it felt, repeating her name, telling her he he was close, telling her he was going to come in her mouth, so triumphant.

There it was, his rhythm faltering, his balls contracting in her hand, and his whole body tightening up. A choked-off cry from him, and he was coming. He pulsed in her mouth, and there was his release. Clara took it all, but didn’t swallow. She straightened up, gripped his hair, and tugged his head back. She touched her lips to his and he opened his mouth. There. He gagged, just for an instant, then swallowed his own come. Clara stuck her tongue into his mouth again, just to make sure he’d got all of it. He sucked at her eagerly, which surprised her, actually surprised her. And then he kissed her deeply, with his tongue in her mouth.

His breathing slowed down. Almost time to untie him, clean him up. After care. Wrists free, first. Undo the knot, loosen the ropes, and away they fell. He stretched and leaned forward on his hands the moment he could, straightened his legs, and groaned. The knot at the small of his back next. The harness that had taken long minutes to weave around him came free. Clara threw the rope aside as something to clean up in the morning. Right now she needed to look at Malcolm, at what she had done to him. At his skin.

Marks all over him, rope marks in his skin, grooves and dents, running over him. Clara touched him, traced a line around his chest and over his shoulders, over his thighs. Better than whip marks, this was. Her marks on him. Her work, this pattern on his skin. Her cunt throbbed, even though she’d come hard earlier, and had no need to come again. Or maybe she did. This was amazing. This was so beautiful. Next time she’d wait until she’d untied him, wait until she could see this. Oh, fuck.

She let her hand find her clit again. Malcolm seized her and kissed her, told her to do it. Clara leaned on him. He swept her feet out from under her and laid her down on the carpet. His hand came down over hers and she let him take over. He cradled her and crooned to her and fluttered his hand against her, while she thought about those marks on him, thought about what it would be like to be taken by him while he was bound, to take him while he was bound, while her fingers ran over the grooves in his shoulder.

Malcolm’s voice in her ear, his breath on her neck. “That’s right, darling, let it happen, I’ve got you, there it is, yeah.” And she was coming again, this time while he held her close.

In the bathroom, a little later, after their shower, Malcolm was staring at himself in the mirror, mouth open. The rope marks were still clear over his shoulders, around his chest. He rubbed at himself, and swore. Clara came up behind him and laid a hand on his backside. He couldn’t see it, but there were more marks visible there.

“You like this,” he said to her.

“Like what?”

“This shite. The rope marks.”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Fucking love your face when you look at me. You get this look, fuckin’ dreamy, like you’re a cat in front of a fire.”

“Would you like to do it again?”

He rolled his eyes. “Always the fucking debriefing.”

“Shut up. Tell me how you felt about the rope. Did you like it?”

He frowned at her. “Yeah. That was, I don’t know, fuckin’ surprising? I’ve seen the complicated rope shite in skin mags but thought it was out of our league.”

“Nothing is out of my league, Malcolm. Did you like it?”

“Yeah. Fuck yeah. Pure fucking brilliant. Do that any time you want. Blow job too.”

“So long as you’re ready to taste yourself, sure.”

He grinned at her. “Doesn’t taste as good as cunt, but I’ve had worse. In a wine glass at last year’s Christmas do, to mention one fuckin’ miserable occasion.” He studied her for a moment. “Come on, love, let’s go to bed.”

He stretched out his hand for hers. Clara let him take it and let him lead her back to the bedroom.

Then they were in bed, burrowed under the comforter, nose to nose in the dark. Sometimes she suspected Malcolm of enduring everything she did to him just so he could get the cuddling afterward. He took her hands and kissed them, and then brushed a tentative kiss against her lips. Clara made an encouraging noise and he did it again.

“Clara?”

“Yeah?”

“S’been good. This thing. What we’re doing.”

“I’m glad. Truly.” And that was easy to say, completely easy and true. Malcolm might well be the partner she’d been longing to find, at least before– Well. She hadn’t been looking for somebody after Danny, but maybe maybe maybe she was getting over him. A little bit. The stab of guilt that she felt at even framing that thought was familiar, but for the first time she wondered if it was fair. It had been years, now. Could she let herself?

Malcolm spoke again. “There’s a thing. Sunday afternoon. Some fucking charity thing. Got two tickets. If you wanted to come–”

“Sounds good.”

She hadn’t even asked what it was for. She didn’t care what it was for. Malcolm would have chosen something she’d like.

Well, well.

Ser Clara of Blackpool

2015-05-30T12:05:00+00:00

The Doctor-King of Gallifrey, they called him, and it had been a lovely title to boast until the Mistress of the Green Isles claimed he’d killed her daughter and heir with his potions. Both the Mistress and he knew he’d never laid eyes on the lass, but it didn’t matter. She wanted something from him he would never give her: the telescope he used to gaze at the stars.

Tradition granted her the right to make the challenge. Tradition denied him the right to fight in his own cause. Not that he would have dared fight against the Mistress’s champion, the gigantic Ser Cyber. Perhaps in his youth he might have been idiotic enough. And it seemed none of his fellow nobles were that idiotic, and neither were their sons and daughters.

Fear had stripped him of his allies, and so he stood in the mud of the field, before the array of nobles, afraid they would burn him after all.

And then she rode in, a stranger on a dappled horse: well-armed, confident, boldly offering to fight for him against the great Cyber. She dismounted and opened her visor, and asked him for his colors to wrap around her sleeve as she fought for him.

A page, perhaps, or a squire newly-made, that’s what she had to be. For she was too short for a full-grown ser-at-arms, surely. But she wore colors that she said were hers, and the herald whose business it was to know recognized them, and so he had his champion. Ser Clara of Blackpool, in red and black, brave beyond sanity. The Mistress of the Green Isles laughed in her face. The Doctor gravely took her gauntleted hand and bowed to kiss it. Cyber would, he thought, batter her into the ground where she stood, but at least he would not die without anyone standing for him.

No one, especially not the Doctor, expected that she would win, but it was difficult not to hope. He bit his thumb as he watched the horses gallop together, swing past each other, then around again. He bit his lip when she was unhorsed by a tremendous blow from Cyber’s mace. To his shock, however, once the combatants were on their own two feet, she ran circles around him. Literally. The giant’s heavy armor was useless against a fast-moving opponent who was canny enough to hack at the backs of his knees. Eventually Ser Clara drove a gold dirk into the breech between his gorget and his cuirass. To the shock of them all, the Mistress’s champion toppled to the ground, dead.

He turned to his enemy and bowed ironically. His life was saved. She was forbidden even to mention her cause for grievance or to bring fresh complaint against him for a decade.

The Mistress smiled at him with blood-red lips. “You win, Doctor. For now.”

He turned his back on her and strode across the sward toward his victorious champion, who stood over her vanquished foe.

Clara took off her helmet to reveal a messy shock of dark brown hair, soaked with sweat.

“Well,” she said, “that’s the end of him.”

And then she swayed on her feet. He caught her himself as she fell and ordered her borne off to the castle.

He tended to her wounds with his own hands. It was, after all, his skill. She looked even smaller once stripped of her armor, though she was muscular as any active ser-at-arms would be. Muscular, and youthful, and lovely. Dimples in her fair cheeks, and dark, dark eyes that smiled up at him. Lovely? That was understatement. More: it was an intelligent face, not a reckless one, and he wondered what had driven her to it.

“Why?” he said to her, as he washed the place where Cyber had driven her own armor into her flesh.

She shrugged and then winced. “It passes the time.”

“You saved my life,” he said to her. “Tell me how I can repay you.”

“Is it possible to repay somebody for their life?” Clara said.

He smiled ruefully. “Probably not. But I’d like to try.”

“I could use an employer. And a new horse, come to think of it.”

“Anything you desire. All of my horses. A place in my house as long as you want it.”

She grinned up at him. “An hour of conversation with you, every night that we are both under the same roof. And a horse.”

He blinked. No one had ever asked him for that before. “It is yours. But–”

“But why?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged again. “Ask me again tomorrow and I might tell you.”

Under the Weather

2015-05-30T12:00:00+00:00

“Why do you English call it under the weather anyway? You’re always under the weather. Surrounded by the weather. Embedded in the middle of the weather.”

You English. Clara managed a wan smile at the Gallifreyan man rampaging around her flat, allegedly making tea. Something clanked in the kitchen and he clucked. Clara considered getting up to prevent him from doing whatever it was he was doing, but it would take too much energy. Her throat felt as if it were coated with that nano-spike barbed wire she’d shredded her favorite raincoat on last week on that obsidian planet. And her entire body ached.

Another clank from her kitchen, then the Doctor’s voice floating out to her: “Your kettle’s broken.”

“What? it wasn’t this morning.” That would have sounded much more imposing if her throat were working properly. Clara tried to clear it, then winced.

He flung himself into her living room, all elbows and jacket tails, kettle in hand. He held it up to her. Something had melted the bottom of the kettle, the part where it rested on the base. Nothing in her kitchen had done that.

“See? Totally broken.” He said this triumphantly, as if it were proof of his cleverness somehow.

Clara felt outrage, dimly, behind the haze of flu. “You broke it. You did it. Just now.”

“Nonsense. Probably been non-functional for weeks, but you just never noticed because you take your tea with me now.”

“Doctor–”

“TARDIS. Now. Come on. Tea on the TARDIS.” He beckoned her again, and when she groaned instead of moving, he dropped the kettle where he stood and scooped her up.

Clara squeaked– or rather, croaked– but he had firm hold of her and his arms around her felt far stronger than his spindly build implied. The TARDIS door swung open for them, and he carried her inside and around. He set her down on his armchair, whisked a footstool under her feet, tucked a tartan wool blanket over her, and handed her a box of the softest tissues Clara had ever held to her nose.

This… wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The blanket was rather warm.

The time rotors spun, and she felt that shift in her inner ear, or inner something, that told her they were uncoupled from the normal flow of time. In the Vortex, in motion relative to some fixed point in the Doctor’s head. He came around the console and up to the spot on the catwalk that was normally his, the spot where she now lay under a blanket. He loomed over her and raised his eyebrows at her. His hair made him look inches taller than he normally did, she thought, all that gray curling mass standing up. Like a fluffy cloud.

Did she have a fever? Oh crud.

“Tea?” she said, feeling ridiculous, because he’d just given her everything but.

“Half a mo’.” He scurried off into one of the corridors disappearing into the TARDIS depths. Clara prepared herself to wait either six minutes, six hours, or six days. She never knew with him. At least she had books here, at her elbow, books worth reading, and she felt warm at last. Not that she felt energetic enough to read. She’d been looking forward to watching whatever comforting idiotic costume drama the Beeb had on in the early evenings.

Clara let herself drift.

It was probably closer to sixteen minutes than six minutes later when the Doctor reappeared, boots thudding on the catwalk, in full cry about something outrageous he felt she ought to remedy immediately. He had a tray in his hand, with cozy-covered teapot, two cups, an enormous sugar bowl, a plate of sliced lemon, and a glass jar with a hand-written label that said “hunny” in smudged green marker. Clara eyed the jar suspiciously.

“How do you want it? Never mind. I’ll give it to you the way you ought to be drinking it. Did you know, you’re meant to drink it from the saucer? To cool it. Horribly gauche to drink straight from the cup.”

He handed her a cup, not on its saucer.

“Lemon?” Clara said.

“And honey. From the bees on 47 Ursae Majoris III. Genetically engineered to provide anti-viral drugs to twenty-three species. I think that includes humans. Probably it does. Probably it won’t kill you if it doesn’t cure you. Come on. Drink up, then.”

Clara sipped cautiously while the Doctor hovered. It might have been genetically engineered honey, but it tasted like honey. Good honey. Clover honey. Her throat melted into happy numbness as it flowed past. And the tea part wasn’t bad either. This Doctor liked his drink of all kind to be just so: his single malt, his coffee, his tea. His bromides.

“Good?” he said, and Clara thought she could hear a little anxiety in his voice.

“Good,” she said, and it came out considerably closer to her normal voice.

The Doctor produced the screwdriver from his pocket and cocked it at her. It warbled and he frowned. “Still sick,” he said, accusingly. “I’m going to have to fetch you some orange juice.”

“No, really, it’s okay–”

But he was already dancing around the console, making music with the TARDIS controls. Clara felt the vortex shift, stream around them. They had a destination now.

“The best oranges come from the planet of New Florida Three, which, funny story, is in a terrible war with New Florida Two about which one of them owns the name.”

“War?”

“Hot at the moment we’re about to land in. Might get shot at.” He grinned as if this were the most delightful thing that could happen to a person with the flu.

Clara sighed. Somewhere along the way she’d lost control of this conversation. Assuming she’d ever had control of it. But come to think of it: to hell with it. Relax. Drink the tea. There was enough for a second cup in the pot, and the honey was good.

“Wake me up when you’re back,” she said, and pulled the blanket up to her chin. She never had managed to find the time to read The Time-Traveler’s Wife. Might as well do it while warring orange lords were shooting at the madman with the hair.

A Day at the Office

2015-05-16T12:00:00+00:00

Malcolm tugged at his bonds, but the ropes coiled around his wrists were solid. Soft cotton rope, red rope. It looked good against his blue Scottish skin. Or so Clara told him. He didn’t fucking much care how he looked. He liked that he was held so tightly by it. Implacable, inescapable: a rope harness wound around his chest and shoulders, another rope holding his wrists fast to the bedpost. He was on his knees on the floor, thighs spread. Helpless, oh fuck yes, helpless. No choices to make, nothing to do but feel what his mistress wanted him to feel.

Right now she wanted to pet him. Clara’s hand was on his head, stroking him, scratching his scalp, as if he were her pet dog. Which he would cheerfully be, if she wanted.

He was nude, plugged, hard, and more than a little frustrated. When he’d handed himself over to her cheerfully enough once they’d locked the door of his house. “Anything you like,” he’d said, like the fucking desperate fool he was. Promise to tie him up and he’d do anything. Tonight that had meant teasing him. Bringing him to the edge and not letting him fall over. Fucking sweet torment.

What next? She seemed to have lost interest in his prick.

Clara said, “Talk to me, Malcolm.”

Shit. This was the part that scared him most. Clamps on his nipples? He liked that. Her hand squeezing his balls? Painful but worth it to see the delight on her face. But when she made him talk, he had to keep his wits about him.

“What about?” he said, suspiciously.

“When you masturbate–”

“When I used to fucking wank, you mean–”

“What did you think about?”

“The usual shite.”

Clara made a clucking noise. “Tell me about a fantasy.”

“Fantasy?”

Her hand stroked down to the back of his neck and rested there. “You heard me. Your most secret fantasy. Tell me.”

Malcolm shook his head. His fantasies weren’t interesting. Not compared to this. “I didn’t often get far beyond imagining myself tied up in ropes at the foot of a gorgeous woman.”

“That means you sometimes got beyond that.”

“Yeah. Truth is, the reality went far fuckin’ beyond my fantasies.”

“But you must have had some.”

She was touching him here and there, maddeningly. His nipples, the backs of his thighs. Everywhere but his prick. He’d been turned on and on the edge of coming for an hour now, and he was almost beyond suffering.

“Yeah,” he said, because what else could he do but admit it? He was in one of her traps already.

“So tell me one. The one you most fear somebody else knowing about. The one that makes your stomach flutter to think about, to think about me knowing.”

“Fuck.”

She’d promised him he could come, if he was obedient, so he was of course going to answer her. And answer her as fully as he could. But what should he tell her? Most of the shite he used to wank to was painfully boring compared to what she was doing to him right now. Except–

“There’s one thing. Drives me crazy.”

“Sounds like a good one.” Her arms came around him; a hand slid down to his belly. Malcolm’s cock jumped.

“Is, yeah.” This one had been premium stroke fodder, back when he’d been allowed to stroke himself off. When nobody had cared if he stroked himself. And once or twice after she’d told to him to stop. Not that he was going to confess that.

“Tell me.”

“It’s about proving myself, yeah? Proving how completely owned I am. I’ll do fucking anything my mistress wants, even things that are completely fucking insane. Career-ending. Impossible.”

“Like what?”

Malcolm swallowed. Here it was. “A day at work with one of your fuckin’ rope harnesses on me, under me clothes. Plugged.” Like he was right now, like he couldn’t stop thinking about. His arse, opened up and filled by Clara’s will.

She tugged at the ropes wound around his chest and shoulders and arms, so decoratively. “Sitting in a meeting with Tom with this harness on you?”

“Yeah. Shit. Oh, fuck, Clara.”

Her hand was on his cock now. Malcolm bit his lip and tried not to thrust against her. Permission to come had not yet been granted him, and he was teetering.

She said, “Just snug enough that you can feel it.”

“Fuck, I’d be so hard. All day. So hard.”

A slow caress along his cock, balls to tip. Malcolm whimpered.

“Mine.”

Malcolm was breathing hard now. “Yours.”

“Constantly reminded.”

“Fuck me. Oh, fuck me. Clara–”

“Is there something you’d like?”

Oh that voice, so wicked, so amused, teasing him, because he was starting to tremble and she had to feel it.

“Wanna come. Clara. Please.”

“I want to do it to you. Tie you in a harness under your clothes.”

“Fuck, darling, that’s fucking mental. We can’t–”

She stilled her hand on him. The noise he made was undignified, but fuck him, he’d lost all his dignity the moment she’d pushed that plug into him.

“We can. Do you want it?”

“I want it, oh fuck me, I want it.”

“Do you consent?” That word, that word, she always wanted that word from him. Didn’t she understand that he’d already given himself to her?

“Yeah, fuck, Clara, I consent. Let me, please. Please please let me come.”

Both hands on him, moving. Wasn’t going to be able to hold off no matter what if she kept it up.

“Come for me, Malcolm.”

Long moments on the edge, the awareness that it was now, it was happening, and yet he was still hovering, and then orgasm. Whiteout. Straining against his bonds so hard that it hurt except it felt good. His cock emptying itself. Her hand on him, almost painfully stripping it all from him, unrelenting. His voice, hoarse, saying her name over and over.

And then the ropes were loose and she was helping him stretch his legs. All Malcolm could do was fall back onto the floor and breathe.

“God, you’ve got rope marks all over you,” she said. “It’s amazing. God.”

Malcolm smiled up at her faintly. She liked it. Good.

In the shower a little later, Malcolm found enough of his brain working again to know regret. Clara was, he had learned, daring and calm and entirely too willing to try new things. And she had a disregard for the opinions of their colleagues that he found thrilling and fucking terrifying by turns. He loathed them and their utter selfish uselessness; she found them interesting only to the extent that they aided her ambitions. Most of them. She had, with as much cunning as he, figured out which ones of them gave two shits about the nation and which ones only about their doughy selves. The latter distressingly outnumbered the former. The fucks.

All this meant that she was likely to hold him to it.

She was going to tie him into a harness, plug him, dress him in one of his bespoke suits, and send him off to Downing Street.

And he was going to submit to it. To her. Because it was what he did.

Fucking hell.

His dignity was nothing he was going to be allowed to hold onto. The morning of the day in question started with a inescapable reminder: a brutally thorough and humiliating cleanse inside and out, administered by a Clara who seemed to be thrilled by both his initial struggle and his final surrender. Then the plug– not the largest one, thank fuck, but a new one she’d bought just for the purpose. “Easy to wear,” she said, and smiled at him. Just large enough that he was going to be maddeningly aware of it, constantly.

Which was the fucking point. It was what he wanted. He wanted to be on the edge all day long. If she’d spared him in the least he’d have been disappointed. He knew it. Clara probably knew it too. He was fucked if he understood her. He tried, oh how he tried, when he was on his knees desperate to please her. Mostly he succeeded. Maybe it was his desperation that was pleasing, all by itself. Maybe it was his submission. The way he knelt on the bedroom floor, head down, cooperating as she wound the rope around his chest. White rope, soft, thinner than what she’d used on the weekend. Easier to hide under his shirt, she told him.

How fucking thoughtful of her.

Turtle shell harness, she told him, as she looped the rope around itself. Often worn under clothing. He hadn’t known this shite had names. To be fucking brutally honest, he didn’t care if it had a name. He had his own name for it: the fucking torture harness. Around his balls, up between his arse cheeks, tugged by a painstaking Clara until it was snug.

She dressed him, which was something he found both deeply erotic and deeply humbling. Being fussed over by her, having her linger over him like this, almost tenderly, buttoning his shirt, tucking it into his trousers– it moved him in ways he couldn’t describe. He had no idea what she felt about him. He was maybe just another stepping stone for her. A friend with fucking kinky benefits, maybe, if he was feeling confident about himself. A fuckbuddy if he wasn’t. Who knew? Here she was, winding a tie around his neck, brushing off his shoulders. She had an eye, he had to give her that, always dressed well, always had a deft hand with her makeup. And he looked good too, when she was done knotting his tie: impeccable, color in the right places, absent where it ought not be. He looked like one of the Poxbridge twits.

He’d always been able to look like them. The contempt only came when he opened his mouth and they heard his accent. Fuck them. He turned the knob to fucking eleven, every time, and gave them the expletives they dared never say.

Clara’s face had an expression on it that made Malcolm look away. She looked like she was glowing. Or something. Fucked if he knew what it meant.

A shared cab into Whitehall, arriving at work together, which was a thing they had done a few times before, back when Clara had wanted to make it very clear that they were an official couple. She held his hand in the cab and rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand, soothing him. His knee was jumping. He wasn’t hard, not really, but he couldn’t keep his mind off the plug in his arse. When he moved his shoulders the ropes shifted and moved against the plug and fuck, the thing was fucking him. Literally. Clara was fucking him.

Malcolm flushed.

She squeezed his hand. “It’ll be okay, Malc,” she said.

“Easy for you to fucking say.”

She grinned at him, that fucking evil grin that said she knew exactly what was going on. Devil of a woman. Malcolm squeezed her hand.

“Text me if you need to.”

“Okay.”

And on cue, his phone sounded off with a flurry of incoming texts about some idiot who’d popped off about a new initiative on Good Morning Britain without asking permission first, thus arse-fucking an entire well-planned publicity scheme. Malcolm clenched his jaw. Right. This was what he needed: a good solid rage-inducing distraction. He stabbed at his phone. “Jamie? Fucking be in my office when I get there. I’ve got someone whose entrails need to be wound around his own neck. Yeah, Whiting, like you needed be told. Fucking love you. Ta!”

And he was off.

It was a day. It was fine so long as he didn’t slow down, didn’t stop to think or stretch or otherwise remind himself that she’d bound him in a rope harness, that her plug was inside him, that he was her willing slave. The trick was going to be channeling it into anger. They wouldn’t look at him too closely if he were swearing at them. This was always true. Except, of course, that he couldn’t stop thinking about it during those quiet moments, when he was supposed to be scanning the morning memos, catching up on the radio interviews he’d missed the night before.

All he had to do was flex what passed for muscle on his body and he could feel it. If he touched himself he could trace the ropes around his ribs, feel the place where she’d tied the knot in the middle of his back. And always, fucking always, the plug inside him, heavy, thick, holding him open, tickling him. The first time she’d plugged him it had been the main event, it had been so overwhelming for him. He’d made more noise than he did when she spanked him, from the moment her fingers had first touched his arsehole. He’d made a fool of himself and come almost instantly later on.

Sweet fucking memory it was, of apologizing to her, groveling, and the affectionate way she’d told him it was her fault, not his. And then made him suffer anyway. Oh, the devil that was Clara.

And thus he found himself hiding behind his desk when Sam came in with the mid-morning papers, because fuck him, he was a decent man, he wasn’t about to inflict the sight of his raging rampant stiffie on his PA. She was a good one, a smart one, and he was going to damn well refrain from offending her.

Sam graced him with his morning tea as well, which he gulped down gratefully while he ripped into the papers. He had fuck-all time to read them, though. He was scheduled to have a quick heart-to-heart with Tom about the intolerable fuckwit who’d ejaculated prematurely all over ITV, and fuck him, he had to piss. And do something about the stiff prick before waggling it around in front of Tom. Though Tom wouldn’t notice. Tom had the usual interest heterosexual men who serially cheated on their wives had in other men’s pricks: none. If he had to endure a meeting with Nicholson he’d be nicked, but with Tom he was safe.

Piss first. Right. He could manage that.

Walk down the hall. Walk normally. Don’t fucking run. Walk. Dodge Reeder. Into the bog. Another fucking idiot in there with him, fucking hell. There was no way he was going to take himself out anywhere near somebody who might see he was stiff. Into a stall, door closed and locked. Malcolm leaned his head against the wall and breathed. So far so good. Yes, he had to piss, but he could do it here. Even with a stiff prick he could do it.

He studied himself carefully in the mirror as he washed his hands. No sign of anything under his shirt. Somebody who stared might see a larger than seemly bulge under his trousers, but the fucker would have to be staring. Nobody would stare, surely? Oh, shit.

Out, walk over to Downing Street from his building. His raging prick had calmed itself with the blast of cold air, but now he was reminded of what it was like to walk with a goddamned plug in his arse. Clenching was not helping him, but Malcolm couldn’t stop himself doing it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucking Clara.

His pocket vibrated. His personal phone, with a text from Clara. Thinking of you she said. Fucking fuck her, the devil. Did she know he was heading into Tom’s office? Fucking had to. It was his usual time with him. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He was shown into Tom’s office immediately, as usual. There was a thrill Malcolm didn’t want to examine here, in his weekly heart-to-heart with his boss, the country’s boss, the toppest of the top fucking dogs, who made time for him and gave him instructions that nobody else in the government ever heard. The real plan, the one Malcolm had to maneuver to bring into being without Tom being seen to do so.

Hands outstretched, the ritual handshake, Tom’s free hand coming to rest on his elbow. One of those little touches, those loyalty-inducing gestures that he was famous for. He used them on Malcolm every time, and it never failed to work.

“Malc! You look thrashed. Clara tiring you out?”

“You know how it is,” Malcolm said. He showed his teeth.

“Women!” said Tom.

“I’m not complaining.”

Laugh, yes, laugh together, the fucking hearty chuckle of men who’d just shown off how much arse they were getting, and who could now get on with business without needing to clash antlers. Malcolm could only feel grateful that Tom didn’t attempt any further pleasantries on the topic. If he’d said anything about Clara directly Malcolm might have had to swallow his rage in a way he hadn’t in years.

Fuck him, he was doing it, he was sitting in Tom’s office nodding at the plan to savage Whiting and get him out of office without being seen to do so. And here it was, a rush of blood to the head, to his cock, every fucking nerve in his body alive. In fucking Downing Street with a harness on him, ropes cutting into him, Clara’s handiwork, plug in his arse, while he carried Tom’s water. Oh fuck him, he was fucking bent.

Breathe, Tucker you fucker, breathe. Concentrate on Tom. On the task at hand. On making sure the man knew his will would be done with the usual amount of smokescreen fume and roil. The Tucker specialty.

Out. Breathe. He’d survived it. Phone out of his pocket, thumb it alive, swipe out a text to Clara: fuck you. She would understand what he meant. And probably punish him for it come the evening, which would be de-fucking-lightful.

It was all downhill from there. A bacon sarnie brought him by Sam at lunch, wolfed down while he finally got through the radio disasters of the week, then a bit of evisceration by memo, never as satisfying as doing it in person. He did have to admit it was a pleasure to write the Queen’s English with more elegance than these overeducated overbred fucks ever managed.

The worst trial was Jamie, lounging around in his office, mooching afternoon tea from Sam. He’d arrived with a tin of biscuits that he’d lifted from Baldymorte, so Malcolm was obliged to welcome him, eat a biscuit, drink more tea than he strictly wanted. But tea meant it was nearly over, so Malcolm let himself relax into a soothing session of planning out how Jamie was going to hack at Whiting’s support from behind while Malcolm broke his will with a frontal assault.

Coat on, shoo Sam out of the office, duck out onto the street, darkening already and damp with rain. Thumb out a text to Clara: On my way to yours. Ten minutes to make his way over. Pleasantries on his way through the office, the sharp satisfaction of seeing fear on faces melt to relief when they realized he was on his way to Clara, rather than there to strip their worthless hides from their backs. Not that they were worthless; this department was full of solid experts. Malcolm almost never came here unless he was there for Clara.

Speak of the devil: Clara, in her office, sharp and modern, everything filed away neatly. No PA for her, no gatekeeper, but she’d be at that level soon enough. Her last paper, analyzing the effects of the taxation shift, had annoyed Tom with the implications for the economy, but it had been so masterfully written that even Tom hadn’t been able to call it bollocks and ignore it. At least she’d done the right thing and been quiet about it.

On the way up, Clara Oswald. His Clara. His magnificent brilliant gorgeous Clara.

A finger raised to him, signaling that she was almost done. Malcolm stood watching her type at her laptop, finishing whatever she was working on. He had a hand in his trouser pocket, jacket unbuttoned, so she could get a good view of what she wanted to see. Yes, darling mistress, he was hard. Again. Yes, he’d spent the day thinking about her constantly. Yes, he could not fucking wait another minute to go down on his knees to her.

“Sorry about that,” Clara said. “Got a surprise request for a set of recommendations on that software industry stimulus plan.”

“Popular woman.”

“These days.”

Malcolm brushed his fingernails against his jacket. “Perk of knowing me.”

“Usually you’re a stormcrow, a harbinger of death in Whitehall.”

“Not for you.”

Clara smiled at him briefly. “Right, that’s it.” She shut up her laptop and stuck it into her messenger bag. “Shall we go out to dinner?”

Malcolm glared, then he saw the spark in her eye. She was having him on, of course. She knew he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

“Straight home,” he said, as mildly as he could say anything.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” said Malcolm, and that meant he was asking her to finish what she’d started. Grins exchanged, and they were off together, to a cab Malcolm summoned with his phone. Sam had revealed her tricks to him and made him install the app.

Clara snuggled up to him in the cab. Malcolm put his arm around her. He wasn’t sure if he should kiss her. He liked kissing her, but he’d only done it thus far on invitation. Which she wasn’t going to be delivering while in a cab lurching its way north through London. Though maybe–

He put it to the touch and kissed her temple, then her lips. She smiled at him. Oh fuck him. That was a sweet smile, and he was returning it in a way that he knew was utterly fucking simple. He kissed her again, lingering this time. He felt fucking strange, floating, light, as if he were in a bubble.

The moment he got her inside his door, he grabbed her, spun her around, and kissed her proper hard. He got his hands into her hair and stuck his tongue in her mouth. Shut her up good with the snogging of her life. Fuck it, she was going to redden his arse anyway, if he was lucky. Might as well be hanged for mutton. He lifted her skirt and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Malcolm pushed her up against the door and rutted himself against her.

“Shit, Malc. What–”

“Can you feel me? Can you fucking feel me? Been that way all fucking day.”

“Driving you crazy?”

“You fucking know it drives me crazy.”

“Was it everything you dreamed about?”

“Clara– I–” Malcolm shook his head. The things she did to him. The things she was going to do to him. He had no idea how to predict her. No desire to predict her. Fuck him, he was in over his head, and it was the most amazing thing.

Not Half Weird

2015-05-13T12:05:00+00:00

Clara stood on the edge of the roof, looking out over the city. She’d had to break the lock on the door at the top of the staircase to get out here, but that was the least of her worries. She responded to the latest puzzled text from Malcolm and sat down on the parapet to wait for him.

“Hey, darling. Why the roof?”

At last. Malcolm, advancing toward her from the door. Clara gave him a strained smile and a kiss. He took her arm and tried to ease her away from the edge. He wasn’t saying anything, but Clara knew he had to be thinking suicide. Her first text had not been at all coherent, and neither had her second. She could not keep her smile on straight right now, either.

Clara came away from the edge of the roof, because it was obviously bothering him too much. And she needed his full attention.

“Want to show you something,” she said.

“On the roof?”

“Yeah. Trust me. It’s important. Step back.”

Malcolm looked uneasy, but he did as she asked.

Clara closed her eyes and found the trigger in herself, the trigger the aliens had implanted when they’d done those things. The things the Doctor had promised to undo. Maybe. Someday. If he could figure it out.

Trigger. And there they came, out from the dimension where they hid, a great soft shudder and air moving around her. Her wings.

“Fucking fuck me.”

She cautiously spread them out. Her control was not yet very good. She hoped it never would be very good, but the look on the Doctor’s face had not been promising.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck.” Malcolm was still swearing, with none of the creativity he usually showed. His voice was like nothing she’d heard from him. Even in an explosion of rage, he had control of himself and his voice. He knew what he was doing. This, however, was beyond him.

Clara couldn’t blame him.

“How the fuck did this happen?” he said. “That mangy git?” Love was not precisely lost between the two of them; usually they treated each other with grudging respect. But Malcolm had sworn to make the Doctor regenerate if he allowed anything bad to happen to Clara, and she was afraid he would think this qualified. Maybe it did qualify.

“Not exactly. Not his fault.”

“How?”

“The latest planet he took me to. There was a thing. A gadget. The race we visited were really into body modifications and dimensional tricks. They asked me what kind of animal I would be if I could be one. I said a hawk. This happened.”

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

“He says he’ll probably be able to sort it out. Probably.”

Silence. Malcolm was walking around her in slow circles.

“Do they–”

“Work?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

Clara shook them out to their full extent, spread them out wide, and beat once, twice. Malcolm’s tie flew back, but there wasn’t anything like lift.

“Purely for show. As far as we could tell.”

“Darling, it is some fucking show.”

Clara shrugged, and her wings shivered. She still hadn’t sorted out how to keep them completely still when she moved her arms.

“Can you feel it? When I touch them?”

Malcolm was stroking her back, the places where the wings emerged, cautiously. He ran his hands out further, along the bony ridge, out to the tips. Clara shivered. Yes, she could feel it. Oh, yes. The Doctor had prodded her, but hadn’t stroked. Not the way Malcolm was stroking now.

“So fuckin’ gorgeous. You have no idea. Brown, like your hair. Same color.”

“You– you like them?”

“Fuck. Yeah. They feel like fucking nothing I’ve ever touched.” Now his voice was coming from just behind her, and Clara could feel his breath on the back of her neck. It always made her shiver and whimper when he kissed her there, and he was kissing her now. Kissing her and stroking along her flight feathers. Or what would be her flight feathers, if she could fly. Why was this erotic? How? What was going on? Was this the whole purpose of the modification? They had been an advanced race, and they had seemed to think they were doing her a favor.

Oh my god, the way this felt. She was whimpering. In another minute she’d be shuddering. Malcolm was in front of her now, a firm arm around her waist, holding her up, thank God, because her knees were weak.

“Sweetheart, darling, Clara, you okay? Tell me. Tell me straight, now, love.”

Clara laughed, weakly, but she felt for the first time that it might be okay. “Told you things would get weird if you stayed with me.”

“Not half, darling, not half.”

Morning Eviscerations

2015-05-13T12:00:00+00:00

“If those utter wrong-way screwheaded spanner-wanking toolsheds think that getting in on repealing the fucking Human Rights Act is going to help them in the next election I am going to disabuse them of the fucking notion by disabusing them of their fucking heads! Where the fucking fuck is my phone?”

Clara closed her eyes, breathed, then opened them again. “I’m going to need you to put on some underwear before you say anything else.”

“What?”

Malcolm looked down, at what Clara was looking at: his prick, at half-mast because before he’d started they’d been engaged in a little idle morning fondling. His eyes widened, and then he reached down and gave himself a luxurious stroke. “My best feature, darling.”

“Your only feature.”

Malcolm shot her a friendly pair of fingers and Clara grinned.

He said, “My phone.”

“In the pocket of last night’s trousers. You took them off in rather a hurry.”

“Fuck, yeah, right, I remember now. Somebody wanted to get her lips around my–”

“Shut up and get to your morning eviscerations. I have a class to go teach.”

Tokens

2015-05-09T12:00:00+00:00

Malcolm woke with a start at the time his alarm usually went off. The alarm was fucking silent, thank sodding fuck. Saturday. A quiet Saturday. The shitlords who ruled his weekdays were all in Italy pretending it wasn’t on the taxpayer’s books. The ones who weren’t in Italy were in the country, week-ending like wittering Wodehouse tits.

He was not in Italy. He was in damp gray London. The consolation was that he was in damp gray London in bed with his mistress– his dominatrix, his lover, his whatever– his girlfriend, if a man his age could have one of those. Clara. Clara Oswald, the woman with the reputation for writing speeches that even he couldn’t complain about. Much. He was in bed, wrapped around Clara, who was naked aside from his dancing skeletons t-shirt. His prick was nestled against her bare backside nicely. Pity he wasn’t in a mood for it. Waking up in the morning after a night in which you sobbed your heart out while your girlfriend made you sweet tea: not something Malcolm was prepared for.

He didn’t have time to waste moaning about it. He kissed her hair and extricated himself gently from her. She murmured something and turned over onto her stomach. Malcolm turned off his mind and went into his Saturday morning ritual: shower, dress, put on coffee, eat a skinny muffin from the box his housekeeping service kept full. He found his Macbook in his case, unlocked it, and began to work through the morning hurricane of piss-headed idiocy. His jaw was already starting to tighten.

Somewhere around message number fifty, Clara appeared, showered and radiant in weekend clothes, which meant a skirt short enough that Malcolm could appreciate it. He let his eyes linger and said, “Coffee in the pot.”

Clara poured herself a cup and came over next to him. She leaned her elbows on the table. “Working?”

Malcolm half-closed the laptop. “Email. Next I’ve got to find out what the cunts dumped into the Friday night news cycle, hoping to get away wi’ something.”

Clara shook her head at him. “When’s the last time you took a holiday? Proper holiday, somewhere nice? Italy, Spain, south of France?”

Malcolm narrowed his eyes and stared suspiciously. This was a new topic for her. “What’s this about? You want to go?”

She shrugged and drank some coffee. “Wouldn’t it be nice? Go somewhere pretty, have a lot of sex, drink wine, sleep late, ignore email.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve got a queue of retarded cunts as long as the line for the pisser at Wembley just waiting to be bollocked.”

“They’re not important and you know it.”

Malcolm touched his laptop, then took his hands away again. She had a point, as per usual. They were unimportant fools, aside from the little detail of being fools in charge of an entire nation.

She said, “I’ve got nothing next week, and enough leave for two months. You can do whatever you like without bothering to ask. You’re one of the top dogs.”

Malcolm opened his mouth to object then shut it. He was. He took advantage of it rarely. At least like this. Did she want to go? Really? Could they just up and go on holiday? As easy as that? He stared at her. She looked almost wistful, as if she’d already given up on the idea.

“I’m going to hold you to the sex, darling. Where?”

Clara’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t comment on how easily he’d surrendered. He almost wished she had. “I know a place outside Perpignan. Stayed with a friend back in uni. I’ll book it.”

He tossed his wallet at her. “Find something fucking nicer than that. My treat.”

“One condition.”

“What?”

“You let me make all the decisions for the week. I’m in charge.”

Malcolm shrugged. “I’m yours, darling.” He’d told her that at least fifty times last night, while sniveling. Might as well behave like it.

He flipped open the laptop again, rattled off an email to Sam letting her know. And that was that.

The magic of modernity. Rain in your face getting into one taxi in London in the morning, then in the afternoon you’re blinking your eyes against the sun as you climb out of a second taxi in the south of France. Clara dealt with the driver. She spoke enough French to avoid irritating the French, which was in Malcolm’s view a pity. Irritating the French was almost as much fun as irritating the English.

He carried their bags into the little house. It was a cottage, modernized, the interior knocked out into a single large space with huge windows overlooking the vineyards beyond. Bedroom in the eastern corner, where he dropped the bags; kitchen that somebody had stocked up for them. Private, yet not too far from the city. It would be costing him a bundle. He had, of course, bundles sitting ignored. He had no time to spend his salary, so all it did was fester in a bank. Spending it on making Clara happy wasn’t a bad use.

When was the last time he’d had a holiday? He’d never answered Clara. He’d pretended to go on them, but in reality the most he’d ever done was steal a weekend now and then to head up to Glasgow for family. It felt strange to be standing in a pretty house, looking through windows onto countryside, with nothing to do. He felt strange. He hadn’t had a Red Bull in thirty-six hours. He hadn’t read an English newspaper in twenty-four. He hadn’t looked at a single web page in that time either. His email was probably a dog’s breakfast of children in bespoke suits mewling over the spilt milk of interviews they hadn’t bothered to prep.

Not that he could find out. Clara had confiscated his phone twenty seconds after they’d landed, because he’d hauled it out and switched it on before the plane had stopped slamming against the runway. He understood why she’d done it, but it made his fingers twitch. She’d claimed Sam had been briefed to text her, not Malcolm, in case anything needed his attention for real. Malcolm had had to confess that he at least trusted Sam, so Clara had triumphed.

No phone. No laptop. All week. Clara was in charge. No decisions to make, not for the next few days anyway. He shrugged and went along with it. If it became annoying he’d assert himself. For the moment it was–fuck him, it was soothing.

They dressed for dinner, Clara in something that showed her shoulders, Malcolm in jacket and tie to match her level. They walked to the village center, hand in hand, to a restaurant the internet recommended. She ordered for him, telling him that she was in charge for real now. He was going to relax and eat and drink. She was drinking her wine, apparently happily. His glass was untouched. The food was on the plate, that was the most he could say about it. Edible. It would probably keep him alive.

“Eat, Malcolm.”

He made an exasperated gesture and picked up his fork. Eat the fish. Taste the wine. He liked wine. It wasn’t anything like what the people around wee Malcolm had poured down their throats. He drank it voluntarily, even. Why was he so nervy about this? A swig. Swished it around him mouth. Made a face at it, to show his grudging approval. Clara nodded at him, satisfied. The waiter, who’d been flirting with Clara almost non-stop, refilled their glasses and said something that made her smile. Malcolm glared. Wanker.

They still hadn’t talked any more about what he’d said to her last night. He still wasn’t sure if she respected him now that she’d had a chance to sleep on it. He’d made a fucking tit of himself.

Malcolm shook himself. Fuck this self-doubt shite. He was in the south of France with a fucking gorgeous woman. He was going to enjoy it. He straightened his back and set his jaw and smiled his most winsome smile at her, a smile that had been known to send junior ministers running. Clara merely smiled back indulgently. Never been afraid of him, thank fuck. He set himself the task of amusing her. He’d talk about whatever she wanted, anything but his miserable self. Novels. The play they’d seen last week. The latest horrible death in Game of Thrones. It was almost like having a personal life might have been. Under the table she kicked off a shoe and ran her toes over his ankle. It was, fuck him, exactly as much fun as every other night out with her had been. How much better had she made everything around him? He almost couldn’t bear to think about it.

The night was cooling off rapidly on their walk back to the house. Malcolm slung his arm around Clara to keep her warm. And to have an excuse to kiss her temple, because he was right there and what man wouldn’t kiss this woman if he was next to her? Okay, bent men wouldn’t, and he’d punch Reeder if he tried, but the point was sound. Clara was kissable. And not just for the sake of appearances any more, not here where there were no reporters hanging about. A kiss meant a kiss.

If he understood what had happened between them last night, it was no longer about seeming to be a couple so they could play their bedroom games. They were a couple. They had been for a while. She was fond of him. She knew who he was and she was fond of him.

So who the fuck was he, if he was somebody Clara Oswald liked?

He was stuck on that thought when they got back to the cottage. He turned it over while washing his hands, staring at himself in the mirror. He needed a shave and a haircut. The shave he’d give himself in the morning; the haircut could wait for their return home. The encroaching gray showed in his beard more than on his head. It was coming, though. Forty-five, graying, childless, unmarried. No legacy. He hadn’t wanted a legacy. Wasn’t going to pass on the curse to another generation. Maybe he longed for some feeling that he’d helped ram some humanitarian policies up the shitters of the nation’s ruling class twats. He’d have settled for that once. Not that his party was going to fucking do that ever again. Too busy racing rightward.

“Fucking cunts,” he said, to his scowling self in the mirror.

“Are you ever going to stop primping?” Clara, leaning on the doorframe, smiling at him.

“Fuck you, darling, need to look my best for you. Here, want the mirror? Need to check if you still have a reflection?”

“Aim that cannon elsewhere, boy. C’mere.” She crooked a finger at him and he followed, as if she had him on a leash, out to the kitchen. She handed him a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. Malcolm squinted at the label: pinot noir, probably local. Probably drinkable. He dutifully opened the bottle and splashed out two glasses. The lights were low. A romantic evening, then. Alcohol meant she wasn’t going to tie him up, but he was fine with that. He wasn’t in the mood. Might take a while before he was again.

He handed her a glass and sat on the couch with her. Clara put her feet in his lap. She’d taken her shoes off, but still had on her stockings. Silk? Felt like it under his fingers. Malcolm held his wine glass with one hand and with the other massaged her feet. Lovely legs she had, muscular. She spent a lot of time on the tennis courts, he knew. Networking, she said, and made a face, but he suspected her of being good at it. Both things. He himself was a disaster with a racquet. He played only to stay in touch with friends. Real friends. No networking on the court for him.

She was leaning back on the cushions, completely relaxed, glass in her hands. “How are you feeling?”

“Tipsy, but not blazed. This shite isn’t bad.” He drank some to prove the point.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Malcolm fixed a glare on her. “Am I supposed to talk about my feelings like an American wank? One of those smarmy smiling fucks with five head-shrinkers, an astrologist, and an aromatherapy consultant trailing behind?”

Clara rolled her eyes at him and said, “Because not talking about them has done so well for you.”

“Got me where I am today.” Malcolm gestured at her feet in his lap. “I’ve got fuck-all to complain about.”

“Malcolm.”

“Clara.”

“Talk to me.”

He set down his wine glass and used both hands on her feet. When he glanced up he saw her watching him. He wasn’t going to be able to wait this one out. He didn’t even want to. He looked back down at her feet, at the glossy clear polish on her toes. Got his thumb on the ball of her foot, where she liked it, and pressed in. She made a pleased sound.

“I’ll talk to you, darling,” he said, quietly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Better. Rough for a wee bit there.”

“Have you ever told anybody about it?”

“No. Been a long time since all that shite last came to mind,” he said. “Never forgot it, but didn’t dwell on it. Was like I said. With you, it’s different.”

“You trust me.”

“I let you fucking tie me up.”

“Trusting me to tie you up is different to trusting me enough to tell me what’s going on inside that head of yours.”

“Neither one is easy.”

“I know, Malc. I know.”

The look on her face was strange. Sympathetic, open, almost tender, if he dared say that. It was terrifying to see. Terrifying to think she might feel tenderness for him. Malcolm felt a flush of shame. He looked away rather than meet her eyes and see anything that made him feel worse.

“Can’t bear to go into it two nights in a row,” he said. “Give us a break, would you?”

“Just so you know, I’m willing to listen. Any time.”

“Fuck me if I understand why.”

“You know why.”

Malcolm let his hand rest on her knee. He knew the reason he was supposed to supply. She hadn’t said it yet, though, and they both knew it. He was the one who’d brought up the topic, like a soppy teenaged girl.

“Might want to hear you say it,” he said, and saying that was harder than telling her about his da had been.

Clara didn’t say it, though. Instead she pulled her feet off his lap and sat up. Malcolm watched her warily.

“Was going to give you a present last night, but then we had something more important to talk about.” He winced. “Hey. Don’t.”

“You can say that.”

“I mean it.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Present, you said.”

“It’s this.”

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped in shiny black paper. Malcolm stuck his finger under a flap and tugged it free. Childhood superstition; don’t rip the paper. He unfolded it to reveal a box. Tissue paper inside that. Wrapped in that, all coiled up, a braided leather necklace, black, a man’s necklace judging by size. He gave Clara a puzzled look, then pulled it out. Platinum hardware. Fuck, she’d spent real money. There was a medallion dangling from it, something like a dog-tag. Engraved on one side was the word owned. Malcolm turned it over: by Clara. The clasp was a tiny padlock. Below the necklace in the box was the key, on a little leather loop with a second medallion. The second one read OWNER all in upper case, and of Malcolm.

“You had these made?” His voice came out strange.

“Found them at one of those shops in Soho you don’t dare be seen in. Where I got the flogger. Had them, you know, personalized.”

He was breathing hard, hard and fast. He stared at Clara. He couldn’t move. She’d bought him a thing. It said he belonged to her. She owned him. He was hers. He worked his jaw for a moment, trying to make it move properly.

“Do you want to wear this?” she said, softly.

All he could do was nod.

“I think you should probably be on your knees.” Her voice was unsteady too.

He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, then he was on his knees in front of her, on the floor, kissing her feet. Hard, yes, out of his mind hard, but his throat was so constricted he couldn’t speak. All he could do was press his lips to her and tremble. He breathed slowly, steadily, the way she’d taught him to do when he was in bondage, until he was calm enough to kneel up again. He folded his arms behind his back, the way she liked it, and that settled him too. He made himself as submissive as he could fucking get, knees apart, head down, waiting.

Clara’s hand came to rest on his head.

“Are you mine?”

“Yeah. I’m yours.” He couldn’t recognize his own voice, it was so ravaged.

She ran her hand down his face, to his neck. Then she was putting it around his neck, the leather braid, Her fingers on the clasp, the key in the lock, a tiny sound as it closed. She adjusted it around his neck, settled it so the lock and the medallion rested over the hollow of his throat.

Malcolm swallowed.

“It’s loose enough to come over your head if you need to take it off,” she said. “Do it when you need to.”

He nodded. He still didn’t trust his voice.

She slipped two fingers into his mouth. He sucked on them. Closed his eyes, tried not to fuck it up, tried to keep himself under control. She’d bought this for him. Even before he’d broken down, before he’d told her he was in love. She was giving it to him anyway. Did she love him back? She’d just said it. Or something. She’d said something. Not the word he’d thought he wanted to hear, still wanted to hear, but another one.

“You look wonderful,” she said. “Surrender is a beautiful look on you.”

Malcolm said nothing. What the fuck could he say to that? Besides, her fingers were still in his mouth. Whatever she wanted, whatever she liked, so long as she sounded like that. Reverential, that’s what she sounded like, even though he was the one on his knees. Maybe that’s what she felt. Maybe she loved him.

She slipped her fingers away from him. Malcolm opened his eyes again. She was looking down at him, hair falling forward over her face. Solemn, so solemn. Gorgeous, no matter what the expression on her face was, makeup or no makeup, jewelry or not.

She said, “Do you get it? Do you get it yet?”

He nodded.

She sat on the edge of the couch and drew him over between her knees. Ran her hands all over him, his hair, his throat, his chest, rested them on his shoulders. Hands on him, fire all over him. Malcolm couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t speak. Then she kissed him. Kisses, long kisses, with her tongue in his mouth. He was shaking, all over. What the hell was going on?

He broke away and got his head between his knees, hands on the floor, trying to slow down his breathing. Clara was beside him on the floor in an instant, hand on his head.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bit–”

“Emotional?”

“Don’t ever fucking tell anyone, okay?” He bared his teeth at her in one of those grins that terrified people who didn’t know any better, but Clara was not one of those.

“Sweetie,” she said. “What do you want most right now?”

To make love to you again like last night. But that was not something he could say, not now. The closest he could get: “Clara. Want to worship you. Let me. Please.”

“Worship me, then.”

“Tell me how.”

“Put that mouth to work doing something other than swearing.”

Malcolm stood up and got his arms around her. Picked her up– no weight at all, she was a bitty wee thing. He carried her off into the bedroom, laid her on the bed as tenderly as he could. Stood and looked at her while he caught his breath. She lay there, hands flat on the bed, waiting for him to do what he wanted. To worship her. He knew his manners: he undressed himself completely before he touched her again. Once he was completely naked he crawled up onto the foot of the bed. He kissed her feet again, kissed his way up her calves.

“May I undress you, Clara?”

“Go ahead.”

He loved doing this, loved the excuse to touch her everywhere, as he removed everything slowly, as slowly as he could make himself go. Her jewelry first, earrings and rings and necklace, removed and set aside on the dresser. Then her stockings. She’d gone all the way tonight and worn garters. It did something to him. Call him a traditionalist about this. Magnificent. Pure delight stroking his fingers along her thighs to undo the garters, slip down the silk. Set them aside. Coax her into standing, unzip her dress, slide it down off her shoulders, to pool at her feet. Undo her bra. Kiss the tips of her breasts.

He was in heaven.

“Lie back, please, darling,” he said.

Yes, heaven, looking at her all laid out below him, hair spread out on the pillow, thighs parted for him, only for him. Such sweet servitude, pleasing her and ignoring his own pleasure. He kissed her lips, her throat, her breasts; kissed his way down until he lay between her spread thighs. Wet, so wet already. She was as aroused as he was by their little ritual. Malcolm pointed his tongue and flickered it against her, right over her clit but not quite touching it. There it was, the first little sound from her, the first intake of breath.

Because his hands weren’t bound and she hadn’t said anything, he got to use his fingers to help. She liked his hands, liked his long fingers, especially liked them when he curled them inside her and found the places that made her moan. He’d always liked doing this, with all his previous girlfriends, and he loved it almost beyond words with Clara, now. She deserved everything he could do for her. His tongue was serving something better than himself for once. Something better than the useless fucktards it served every day, shaping itself around threats. Now it served her pleasure, as did he.

He eased her down through the aftershocks. Sometimes he could coax her through to a second or third orgasm, but not tonight. One was enough for her. He pressed a last kiss to her sex and knelt up.

Clara sighed. “So good. Nobody does that like you.”

“It is an honor.”

“Get up here and let me thank you.”

She didn’t like it when his face was dripping from going down on her, so he gave his mouth a swipe on the sheets before crawling up and over her. He brushed his hard cock against her, teasing, promising, and kissed her mouth, licked at her, let her thrust her tongue against his. He took her face in his hands and slowed down, let it turn tender. A man kissing a woman, trying to show her what he felt about her, oldest fucking story ever. God, he fucking loved kissing her.

She pulled back from him and kissed the end of his nose.

“Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “I’ve got plans for you tomorrow.” She burrowed herself under the blankets, and turned on her side, facing away from him.

Malcolm sighed. Of course she was going to make him go without. He thought about begging, because it was so fun for them both, but then decided not to. He would accept his fate quietly tonight. He was an owned man, now. Best behave like one. He tucked himself in behind her, where he could hold her, hips pressed against her so she could feel that how much he was suffering for her, how badly he wanted her. How much he– fuck him. He was head over fucking bound-up teakettle. He let his hand rest against her bare belly. Warm, soft. She smelled like perfume. What the fuck was it she wore? He’d seen it on her dresser. He’d have to get a gallon or two of it for her come Christmas.

“Clara?”

“Yeah?”

He’d been about to say it again, about to tell her how he felt, but he couldn’t do it. All he could say was, “Thanks.”

She laced her fingers through his and gave him a squeeze. “My pleasure.”

A now-familiar and sweet feeling, this business of going to sleep hard and aching and wanting her desperately but feeling content. Fucking twisted, if you asked him, and he’d deliver that judgement and a thousand times worse if he needed to, to knock down some junior minister with a hankering for power above his gray cell level. He couldn’t manage to feel bad about it in himself. She’d put her name on him. He had a fucking necklace on. Not a collar; he’d have objected to that. A leather necklace. A platinum medallion that said “owned”. She’d put it on him. Clara. Clara still wanted him. Clara still respected him. Clara still found something of value in his worship. He felt good all around. Fuck London. Fuck the southern political poxbridge gobshites. He was on holiday with Clara. He was pressed up against her and she was asleep, satisfied, with her head on his arm.

Malcolm fell asleep without needing to take a pill for the second night in a row.

The Hypervodka Incident

2015-05-01T12:00:00+00:00

Clara dragged her heels on her way through the TARDIS door. It closed behind her the moment she was properly inside, and the Doctor instantly threw home the lever. The rotors turned. Clara sighed.

“No time to waste, slowpoke,” the Doctor said.

Yeah. She didn’t have any more time to waste. It was now or never, and never was impossible. Though she could yet chicken out. She could. But running away was not something Clara Oswald was going to start doing now.

“Doctor.”

“Clara?”

“Remember the night with the hypervodka?”

The Doctor smiled briefly: a moment of mutual embarrassment. Clara was sympathetic. There had been karaoke with a group of strangers in a bar on Ceti Alpha VI. The Doctor had belted out “Bohemian Rhapsody” like the best of them. There had been hypervodka shots. More shots. A duet on “Endless Love” that she really wished she couldn’t remember.

He said, “Parts of it. Mostly the parts before the bar. After that, not so much.”

“Do you remember waking up?”

“What’s this about?”

Clara ignored him and repeated herself, more firmly. “Do you remember waking up?”

The Doctor chewed on his forefinger. “Yes. Vividly. My head felt like it was doing the Titanian Two-Step all on its own.”

“You were in your bedroom when you woke up. With your clothes all over the floor.”

He stopped chewing on his forefinger and stared at her instead. “How do you know that?”

“Because I woke up first. In your bedroom. With you.”

His mouth opened and closed a few times. “We– we– Did we?”

“Yeah, we did. I didn’t remember it, but it must have happened, because. Well. Just because.” Because of the way her body had felt, because of the love bites in odd places, because of the chafing in places she did not want to describe to him.

“And I didn’t remember either,” he said, so quietly she wasn’t sure she’d heard it.

“Yeah. That was pretty obvious the next morning.”

His hands were now deep in his trouser pockets, and he was looking at the floor instead of at her. “Hypervodka is dangerous like that. I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s okay, sort of. We’re both adults. We probably knew what we were doing. Even though we don’t remember it.”

He smiled at her very briefly, then moved toward the other side of the console from her. Clara followed. He pressed a few buttons as if they were the most important buttons ever, then stopped abruptly. He folded his arms, unfolded them, then shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets again.

“Forgive me, Clara, but that was two months ago. Why bring it up now?”

“It’s only sort of okay. I, um.” There was no letting him off the hook on this one, but now that it came to it, she didn’t know how to say it. Words. She’d written a speech out in post-it notes, but they were not in front of her now.

“What?”

Clara couldn’t find any way to say what she had to say next without yelling and she wasn’t angry at anybody other than herself and she was more scared than angry anyway. So she pulled the little stick out of her pocket and held it out to him.

The Doctor took it gingerly and looked. Then he handed it back, pulled out his sonic, and scanned her.

“Yeah,” she said, when she saw his face change.

He yanked the viewscreen around toward them. He did something to the sonic and scanned her again. The monitor changed to a display of what she assumed were her guts, color-coded and moving in three dimensions. She leaned closed to take a look: tables of numbers flickering, an image of her belly, a cavity, a moving thing inside. He pointed at one of the charts of letters. It changed to a display of a double helix spinning, with labels along the edges.

Clara craned closer to the image on the screen. “Is that the baby’s DNA?”

“Yes. It’s Time Lord DNA. My DNA. Your DNA. The thing I don’t understand is– oh.”

“What oh? Explain oh. You don’t get to say oh and then not explain it.”

“I was merely wondering how this–” he stabbed a finger at the helix – “happened. Humans and Gallifreyans can interbreed, yes, but to produce this requires intervention.”

“Who intervened?”

“It happened on the TARDIS. She’d have– there are machines– I once set up something so that if – I set it up originally for River, a very long time ago, but nothing came of it. She was angry with me and so I went off for a year and built a semi-autonomous gene splicer and then when I went back to her the next day her time she was still angry and I’d completely forgotten what we were fighting about. And then I forgot about this. Until now.”

He was babbling. Still babbling, though Clara wasn’t paying attention any more. Well, that was annoying. She was pregnant because a thousand years ago he’d set up something to let his wife get pregnant, maybe, if they’d ever decided to, and the machine had just blithely done something with her DNA and his DNA and then it had spliced them together into a fertilized egg without even so much as asking her and she couldn’t even remember it.

Though she did remember the love bites on her shoulders. Those had taken days to fade. She’d been mortified because they’d been left by him and neither of them remembered it. She’d had wild monkey sex with the Doctor, and he’d got her pregnant, and she was going to have a Time Lord baby and she didn’t even remember it.

There was a clatter and a thump. The Doctor was now kneeling on the floor, with the screwdriver rolling away from him. His hands were on her shoulders.

“Clara? Are you okay?”

Clara noticed that she was sitting on the floor next to the Doctor. Speaking of things she didn’t remember: sitting down was another one.

“Yeah. I mean, aside from the morning sickness and the napping.”

“And the sudden collapsing.”

“That’s like the napping. Third period I have free, and I spend it asleep in the faculty lounge. I used to wake up with my head on my desk until I got smart and started commandeering the couch.”

“I think that’s normal,” he said. And then he reached out and laid a hand on her forehead, and tutted. The Doctor, who rarely touched her (except when he left love bites all over her shoulders, a traitorous part of her mind said), was touching her now, solicitously.

“Are you going to turn into one of those?”

“Those?”

Clara shook her head. He’d only deny it as if the suggestion outraged him.

“You seem well enough,” he said.

“Doctor.”

“What?”

“What are we going to do?”

He was watching her now, almost warily. “I don’t know. What would you like to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I asked first.”

“No, you didn’t. I asked first.”

“Oh.”

He sat down with his legs crossed. His thumb went up to the corner of his mouth and he worried at it with his teeth. Clara watched him fret. Could she see him as a father? Yes, she could. He’d been a father once; he sometimes boasted of his dad skills, and from what she’d seen, they were real, if off-kilter from what the average human thought of as a dad skill. The question was, did he want to be a father right now? Did she want to be a mother if he didn’t want to be a father? And what were Time Lord babies like, anyway?

“It’s your body. It’s up to you. You could terminate. You could put him into storage here in the TARDIS for a time later on when you wanted to carry him. You could put him into an artificial womb until he reaches full term. You could continue on the old-fashioned way.”

“Wait. Wait a second. Did you say him?”

“Oh, sorry, yes, XY chromosomes, other gene sequences say he’s probably going to turn out to be male in the usual way, which means most of the regenerations will be male except for a few extra-fun ones. I hope you didn’t want to be surprised.”

“It’s okay. Um. That’s a lot of choices. More than I knew I had.”

“You don’t have to decide yet. You have another week or so before some of the options become, er, tricky.”

“Well, actually, I sort of know what I want to do already. It was just more a matter of, well, you.”

“Me?”

“You. Do you want to help me raise him or would you prefer to show up on birthdays and give him wildly inappropriate presents that I’ll have to hide away before he uses them to splice cat and dog DNA or engrave his name on the moon with a laser or–”

“Yes. Please.”

“Which one?”

“Help. Raise him.”

“Okay. See you do it, now. No vanishing for weeks at a time because you messed up the times. You’re here–”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly, and you’re helping. Even with the nappies.”

“Oh, nappies, there’s a perfectly good robot that can do those, I got it working once when Ace came to visit with her twins and it only malfunc–”

“Shut up. You’re changing nappies.”

“Yes, boss.”

They held hands now sometimes, at stressful moments. That was a thing. The Doctor would seek it out, even, and would hold her hand without any prompting whatsoever when things got weird. This hadn’t changed after their drunken night together. He reached out for her hand now and laced his fingers through hers. They sat like that for a while, hand in hand on the TARDIS floor, and Clara felt better. She had had some vague idea that he might have fled instead of welcoming it, dumped her in Croydon and come back in five years to see how it worked out. But no, he was sticking around and holding her hand and still smiling at her like he’d been given a present. Which, well, maybe he had.

Two Lit Fuses

2015-04-19T12:00:00+00:00

They were dating. An official item. Spin doctor Malcolm Tucker and up-and-coming party strategist Clara Oswald, seen together at restaurants, in the West End, at party events, at his local, at her local. “Power couple”, said the captions under the paparazzi photos, “dynamic duo”, and the articles speculated about how he must have blackmailed her into it. He filed every one of them away in a messy box in his office and contemplated exactly how much he knew about the authors. Enough.

It had been Clara’s idea to be a public couple. “Look, Malcolm,” she’d said, “This will all be much easier if we’re not sneaking around like idiots in need of a bollocking from the likes of you.” And he’d had to admit she was right.

So they dated. They went out and ate food that sometimes Malcolm liked instead of merely ignoring, and saw films that he’d ordinarily never have taken time off to see, and even gone to the theater. Noel Coward was a gas, it turned out. The press wrote about them for a few weeks and then got bored and moved on to some doe-eyed starlet dating some empty-headed wanker on Game of Thrones. And what they did in the privacy of his bedroom was nobody’s business but their own.

Not that it was anything unusual. Malcolm could name six members of Parliament who’d paid handsomely in the last month to be whipped to serenity; two who had their limp pricks regularly locked into plastic cages by even pricier mistresses. Not that he spent a lot of time thinking about the conventionality of his desires, not when he was on his knees to a woman like Clara. He had so much more to think about. She made sure of it.

They dated, and then they went home. Tonight was another one of those nights. A Friday night, so they had all the time in the world. Tonight was going to be a night that kept his mind occupied. She’d told him as much in the moments they’d had together earlier in the week; tonight was his reward night for his earlier obedience. Dinner out at some fucking trendy gastropub Clara thought would be interesting, a glass of prosecco each while standing around waiting, and then decorative plates with bits of offal he took great pleasure in likening to specific MPs to make Clara laugh, then cheese, then out. Not too much to drink, not that he ever drank much, mostly held a glass and tasted it now and then for show, but Clara was especially careful on these nights.

Hail a black cab, hand her into the back like a gentleman, refrain from giving the finger to the pap who’d got a shot of her with hand in his. Just another couple, a proper couple, no scandal unless they wanted to fuss about his age, not if he managed to keep his rage under control. She wanted him to control his rage, so he did. Slow burn, controlled burn. No explosions. Into the cab beside her, home address given, then he tried to sit still. His knee was bouncing. Clara laid a hand on it and he stopped with an effort.

“You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, just, yeah, fucking been a mad week, you know?”

“Don’t have to tell me.”

“Looking forward to a quiet night in with you.” By which he meant a great deal, none of which he expressed for the cabbie.

“Mm.” Clara slipped her arm through his and took his hand. Malcolm leaned close and kissed her. He was allowed to do that without asking, particularly when they were out. Looked better if he stole a kiss now and then. Or simply traded lazy kisses with her, as he did now, because she seemed willing. Take what he could, dream his fucking pathetic dreams while he could. Perfume in her hair, something musky and smoky. Sweet kisses, slow smolder. The first heat of arousal in him.

It distracted him enough that he managed to keep his knee still for the rest of the drive home, which was a victory.

Assist her out of the cab– not that she needed assistance, but she loved the antique courtesy– pay the driver, up his steps, unlock the door, bow her over his threshold with that same courtesy, door shut, on the latch. Take off her coat, put it on a hook, take off his own coat, then stand for a moment all awkward and uncertain what to do with himself. Nothing to drive him forward, nothing to chase, nothing to fret over. Only Clara, standing in front of him, lovely in cocktail dress and heels and a touch too much makeup, lipstick she’d leave on his body in the strangest places. Jamie’d found lipstick traces on the back of his neck the other day and made as if to laugh himself sick until Malcolm had smirked and stretched like a self-satisfied cat. Which one of them was fucking the gorgeous woman? Yeah, fuck you, Jamie.

Something yanked hard at his neck: Clara’s hand, on his tie.

“Pay attention. You are all over the map tonight, Malcolm.”

“Sorry.”

She tugged on his tie, more gently, and he bent obediently to accept her kiss.

“On your knees.” Another sharp pull to urge him into motion. Not that he needed it. He sank to his knees gratefully, and let out a long breath.

“Yeah, there we go,” she said. “Who do you belong to?”

Another long breath, releasing another little bit of the tension in his jaw. “You, Clara. I’m yours.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned against her. She ran her fingers through his hair. Felt good. Malcolm rubbed his face against her like a cat, for no reason other than it amused her, and he liked hearing her laugh. And he was already thinking ahead. Tonight he got to come.

She’d allowed him to fuck her twice, but he hadn’t been allowed to come either time. There’d been a metal cock ring around him, heavy and hard, giving him the control he’d needed to survive that without angering her. The second time had been three nights ago. She’d put the ring on him, plugged him, bound him spread-eagled on the bed, and ridden him until she was sated. He’d been so fucking close to coming that he had no idea how he’d held off. But he had, and Clara had been pleased.

“My reward night,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Gonna come in your mouth.”

“Don’t smirk so hard when you say that.”

“Why not? I’m smirking. I’m fucking smirking. I’m going to be coming in Clara Oswald’s mouth. The best mouth in fucking Downing Street. The only one worth coming in. And I’m going to be doing it.”

She grabbed by the hair and yanked. “Don’t try to bully me. Because if you do–”

Shit. Malcolm shut his fucking trap and went all the way to the floor and kissed her feet. He wasn’t into feet, but he was into groveling to keep Clara happy with him. He kissed her shoes again. Poor little toes into those cruel heels. They did pure wonders for her calves, lovely muscular calves. He allowed his hands to graze over them before he knelt up again, hands behind his back and head down.

“Sorry. Clara. It’s– it’s hard tonight.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” She tipped up his chin and held his gaze. Malcolm did his best not to flinch away. Lovely, she was lovely, those dark eyes, expressive brows, furrowed now in concentration on him. “Do you need to be whipped, Malcolm?”

He closed his eyes for a long moment and tried to breathe. Trust her to go right to the heart of it. No compromises. It was why he adored her, but fuck, it cost him. “Yeah. Please. I think– I think I need it.”

She didn’t like doing that to him too often, he’d learned. Bondage and nipple clamps and making him go without coming: those she loved. A little bit of spanking, yes. The whipping she saved for when he’d annoyed her, which he did from time to time. Once in earnest when he’d slipped up and come too soon. She’d bought him a flogger, made him kiss it, made him thank her after she’d used it. Which he had done, oh so fervently, because he’d hated it and loved it. That had been a revelation, the flogger. Where it had sent him.

It was a relief to know he’d be given it tonight. That feeling. That utter freedom. His jaw was still half-clenched with rage from Hugh’s latest, but she’d sweat it out of him. He’d be able to stop thinking soon enough.

She tugged on his tie and pulled him to his feet. She walked upstairs and he trailed after her obediently on the leash of his tie, hands still behind his back. Up into the bedroom, jacket hung up, the shite in his pockets chucked onto the dresser. He waited for her signal to undress. She was digging into his drawers for the things she’d need. Flogger, lube, plug. Oh fuck, she was going to use that on him too.

She pointed at the foot of the bed. “Trousers down.”

He undid his belt and flies and shoved his trousers and pants down. Bent over the foot of the bed with his hands on the bedspread bracing himself. Flinched when she touched his arse, because he knew what was coming. Her fingers first, wet with slick, working him open, more slick on him, cool at first then warming up, teasing him until he yielded to it. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut when she did this to him, not to save his fucking worthless life, it was so intense. He was hers and he had to tell her that, had to whimper for her and beg her to do what she wanted with him. And here it came, the plug, nudging against him. Opening him up. Owning him. Pure ownership, what that thing meant when it was inside him. No room for anything else. Only her. She had taken him in every way she could take him. He let go of everything and opened himself to her and let her inside. Pressure and pain, easing to pleasure as he relaxed and let her claim him.

“Yeah baby, yeah, that’s right, tell me who you belong to.”

“You. Clara. Yours. I’m yours.”

And then it was all the way in, settled. He whimpered some more, because it felt so good and her hand was on his rump, petting him, pushing his shirt up his back and stroking.

She left him like that, bent over the foot of his bed, arse in the air, trousers around his ankles, while she went down the hall and washed her hands. He used the minutes alone to contemplate how fucking hard he was, how big the thing in his arse was, how much of a jessie he was to like it so much, what it would feel like to come with this inside him. He was going to come tonight. She’d promised. Tonight he got to come. In her mouth. In her mouth with his whole body and mind and heart open because of this. How the fuck was he to have known it would do this to him? He was going to explode. His heart would, if nothing else.

Malcolm held himself in place where she’d left him and trembled in anticipation. Or something else. He was in trouble. So much trouble. When she tired of him, when she found some handsome Oxbridge prick with a body and a future, when she discarded him, he’d be so fucked. Ruined. Shattered pieces of a man. Nothing left but the job. Fuck. Don’t think about that, Malc. Don’t. Enjoy this while it lasted.

She came back wearing her heavy silk robe, the one he’d bought for her birthday. Underneath she’d be wearing nothing, or so close to it as to drive him mad. He watched her. He was allowed to look all he wanted. Clara, bare legs, black robe, flogger in hand. Malcolm panted.

“Undress for me,” she said.

Malcolm couldn’t undress fast enough. He kicked his trousers off. Shoes, socks, then the tie and shirt, all thrown onto the floor and kicked aside. He was naked in seconds, standing before her, wrists held out for her to buckle the cuffs on, prick jutting out heavy and hot, betraying him completely. He turned to the wall without being asked and raised his wrists up to the eye bolt she’d had him put in. She had to stand on a chair to snap his cuffs to it.

He tugged. Solid. He was bound. He breathed. Now he proved it. Now he proved she owned him. Now he proved she could do anything she wanted to him. Now he would let her take him all the way out of himself. Bound, he was bound, he couldn’t do anything, didn’t need to do anything, didn’t have to take care of anything. He could stop now. Soon she’d make him stop.

He waited and listened. Her footsteps behind him, her breathing. The jingle of his belt buckle. Not the flogger? A heavy snap. That sound. He knew that sound. He’d heard that sound before. That snap of stiff leather slapping against itself. Something went strange in his stomach. He clenched his jaw. Waited.

A snap and burst of heat, right across his arse. He yanked his hands against his bonds, but they held. A warm-up blow. That’s all that was. He’d had worse.

The second was lower down, across the back of his thighs, and hard enough to make him suck in his breath and release it slowly. The sound. He’d heard that sound before. Many times before. He hated that sound. He hated this. This feeling.

The third was in earnest and he jerked and shook and swore and tore at the cuffs. The fucker was not going to do this to him. He was going to break free and stop him before it got worse.

No. It wasn’t him. Clara. It was Clara. She’d flogged him with a proper flogger. It had hurt a lot more than the belt had. Liar. The belt had left marks that lasted. He hadn’t wanted to sit down or lie down, move, or take his shirt off for days. What had he even done to deserve it? He couldn’t remember. Yes he could. He’d intervened, that’s what. The sick-sweet smell of hard liquor on his father’s breath, the sound of his mother’s voice begging him to stop, Malcolm shoving him, commanding him to stop, swearing at him, the belt coming off, he hadn’t given in, not for an instant, the fucking piece of shite wasn’t going to do it ever again– both of them on the floor afterward, and his mother’s voice.

See what you made him do.

He was weeping now, three fucking stripes from a woman and he was weeping and it had nothing to do with that, did it? His chest was going to burst with it. And then she was fumbling at his wrists and the cuffs came off and she had her arms around him. He shoved her away, backed away, stumbled over something, caught himself on the wall. Don’t fall, Malc. Stay up. Fists up. He remembered trying to dodge and failing. What it felt like to be punch-drunk. Falling. He’d been helpless.

He curled up on the floor. He couldn’t stop. He’d started and he couldn’t stop, like he’d always known. If he let himself think about it for an instant, ever, he’d start and never stop. His fault. It had been his fault.

Someone was there, holding him. Clara. Arms around him, crooning to him, saying something over and over. She coaxed him into sitting up and blew his nose. He’d have felt humiliated by that if he were capable of feeling anything at all. She taken his cuffs off and taken the plug out and blown his nose. She handed him a t-shirt and he pulled it over his head because that’s what you did. Got to his feet because she was holding his hand. Stepped into the track pants. Followed her downstairs. Sat on the couch. Curled around himself again.

Hadn’t bargained on this happening, had he.

Cup of tea in his hand. Tea. She’d made him tea. Too much milk and sugar in it. He liked it like this. Hot in his mouth, warm in his belly. It was making him feel better, that was the devil of it. Blow his nose and give him a cuppa, and he’d feel better. She came to rest next to him on the couch, her own mug in hand, and pressed a kiss to his temple. He looked at the floor. Anywhere but at her. He had no idea what she was thinking of him right now.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“I’m the one who should apologize.”

“Wasn’t your fault. You did what I asked.”

“Still. Should have stopped sooner.”

He shook his head. She wasn’t to have known. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t remembered any of that for decades. Only one regret. “Sorry to have ruined your night.”

“Ruined my night?”

“You and me, it’s about fucking. You want me on my knees with a stiff prick. Not like this.”

“You idiot,” she said, and somehow it didn’t sting.

“It’s not about you caring about me,” he said, stubbornly. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“I don’t. So I’m not. This is me, caring about you. This is me, telling you that I’m fond of you, you foul-mouthed terrorist.”

He stared at her open-mouthed for longer than he’d have liked to admit, and then drank the rest of his tea. Sweetness in the last mouthful, sugar in the dregs. She was fond of him. She hadn’t ruined him when she might have. Twenty times over. So fucking bizarre. Nobody liked him. People tolerated him because he drove them onward toward a destination they seemed to have forgotten they wanted. Clara had never wavered on that, not that he’d seen. She knew what she wanted, for herself and the country, and she knew how to get it. Until this moment he’d thought he was another one of her stratagems. A stepping stone. He might yet be, because together they were proving to be far more effective than apart. But if she cared for him, even in a vague way, if she felt something about him–

His head spun. He set down the mug and stared at his hands. Her hand appeared over his, squeezing. Malcolm took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles. Stroked her fingers. Then he pulled his legs up onto the couch and laid his head in her lap. She was wearing his gym shorts, drawstring pulled all the way tight, and the shirt he’d worn today. Cheeky. Lovely. Comforting somehow. Clara wearing his shirt. Clara squeezing his shoulder. Clara, fond of him.

Clara, saying, “You going to tell me about it?”

He nodded into her lap. Where to start? No idea. He shrugged.

She said, “It was the belt, wasn’t it.”

He shuddered. The belt. “Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Me da.”

“You said once he wasn’t around when you were a boy.”

“Did a bunk when I was thirteen. Haven’t seen him but once since.”

“Yeah?”

“Told him I’d drown him in the river if he ever showed his face again.”

“Oh.”

“He liked his drink.”

Clara caressed his face. “By which you mean he was an alcoholic.”

He forced out the next words. She deserved to know it hadn’t been her. “Rager when he was mad with it. The belt was his favorite.”

“Oh. Malc, I should never have– if I’d known, I’d never. I’m sorry.”

Now the words were there, falling over themselves in the rush to get out of me. “Flogger was lovely. Made me float. Wanted to feel it again. Didn’t think it would matter what you used on me. But fuck. It did matter. Was in the headspace, you know? When you used the belt. Couldn’t stay where I was. Beyond belief, where you bring me. I have no walls, yeah? Nothing between me and things in my head. Can’t keep anything away.”

“Shit. Malcolm.”

“Usually you make it all stop. All the shit in my head. Stops when you tie me up. This time, went the other way.”

“That’s why you like this? I make it stop.”

“Fucked if I know. Probably. It’s nice to take a break, yeah? Nothing to do but what you tell me. No need to save the world. No need to fix everything because if I don’t it’ll go to hell– it’ll all turn to shit– he’s going to– Shit.”

Because he was weeping again. Or not him. It was distant somehow. Somebody else was weeping. Somebody else named Malcolm. Somebody else had Clara’s fingers running through his hair, scratching soothingly at his scalp. Somebody else was being cuddled. He came back to himself slowly, with her voice easing him home, telling him it was all right.

He accepted a tissue from her and blew his own nose this time. “Why the fuck you arse yourself with me, I’ll never know.”

She shook her head at him. “It’s hard to find men who are interested in the things I want.”

“Sweetheart, I can list ten off the top of my head. Ten men at the very pinnacle of fucking power in this whole run-down ruin of an island who’d be more than delighted to have you whip them.”

“So can I. And I despise every one of them. Wankers. Drips. Wet noodles. I want a strong man, not a weak man who fawns over me because he wants to ride on my coattails.”

Malcolm laughed bitterly. “Strong man. Now you see the reality of Malcolm Fucker. Just another human wreck.”

Clara took his hand and laced her fingers with his. “This is strength, Malcolm. Getting here from where you started, that’s strength.”

“If you say.”

“I know. Trust me. You– you want the right things. You’re angry because the prize idiots we work with could fall into a diamond heap and come out covered in shit.”

He laughed despite himself. She squeezed his fingers.

“I hated you at first. I thought you were just a bully. Thought you were into the cruelty for its own sake. Then I saw you one day, when you thought nobody was around. You were talking to a bicycle messenger, nobody in particular, and you were asking him how he liked his job. You made him laugh. Completely and utterly like a human being talking to another human being. Then Hugh blundered in and ignored the messenger, started talking to you as if he didn’t even exist. If he’d had any kind of self-awareness at all, your glare would have killed him dead where he stood. And I thought, oh I understand now. I get Malcolm. From that moment I knew you were my ally.”

Malcolm’s ears were red. He tried to shrug, but her fingers were still interlaced with his and he didn’t want to pull away.

“It was a gift from the gods when I found out you liked what I liked. It was a way to get close to you that you allowed. You’d never have let me touch you ordinarily. You avoided me.”

“You’re dangerous, sweetheart. Fucking powder keg.”

“So are you. Two powder kegs.”

“Now here we are. Two lit fuses.”

She smiled. “Exactly.”

Malcolm watched her face carefully. She seemed sincere. He couldn’t see anything else in her face. He said, cautiously, “Explode together?”

“I was thinking more like, more like a rocket. Ride up balanced over a giant explosion. To the top. Because nobody else is going to do it right.”

“Together.”

“Can’t do it alone. Don’t want to, now that I’ve had a taste of you.”

“Fuck. Clara. Can’t cope with much more tonight. But– I’m still yours. If you want me. I’m yours.”

“I want you.”

“Fuck.” He closed his eyes. It beggared belief. Him. Clara. Rocket on a stick.

She ruffled his hair. “Come on. Bedtime.”

Upstairs again, hand in hand, Clara leading him up, coaxing him out of his clothes, allowing him to unbutton her shirt. His shirt. Looked better on her. Into bed, blankets up, lights out. Malcolm was wrung out but not sleepy yet. Fault of the tea, most like. He waited while Clara did whatever she needed to do in the washroom. Taking her makeup off, mostly. He liked her without the makeup. Liked her like this, sliding into bed next to him, in his cast-off t-shirt and nothing else. He kissed her. Perfume scent still in her hair. Soft lips. Kissing him back. He couldn’t help it, he was fretting again.

“We didn’t– I mean, fuck, I don’t know what I mean. Are you good?” He let his hand slide down to her hip to say what he couldn’t say in words.

“If I wanted anything I’d ask for it.”

“Yeah.”

“So what I want is to cuddle you.”

“Okay.”

“This isn’t a trap. Malcolm.”

“Trying to believe you.”

“You poor fucked-up bastard.”

It tumbled out of him. “I’m in love with you.”

“I know.”

“I’m scared out of my mind.”

“Hush, you idiot.”

He rolled onto her and wrapped himself around her. Didn’t want to stop touching her, needed to touch her with as much of himself as he could. She hadn’t told him she was in love with him, but she hadn’t flinched away either. Here she was, stroking his hair. He could feel himself slowly hardening against her. Body wasn’t quite matched up with his mind; body remembered that it had been starving for her for days. Body had three stripes across its backside, burning at him, reminding him. The mind was ready to give up and go unconscious. Though it would be nice to feel her all around him that way too. It would be nice to be inside her.

He worked up his courage one last time and said, “Can I make love to you?”

“Whatever you need. I’m here.”

She helped him guide himself in and then tucked her heels behind his knees. He burrowed his face into her neck. It felt good in ways he didn’t know how to describe. She was holding him. She surrounded him. She had him. She wasn’t letting go. He wanted to move inside her and he didn’t want to move. He wanted to be like this forever.

This was what it was like when you were in love with the woman you were with. Strange to learn this at the age of forty-five. Sleeping with all those women and thinking that what was missing was he couldn’t ask any of them to tie him up. What he’d been missing wasn’t that. He liked that, but it wasn’t that. It was this feeling in his– not his heart, not his prick, it was all over him, all over his skin and in his gut and in how tight his throat was and in the palms of his hands. She’d lit him. He would burn for her, explode for her. Whatever she wanted.

His face was wet again now but it was okay. It was fine. It was because he was coming and it meant everything at last.

Owned

2015-04-08T12:00:00+00:00

Owned

2015-04-08T12:00:00+00:00

Malcolm almost had it. He’d managed to get his teeth onto the strap and if he could hold this position for another second–

The door of his house slammed opened. Malcolm yelped and lost hold of the strap. Fucking hell.

Steps on his stairs, and a voice he knew well: “Malcolm? Where the hell are you? You aren’t answering your phone and iCloud says you’re at home and– Oh fuck!”

“Don’t say it. Don’t you fucking say a single fucking thing, Clara. Just fucking avert your eyes and get these sodding things off me.” Malcolm tugged at the cuffs again, hard enough to make his bed creak. Humiliating, yes. Unbearably humiliating. Thank all that was fucking sodding shit-tastically thank-able that it had been Clara who’d found him not fucking Ollie Fucking Reeder.

Clara said something under her breath. Something thudded onto the floor. Malcolm risked a look over at her: raincoat, phone going into her pocket not snapping a pic of his predicament. She was not looking at him straight on. Maybe he would get out of this with some scrap of his dignity left.

He said, “Key’s on the dresser.”

Clara knelt up on the bed and fumbled at his wrists. “Fuck. What are these locks?”

“Timed. They were supposed to go off after half an hour.”

She bent close to his wrist and poked at the lock. “Says you have another two hours of lockdown. You must have mis-set them.”

“Stop fucking telling me what I already know and just unlock them.”

“Would it kill you to ask politely once in your life?”

Malcolm ground his teeth. Yes, he was feeling desperate. He was naked and cuffed in the presence of his colleague, a woman who was well-fit and had a brain like a hand-whetted straight razor. If this had happened in any reasonable way he’d be begging happily. But it hadn’t. Instead he’d made himself into a laughingstock to her.

He found what remained in him that could be polite. “Clara. Please. Unlock me.”

“No. Well, yes, but first I want some answers. Was this self-bondage? You tied yourself up?”

Malcolm closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He counted to ten, slowly. He had lost his mind. Or she had. Possibly they both had. Eventually, he said, “Yes. I tied myself up. Yes, and because it’s your next fucking question, I was going to spend the half hour fantasizing myself into a lather and the ten minutes after that wanking myself into next week.”

“Hence the lube and the box of tissues by the bed.”

“Yes. Have you humiliated me enough yet?”

“Maybe not.”

The weight on the bed shifted. He opened his eyes again. Clara was taking her coat off. Not dressed like she was in his fantasies, in which she was in heels and a red dress with a plunging neckline and sometimes, when he was feeling very bold indeed, a whip. This Clara, the one in reality, was wearing jeans, a green sweater, and trainers. It was Saturday morning. Not the time of day for bondage dreams. He’d had a free hour. Try out the new cuffs, have an extra-satisfying wank, take a shower, then work. That had been his plan. Instead, here he was, arms bound over his head, prisoner in his own bed thanks to his own stupidity, with the only woman in the Party he respected laughing over him.

Malcolm closed his eyes again. He gave up. He’d lost. It was over; his self-respect would never be repaired. Possibly his career, depending on how she felt. “Yeah. Go ahead. Have your fun with me. We both know you’ll get whatever you want from me from now on. Rub it into my face good and hard.”

“Malcolm.” Her voice was very close to him now. He could smell her perfume.

“What.” He was tired, so tired, of the constant fencing.

“Look at me.”

“Why.”

“Open your eyes,” she said, in a way that was so commanding that he snapped his eyes open. She was leaning over him, and she was not laughing at him. “Malcolm. Is this what you’re into?”

He swallowed. What the hell. He couldn’t lose anything more than he already had. “Yeah.”

“With a partner or do you prefer it solo?”

“Never had the chance to find out with a partner.”

“Would you like to?”

His cock knew the answer as well as he did, and was more eager to give him away than Malcolm would have liked. Fortunately she was looking at his face, not down at his prick, so he had a choice. Or the illusion of choice. Wasn’t that what mattered in the end?

“Yeah,” he said. Shit. His voice had gone funny. And his prick, gone so very soft during the struggle to get the cuffs off, was stirring for real now.

Clara closed the bedroom door and drew the blinds tighter than he had. Now it was properly dim. She climbed onto the bed and straddled his waist. Malcolm gulped.

“Some rules,” she said. “First. We will not screw around in the office. This stays in our homes.”

“Fucking sensible lass. Knew you were the only one with brains.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for you to fawn over me later. Probably while you’re on your knees. Second. We’re going to talk properly once this is over and agree on boundaries like sensible people.”

Assuming she wanted to do it a second time. “Yeah.”

“Now. For our first time. Do you want to be hurt, or do you want to be helpless and teased?”

Malcolm kept his mouth firmly shut while he thought this over. All three, really, but it was too terrifying. Too much. He wanted it. He wanted her. He wanted to hand himself over. Dared he? He opened his mouth to speak, but it was too hard. He was bound on his bed, underneath the woman he hadn’t dared look at straight on for the last year lest she read his mind and see how much he worshipped her, and she was willing to dominate him, and dared he?

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah. I mean. Tease me for now. Make me beg to come. Next time, hurt me. Mostly–”

“Mostly what?”

“Fucking make me yours. Yeah?”

She planted her hands on either side of his head, leaned down, and kissed him. Malcolm tried to slip her some tongue but she slipped him tongue instead. He opened his mouth to her and let her do what she wanted. He was hard now. Would probably be hard for some time yet, if she did as he hoped.

“You’re mine now,” Clara said to him.

Malcolm groaned. He gave the cuffs another tug, a happier sort of pull this time, reminding himself that he was helpless and utterly in her power. “Fucking fuck me,” he said.

“I intend to.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“You are almost adorable when you’re embarrassed, Malcolm. I would never have guessed.”

“Fucking hell, what have I got myself into?”

“Exactly what you were dreaming about, if I am not mistaken. And I’m not.”

“You never are.”

She smiled down at him. “Keep that in mind.”

Her weight shifted off of him. She sat on the edge of his bed and took her trainers. Malcolm watched avidly. He’d always wondered what she looked like naked. He’d finally get to find out. Today, if he was lucky. Oh, yes, lucky he was, because her jeans were next. Thong, black, lace, and it was clear from the view in front that she waxed. She tossed her jeans onto the floor and knelt up on the bed again, backside toward him. Malcolm let his head rest against his bound arms and stared at it without shame. Was a relief to be able to look at her without feeling guilty.

And then she opened his bedside drawers and started rummaging around inside without so much as asking for permission. Malcolm opened his mouth to protest then shut it. If he jibbed now she might leave.

She said, “Condoms, more lube, where’s your plug?”

“My what?”

“Your plug. For your arse. You have to have one. Either that or a dildo. I’ll take that.”

“Don’t. Sorry.”

Clara straddled him again. She’d settled her quim right over his cock. Malcolm was not complaining about that. Felt good to get a little friction at last.

“Locking cuffs but no plug?”

Malcolm shrugged.

“Your first task for the week is to buy yourself a plug. Large enough to you’ll feel yourself fucked. If I think you’ve finked on it I’ll make you regret it.”

“How? Can’t be seen in sex shops.”

“Order one online, you berk.”

“Oh. Yeah. I– Yeah. I’ll find something.”

“I’m going to be fucking you with it. How does that make you feel?”

Malcolm swallowed. Clara was gorgeous, even more gorgeous leaning over him like his, with her weight on him. How did he feel about the idea of something up his arse? In all honesty, he almost didn’t give a fuck so long as it was her hand on whatever it was. “Terrified. Excited. Fucking mental, to be fucking honest.”

Her fingers wandered down his chest to his nipples. She played with them almost idly, then pinched. Harder. Malcolm sucked in his breath. He’d done this to himself but had never had the courage to do it hard. Clara had no such worries. It felt like he was going out of his mind. What a right mess his head was in, pain and pleasure at once. She pinched him again, and he made a sound he’d never made before in life.

“Huh,” she said, and she let go of him. “Noted.”

“Noted what?”

“Just trying to find out what you like, Malcolm. Apparently you like that.”

“Not sure like is the right word.”

“Need? Crave?”

“Fucked if I understand it.”

“What else do you like?”

“I don’t know. Being tied up.”

She let her eyes rove up to the cuffs on his wrists, pointedly. The cuffs he’d locked to himself. “Oh, really. Let’s talk about something else you like. Being hurt. Being whipped?”

Malcolm nodded. Theoretically. But if it was anything like having his nipples pinched had been, yes, he liked it.

“And being made to wait to come.”

“Yeah.”

“Having to beg for permission?”

“Yeah. Fuck.”

“Having to go without?”

He raised his head. “Hard to tell the difference between that and the rest of my life.”

“I’ll teach you the difference. Starting now.”

“Not this time? Not the first time? I get to come the first time, for fuck’s sake.”

Her weight was gone, and now she was shoving his legs apart so she could kneel between his thighs.

“Malcolm,” she said, and the steel in her voice made him gulp. “Let’s make something clear.”

“What? Fuck!”

Clara had his balls cupped in her hand. One squeeze and he was trembling. Now this, this was pain.

“Repeat after me. I own you.”

Yeah, she owned him. A flood of something warm rushed through him at this thought. He could yield to this. He could surrender to her. Stop fighting. Let go. Let her hold him. It almost made him want to cry, the idea of it. Trust her all the way. What the fuck. Do it. He only lived once and she was either the fever dream of a dying man or the best thing that had ever happened to him.

He craned up as far as he could with his hands over his head and held her gaze. He said, “You own me.” He put as much earnestness into it as he had.

She smiled at him but gave his balls another squeeze anyway. “I own your orgasms.”

Malcolm sucked in a shuddering breath. “You own my orgasms.”

“You come only when I give you permission to.”

A third squeeze, even crueler than the first two. Malcolm groaned under her. He’d asked for this. He’d told her he wanted to be hurt. And now that he had what he wanted, how did he feel about it? How fucking hard was he? Shit, he was doomed.

She released him, and he found his voice again. “I come only when you give me permission to. Clara. I’m yours.”

“Good man. Now see what happens when you do as you’re told.”

She shifted down and shocked him by licking his cock. Tongue on the underside, wetting him, then flickering around the head. Malcolm bit his lip and watched her, struggling to control his urge to thrust, to take more. And then she went down on him, took him all way inside, a moment of deep throat, then she pulled back and got her hand around him and her tongue on the sensitive spot under the head and fuck, that was good, she was good, and fucked if he could stop himself moaning.

He could feel impending orgasm tickling at him, rising. Of course Clara could feel it in him as well, because she sat up and grasped him around the base of his cock, hard. Malcolm swore under his breath. Well, he’d asked her for this. She was going to make him wait for it. He could only pray that she didn’t make him wait days. Or she might be the sort to lock him up and take all choice away.

He stared up at her face, with that mysterious smile, that dimple, and wondered what she was planning for him.

“You look amazing like this. All sweaty and desperate. Such a nice change from the angry sweary Scotsman rampaging around Number Ten frightening people.”

“Yeah?”

“Love you like this. Really looking forward to seeing what you look like after a little flogging.”

Malcolm couldn’t help it, it happened without his conscious mind intervening, he was thrusting his hips up under her. The idea of her with a whip– he was out of his mind with desire. He wanted inside those panties so badly. He wanted her to do it all to him, right now.

Just then his arms decided they’d had enough.

“Shit!” He winced then tried to control his reaction. He shifted himself as much as he could, trying to relieve the strain.

“Arms? Been bound too long?”

“It’s okay. Carry on.”

“No, it’s not, you idiot.”

Clara was off the bed in an instant, snagging the key from the dresser, and then a second later the locks on his cuffs clicked open. She helped him sit up. Malcolm stretched and rolled his shoulders. Fuck, he’d been there how long? Nearly two hours. Not something he wanted to do again, even with a gorgeous woman on top of him.

“One rule we don’t break, Malcolm. If something that isn’t supposed to hurt hurts, we stop. And we are not stubborn idiots about it.”

“Yeah, okay. I was just starting to enjoy myself. And you haven’t had any fun yet at all. Sorry.”

“What makes you think this is over? On your knees. Now.” She pointed at the floor beside the bed.

Malcolm grinned and rolled out of bed and onto the floor. Now this was straight out of his fantasies. This was perfect. He rubbed at his shoulders again and stretched.

“Hands behind your back. Keep them there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” with a grin that widened when she pulled her jumper over her head. Under it was a pale green shirt that also came off, revealing a bra that matched the panties. Black, lacy. Front clasp. She smiled at him and took off the bra.

“Your lucky day,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Nice breasts, not tiny things, but lovely breasts with pink nipples. She wasn’t a starving model, thank God for curves, for hips, for breasts that would fill his hands. If he were ever allowed to touch them, that was. Hallelujah, fuck all, the panties were next, and there she was, little patch of brown hair above a bare pussy, deliberately sitting down on the edge of the bed right in front of him with her legs spread. Malcolm let his gaze linger. He did so love bare quims, showing him everything, all the secrets exposed. Where he wanted to put his cock. His tongue. Anything.

“Come here,” she said.

Malcolm shuffled forward on his knees eagerly. She was turned on already, he could smell it and see it. And it was his happy lot to taste it as well. No hands allowed, sadly, for he’d have loved to get his fingers into the job, one in her arse, another inside this sweet quim, but he would take what the gods and Clara had given him. Just lips, tongue, teeth, and his overheated brain. Listen to the sounds she was making and do more of that, wait for her fingers to twist in his hair when he did something particularly nice and do it again, find the rhythm that she needed to drive her onward, to turn those quiet words of encouragement to gasps, to harsh breathing that let him know she was close. Her fingers unsteady in his hair now, starting to tremble, and he scraped his teeth over her clit and there she was, that was what she’d needed, she was shuddering around him, and that was his name on her lips.

He licked her gently afterward, everywhere but her clit, careful not to give her too much immediately afterward.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” she said to him. “Nice. That was good. We’re going to do that again.”

“My pleasure,” said Malcolm.

“Look at you,” she murmured. She wiped his face off with a tissue. Malcolm submitted to this, though he’d have been perfectly happy to leave his face wet. At least her scent was still with him. He loved that smell. Sex. Women. And now, Clara. All over his face. His cock twitched. Poor prick, hard for hours. Surely it was his turn now. Surely he deserved a reward for that performance.

He smiled up at her with his best puppy eyes.

Clara stretched luxuriously in front of him.

“You can take your hands out from behind your back now. We’re done. I think it’s time for a shower. Don’t you?”

Malcolm left his hands where they were. “I was hoping for a little more.”

“Were you?”

He was not mistaken, that was pleasure on her face at his distress. Might as well ask for what he wanted, though he already understood he wasn’t going to get it. “Was hoping to come.”

“I don’t think so.”

He shuddered. It was going to be hell, but he would do it. He inclined his head to her, trying to make it clear to her that he had submitted. “Okay.”

“Not going to argue?”

He shook his head. “I belong to you. I only come when you let me.”

“Good man.”

Clara tugged him closer, tipped up his chin, and kissed him. Malcolm whimpered into her mouth, he was so very hard and so close to going out of his mind with the need. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to feel it, to spend himself inside her. Anywhere she wanted. He didn’t dare beg for her mouth, but he wanted it again. Why not, though? Why not dare?

“Clara. Can I– can I beg?”

“You may beg,” she said.

Malcolm swallowed. This was also something he’d long wanted to do. And now that he could do it, it was impossible. Here he was, on his knees to a woman he adored, and she wanted him to beg, and his voice had utterly gone. He shook himself all over.

“Please, Clara. Let me come.” A whisper, almost unrecognizably hoarse, but it was all he could manage.

She smiled down at him. “No.”

“Oh, fuck, Clara, please, I’ve done all you asked, I’m suffering here. Fuckin’ let me, Clara, please.”

“No.”

“Clara, I worship you. Let me come, please.”

“You worship me?”

“Fucking hell, I do. You’re a goddess. Fucking gorgeous, the only human in that miserable lot of troglodytic morons that think they’re up for the job of running the fucking country, poor miserable country to be saddled with those fucking retarded Oxbridge twats. But you, not you. Fuck. I haven’t been able to look straight on at you for ages because I get stiff when I hear you eviscerating them. I’ve wanted to be on my knees to you since the moment I first heard you do it. Fuck, Clara. Please let me come. If you won’t let me, promise me it’ll be soon. I want to come with you touching me. Any way you want it. Please, darling.”

Clara kissed him on the end of his nose. “Since you begged so nicely, and said such nice things. You may come. Touch yourself for me.”

“Fuck. I can?”

“Yes. Bring yourself off now, before I change my mind.”

Which was no more than what he’d been planning on when this fucking insane morning had started, but Clara’s fingers were running through his hair, and she was kissing him. Tongue in his mouth, giving him something to suck on, God, she really did own him already. One hand on his aching balls, the other around his cock, one stroke and he knew he couldn’t last more than a minute in the state he was in, he’d been so excited so long. Now she was tugging on his hair, hard, and he closed his eyes. She owned him. He’d handed himself over. He was hers. It was rising in him. Her voice commanded him to come now. Malcolm couldn’t help but obey her. One last stroke and he came, saying something, he had no idea what, and then he collapsed forward onto her knees.

When he was next sure of where he was and what was happening, he felt Clara’s hand stroking his head.

“Hey, Malcolm, hey, you okay?”

Malcolm rocked back. He went to run his hand over his face then stopped. He’d come all over his hand. The floor. Fucking everything. Wank himself into next week? More like next month. “Yeah. Fuck. That was–”

“That was what?”

“Fucking amazing. You’re amazing. Clara. Love. I–” He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“You’re not so bad either, you idiot.”

“Deserve that.”

“You do. But I’m not going to complain about the outcome.”

She took his elbow and helped him up. Then she grimaced at him. “You need a shower.”

“Shower, yeah. And then tea.”

“And then we have a lot of work to do. That utter waste of skin Hugh has–”

“You just killed the mood, sweetheart.”

Clara laughed at him, but Malcolm found he didn’t mind in the least.

Tyger Tyger

2015-04-04T12:00:00+00:00

Why do Daleks have storage closets?

2015-04-04T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor’s hand grasped her arm and pulled her to a halt. “Storage closet,” he said, and Clara followed him into it. He shut the door behind them. The closet was plunged into darkness. Clara leaned against a shelf and caught her breath. The Daleks rolled past in the corridor outside, shrieking four-syllable words like the defective pepper-pots they were.

“Wait. What’s in these boxes?”

The Doctor snapped out the sonic and ran it for an instant. “Cleaning supplies. Just like it says on the labels.”

“Not exploding cybernetic cleaning supplies?”

“It’s just a storage closet, Clara.”

“Why do Daleks have storage closets on their ships anyway? Ones with doorknobs that they can’t operate with their plunger things?”

“There are some mysteries that even I cannot understand.”

Clara poked him in the arm and pushed her hair back from her face. “So. Where is the TARDIS, again?”

“That way,” the Doctor said, jabbing his finger toward a corner. “One level up. My plan worked. They’re clearing out. We just have to wait until they’ve all teleported off.”

“How long?”

He shrugged those narrow shoulders. “Thirty minutes? Just listen until the shrieking stops.”

Clara sighed.

“We can pop out and get chased down corridors again if you find this boring,” he said.

“I can think of one way to fill the time.” Clara slipped her arms around his waist, inside the jacket, and leaned against him.

“Again? We just did that last night.”

But the smile lurking at the corner of his mouth told her that he was, as usual, protesting because he enjoyed the game of protesting, enjoyed the game of teasing her, enjoyed bantering almost as much as the sex itself. Which he also enjoyed, manifestly, though he was a naïf. Such a naïf. He reacted to everything as if it was the first time he’d tried it. Which it was, maybe, in some sense, if he perceived himself as a new man who’d simply inherited a load of memories from other, vaguely-related people.

He was more than happy to kiss her for hours as he was doing now, leaning back against a stack of crates, sliding his feet apart so she could stand between his thighs close to him, endless deep kisses, slow and patient. No endearments from him, no pet names, never, but Clara didn’t need those words from him. They would die for each other. Why waste their energy finding words that would never be enough?

Not that she was going to waste energy even thinking about that. She had a mission. Clara let her hand slide down his stomach to his belt buckle.

“Clara–”

“Shut up.”

She got the belt buckle undone. Button, zip, and she dipped her hand inside. He was hard already, had probably been hard from the first kiss. He was always more eager than he wanted to let on. He reached for the button on her jeans, but she batted his hand away. She had other plans. Down, down onto her knees, sliding his trousers and boxers down as she went.

“Clara–”

“I told you to shut up.”

“Yes, boss.” And then he was moaning, because she had taken him in hand and was licking the underside of his cock.

Outside another Dalek went past, shrieking something about intruders.

“Can you manage to stay quiet while I do this?”

He whispered a very bad word that the TARDIS refused to translate directly, but Clara had heard it often enough to know what it meant. She smiled and licked him again. Had to get him wet and slick so her hands could take what her mouth couldn’t. His cock was heavy, surprisingly broad given how slim the rest of him was. Satisfyingly broad, a good weight in her hand, on her tongue. Clara took him deep, held him there for a moment, fluttered her tongue against him, and listened to him moan. His mind, that great Time Lord mind, melted right out of his ears when she did this. Listening to that happen was almost as much fun as his eager reciprocation, Clara had to admit.

He didn’t taste like any other man she’d done this for. The humans had all tasted different but the same somehow. He was nothing like them. Salty, yes, but there was something else. Alien biology. The same on the surface, different in blood and sweat and other things. But his hips moved the same way, his breath caught and unraveled the same way, his fingers tangled in her hair the same way. He was looking down at her, watching himself, watching her, her mouth on his cock. The expression on his face was pure worship. Here she was on her knees to him, and she knew which one of them was praying.

It was such a turn-on doing this. Clara could smell herself she was so wet. Dammit. She was probably going to have to wait until they got back to the TARDIS to get off.

“Clara. Close.”

She wasn’t about to answer. Her mouth had better things to do. Her hands had better things to do, one wrapped around him sliding as he thrust, the other on his arse digging her fingers in. His pace slowed, stumbled, and there it was, a strangled sound from him, her name, and he was pulsing in her mouth. Clara swallowed around him and there was that gasp again. She let him slide out, gently now. He was leaning against the crate, hands splayed out. Clara pulled his boxers up and tucked him back into them, then decided her knees had had enough. She sat down, back against the crate, and wiggled her jaw. He slid down to the floor next to her. His head thumped back against the crate. He was still breathing heavily. Clara found his hand and he laced his fingers with hers. They sat like that for a little bit. She let her head rest on his shoulder.

“You are impossible,” he murmured.

“Admit it. You love impossible.”

“Oh, yes.”

Rolled Cuffs

2015-04-04T12:00:00+00:00

“Undress for me,” he said.

Clara was not usually immediately obedient, no matter what they agreed to ahead of time, but she was this time. This meant, if he had judged her correctly, that she wanted deep submission, not a struggle for power or punishment. That was fine by him. Her submission willingly granted to him was, if he admitted it, the spice he liked best. Though a spot of her reddened arse under his hand wasn’t at all disagreeable. Not at all.

So pretty she was, undressing herself methodically, so demure, almost, the way she looked down when she folded her shirt neatly and laid it on top of the pile of her clothing. So delightful, shimmying out of her panties and laying them on top of the pile. So coy, stepping into her heels again once she was nude. So shy, folding her arms over herself and letting her head fall so that her hair hid her face.

“None of that,” he said. “Clasp your hands at the back of your neck. Good. Head up. Clara, my Clara, how pretty you are when you show yourself off like this.”

And she was pretty, even with those eyes downcast, with her lovely breasts, her curved hips, her parted lips. His pretty Clara. He ran his hand down her back, over her rump, then around and up. He cupped her breast for a moment, then pinched the nipple between his fingers until she gasped. A little touch of roughness, that’s what Clara needed, just the barest edge of it. Though she did like to live dangerously. Speaking of which–

“There’s a planet I could take you to where I could lead you on a leash just like this, so everyone could look at you. Would you like that?”

Clara blushed ferociously but didn’t answer him. He put two fingers under her chin and lifted it.

“Would you like that?” he asked again, and this time he put an edge into the question.

“Yes, Doctor,” she said. Her blush deepened and spread down her neck.

“Something to look forward to.”

She met his gaze then, as if she were uncertain he’d meant it. He nodded to her and she sucked in a sharp breath. He saw the excitement flash across her face. That was the beauty of Clara. Her face was so expressive. Everything that she was feeling was visible in those eyes, those trembling lips. He leaned down and kissed those lips. They parted immediately for him. Sweet, lovely Clara. He’d do anything for her. If she’d wanted it the other way around he’d be stripping himself for her, even now, but she wanted this, she wanted his bonds on her wrists, and once she’d felt safe enough to admit this to him he thrown himself into the role with delight.

He stepped away from her abruptly. She swayed toward him, lips still parted, but caught herself in time. Good. She was already starting to melt for him. Now to make her burn.

He went to his dresser. He undid the topmost shirt stud and removed it. He undid his cuff links and stored them in their box. He turned up his sleeves deliberately, carefully, neatly. Bare forearms, bare hands, save for his rings. He could see her watching him in the mirror, head turned. It was perhaps disobedience, since she hadn’t been given permission to look, but he rather liked that she was so focused on him. He did, after all, hold her in the palm of his hand tonight, pain and pleasure his to dispense as he wished.

He walked over to his armchair and laid his hand on its back. “Come here, my dear.”

Most obedient, she was tonight, bending herself over the back of the chair without complaint, though she had to be a little afraid of what he might do next. He paced around behind her and tapped her bare ankle with a boot.

“Wider, please,” he said, though her thighs were already parted. She obeyed again and spread her thighs wider. It was good, he had found, to give her something more to submit to, no matter how obedient she was being, to bring her to the edge of discomfort. To remind her how naked she was.

He’d been uncertain, once upon a time, about her habit of waxing her cunt bare, but he had to admit it was lovely at times like these. She was completely exposed to him. He could see quite clearly how aroused she was.

He told her so, in detail, and was rewarded by the sight of her growing wetter and more open, just from listening to him. He rested a hand on the small of her back. She flinched, and he smiled to himself. Not tonight. Perhaps next time. This time, he had a different trial in mind for her. He pressed himself against her and let her feel how hard he was inside his trousers. Rough wool on bare buttocks, so delicious when he’d spanked them first.

“Where would you like me to take you tonight? Your mouth? Your arse? Your cunt?”

A little shudder at his language, at the burr that had deepened on those last words. Her voice was husky with arousal when she finally answered him. “Wherever you want, Doctor.” The correct answer, the answer he had taught her to give, though sometimes he would press further to discover what she longed for most. Not tonight, however. He already knew what he wanted to do tonight.

He undid his trousers enough to take himself out. He rubbed his cock between her buttocks, let her tighten up, let her think he was contemplating taking her there. It was tempting, for she was wonderfully tight and the feeling of his cock in her arse seemed to wrench open something in her that she otherwise kept closed off, but not tonight. Tonight, her cunt, so wet, so open to him. He need hold nothing back when he took her there.

Inside, all the way inside, as deep as he could go, yes, so good, so good to hear her moan under him. He took her hard, fast, taking his own pleasure with no regard to hers, but she was moaning under him anyway.

He stopped. Clara whimpered under him in protest.

“Did you want something?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to come.”

“Oh, do you. How much?”

“So much. Doctor, please!”

He let his forefinger rest on her clit, just barely. “You want this?”

“Please.”

“Enough to beg me?”

“Yes! I’m begging. I’ll do anything. Just let me come.”

He let his fingers move against her and she moaned. He stilled again. “Anything?”

“Yes!”

Time to bring her off. He rubbed her almost cruelly hard, leaned himself over her back, and whispered into her ear: “When I take you to that planet, I’m going to make you spread yourself out like this in the pleasure market, voluntarily, no cuffs, and make you come while they all watch.”

That was it, that was enough, she was coming under him, crying out and pumping her hips without control. The Doctor gritted his teeth and rode it out, held himself off just barely, she was so wild under him. He let it fade, let her catch her breath, then he took her again, hard and fast, his fingers on her relentless. This time she screamed when she came. He spent himself inside her and God, it was good, so good.

Afterward, she curled up with him in the armchair, half on his lap, still naked, debauched, her thighs still damp with her arousal and his seed, just as she liked it. He undid the buttons of his waistcoat and reached for the book on the history of Kthlee semi-sentient sculpture he’d been reading. One hand for the book, the other hand free to fondle her while she slept, just as he liked it.

Twist the sinews of thy heart

2015-04-04T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor got them out of there, as fast as he could, given that she had a death-grip on his arm and appeared to be unaware of it. He parked them in geostationary orbit over a planet with a lot of obvious bustling life and spaceport traffic, cloaked the TARDIS, and led her down out of the console room. It was, apparently, pointless to try to pry her hand off his arm, so he didn’t try. He knew what this shock felt like. He knew.

He led her down to the library, to the quiet corner she loved best, the one he’d found her in when she wanted to do a bit of reading, or rest after a particularly wild day with him. There was a shaded lamp, a comfortable old couch, and a teapot that the TARDIS kept hot for them. He sat her down on the couch and she let go of his arm at last. She looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault,” she said.

He knelt before her and laid his head on her knees. There was no consolation for this, not really. He knew that. It was some slight help to have learned, as he had, that his people were merely locked away in another dimension, not wiped out as he’d thought them. He couldn’t offer Clara that. They’d watched it. They’d watched the solar flare overwhelm the trees. They’d watched her planet burn, superheated until the oceans boiled.

It was a fixed point now.

She wasn’t weeping, but he was. Another failure. This one hurt more than most. His adopted home. His second family. He’d failed them. He’d failed her.

“Hey,” she said, faintly. He felt her hand move in his hair. “I think I’m supposed to be the one crying.”

He sat up and wiped haplessly at his face. “No reason we can’t both.”

“I suppose.” She sighed.

Time for him to stop being a self-indulgent maudlin mess. Time to take care of her. He sat on the couch next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. She was rigid and still against him for a moment, then she leaned her head against his shoulder. The tightness in his chest eased a little; if she was accepting this comfort, she might pull through.

“What’s it like?” she said.

“What’s what like?”

“Being alone.”

“I’m not alone.”

“You’re the last of the Time Lords. Your people are gone.”

“That’s not the same as alone. I’m not alone. I have you.” Unstated: you have me. If she wanted him. She might hate him forever for having been wrong.

“Nobody else. Nobody to hold me. Nobody to have babies with. I was going to, I think. Maybe. With him. Or somebody.”

“You can still have all that.”

“But I’m the last.”

“From your planet. There are others who can be those things for you. Trust me. It doesn’t help now, but some day.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You and I– we could do it. Together. If we wanted. A child of both Gallifrey and Earth. Or we can at least hold each other.”

“We could?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it?”

It might have happened between them even without this, he knew, it had been close to happening several times before, but he’d known how she felt about Danny Pink and had pulled away. He hadn’t wanted to be the cause of that guilt for her; hadn’t wanted to be an accident she flinched away from. He’d wanted this to happen because she’d chosen him, clearly and joyfully. She needed him now, in desperation, and he’d give her anything she needed. So he would give her this.

He stood up and spread his arms out. “Look at me. Clara. Watch.”

He undressed himself slowly while she watched. Jacket, boots, shirt, trousers, socks, until at last he was nude before her. Nude and aroused. It was so easy to let himself be aroused with her. All he had to do was relax the ferocious controls he’d had to set up for himself when he was near her, let himself be as he wanted to be. Let himself look at her, truly look, see her lovely face, her beautiful eyes. Allow himself to be aware of how much he wanted her.

He stood before her and spread his arms out again. “Do you see me?”

“Yeah.” She was looking at him, everywhere. Every bit of his scrawny body, gray hair, knobby knees, everything. He knew what he looked like, how unexceptionally human he looked in this incarnation.

“Now you know what I am. Your turn.”

He tugged at her hand and pulled her up from the couch. He undressed her carefully, gently. She cooperated with him but made no move to help. Sweet Clara, five foot one and refusing to cry, at last nude before him. He’d seen her before– of course he’d seen her before– but never like this, never with this intent. She was aroused. He could see it in her eyes. He kissed her breasts and was rewarded with a gasp of pleasure from her, knelt before her and kissed her belly, coaxed her into sitting on the edge of the couch for him.

“Clara.”

“Doctor.”

“We are the same. We can be together.”

She parted her thighs for him. There she was, wet already, moaning at the first flicker of his tongue against her. Did he even remember what Gallifreyan women tasted like? He’d loved too many Earth women, for too many years. He’d forgotten. He didn’t care. So long as Clara was with him, so long as she allowed him to do this, he was at peace. If he could give her that same peace, then he would.

He brought her up with lips and tongue and fingers, up and up until he could hear the pleading in her voice. He laid her down on the couch, pressed her against the back, sheltering her from everything with his body. He’d have sheltered the Earth with his body this way if he’d been able, if only he’d been able. Protect her from everything and anything. His Clara. She wrapped her leg over his hip and he found his way inside her. That was what she sounded like when she felt real pleasure. That moan. He moved his hips and she moaned again.

He stopped moving and she whimpered in protest. He tipped her chin up and kissed her.

“Clara, look at me. Look at me. I’m here. You’re not alone.” She opened her eyes at last. He kissed her. “Yes, like that. Don’t look away. Move with me. Like that. Yes. Feel me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m with you. You’re not alone.”

He kissed her again, then slipped his hand down between them, set two fingers against her. So aroused, so open to him, so responsive. Her breathing was ragged already. He would make her come, again if she needed it again, and hold off. He didn’t need to come. This was for Clara, he told himself, not for him. She felt so good in his arms. It felt so good to be inside someone again, after so long alone. So good to make somebody else gasp like that, moan like that. She was going to come. He wanted her to come, so much.

“That’s right, darling. Let it happen. Let it come to you.”

She whimpered. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. For me. I’m here. Do it. Clara, darling, close your eyes and come for me.”

She obeyed him, for once in her life. She closed her eyes and he felt the change, felt her hips thrust against him harder. She was on the edge, she was there. She came, cried out, shuddered around him, and it tipped him over. She was too much for him, had always been too much for him, would always be. He adored her and he would never leave her. Not now. He came, came inside her, gave her what he had, the possibility of new life, the possibility of renewal for them both. He saw it now, the future, saw it all in that moment of climax, and knew. It would happen.

The universe and time coalesced again around him, crystallized into its new patterns. He was still beside her, her legs wrapped around him, his body inside hers, and the sweat was still wet on his neck.

She was weeping at last.

“I’m here. Clara. Cry all you need to.” She clutched at him and he held her tight.

“Don’t let go of me, don’t you dare.”

“I won’t.”

The TARDIS had thoughtfully provided a folded blanket on the back of the sofa. He pulled it down over them. He held her close against his chest and murmured into her hair, pointless words of pointless comfort that were the best he could do for them both for now. Later– later she would know.

Watching

2015-04-04T12:00:00+00:00

The TARDIS had led her here, woken her up with insistent noises and led her with soft noises and trails of lights, along a circuitous route to this side room. The carpet told her she was in the library, but no part of the library she’d been in before. There was a heavy curtain that ran from floor to ceiling. Clara peeked around its edge and froze in place.

The Doctor was there. He was stretched out on an leather lounge chair, in a little alcove she hadn’t known existed, with the lights low. His jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up. A glass of something amber was next to him on the floor. Having a relaxing night with a drink and a book, probably. Except that there weren’t any books around, and he was stretched out oddly, legs apart, and he– He had an erection.

“Oh, Clara,” he said. “Why? How I wish–” And then he cupped himself through his trousers, gripped for a moment, and released.

There was no way he’d just done that. He wasn’t doing that. That wasn’t the kind of thing he did. He couldn’t be.

That was the only excuse Clara had for not bolting out the library right away. That, and the fact that the TARDIS had been at pains to lead her here, to this room with a curtain perfect for hiding behind. An arras, she thought, and had to choke back an almost hysterical bark of laughter.

Hiding behind an arras, watching the Doctor– Watching him take another drink from his glass, then unbutton his trousers.

He was doing that. He was doing it, and Clara was watching, and she should leave but she couldn’t. She wrapped her arms around herself and stuffed her forefinger into her mouth to ensure she didn’t make any noise and she watched.

He was methodical. Slow. In no hurry. Gray hair above his penis. It looked completely human, to her, an average human penis, on the very alien Doctor. And he was stroking it the way a human man might, thumb on top, fingers below, playing with his own foreskin, cupping his own balls. Making little sounds every now and then. Then he said her name again, and Clara’s heart jumped, but it wasn’t that he knew he was there, it’s that he was thinking about her. While he masturbated.

Because that’s what he was doing. He was doing that, and she was watching, and she really ought to leave. But he was thinking about her and that meant– Clara shoved that thought away for the moment. Too much to deal with on a night when she was barely coming to grips with the idea that the Doctor needed sex as much as she did.

His pace was faster now and his hips were moving. His breathing had changed. He pushed his shirt up, leaving his stomach bare. Clara bit her fingers. She watched his face, not his hand on his body, watched it flush dark red. And then his head went back, his neck corded with the strain, he made a choked sound, and he was coming quietly, onto his belly. His hand was still now, cupped over himself. His breathing slowed.

Clara let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She was turned on now, and that was– that was a revelation.

The Doctor reached down to the floor beside himself and picked up a towel.

“Thanks,” he said, and Clara’s heart leapt into her throat. Then she realized he was talking to the TARDIS. How disturbing was that? The TARDIS watched him masturbating and he didn’t mind. Then it occurred to her that the TARDIS had to know she did it too, and then there was the whole business with the TARDIS leading her here, and oh shit what was going on?

She had an urge to creep away now, back the way she’d came, back to her room where she could pretend none of this had happened, but she was afraid he’d hear her, now that he was not distracted. She’d wait until he left, then run back. He was buttoning his trousers again now. Surely he’d wander back to the console room, acting exactly like nothing had happened. As he surely had to have done many times before.

She wasn’t going to judge. Not her. People who lived in glass houses and all that.

The Doctor had set his clothes to rights. He sat up. His face changed, and he looked impossibly weary for a long moment. Then he straightened his shoulders.

“Clara,” he said. “Please come out. It’s all right.”

Clara froze where she was. If she didn’t move–

“I know you’re there. She told me.”

Clara stepped out. That sinking feeling was her conscience, of course. She’d been pricked with regret before, but now she was utterly ashamed. She ought to have left immediately. Ought not to have violated his privacy like that. She should apologize. Abjectly. What came out of her mouth instead was: “I can explain. The TARDIS, um, there were these lights, and–”

The Doctor shook his head. “I know.”

She got control of her mouth. Say it. “I’m sorry. I violated your privacy. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. I made the mistake of talking aloud when I began. She decided to, ah, act. To break the impasse.” The Doctor ran his hand through his hair. “I think she was beginning to find it frustrating.”

“Find what frustrating?”

“I think you know.”

“Yeah. I, um, I do know.”

The Doctor braced his hands on his knees and stood up. He drained the glass and set it back down. He put on his jacket and straightened it. Clara had never realized before how cock-of-the-walk he usually was until she’d seen him when he wasn’t. There was no bounce in him right now; he looked defeated.

Her fault. For watching. Way to go, Oswald.

He said, “What do we do now?”

He was standing before her now, with his head down. Probably feeling like a bit of a fool, if Clara had to guess. She had an idea about what to do to fix it. Did she have the courage?

Yeah. She did.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take your hand, and we’re going back to my bedroom.” His head came up sharply and he stared at her but said nothing. “And then you’re going to hold me because it’s my turn.”

“Oh?” That was the imp back in his eyes, the spark that was the Doctor.

“And then next time–”

“Next time?” He was grinning now.

“We’ll do it properly.”

So Let Us Melt

2015-03-23T12:00:00+00:00

Another encounter with the Doctor’s nemesis, Missy. Another set of coordinates that revealed nothing when visited. Clara watched him close the TARDIS door on the emptiness and turn away. He did not seem to see her, but stood with clenched fists, back to the closed door. The set of his shoulders was stiff. His face alarmed her, it was so blank, so shuttered.

Clara went to him and touched his hand. “You can’t believe her,” she said. “No matter how she swears.”

He nodded, once. Then she saw it. His eyes were reddened. He’d let himself believe her, no matter his words, and it had hurt him. Missy had hurt him. As she’d intended, no doubt. Left to himself he would hide somewhere in the TARDIS for a week, claiming that vital repairs needed to be made to a subsystem she’d never heard of before and would never hear of again. Clara thought for a moment, then made a decision. He would resist this, but he needed it.

She took his hand and tugged, gently. “Come on.”

“Where?” His voice was reluctant, but he’d clutched at her hand and was holding tight.

“We’re going to sit in my room. I think you need a hug.”

“I don’t–”

“You do.”

“Whatever you say.”

He followed her meekly, fingers still entwined with hers, out of the console room and into the corridors. The TARDIS had, thoughtfully, put her bedroom rather closer than usual. The ship looking out for her pilot, as always. Clara set the room lights to low and red, firelight mode. Comfort mode. Restful mode. It was, the TARDIS databanks had informed her once, the color of sunset on Gallifrey.

It wasn’t the Doctor’s first visit to her bedroom. He would lie with her sometimes, chastely, in this new life of mutual affection they’d embarked upon. He seemed to have no interest in taking the relationship further, at least physically, but he liked being near her. He would often sit in her room reading while she slept. Clara was reluctant to ask him about it; he seemed as happy as she’d ever seen him in this incarnation and she didn’t wish to disturb the equilibrium of their new relationship. He cared for her deeply, in his way, and she trusted that and was comforted by it.

This closeness meant he would allow her to comfort him when he needed it, as now, when she drew him over to the bed and sat him down. He unlaced his boots without protest. Jacket off, hung over the back of her armchair. Cufflinks off, top button of his shirt undone. Now he was as exposed as she ever saw him. He was all wrapped up around himself, arms folded, biting at his thumb.

She took her own shoes off and got onto the bed fully dressed, on top of the covers. Anything more intimate seemed to make him nervous. He stretched himself out next to her and allowed her to pull him close. He slid down and burrowed his face into her neck. It was pretty bad, then. Clara wove her fingers into his hair and petted him. He made a little sound, a needy sound, but didn’t speak. Clara held him for a while, until she felt him start to relax against her.

She said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, but you’re going to wring it out of me no matter, so I might as well.” There was the ghost of amusement in his voice, though it was hoarse.

“Wise man.”

He sighed and shifted on the bed beside her, adjusting himself so his arms were around her. “It’s not what you think.”

“Not about Gallifrey?”

“It is, but not the way you think. I knew she was lying. I had to check, just in case, but I knew. She’ll always lie to me about this.”

“What is it, then?”

A long silence this time. Clara rubbed her fingers in little circles at his temples. Such soft hair he had. She liked it like this, longer than he’d worn it before, long enough that it stood up in fluffy curls. It made him look softer, more like the man he was inside, under the frowns and the glares. More like the man who sighed and nestled into her arms, who allowed himself to feel things now and then, and even sometimes to tell her about those feelings.

At last he spoke. “I’m alone.”

The hurt she felt at that surprised her. He was lying in bed with her, wrapped around her, face against her neck, clinging to her desperately, and he said he was alone. Was she not enough for him? Was she not doing the right things?

Clara pushed it down as best she could, and said, “I’m here.”

“I’m still alone.”

Clara thought she understood now. It was about Gallifrey, about it being hidden. The magnitude of his grief, the daily pain of it– he was the last of his kind in this dimension, and that loss was with him keenly today.

“You miss your world,” she said, carefully, tenderly.

“Yes and no. Not the way– not the way you’re thinking.” A moment of silence, then he said, “You’ll have it out of me, I know. I might as well just tell you.”

“Quit doing my work for me.”

He squeezed her for an instant. He liked being teased, this Doctor did, secretly.

“My people. We’re telepaths. You knew that?”

“You told me you weren’t much of one.”

“This regeneration, it all came back. I couldn’t control it, it was so much stronger than the last time I had it. Any touch hurt, from anybody, even you, because you’d overwhelm me. I’ve shut it all down now, so there’s nothing. Put up barriers. I can hold your hand. I can let you touch me like this. Except–”

“Except what?”

“Except Koschei. The barriers don’t work. When she touches me I feel it. When we’re near each other, when we touch, we feel each other. Like it used to be when I was on Gallifrey. It’s why she gets to me. We used to be–”

“What?”

“Lovers. A long time ago. When we were boys together. We used to be together in our minds. The point is– the point is. It’s that the feeling reminds me. Whenever I see her, it reminds me. There used to be people around me. My family. Friends. In my mind sometimes. There’s no one in my mind now. I’m alone.”

He burrowed his face into her neck again. His breathing was hitching.

“They’re terrible people, the Time Lords. I don’t miss them. I miss– everybody else.”

Clara stroked the back of his head and thought about this. It was a surprise and yet no surprise. It explained a lot. Why he seemed so grieved when he encountered Missy. Why he was so reluctant to hurt her, despite her insanity and her willingness to hurt him. Clara knew how deeply the man in her arms could love, how stalwart and true he could be, how many of the rules he would bend to breaking for the sake of the people he held dear. Missy– Koschei, whatever she called herself now– was one of those people. Despite everything.

The revelation about his sexuality was the same: not truly a surprise. If the bodies changed, what mattered most would be the mind. And the mind– he’d just been reminded of how it had once felt. What he couldn’t have.

“I wish I could help. If I could be with you, I would, but–”

“Clara. You can. If you can put up with me.”

“I put up with you all the time, you silly man.”

“Could you possibly let me touch your mind?” His voice was so rough, so hoarse, and so full of hope.

Did she want to do this? Of course she wanted to do this. Telepathy? With the alien who was for all intents and purposes her life companion? Yes. It was as if someone had asked her if she wanted to watch a solar flare happen from the safety of the TARDIS. Of course she wanted to do it. And if it made him feel better, made him feel less alone, it wasn’t even in question. Except–

“Won’t it hurt like it did before?”

“Not if it’s intentional. If we do it together.”

“Okay.”

“Clara. No. I shouldn’t. I’ll get over this weakness.”

Clara was having none of that. He wanted it. She was willing to give it. She pulled away from him and made him look at her. “You’ll feel better if we do this, right?”

“Yes, oh yes, but I’ll be– I’ll need you even more than I do now. And I need you absurdly as it is.” His voice was warning, but his eyes were pleading with her. She knew that expression on his face. He was as close to begging her as he ever came. He was begging her.

“We’re doing it. Do as you’re told.” That last affectionately, for it was a shared joke with them now, when one ordered the other to do something pleasant.

He yielded and smiled at her, with a grin that lit up his face. He hugged her close.

“How does this work?” She was imagining something like a mind meld, his fingers splayed against her temples, a weird chant, maybe strange music playing.

“It requires touch. Skin to skin. The closer we are the easier it is.”

“Skin?” Uneasily, because she had never seen him even with as much as his shirt off.

“Holding hands is enough.”

That she could do.

He shifted himself away from her and held out his hands to her. She let him take her hands and tug her close again. They lay together for a moment, motionless, fingers laced together, foreheads touching. Clara breathed in with the Doctor, out, and then he was there with her. A presence, asking for her permission to be closer. She granted it. He flowed around her, his mind, his feelings, a sense of him. One part of her was there, in the bed, pressed against him, and another part was with him. The Doctor, with her, around her, accepting her into himself, easing himself into her mind. Allowing her to feel him, to know him at last.

There was an intellect there, yes, the great intelligence that worried over the problems of the universe even as they lay together, the mind that held so much of the universe’s knowledge, but strongest were his feelings for her. Neediness, guilt about that neediness, and then a wash of pure adoration that made her shudder it was so strong. And then he breathed, in and out, deeply, and it receded and was gone. He’d pulled away from her.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Lost control. Let me try again.”

He touched his forehead to hers again and was there again, less overwhelming than before but still present. Inviting her, hand outstretched, to be with him in all ways. She took that hand in their minds, and they were together. He was smiling at her. His face shifted to the first one she’d known, and he showed her when he’d first met her in the Dalek asylum, when he’d met her again in London in the winter, and then rapid-fire, his many faces and the many times she’d appeared to him. Her echoes, some touching him only briefly, the others with him longer, but all of them cherished. His gratitude was profound.

It was his current face that told her that, standing before her diffidently, in the console room of the TARDIS, his hands in his pockets, coat flared to show off the red lining. She was with him wearing what she’d been when he’d first regenerated, the little plaid skirt. He saw her that way always in his mind, at some level. The Clara-ness of Clara, as he’d seen her when regenerating. So dear to him.

He loved her.

She let him know– somehow, she wasn’t sure how, but forming the intent seemed to be enough– how much she loved him in return. It had been an honor to do that for him. Her leaf, falling through his lives, had been gladly given.

Then they were back in her bedroom, lying together, hands clasped. He kissed her forehead, to her shock, and then the end of her nose, and then his lips were brushing against hers, and again, lingering this time, until her eyes fluttered closed. It was sweet, tender, as affectionate as his words to her had been.

“Was that okay?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, a little dreamily. “Nice. You are a sweetheart.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“It’ll be our little secret.”

They were still touching each other, still linked, but it was a quieter background connection now, not so overwhelming. He was happy like this. For the first time in so long he was touching and touched, forever joined. That phrase, she realized, had come from him.

“Flowery language from you.”

“That’s a ritual phrase,” he said. “From a ceremony. Antiquated, not practiced any more. Or it wasn’t. When I was there.”

“What ceremony?”

He blushed and refused to answer. Clara laughed at him, because he’d been unable to avoid thinking about it, and so she knew. One of the possible wedding ceremonies, between lovers joining for the first time. There was a thread of arousal in him now, which she felt and responded to. His rose further in response, until he pulled back a little bit to ease down the connection. If he hadn’t, Clara might have gone over from thinking about it with him, bouncing it back and forth until it was too much. That must be what sex was for Gallifreyans, minds touching, nothing more needed.

“Sometimes,” he said, though she hadn’t spoken aloud. “But we can also make love the usual way.”

Images in her mind then, flashes of sensation, of bodies pressed together, his body inside hers. Partly from her, partly from him. She imagined what it would feel like to have sex with him, to feel the weight of his body over her, to wrap her legs around his waist, to feel him inside her while their minds were joined. His breath was coming fast. So was hers.

“Would you like to?” he said, aloud.

“If you want to.”

Oh, how he wanted to. He wanted for this connection never to end. She knew that, because it was the only thing he felt in that moment. But he pulled back from her and looked her in the face. “Am I overwhelming you? Am I making you want this?”

Clara laughed at him and kissed the end of his nose. “I’ve wanted it for a long time, you silly man. I’d have asked, but it didn’t seem like it was something you wanted.”

He licked his lips. “I’m sorry. I can’t without all this mind stuff.” He flapped his hand around. “It’ll happen if we start making love. I couldn’t– wasn’t ready. To let anyone in. Until today.”

Clara sat up next to him on the bed, and then immediately regretted it because his mind faded away from hers. She touched his hand again and his presence returned, faintly.

“That’s better,” she said. “Missed you.”

“I’m completely open to you,” he said. “But I’m not good at this even in this body.”

“We’ll just have to keep touching.”

He smiled and reached for the hem of her jumper. “Let’s make it easier.”

They undressed each other slowly, keeping that skin on skin contact as they went, with foreheads touching or lips pressed against a shoulder. Shirts off, her bra unhooked, his trousers unbuttoned and peeled away from his long legs. There he was, looking completely human, at least on the outside, however different he was inside. Spare, pale, gray hair dusted over him, a trail of still dark hair down his belly, and then his sex. He was excited, the way any human man would be excited. He felt in her hand the way any man might feel, soft skin over hardness, the tip emerging from its sheath of skin. She felt his pleasure from her touch, and it spiked when he slipped his hand between her thighs to explore her in turn.

The pleasure bounced back and forth from one to the other, rising with only the gentlest touches. It was not going to take much. Clara was going to go over before he was even inside her, and something about that made her sad.

Then it damped down. The Doctor was shaking his head. “I’m going to lose control of it,” he said. “I’ll try, but–”

“Don’t. Just let yourself feel it.”

“Oh, Clara, you have no idea what this is going to do to me. None. I’m yours now, but after this–”

“Stop fretting and come here.”

She lay back on the pillows and tugged him down to lie over her. Clara took him in hand and guided him inside. He rocked his hips until he was as deeply inside her as he could be, and then he stilled. His face was pressed against her neck. She could feel him inside, feel his satisfaction at being so entangled with her, how he had missed it.

The connection was deep now, so deep that it wasn’t in her conscious awareness. They were one being, one body, one mind, moving together, communing. Exchanging words of devotion, promises and pleas, one caressing the other and receiving the pleasure redoubled. They were moving together gently.

Her orgasm was slow but inexorable, utterly intense, in her mind as much as in her body. He came inside her as she came. She felt his joy, his guilty joy at spending himself inside her, the longing that he would never give voice to that she might perhaps carry his child someday. It couldn’t be hidden from her when they were like this, and neither could she hide from him her spark of delight at the thought.

“Clara,” he said.

She said his name to him.

He almost crushed her in his arms in response. “You know it, you know it, you heard it,” he said.

“You were saying it to me, over and over. See me, you said, and then your name.”

“God,” he said, or some oath that was translated that way, and he wiped at his face.

Clara extricated herself from him and sat up. That was strange: she wasn’t touching him right now, but she still had a sense of him. Faint, but present. She touched his shoulder with a single fingertip, and it grew to a steady pulse between them. His mind, her mind, next to each other now. It wasn’t invasive or overwhelming now. He’d regained control, perhaps.

She looked the question at him. He fluttered a hand in the air, sketching a line from his heart to hers. “We’re together now,” he said.

“Always?”

“I warned you.”

“I’m not complaining. It’s nice.”

Relief on his face. “It is.”

“It is always that way? Anybody you let inside?”

He shook his head. “No. I let you all the way in. Rarely done, because it’s so– the consequences– it’s a bonding. We’ll always be together in some sense from now on. At least for me.”

This was, she knew, what he had done with Koschei so long ago, and why she still had a hold on him. “Forever joined?” That phrase, from the ritual that had embarrassed him.

He nodded. The expression on his face was difficult to read. His hair was rumpled and his temples were sweaty; he looked like a man who’d just had sex. She touched him, and yes, there he was, warm against her mind. He was at peace now, contented in a way he hadn’t been before. It wasn’t only that he’d had sex; he had found something he needed. In her. Clara felt smug at that. The great Time Lord, hers in all ways now. Her companion as they explored all of space and time. Never alone, not any more.

Feeling a Bit Rough

2015-03-07T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor had vanished somewhere after he’d sent them into the vortex. He’d slammed the levers over and then stomped off without saying a word to her. It wasn’t about her; she knew that. That wasn’t what was hurting. It had been the whole day. That place. The things they’d seen. He needed time alone. She needed time alone. And she’d spent it alone, sitting on his armchair on the upper deck, staring with unfocused eyes at the lights of the rotor.

It was cold in the control room, always a few degrees cooler than what a human would call comfortable. Definitely cooler than Clara called comfortable, which was why she kept a throw handy. Was she sitting on it? No. She was sitting on the Doctor’s jumper, the one with the holes in it. She pulled it over her head. The arms were hopelessly long, but it was warm. And it smelled like him, like sandalwood and leather and tea with lemon.

She was tired. She should get some rest while she could. She didn’t want to sleep, though. Too soon for that. The dreams that would come would be horrible. The TARDIS library. There had to be a quiet corner there where the Doctor wouldn’t find her and where she could sit and think or read something or maybe just cry until she was too exhausted to cry any more. Crying was useless. Crying wouldn’t fix anything.

Might as well try the library.

The TARDIS had thoughtfully chosen to shorten her trip there by moving the door three corridors closer. Clara laid a hand on the door and it swung silently open. She stepped into the space, her favorite place in the TARDIS by far. It had high walls, a vaulted ceiling, tall bronze-colored ladders that slid on rails along the walls. Persian carpets striped the spaces between shelves. In odd corners were little nooks with comfy chairs, where one could read or sleep or just think.

Clara trailed her right hand along the wall in search of her favorite spot, the one with the stained glass window above it. The light was always better there, as if a little bit of sunset were always shining through the colored glass.

She came around the corner quietly, so quietly that she didn’t disturb the man already sitting in her favorite spot. He’d taken his shoes off and was sitting cross-legged on the leather love seat; his socks had kittens on them. Clara put her hand to her mouth. He was absorbed in reading the book that rested on his lap, something paperback-sized.

He looked up suddenly, though she hadn’t moved. “Clara?”

“Hey.” It came out watery and sniffly, and the Doctor’s face changed.

“Are you okay?”

Clara couldn’t make any answer other than a shrug, because she’d burst into tears again.

The Doctor set his book aside and patted the sofa cushion next to him. “Come here.”

Clara almost flung herself at him. He hauled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, as tightly as she needed just then. She clung to him and sobbed into his shoulder.

The outburst was over as quickly as it started. Clara blew her nose on the handkerchief he produced for her and let a long breath out.

“Sorry,” she said.

He tapped her nose, her red, sniffly nose. He said, “The girl today, in the marketplace?”

“Yeah.”

“I understand.”

Clara knew he did. She’d seen his reaction. She’d seen what he did to the flesh merchant. She’d seen the anger and the despair. And then he’d been able to move on, as he had to. If he didn’t move on, he’d stop being able to do what he did. And she understood that all the way down, truly she did, because she had to do it too if she wanted to save people. And she did it. Every time. And they were more effective as a pair doing it than he was alone. But today–

Clara wiped at her face. Today had got to her. It had slipped under her guard and stuck her right in the heart. Today was a right bastard.

“Is that my sweater?” he said, with the faintest hint of outrage in his voice, under the tenderness.

“Mine now,” she said.

“The things I endure.”

“I must be putting your legs to sleep–”

He tightened his arms around her and pulled her back down. “Shush. You’re fine.”

Clara relaxed into him. She had no idea why he was putting up with this but he was. He was more than putting up with it: he was stroking her hair. She let her head rest on his shoulder and closed her eyes. He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. Was that the first time he’d kissed her? It was.

She let herself relax a little more. It was warm here in his arms, on this sofa, in a quiet corner of the library. The ship hummed around her, the quiet thrum that meant safety. The TARDIS held them in its arms just as tenderly as the Doctor held her. Where did that thought come from? She was certain it was true, however it had come to her. She was safe. She was understood. She was loved. It had been bad, but they had stopped it from happening again. It wasn’t okay; it would never be okay; but she was with someone who understood.

She let herself drift.

Clara woke to find her head on the Doctor’s lap and a rough wool blanket over her. She was warm and cozy. The Doctor’s hand rested on her shoulder. She felt better. The grief was still there, but it wasn’t sharp any more. She opened her eyes and rolled onto her back.

The Doctor cupped her cheek. “Hello,” he said.

“I fell asleep on you.”

“Didn’t mind. Gave me a chance to finish.” He held the book up where she could see it: The Wind in the Willows.

“Comfort reading?”

“You weren’t the only one feeling rough,” he said. He set the book aside and glowered at it, as if it were to blame for his admission of emotion to her.

Clara sat up and kissed him on the corner of his mouth in sympathy and thanks. He held still for it, as he did these days, but didn’t respond. Not yet; he would soon. She could feel it in him, see it in the warmth on his face, in the way he squeezed her hand afterward.

She slid off his lap and stretched, wriggling her toes in the deep carpet. There was one more thing she needed. She raised an eyebrow at the Doctor and said, “Tea?”

“There’s hope for that brain of yours yet.”

They left the library in search of the kitchen, hand in hand.

Conjunction

2015-02-14T12:00:00+00:00

Clara and the Doctor, hand-in-hand, running from her father’s house to the TARDIS, in nightie and robe, slippers on her feet, sliding through the snow. They were eloping, that was the only way Clara could describe it, though she wasn’t sure that the odd brain in the Time Lord clutching her hand would describe it the same way. But they were in the TARDIS now, giggling, hovering over the console together, and he was still clinging onto her hand. In the dream, she’d woken on the base floor with her hand in his, held painfully tight. It had been the only thing she’d trusted in any of the dreams, his hand on hers.

She squeezed his fingers and he squeezed back.

“Where to?” he said.

“All of time and space?”

He smiled, so warmly her heart went squidgy and she had to close her eyes for a moment. “All of time. All of space. Yours.”

Clara opened her eyes. He was still smiling at her, and he still had hold of her hand. “I still feel in a Christmas-y mood, but I don’t want snow. If that makes any sense. Something pretty. Lots of colored lights.”

He smirked, as if he’d been expecting that response. “I know just the thing.”

The Doctor typed one-handed on the TARDIS console and primed the navigation system. He set his hand on the lever, turned to her, and raised his eyebrows. Clara knew her cue. She set her free hand on the second lever and they pulled home together. The TARDIS lights flashed, the column moved, and they were in the vortex.

“Clara,” he said. His eyes were hooded and he was smiling faintly. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. And then he turned it over and kissed her palm. Her breath caught. He’d never done anything like this before, not with this face. Never any flirting, never any casual gestures. This meant–this mean that everything had changed. She stepped closer to him and brushed her fingertips against his cheek. He didn’t flinch back, didn’t protest, but looked down at her with that little smile. His eyes seemed intensely blue in the console lights, so blue, under those furrowed eyebrows, as he leaned closer to her.

The TARDIS chose that moment to spin to a halt. Clara startled and stepped back from the Doctor. “Where are we?”

He smirked again, obviously pleased with himself. “A system with three gas giants, all with rings. And they are coming into conjunction in the next two hours.”

Clara made an undignified noise. She made for the TARDIS door, but the Doctor tugged gently at her hand to stop her.

“If you will indulge me?”

That was oddly formal language from this brusque man. She nodded to him graciously, playing along, trying to match his formality. He led her from the control room down below stairs, along the first hallway of the TARDIS maze, to a carved wooden door she’d seen before but never found open. It swung open now at a touch from him. He paused at its threshold and bowed her over it.

It was a bedroom–his, she guessed. A Turkey carpet covered the floor, and there was an armchair the twin of the one in the console room. The bed was huge, with heavy wood posts. It was piled with pillows and covered in heavy dark blankets.

The Doctor paused at the door and did something with a control panel on the wall. The lights dimmed and the ceiling and walls vanished: they were suspended in space, below a gas giant and its flaring rings.

Clara gasped. She let her head tilt back. It was like being in space, except that gravity was firm against her feet. She turned around slowly, taking it all in.

The Doctor came up close behind her. “Watch from here?”

“You’ve been keeping secrets.”

“Ah, the TARDIS has many secrets.”

“Good old girl, the TARDIS.”

It was warm enough in his bedroom that she finally felt like taking off her robe. The Doctor took it from her and set it aside. He took off his own jacket and boots. He led her to the bed and arranged them so he was sitting with his back against the headboard, legs on either side of her.

“Lie back,” he whispered.

Clara lay back against his chest. His arms closed around her. She let her head tip back. This was the most intimate she’d been with him in this body, and now that she thought about it, the most intimate she’d ever been with him at all. He was holding her, actually cuddling her, nuzzling the nape of her neck, warm against her, breathing, touching her more in these moments than in the entire year previous. And she had only half of her attention to give to him, because of the view.

Oh, the view. The conjunction was in progress and it was gorgeous. They were too close to the gas giant to see many stars, but the rings were astonishing. And the planet itself: all roiling red and yellow, bands of color, a vast thing below them, occupying maybe a quarter of the view. Beyond it, a second planet, close enough that she could see its disk, green and blue, with its own rings a pale arch in the darkness. And beyond that, a third planet, barely visible as a disk, a bright orange dot.

“Where are we?”

“A star in the Pegasus Galaxy. Neither one of us can pronounce the name. Haven’t got two throats.”

Clara smiled to herself. Two throats. She could recall only one species that had two throats. Probably the Doctor could name dozens. “Three gas giants, with names we can’t say, in conjunction.“

“Three bodies, so it’s a syzygy. We’re near to the inmost in the system, the smallest. I was afraid we’d have a hard time seeing the third one, but it’s clear. I suspect the TARDIS of enhancing the view for us.” He said the last fondly; Clara smiled.

“No complaints. Best planetarium visit ever.”

The Doctor’s lips brushed against her ear. Clara shivered. He said, “If you look carefully, you’ll see other spacecraft. This was a popular moment. See? There’s one.”

He pointed. Clara could see a little flare of something behind a needle-shaped thing that moved fast across their field of view. While she watched, it tumbled around and fired another burst of engines and slowed to a stop relative to them. Like them, watching the conjunction from a good spot.

This. This was what her dream-self had missed, during those sixty-two years without the Doctor. The man himself, yes, keenly, but also the cosmos. The universe. Time and space and conjunctions and eclipses and solar flares and black holes swirling. His hand clasping hers, his voice saying run! This was exactly what she’d missed most during those mundane months of teaching and grief for Danny.

She laid her hand over his at her waist and twined her fingers through his. “Thank you. This is perfect. Right down to the hugging from Mister not the hugging sort.”

He tightened his arms for a moment. “Clara–”

“Yeah?”

“I never had a vote about that. Not with you.”

Clara squeezed her fingers in his. “I know.”

“I thought you didn’t want… somebody who wasn’t him. Earlier me.”

Her heart constricted in her chest. She hadn’t wanted him at first. She’d seen the crow’s feet and the graying hair and how different he’d been. That owlish face, peering at hers after her Doctor had vanished forever–she’d taken a long time to love this new version of him. He’d begged her and still she’d struggled. A whole lot of time wasted. She’d known all along she’d wanted to be where she was now.

“Sorry,” was all she managed to say. “I couldn’t see you.”

He was quiet for a long while behind her. Clara let herself rest against him. She breathed, and watched the lights move in the starscape above them. The Doctor freed a hand from her grip and stroked her hair. She was floating in the vastness of space with an alien, hovering above a gas giant, following the sweep of its rings around. She was lying in a bed in a space ship being held by her best friend, a near-immortal alien. She was seeing wonders. Her life was back to normal, for her, back to what she loved best. Except not. Their relationship had changed. Was changing. That pleading invitation he’d made to her, his hand offered to her, was one she would never have accepted before. One he’d never have made before. Not like that.

So here they were. If this was the only difference, if they cuddled now as well as bickered and explored and ran, Clara would be happy.

The planets above them moved, imperceptibly slowly, closer to alignment. Another spacecraft zoomed across their view, close enough that she could see light flash off its viewports. Somewhere across the vacuum from them were other people, aliens or humans or both, there to watch the same conjunction, to see the same wonders.

At last the Doctor spoke. “Clara? Do you see me now?”

She squeezed his hands again. “I think so.”

“Good. Because I need to say something to you.” His voice was so quiet, so deep and raspy. He was emotional, that’s what that meant, emotional but containing it. Bottling it all up inside.

“Listening.”

“I want you to know my intentions.”

“Your intentions?” There was that odd formality again, even odder because the man was lying in bed with her, cuddled up with her, his legs tangled with hers, though he was still in shirt and trousers.

“My intentions. Clara, I–”

She wanted to blurt something out to fill the silence, but instead she squeezed his hands where they were linked around her middle. Talking over him hadn’t done her any good back in that cafe, had it. Shut up and listen, Oswald. Give him space. Give him time. He was so awkward and uncomfortable with feelings, whether they were hers or his.

“Clara. I keep not saying things right. I want to get this right.”

“Still listening.”

“What do you know about regeneration?”

Clara blinked. Regeneration. Okay. He could, as far as she was concerned, talk about anything he wanted. The solar system they were in, the history of the people in the spacecraft they’d seen moving past, the finer points of brewing tea, or the intricacies of the three-body problem. Whatever he wanted. She’d missed the sound of his voice so much. The off-kilter scent of his clothes, of his body. The way his thumb caressed her whenever he took her hand. He could talk about regeneration so long as he kept holding her.

She said, “Not much. I know it happens. That you keep the memories but feel like a different person. Sort of.”

“There’s too much to go into right now. Most of it doesn’t matter to anyone except a Time Lord, someone blessed or cursed with the ability. I’ve never been sure which it is. But– the thing you need to know is about the first minutes.”

“When you were confused and crashed the TARDIS.”

“I crash it every time.”

“Maybe you should stop regenerating in it?”

Clara felt him shaking his head behind her, as if she’d said something absurd. “Memories, sense of self– all a mess in the first hours. It’s the first minutes that matter most. When the regeneration energy is still rebuilding me. The first experiences– the first face I see. That first face is special.”

She’d been his first face. Her floppy-haired friend had fallen backward, and when he straightened up again he’d been this man, this owlish man, with the angry eyebrows and the curling graying hair. He’d stared into her eyes and she’d stared back, frightened, confused, in shock.

“The first face, the first face.” He tightened his arms around her for a moment. “So many times it means nothing. You see it too late, days or hours after regenerating. Or you mean nothing to the other person and you never see them again. But when it’s in the first seconds, when the other person cares–”

“When you saw me?”

“You’re seared into me. You’re part of me. I will always–” He broke off. His voice had gone rough again. “I will always run to you. Clara.”

She needed to see his face. She untangled herself from him and turned around. He watched her warily. She edged herself right up against him and hooked her legs over his. His eyes went wide, but he didn’t shrink away. Clara laid a hand against his cheek. He leaned into it. Now she could see it. Now she could see the need in his face, how desperate he was for her touch, the same touches he used to complain about. Oh, how she must have hurt him. When she’d told him she didn’t know who he was any more, it must have been a knife in his hearts. Clara’s own heart ached in sympathy. She hadn’t known, hadn’t understood. And he had been too– something– to explain. Proud? Stubborn? Alien? Hurt? What a mess. What a long mess. Why hadn’t he told her? She’d never have tried to send him away.

“I’m sorry,” she began, but he cut her off.

“The past doesn’t matter.”

“It matters. Your feelings matter. I know you have them, so don’t you try and tell me otherwise.”

He shook his head. “Clara. It doesn’t matter any more. What matters is that you understand now.”

“Understand what?”

“This means something to me.”

“What does it mean?”

“Everything.”

“Everything,” she said. He nodded. “That’s a lot.”

He nodded again. “I’m not leaving you again. Not so long as we both live.”

And that was her heart racing in her chest and a feeling like free-fall in her stomach. Those words had to be deliberate. She rested her hands on his shoulders. Narrow shoulders; it looked like there was nothing to him, but somehow he was the most solid being she’d ever touched. More present than anybody else had ever been. A concentrated being, there, tense under her hands, his eyes locked with hers.

He said, “Is it the same for you?“

He was gazing at her, with those anxious eyes. Waiting for her answer, it seemed. Hadn’t she been clear enough before, when she’d taken his hand? Only one thing to do. She leaned into him and kissed him, on the lips this time. Pulled back and saw him staring at her again, wide-eyed, like he had in her bedroom when she’d kissed his cheek.

“Oh,” he said.

“Idiot.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Cool hands, soft lips, a little stubble on his chin, her hands on his shoulders, and a long gentle kiss. Almost chaste, except for how close they were on the bed. And then his hand was behind her head, and his fingers in her hair, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and they met in a kiss that was not chaste in the least. Then he was pulling back and staring at her. She was breathing hard. So was he, those blue eyes looking into hers, pupils wide.

The Doctor had just kissed her.

More than that, if she understood him, and she thought she did. He’d eloped with her, then proposed marriage to her, then kissed her. In that order. What came next, their first date? Except they’d been dating all along: bickering while chained to posts in the desert, drinking champagne with strawberries in a space train, robbing banks together– one long courtship. A bizarre one, but unique to him. And she had to admit it, the way to her heart. Poor Danny. She’d miss him five minutes a day, keenly, but she had never had the time to miss him when she’d been with this man.

Another regret. She could yet remember what it had felt like, in that dream, to have a lifetime of regrets, each one cherished somehow. Had she really lived that life and been given youth back by Santa? How would she ever tell? It was as if she’d lived it. She was changed by that memory. She could, now, look at the Doctor, and remember what it was like to grieve for him as well, to ache for him, for so many years. Remember what it had been like to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, to let things go. To lose loved ones to time.

Another way that she understood this man holding her.

The Doctor touched his forehead to hers. “That’s settled, then,” he said.

He kissed her again and Clara let herself relax into him. Warm on his bed, under the most beautiful starscape she’d ever seen, kissing the Doctor, tilting her head back to allow him to kiss her neck. He was gentle, relaxed, patient. All the time in world to kiss her and smile at her and stroke her hair. And to be caressed. Clara was pleased to confirm at last that his hair was indeed soft to the touch. She rumpled it and it stuck straight up endearingly.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said, grumpily, but it was all for show, because he couldn’t stop smiling.

They lay side by side on his great bed, holding hands again, looking up at the stars. At the three planets, now in perfect alignment from their vantage point.

“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Clara said.

He made a noise that sounded like agreement. Then he rolled over onto his side and leaned his head on a hand. When he spoke, his voice was uncertain. “Clara? I would like to make love with you. If you’ll have me.”

Clara’s heart turned over. She tried to say something, but couldn’t. He looked alarmed again, and the words poured out. “I don’t need to. I offered because I thought it’s the sort of thing you like. If you’d prefer to stop at the hugging, I’m fine.”

“Doctor. Shut up.”

“It’s okay–”

“Yes. I’ll have you.”

He looked like he was going to keep talking, so she kissed him, hard this time, trying to signal as clearly as she could that yes, she wanted him, yes, he could make love with her, yes, he had better start with the love-making right this second if he knew was was good for him.

He kissed her back eagerly enough, hands cupped against her face, mouth open. But he was slow to follow up. It wasn’t that he was shy. It was more that he was hesitant, uncertain. He followed her lead easily, but wouldn’t initiate anything. He allowed her to remove his shirt, quietly lay back and watched her while she undid his cuff links and made her way down all those buttons. Buttons on his flies as well, buttons on everything. He was thin, so thin, with graying hair on his chest and stomach. And underneath those wool trousers, a man who was human in all the ways that mattered. Or maybe she was Gallifreyan in the ways that mattered. It was all perspective, wasn’t it.

He was shy, no idea why, but at last there he was, the Time Lord, bare before her, and she at last, kneeling beside him. Another kiss, oddly chaste, and he was still hesitating, though she could see how excited he was.

“What do you like?” she said, and he shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?”

“This body– I’ve never done this before as me. It’s always different. Every time. No idea what it’s going to feel like.”

“Shall we find out what you like?”

He smiled shyly. “Please.”

It wasn’t merely that he hadn’t done this with her before, or even with another person. He hadn’t experienced sex in this regeneration at all. When he said he didn’t know, he meant it literally. Did he like being touched that way? He had no idea. Clara touched him and they both learned. She was awe-struck and terrified at once. She’d never been with somebody so raw, so utterly new to the reactions of their own body. She remembered her first time, with Nina, what it had been like figuring things out, though she’d already known things about her own body. Her first time with a boy, at university, had been with somebody who’d done it before. The Doctor knew how it all worked, had done it countless times in his long life, but in different bodies, in past lives. Not this one.

She was his first.

He liked being kissed. His nipples were ticklish, but that was distracting. He liked it when she took him in hand gently, not when she was rough. He loved being licked, but couldn’t bear to stop kissing her long enough for Clara to explore that further. He liked touching her while kissing her and looking into her eyes, so much that he brought her to her first orgasm that way, surprising both of them. Her orgasm excited him so much that he was at last willing to move to the next step. He was uncertain and tentative when he entered her, but he gained confidence when she coaxed him into going deeper. He loved lying beside her, his forehead touching hers, her legs wrapped around his, moving gently against her.

Gentle. That was the word for him. Tender. Patient. Quiet, for once in his long lives, save for little gasps and wordless sighs. She came the second time this way, his clever fingers touching her, his face against her neck, his body inside hers. It was so easy to let herself go with him, so easy to relax and let it happen.

“Clara,” he said. “My Clara.” He rolled himself on top of her. Clara wrapped herself around him and urged him on.

He went to pieces when he came. No other way to describe it. He was emotional in a way she hadn’t thought possible for this man, weepy and raw and open, telling her that he loved her. Three simple words, words she’d never heard from him or expected to hear or dreamed of hearing, not like that, not repeated so desperately. And then she was saying it back to him, and tearing up herself, because she remembered promising Danny that those words were his, if he’d been alive to hear her, and now she’d said them to the Doctor, and this meant she’d moved on.

Afterwards he held her, inside her still, his weight on her, his face pressed against her neck. Clara would have let him stay there forever. Finally he sighed, and rolled away from her. Clara laid her head on his shoulder.

It was so strange to lie in that wide bed with him, so warm and cozy, with nothing but space visible overhead. Somebody else in this situation might feel cold, or frightened, or exposed. But she didn’t feel that way at all. She was in the safest place in the universe, with the safest man in the universe. For her. For others, perhaps not so much. But he was here, with her, and he’d just made love to her. He was dozing off, in fact, something she saw so rarely that she was overcome with tenderness. His face and hands were relaxed, for once. His hair was a mess, dark with sweat at the temples. Clara had never loved him more than at that moment.

She slipped out of bed and found her robe. She made her way toward where she’d remembered a door was. The TARDIS helpfully faded out the star field view as she got closer. Bathroom, yes, with a ridiculous giant tub in it that made the one in her room look silly and she’d always been embarrassed by that. A quick wash and a brush through her hair, a look in the mirror. Yes, he’d marked her throat. Were human-Gallifreyan kids a thing? She’d have to ask him, because if it was possible it might be a thing now. Or she’d have to go back on the pill. Or do something. Maybe he wanted kids. Did she?

She wanted to stop leaping forward to big decisions, that’s what. Enjoy this moment. Christmas morning with the Doctor. Whatever time of day it was for her. Maybe it was morning. She was feeling hungry like it was morning.

The Doctor stirred when she came back into the bedroom. She sat on the bed next to him and stroked his hair. He snagged her hand and kissed it.

“You hungry? Was going to grab something from the kitchen and bring it back. Breakfast in bed.”

“Sounds lovely.” His eyes went unfocused for a moment. “There’ll be a bottle of champagne there. And some orange juice.”

“Ooh, traditionalist.”

The TARDIS had moved the kitchen to right next to the Doctor’s door, which was thoughtful of her. Or of the Doctor, or some combination of the two of them. That relationship was complicated, and Clara had mostly stopped trying to puzzle it out. The other complicated question she’d stopped trying to answer was where the bottle of champagne had come from, and whether it had existed before the Doctor had told her to look for it. It existed now, and had a label that claimed it was Dom Pérignon 1921. That meant it was probably a sin to drink it in a Buck’s Fizz, but Clara wasn’t going to fuss too much. They were drinking it on Christmas morning. Or whatever time of day it was.

When she got back, the Doctor had got out of bed and put on a robe himself. Black, of course. His knobby knees were shockingly pale below the hem. The man needed to get some sunshine now and then.

Clara handed him the tray and he set it in the middle of the bed. He pressed his thumb against the head of the cork and out it popped, no fuss, no drama. Champagne into the glasses, orange juice to chase, and he was smirking as if he’d been very clever as he handed a glass to her.

“To us,” she said.

“To us.”

They touched glasses, drank. It was ridiculously good. Decadent, to be drinking this in the morning, eating cheese and grapes and slices of peach, while sitting under a starscape. Her life, she decided, was absurd. She had no idea what she’d done to deserve it.

“I was thinking,” he said. Clara’s eyes widened in alarm. “We should do something formal. To mark the occasion.”

“Okay.”

“We could–”

Clara braced herself for, well, she couldn’t guess what he was about to say, which was the fun and the terror of this man.

“We could get tattoos.”

“Tattoos?”

“Like they do on Coreward Palestra. Or ear piercings like on Respiregan Twelve. Matching body modifications are popular there. Feathers, for instance. Or functional tails. Or we could–”

Clara silenced him with a fast kiss, lest the list of possibilities get worse. “What would you like to do?”

The Doctor was silent. Clara took the opportunity to kiss him again, which he cooperated with for a while. He was thinking, probably. More than probably. She wasn’t certain he ever stopped thinking, even when sleeping.

Eventually he shifted away from her. He said, “Rings. There’s a place– the Satanic Nebula had jewel-smiths that were–But until then, please. This.”

And then he took the ring from his finger, the one with the gem on it, and slid it onto her hand. He had such slim long fingers that it fit on her ring finger and was only a tiny bit loose.

Clara couldn’t help it. It had been such a long day, a long night, a long set of hallucinations while under attack from Dream Crabs–whatever. She couldn’t help bursting into tears.

“Are you–what–Did I do something wrong? Clara?”

“Shut up. You idiot. You didn’t do anything wrong. You did something very right.”

He mercifully shut his mouth and let her hold onto him, and his arms went right around her without any hesitation at all. Sometimes he was so completely alien, and sometimes he wasn’t. He had learned, somewhere, how to comfort her when she was upset. He tipped her back, laid her down on the great bed, and lay beside her, wrapped around her. Clara pushed her face into his shoulder and cried, and he didn’t complain or grumble or say anything inappropriate at all, merely held her tight.

She got control of herself again, and he handed her a handkerchief. It was monogrammed with the initials “JS” and ridiculously large. She dried her face on acres of linen.

“You okay now?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Wow. Did not see this coming when I went to bed last night. Christmas Eve, I said, sleep in as late as I can get away with, pretend to like my presents, and now you’re back and we’re–”

“Yeah.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips again. A ridiculous, antique, courtly gesture, that she now understood was how he would tell her he loved her when not making love to her.

“Merry Christmas, Doctor.”

“We should be opening presents,” he said. “Eating tangerines.”

“Feel like I got the best present possible.”

He smiled at that, in a way that lit up his whole face. “Yeah.”

Limits

2015-02-08T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor was kneeling with his head in her lap, his arms around her waist. Clara ruffled her fingers through his hair. He seemed calm again. No more tears, no more apologies for using his safeword.

“I’m ready to try again,” he said.

Clara tugged at his hair gently. “You sure? You don’t have to. We can stop.”

“I want to try again.” He looked up at her. His face was so open and trusting that Clara’s heart ached. “You liked doing it. I could see how much. Let me give this to you. Ma’am.”

“Okay. But I’m going slowly this time.”

“Thank you. And Clara? If I may ask?”

“You may.”

“Stay close?”

“Yeah. I will.” She leaned down to him and kissed him. He closed his eyes for her and kissed back sweetly, so pliant and submissive. That fierce face was calm now; no sign of the distress he’d felt earlier. The distress that she’d caused him by pushing him too far too fast. She hadn’t realized how important it had been to him that he never say no to anything she asked. It made it harder on her, not that she’d tell him that: now she had to make sure she never pushed him past his limits again.

Clara knew what she had to do this time. She was going to have to make him like it, beg for it if she could bring him there, but he wasn’t going to be in the right place straight away. He never was, no matter how often they did this together. He needed a lot of time and attention, and this was a challenge to her every time. She was impatient. She wanted him sweating and straining immediately, but he always needed time. Time to slow his giant brain down, to center himself inside his body, to get his attention on his skin and her touch instead of on the universe wheeling around him.

He positioned himself against the cross, facing out, hands and wrists ready to be bound. They didn’t talk about the step stool she had to use to reach his hands or to be able to kiss him when he was all stretched out. He got something out of the fact that she was so much shorter than he but so very definitely in charge, but it wasn’t something they’d talked about. Yet. That was another of the difficult parts for her: coaxing this man into talking about his feelings, when she wasn’t completely sure she wanted to talk about hers. But she had to, or they had incidents like this. She hated messing up.

It said something about him that he was half-hard again already, just from being bound in place. He was watching her closely while she moved around him, getting what she wanted ready. He’d already seen it all laid out on the bed, but she didn’t want him looking at the little flogger and getting tense again. The ring, he’d be feeling that soon enough. And her hand on his balls, squeezing.

She loved the feeling of his balls in her fingers. Whether they were playing hard or not, he liked it when she cupped his balls and stroked behind them. She wasn’t going to start there, though. No, she was going to start with a nice kiss. Kiss him and let her hands stroke over him everywhere, a little tweak at his nipples, just enough to remind him they existed, down his flanks, to his thighs, back up again. Her tongue in his mouth, her hand cupping him now. He was fully hard now. Such a nice penis he had, elegant like his fingers, a nicely shaped head peeking out from the foreskin.

Oh, the things she wanted to do to this man’s cock.

He was breathing steadily now, calm as she needed him to be, pliant under her hands. Time to take the next slow step.

He had reacted poorly to photographs of more extreme gadgets. No metal, no plastic. He liked leather, so leather it was. Leather and silk and satin and the solid wood of the cross. The cock ring was leather, a wide heavy strip, much wider than anything she’d used on him before. It snapped around him easily.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s different.”

Clara slapped at his haunch. “Hush, you.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

It was a nice look on him, the black leather below his graying hair, his balls tugged away from his body, hanging down. So accessible. So vulnerable. Clara could hear it already, the way he’d gasp, the way he’d plead, the way the sweat would spring on on his face and under his arms.

“Who do you belong to?” she said.

“You, Clara.”

“Ready to please me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She could feel the tension in him now, as he braced for whatever she was going to do to him. His breath was coming faster, fingers curled into fists, arms unconsciously tugging against his bonds. Well, why not give him what he was bracing for? Or something else.

Clara’s hand drifted down. There was his cock, fully hard now, jutting down between his spread legs, and he was going to stay hard thanks to the strap around him. Soft skin, moving over hardness underneath. He made such nice sounds when she stroked him. Such nice sounds when she cupped his balls, when she flicked a finger against him. Such a nice intake of breath. Again, not enough to really hurt him, but enough to earn his complete attention.

“This is what I want from you,” she said.

“Please take it.”

“Oh, I will.” Another flick, and a little gasp and flinch.

Now Clara squeezed. Carefully, watching his face to see how she was doing. No sharp sudden movements like last time. This time she closed her fingers around him steadily and listen to him moan. He was trembling, hips moving reflexively. It hadn’t tipped from pleasure to pain yet, then. She released him and let him whimper. Again, harder this time, right over the edge: he stiffened and held himself completely still.

Clara found that patience was easy now, as she squeezed his balls and released, experimenting with him, finding that edge and riding it, leading him further along every time, holding him harder. Was she cruel? There had to be some sharp places in her, that she could love doing this to a man she loved, love hearing him whimper, love watching his face go red, the sweat spring out on his brow. That she could do this until he was begging her for something, anything, please Clara please please.

Time for a respite. A moment of pause before she brought him all the way there. She stroked his cock gently, played with the head a little, almost tenderly. His breathing slowed. He leaned his forehead against hers, which was allowed. Oh, this lovely, lovely ridiculous man. What a gift he was.

She said, “You’ve done so well, Doctor.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” His voice was unsteady, which she loved hearing.

“One more thing to bear. Do you know what’s next?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The little flogger.”

“Oh. I–” Clara waited for him to find words for whatever it was inside him. “Kiss me first. Clara. Please.”

There it was, the Doctor wrung out, completely open and vulnerable, kissing her with all of himself in his eyes, nothing held back. This was why she did it. Why he did it, she suspected, because he couldn’t get here any other way but he wanted it so desperately. She kept her hand where it was, to remind him how much in her power he was, and kissed him. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed. Soft lips, gentle kisses.

She pulled away from him and he strained after her for an instant before relaxing in his bonds. He was watching her just as avidly as she watched him. Now the little whip, a tiny thing with little knotted lashes on it. He was ready for it this time. She held it up to him and he kissed it. She got down from the step and ran the lashes over his thighs, his jutting cock. Held it between his legs. Flicked her wrist up once.

The lashes snapped up against his balls. He writhed against his bonds, shuddering, gasping. Sweat running freely from his temples now, along his ribs. Clara smiled. Oh, this was what she wanted. This man, giving his pain to her as a gift. She was as wet under her skirt as he was hard. One touch and she’d come right this instant. But she denied herself; that would be his reward later, to bring the both of them to orgasm.

Up onto the step, to claim another kiss from him.

She said, “Did you like that?”

“Y-yes. Ma’am.”

“Would you like another one?”

“Harder? Please, Clara.”

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Down from the step, into position. He’d braced himself already. Clara grinned a feral grin and gave him a little casual flick of the lashes against his balls, just a friendly tap, and he gasped. She gave him no time to brace himself again, but snapped her wrist sharply, harder than the first time. That was a cry from him, a cry and a whimper and a creak as he pulled hard against the cross. She was pressed up against him before he settled, before he could silence himself, kissing him again.

So much less work than the flogger, and the results were so exquisite. He was deep in trance state, moaning at every touch of her hand on his body. Wide pupils, sweat, trembling arms.

“One more,” she said. “You can bear one more for me.”

He nodded slowly.

Clara didn’t give him just one, but three more strokes in quick succession. That was a full-throated cry from him at last. She threw the flogger aside and leapt to him, undid his bonds, caught him as he came from from the cross. She helped him down to the floor. He steadied himself on hands and knees, his thighs spread wide. He knew what she liked, even in this state with tears on his face he was obedient. Oh, yes, tears on his face, and that was what she wanted to see. The state he needed to be in. He’d have days of peace after this.

He kissed her feet. How he managed to do it gracefully after that, she wasn’t sure, but he did, and it was touching. He stayed where he was, trembling, still weeping, his mouth open.

“So good,” she said. “You were so good.”

“Thank you.” Voice so low and rough, so raw. She forgave him his failure to say “ma’am” after that. And now his reward, and her reward too: that cock, still hard, was going to feel so good inside her.

Explosion of the Daleks

2015-02-07T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor poked his head up. Daleks. Lots of Daleks in the bunker. Too many Daleks, and they weren’t in the least interested in communicating with him.

“Clara, I hate to say this, but I think a tactical retreat might be–”

“A tactical retreat?”

“Run!”

He grabbed her and and tugged her into motion. There was an odd whistling in the air, then a Dalek said, “Retreat! Retreat!”

The bunker full of Daleks blew up. The Doctor watched the explosion for a moment, then turned his back and ducked, pulling Clara down with him. She squawked and covered her hands with her head. Debris and clods of dirt rained down on them. A dismembered plunger landed next to their feet. The Doctor ran his tongue over his lips. Quite satisfying, really.

“What did that?” she said.

“Nitro-nine, if I’m not mistaken. And I’m not.”

“What’s that?”

“An explosive a friend of mine was quite fond of. I wonder.” He gnawed on his thumb for a moment.

He stood and headed toward what remained of the bunker. It had been quite satisfyingly obliterated, and if he was right, the author of the obliteration would be nearby to observe the results. And there she was: human female, leather jacket, backpack, hair in a braid. He waved to her and headed her way at a jog, Clara at his heels.

“Ace! It is you!” Ace studied him cautiously. “Don’t recognize me with this jacket on?”

“Professor?”

The Doctor found himself reaching down and tapping her nose before he quite realized what he was doing. Old habits. Old feelings. He had been quite ridiculously fond of this young person at the time. “It’s me,” he said.

“You’ve regenerated?” Ace said. “But–”

“Several times. I’m from a long ways further in my own timeline.” She looked relieved, and a moment later he found himself being hugged. By Ace, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. He might even have returned it, perhaps even have kissed the top of her head. Not that he was that sort of man any more, not usually. When she released him, he studied her, trying to place her in her own timeline. Before she’d gone to the Academy, he judged. That mean he himself was– “Is my prior self around? The fellow with the hat?”

“He’s in the TARDIS, doing something he wouldn’t explain to me even though I’m perfectly capable of understanding it.” Ace rolled her eyes.

He heard a stifled laugh from behind himself and turned. Clara had a hand over her mouth. “Right. Introductions. Clara Oswald, Ace McShane.”

“Pleased.”

“Likewise.”

The two shook hands solemnly.

“And what brings you here, Professor?”

“I am seeking a control mechanism, something the Daleks have been using to monkey with the trains in the Tube.”

“Funny. I’m looking for the same thing. Only I was just going to blow it up. Might have just now.”

The Doctor snapped out his sonic screwdriver and ran it for a moment. “No, still operating. Hope you don’t mind if we take it and run it off a few hundred years in the past.”

“Be my guest,” said Ace, and she grinned.

Decoherence

2015-02-07T12:00:00+00:00

Sixty-two years. Sixty-two years is an entire lifetime for many humans. Sixty-two years is an eyeblink for a Time Lord in one mental mode. It is an eternity for a Time Lord who has slowed down his perception of time so that he might savor every last one of the seconds of those sixty-two years. Nearly two billion seconds. (He cannot help but enumerate them.)

He can, if he wishes, count them, but that is a waste of his mind. And worse, it is a reminder that they are dripping away. He does not wish to keep an accounting of them. He wishes to be surprised when they end. (He cannot help but count.)

A Time Lord can control his experience of time. He knows where he is in it, and in which direction he is moving. He feels his own motion through the quantum foam. He can slow himself down, so that he feels the elapsed time in a day the way she does, the way Clara does. He stops begrudging her this need to sleep, to dream. (He lies awake beside her and watches her dream, committing her ever-deeper to memory.)

Time has an arrow. It is asymmetrical; it points toward a state of greater entropy. Not even Time Lords can alter this, for it is a physical law. The wave function collapses; entropy increases. This is observable even in individuals moving at will through time and space in a little blue box. (He denies this, for surely this system is not closed and with the expenditure of great energy he can alter the entropy level measurably.)

There comes a day when she looks at them in a mirror and tells him that they match now, that she is as gray as he is. He shakes his head and tells her he has no idea what she’s talking about, she looks exactly the same as she ever has, and would she stop wittering about and help him open this safe? (He starts choosing adventures that do not require quite as much running.)

Somewhere there is a crack in the fabric of space-time and beyond it is Gallifrey. The infinite schism and the unimaginable Time Lord technology that ripped it open hold the solution to his problem. He is aware that they may well clap him in irons the moment they see him, but he is certain he can escape them and steal one more great secret from them. (He has planned this theft for nearly forty years now and is confident.)

The human body renews itself every seven years, but it does so using a blueprint that becomes ever more blurry. Entropy increases. Systems fail. He takes her to all the pretty places he has known or read of, to the quiet peaceful corners of the universe where the high-energy collisions of civilizations do not happen. She shakes her head at him but he refuses to discuss it. (He is superstitious in this way: if he does not look inside the box, the wave function will not collapse.)

There is part of him that has forgotten she is human, that expects when she breathes her last that golden light will suffuse her and burst out and that the regeneration energy will rebuild her into something unexpected, something she will look into a mirror and be shocked by. He is there, holding her hand, so that he will be the first thing she sees and it will continue on, an infinite cycle. (He knows this will not happen, for in those sixty-two years he has not managed to find Gallifrey.)

He is aware that he will recover from this as he has recovered from every one of the losses that came before her. Some day his chest will stop aching for her, some day he will stop reaching out for her hand. Some day he will reach for a hand and it will be someone else, because she told him to find someone to travel with, and the sooner the better. He consented, because that was what he always did when Clara told him what to do. Get on with your life, you stupid old man. Some day soon he’ll work out how. (He knows time will take away this too from him, as it takes everything.)

Five Lies

2015-02-07T12:00:00+00:00

Clara lasted five days before she called him. She was still angry, or so she kept saying. She’d yelled a lot about the whole mess on the moon while Danny listened patiently. He’d been most upset to hear that Courtney had been with them; she had brushed that off with a handwave as being perfectly normal. Courtney had loved it, which was she should have done. But the Doctor’s behavior had been completely unacceptable, completely horrible, and it was the last straw. Absolutely positively the last straw.

But she couldn’t have it end like that. She had to say goodbye. Of course.

So she called him. The TARDIS appeared in her bedroom before she’d quite got through stumbling through her prepared introductory statement, written out clearly in a notebook. That was suspicious; it implied he hadn’t gone far away as instructed, though who knew. The Doctor emerged cautiously, receiver to his ear, and she’d sighed and hung up her mobile. What was the point of having a little speech to read if he was going to be there, gazing at her mournfully with those big blue eyes?

“Shut up,” she said. “Shut up. Listen to me.”

He sat cross-legged on her bed, facing her, and listened to her. She delivered the speech anyway. A version of it. It was over. Danny didn’t want her traveling with the Doctor. (Lie number one: Danny had said nothing like that whatsoever.) It was time she moved on. She had her life to lead, and she couldn’t do this any more. (Lie number two: the idea of never leaving Earth again made her want to cry.) He had plenty of people he could travel with instead, she knew, so he wouldn’t miss her. (Lie number three: she could see quite clearly that he was curling up around a heartache that grew with every word out of her mouth.) It wasn’t safe, it had never been safe, and she was no longer okay with not being safe. (Lie number four: she had never been okay with being safe.) Danny would allow her one last hurrah with the Doctor, one last trip, so long as it was completely safe. (Lie number five: the idea of the trip had come to her that very moment.)

She sputtered to a halt, eventually, and looked at him straight on. He wasn’t angry. His face was oddly blank. He was staring at his hands, cupped in his lap.

“There you have it. What do you have to say to that?”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

“You’ve told me quite clearly what you want. There’s nothing else for me to say.”

That was not disappointment she felt. It couldn’t be. That had to be hurt that he wasn’t fighting for her at all. He wasn’t trying. He sat there, just like Danny, and told her she could have what she wanted.

The Doctor was saying, “I’ll find some place for us to go. Something spectacular for you. And safe. And then–”

“Then?”

“It’ll be as you wish.”

“Right. As I wish.” No more painful decisions, no more watching him leap into chasms without her, no more being abandoned at the last second with the fate of the human race in her hands. No more moon spiders, Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Sontarans, super-intelligent shades of the color blue. A quiet safe life for her, just as she wished.

“When are we leaving?”

The Doctor’s head came up and he stared at her for a moment. He blinked. “Any time.”

Protective Coloration

2015-02-07T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor seized Clara and tumbled back with her into one of the little curtained alcoves.

“What the–”

He clamped a hand over her mouth briefly and released it as the attendant approached. She caught on, thankfully, and pulled further back into the alcove. He flashed the attendant the psychic paper; she bowed to him and promised to be back in a moment with the wine and the incense.

“What’s up?” Clara hissed at him.

“My alarm tripped. The guards have discovered the breach in the queen’s security.”

“Uh oh. They saw me. They know I’m involved.”

“They didn’t see me. I’m in disguise.” He was, in fact, a master of disguise this time, all dressed up like one of the minor nobility.

Clara snorted. “Deep cover. You’re wearing a satin coat and a sash.”

He ignored this and peeked outside the curtains. A hubbub at the entrance of the great hall. The musicians faltered and then resumed.

The attendant reappeared with a carafe of wine and a bowl of incense, already burning. The air was hazy with it already, but it would help the illusion that they were just another pair of courting aristocrats. And– he aimed his sonic screwdriver at the burning stick and altered its chemistry ever so slightly. He grinned. That had been very clever of him. Or it was going to be very clever, once the guards got a snootful of that instead of the usual aphrodisiac. It would make them very suggestible indeed.

“This is a snogging booth,” Clara said. “One of those snogging booths you told me not to go near.”

The Doctor ignored that, too. They were not snogging booths, and he was quite certain he’d explained that.

“Soldiers in the hall,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. It was rather adorable, in his opinion. Enticing, even. Then she sneezed. That was adorable too. The Doctor rubbed at his own nose in sympathy; the smoke from the incense was syrupy sweet, and there was rather a lot of it.

Clara said, “Just because we’re hiding in a snogging booth doesn’t mean you should get any ideas.”

That was not adorable. The Doctor ignored it.

She said, “You think the queen got away?”

“We need to keep the palace shields down for at least ten more minutes. Then they can find us.”

The Doctor risked another look out: a handful of soldiers, fanning out through the hall, and the raised voices of annoyed celebrants. “They’re starting to search the alcoves. If they recognize you–”

“Have to make sure they don’t see my face.”

“No idea how we’ll manage that. This isn’t a masked ball. That’s on the spring equinox.”

“Sometimes you’re pretty stupid, you know that?”

Clara grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him down to her level. And then she kissed him. The Doctor flailed his arms around. She kept kissing him. Her mind, his mind, touching– he flinched away, but her free hand slipped inside his jacket and onto his waist. Her thoughts battered at him for long seconds, images of them on a bed, on the floor of the TARDIS console room, everywhere. Finally he regained control and closed himself off.

Kissing him was a good idea. He had to admit it. It’s what the alcoves were for: privacy for courting couples at the grand celebration of the return of the sun. Conceiving a child on this day of the year was a grand honor. He had explained all this to her and she must have been listening after all because she was still kissing him, and his entire body was on fire. He opened his mouth and her tongue thrust inside immediately. She pulled him back down onto the couch with him and then they struggled for a bit over who was to be on top. He settled this at last by grasping her wrists and stretching them over her head. Clara moaned and let him kiss her for a minute.

Then she said, “I wanna be on top.”

“Shut up,” he said, and then shut her up with his tongue in her mouth. Clara Oswald might protest about wanting to be on top, but that’s not what she craved. What she craved was his body on hers, her wrists pinned over her head, his thigh hard between her legs. And oh, was he certain of this. He knew her fantasies now, in detail, thanks to those moments of telepathic contact, which he would either apologize for later or never, ever mention or hint at or go near ever again. It all depended on what happened after they got out of this. If she slapped him, no mention. If she asked him to carry on, apology. Later. Much later.

The incense was thick in the air and it made his head swim. Had he perhaps miscalculated? Bother. And bah! It didn’t signify. The Doctor set himself to the task of doing what any courting aristocrat would do on Solstice Night: make his beloved tremble. Clara whimpered under him. The Doctor lifted her skirt.

Bootsteps coming nearer. The swish and clatter of curtains being pulled open and then closed again. The outraged voices of courting aristocrats.

She was panting under him now. He rolled his body onto hers fully. She wrapped her legs around him.

The rattle of curtain rings on the metal rod. The Doctor did not release her. “Excuse us, your excellencies,” said the soldiers, and the curtains rang shut again.

“We’re safe now,” Clara said.

“Five more minutes,” he said.

He bit her neck. She moaned.

“I’m still going to slap you when we’re back on the TARDIS,” she said.

“Shut up.”

As it turned out, the events of the next half hour were a successful distraction from whatever it was she’d been angry with him about, and she never did get around to slapping him. Therefore he’d been clever at least twice over, which made it a very good day indeed.

Traveling Hopefully

2015-01-18T12:00:00+00:00

Traveling Hopefully

2015-01-18T12:00:00+00:00

Malcolm gave the switch on the telephone a healthy jiggle, marveling at the concept that anyone in this day and age would still own, let alone use, an old-style rotary telephone, but the receiver remained silent. The phone was dead.

“We’re stuck here, sweetheart,” he said to the doe-eyed woman in the plaid skirt. “No ferry, no phone. All hell breaking loose out there in the North Atlantic.”

She glared at him suspiciously and picked up the receiver herself, but she soon reached the same conclusion he had. “Seriously? This is our line out?”

“You’re in the Outer Hebrides, sweetheart. For the duration of the storm.”

She fixed him with a surprisingly sharp look. “Marooned with a madman.”

“Shipwrecked with a swee–”

“Don’t say it. You haven’t earned the right to endearments. I don’t even know your name.”

“Malcolm,” he said, and he stuck his hand out.

“Clara,” she said, and shook his hand. Firm grip, cool hand, and a little fire in the way she met his eyes. Malcolm showed his teeth in a smile, which was not returned.

“Nice to share an abandoned waiting room with you.”

“Likewise. Maybe.” That was a sidelong glare for sure.

And who the fuck was this bird? She’d showed up a few minutes after he, no luggage, no handbag, and no coat against the rising storm. Suspicious. And to a man who’d just received a summons from the PM to get his arse back south, for urgent reasons unspecified, it rose to the level of fucking suspicious.

Malcolm leaned casually against the abandoned ferry ticket desk. “On holiday, then?”

“No.”

“And what keeps you busy when you’re not marooned dockside in a storm?”

Clara was now wandering around behind the desk, looking for something. Another phone? Good luck. She said, “Teaching school in east London, most of the time.”

“Ah.” Malcolm found himself relaxing. Not a politician, not a civil servant, not a journalist. Not a professional menace to his country. He hadn’t realized how much tension he’d managed to build up in the short minutes he’d been sharing the waiting room with her. “What brings you to this hellish little island if not a holiday?”

She frowned and walked away from him to look out the window. “A friend ditched me here. No luggage, no coat, no anything. Thought I could make my way back but then–” She gestured toward the window. The ferry that ought to be there, taking them to the mainland, was conspicuously not present. Instead a storm was whipping up.

Malcolm closed his mouth on the first thing that occurred to him to say. Revised it. Revised it again. The worst of his tongue was a special service he reserved for politicians, not for schoolteachers. “That was inconsiderate of him,” he said finally.

“Understatement of the year,” she muttered. “And why are you here? Local?”

Malcolm snorted. “Glaswegian boy here. No. This was supposed to be a holiday, a holiday in sodden hell. Fucking refreshing it’s been.”

She raised an eyebrow at his language but to his relief did not seem to have recognized him.

Rain on the window, gray skies, gray water, white-capped waves, and a heavy sea incoming. The ferry house was made of stone and set up a hill from the dock proper, and it looked to have survived several hundred years of storms. They’d be safe there, if cold and hungry. However, Malcolm felt no urge to cap his shortened holiday with a bit of privation.

He said, “Look, darling, let’s continue this in the pub over a pint and something hot. Quarter mile up the road, best we get walking now before it gets worse.”

“Look, Malcolm, I can’t. I’m just going to sit it out here.”

“Clara–”

“I’ve got exactly forty pounds in my pocket, and that’s only because I always carry something for emergencies because this is not the first time he’s dumped me dead in a ditch. I need about that to get back to London, which is where my cash card is. I’m lucky I had my phone with me this time. Damn him.”

The string of obscenities that occurred to Malcolm once again did not make it past his lips, because they weren’t aimed at her but at the fucking cunt who treated her like that. Routinely.

She was saying, “And besides, no coat. I’ll get soaked through. I’ll be fine here. Bored maybe, but dry.”

Malcolm had the feeling he was about to get himself into a mess that couldn’t be talked out of, but– those eyes. That spark in her voice. That no-nonsense attitude she had. This woman didn’t need him to solve her problems, would do very well without him, and that was more interesting than anything he’d encountered in the last five years.

He unlocked his wheelie suitcase and pulled out a fleece. He tossed it to her. “Fuck the money. You’ll cover it when we’re back in London. Me mam would never forgive me if I left you to freeze in this hovel.”

She studied him, head tilted. “All right, Malcolm. Let’s get a drink.”

The walk back up the road was more of a jog, thanks to the downpour, and Clara demonstrated herself to be considerably more fit than he, even in those ridiculous heels. The rain rushed down in waves as the wind gusted, but there were as yet dry moments. He’d underestimated the distance to the village; easy to do when one was being driven in a car and paying attention to the letter in one’s pocket and not to the road. An actual paper letter they’d sent him; his smartphone was useless in this unconnected primitive island of the Outer Hebrides. Which was of course why he’d chosen it. Make the cunts work if they wanted him.

There was his blood pressure rising again. Best to set that aside until he was surrounded by southern arse-faced morons once more. Concentrate for now on the girl beside him, on the cluster of fucking picturesque white-painted thatch-roofed buildings in front of him. On walking with the rain lashing at his back. On hovering just behind her so it hit him, not her. On shouldering off his coat and holding it over their heads so she wouldn’t get quite as wet, because fuck, it was pissing down now. She took his wheelie bag and tucked herself under his outstretched arm easily; she was a wee thing.

There was the inn, pub at one end. They dodged inside just as the heavens opened above them in earnest, with a howl of wind and a roar of rain. Malcolm wiped water from his face and shook his hands dry. Clara was a dripping waif bundled in his gray fleece. She stripped it off and wrung it out.

The woman behind the desk took them for a married couple, thanks to his ring, and he did nothing to disabuse her of the notion. He didn’t want Clara given any grief. They were near booked up anyway; other visitors had been trapped by the surprising intensity of this storm. Unseasonal, it was, or so the clerk told him at annoying length. She stuck him with an expensive room, en-suite. He returned to Clara with two room keys in hand, great old-fashioned brass keys with hand-written tags. Fucking quaint. He gave her one and watched her turn it over in her little hands.

“There is only one room at the inn, sweetheart, and I have taken it for us. Come on.”

He turned and hauled his suitcase up the creaking stairs. The room was large, tucked right up at the top of the inn, with a deep bay window overlooking the sea. The window had a seat built into it, covered in embroidered throw pillows and a couple of fucking stuffed bears; no doubt tourists loved that touch. It had one double bed in it, under the eaves.

“We’re married,” he said to her. “As far as the daft cow at the desk is concerned. Saw my ring and leapt to conclusions.”

“Easy to leap to,” Clara said, under her breath.

He held up his left hand. “I wear this as a distraction,” he said. “Protective coloration, like a tiger blending into the underbrush. Been divorced an age. Truly. I’m not fucking wi’ you.”

“I don’t care about your ring. I care about that.” She pointed at the bed.

“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. I’ll steal a pillow and sleep on the floor. Me mam didn’t raise me to pester women who aren’t interested.”

“Not a predator, then.”

He grinned mirthlessly. “No. There’s only one kind of person I even think about eviscerating, and you aren’t it. You can trust me not to be a cunt.”

Her eyes widened at his language then she laughed. She peered at herself in the little mirror set over the battered dresser. She ran her fingers through her hair then shook her head. Malcolm thought she was dead gorgeous as she was, all wind-blown and wet, but he’d learned that he best not say that sort of thing out loud to women. They always took it badly. Assumed it was some kind of veiled insult.

She shrugged at herself in the mirror and then laughed at some private joke. “Right. Shall we get that drink?”

The pub was overheated and drafty at the same time. Clara chose a booth by a window; Malcolm did not quarrel with this choice, because it faced him away from the flat screen over the bar. The storm promised to be a spectacular thing to watch, much more interesting than the rolling twenty-four hour news cycle. He didn’t want to know what mess was so bad they were willing to wait days to get him back to clean it up. Or so bad that the fucking mental rejects they’d replaced him with had been unable to cope with it.

He said, “What’ll it be?”

“Red wine.”

He got her a glass of something that was bound to be terrible and himself a dram of the local single malt, the pride of the island and source of all income that wasn’t from the sale of overpriced food in inns. It wasn’t bad. He’d near drowned himself in it his first days on the island. Then he’d gone through a week drying himself out in more ways than one. No politics. No newspapers. No telly. No screaming. Hours spent reading what he liked, for pleasure, and not drugging himself to sleep. His libido had returned around the third week, which had been annoying if a bit of a relief. Good to know he wasn’t a total husk.

It had almost been a disappointment when the imploring letter from the PM had arrived. He’d almost started to take an interest in food again when that letter had arrived to set him retching again. Metaphorically. Fucking twat Tom.

He stole a glance over at the girl he’d tangled himself with, the only good thing about his aborted departure from the island; possibly the only good thing about this village.

What was it about her? She was good-looking, yes, but that was hardly interesting in his world, littered as it was with ambitious pretty things of all genders. The freshness, possibly. The resilience. The way she smiled at that first crack of thunder as storm front arrived for real. Or maybe it was just that little plaid skirt that had turned his head.

And oh, it was turned. But he had better manners than to take advantage. And she might yet prove to be a moron. If she stayed interesting after an evening’s conversation, he’d get her number from her and follow up in London. Fuck him if he wouldn’t need the distraction from the hell his life would be once again.

Assuming she was free for his pursuit.

“Tell me about this wanker who left you up here,” he said.

Clara shook her head. “He didn’t mean to, probably. He gets distracted.”

“Haven’t got much good to say about a fucking cunt who’d abandon a friend in the middle of nowhere with no way to get home.”

Clara sighed, her exasperation clear. “He means well. He’s just not, not of this world sometimes. And no, I’m not making excuses. Well, I am. And I am tired of it.” She took a healthy swig of her wine then froze and made a face. Malcolm revised his opinion up a notch; she could recognize swill. He tasted his own whiskey. More ice than liquor. Fucking knob of a barman.

He said, “Did you at least enjoy the island?”

“No. That’s the worst of it. Looks like it’s beautiful when the weather’s better. What is there to do here anyway?”

“Drink, fish, paint, read, go tramping about and get pneumonia when the rain catches you.”

“Is that what you did?”

“I spent my time shut up at the house I let for the summer, reading. Sulking a bit if I’m honest.”

“Sounds heavenly.”

“Sulking? Fucking overrated.”

“I could do with a few weeks of sulking in a corner.”

“You look like you couldn’t stay sulking for more than a day tops.”

“I have managed an entire week sulking, I’ll have you know.”

“Don’t believe you. Any man who got a look at you would fucking tie himself into knots getting you to smile.”

“Not this one,” she said, sourly.

“Like that between you and your friend, then?”

“Like what?” Then Clara set her wine glass down and shook her head. “Not like that at all. He’s just a friend. You know, you remind me of him. A much younger brother or something.”

Malcolm cocked an eyebrow at her. “Advantage or disadvantage for me?”

“Serious disadvantage. But the good news for you is that you’re going to look wonderful when you go gray.”

“Good to know.”

Malcolm watched her drink a little more. He took a swig of his whiskey, which still had too much fucking ice in it. He fished out a couple of cubes and slid them across the table. Clara smiled at this, the first smile she’d granted him. She flicked the ice back at him. It slid all the way across the table and landed on his crotch. Malcolm yanked the ice out of his trousers and tossed it at her. He flashed her a V. At that she broke out laughing. The pleasure that washed through him at the sound was absurd.

“What do you do when you’re at home, Malcolm?”

“Public relations,” he said, showing his teeth.

Clara stared at him for a second, wide-eyed, then she grinned. “I can just see you dealing with the press, telling them, oh I don’t know, my twat-faced client’s firm regrets the fucking cock-up with the fucking arsenic. Four-letter relations.”

Malcolm returned the grin; was a treat hearing those words coming from that pretty mouth. “Pure dead brilliant name for a firm. I’ll have that printed on cards when I get back.”

“Name and number on the front, fuck off in flowery script on the back.”

She was laughing as she said it and Malcolm could not look away from her. Doe eyes, bright smile, god damn him, a month in this place had softened his brain. How else to explain this urgent need to keep her smiling at him?

“On holiday from your PR firm up here in the sunny north Atlantic.”

“Sort of.” She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shifted uneasily. “And what do you teach when you’re not stranded in the Outer Hebrides by a wanker who’ll be getting a bollocking from me?”

“English. Secondary level.”

“Jane Eyre and that shite? Heathcliff dashing his wee self against a fucking tree in a fucking great storm?”

“Yeah, exactly your kind of thing, I can tell. See that tree out there?” She pointed out the window toward an oak that looked as if it were three centuries old and didn’t give a tinker’s about faff-arsed North Sea storms.

“I’d piss against that,” Malcolm said.

“You’d look fantastic dashing yourself against that. I can just see the blood dripping down your face.”

“Believe me, sweetheart, I’ll feel the need to beat my head against a tree about ten minutes after I get back to fucking London and the fucking inbred Oxbridge twats I have to deal with every day. Slam my head against it, scream fuck, and do it again until I bleed.”

“You should try slamming somebody else’s forehead against a tree,” she said. “A lot more effective.”

He smirked. “Got a list of candidates as long as my arm and that’s without looking at my notes.”

“Are you sure you enjoy your job?”

Malcolm tipped the last of his whiskey up. “Never said I did, sweetheart. Another? And maybe food?”

“Not that wine again, please. It was vile.”

He ordered two whiskies, neat, and a couple of pasties, which was about all he’d trust this place to do. They probably came from a box in the freezer, which was a comforting thought. He brought the drinks back and sat down again. Clara was now watching the storm through the window, dark skies, and ever darkening though it would be a while yet before sunset this far north. The rain was rolling in waves up the hill from the sea, driven by the wind. Lightning flashed and cracked, nearer than he was comfortable thinking about.

“Barman says it’ll be clear by tomorrow. Ferry should run again.”

“Good to know.” She leaned her chin on her fist and scooted closer to the window. That was complete absorption on her face, and more than a little delight. The lightning flashed and she smiled. Dimple on her cheek, button nose. So pretty. Malcolm drank and watched her. Too pretty for him, too young for him, too innocent for him, but no one could fault him for admiring her.

“What are you looking at?”

Malcolm found himself smiling. “You. You’re fucking gorgeous, like a fucking English rose. Which is about the only nice thing the fucking English have ever done for me.”

“That’s very sweet of you, if I ignore the language.”

“Sorry, darling. It comes with the Malcolm package.”

“What else comes with the Malcolm package?”

Malcolm ran his fingers through his hair. Fuck him if he could find something to say that wasn’t about the job. What did he do when he was at home? “I play the clarinet. Jazz. I do a mean Sing Sing Sing.” He mimed playing briefly.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. When I had a life fucking donkey’s years ago in Glasgow I used to play out with my mates. Nothing big, just round the local and the odd wedding. But I keep my hand in even now. Makes the rare evening at home a treat.”

“I’m impressed.”

“You’re easily impressed, sweetheart. There isn’t much to Malcolm past that. My job ate me out from the inside.”

“Is that why you came up here?”

He frowned. “Something like.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

He stared at his glass, sitting on the table in a puddle. She was the first person who’d even asked him why he’d left. He touched the glass, did not drink, and found himself saying, “Might want.”

The food arrived, which was a welcome distraction from the question. Malcolm had been avoiding contemplating the reasons for his sudden resignation. Yes, there was the sheer humiliating fact of looking six moves ahead in Fleming’s game and seeing checkmate looming. The PM hadn’t seen it coming, at least, so he’d retained the appearance of mastery of his own destiny. But Malcolm knew it to be illusion, knew himself bested, and didn’t much enjoy the feeling. Why had it happened? He’d lost the plot somewhere along the way. Lost his fucking moorings and been blown to sea like a fucking useless ferry boat to hell. To mix his fucking metaphors.

Food on the table. Right. He should eat it. His suits were hanging on him like a rag on a knife blade these days. Too much tooth-grinding at night. Clara was eating but watching him closely. He sighed and gave in. He had a bite of the pastie. Food. Hot. Would keep him alive most likely. When covered in sauce it probably wouldn’t make him retch.

He swallowed and said, “Sweetheart, I’ll tell you why I came up here. I sent myself to Coventry before I could be sent. Risk paid off, because I’ve been summoned back to rescue the incompetent fucks once again.”

She was watching him closely, listening. Malcolm shrugged. “Suppose I’m going back. No clue why.” He didn’t want to talk about how he felt about going back to Downing Street. He might figure out what he felt, and then he’d be fucked. So he said, “What are you going back to?”

Clara’s face lit up. “The kids at the school, my job. Don’t know why I’m here. Well, not here now with you. I meant on this island. Which I wouldn’t even know the name of if it hadn’t been on a sign at the dock.”

He was relieved the let the conversation shift back to her. “How the fucking hell did you get here, then? Helicopter?”

Clara’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. Then he said be right back, hopped in, and was gone. I knew the signs, so I started walking.”

“Your serial abandoner is minted, then.”

“Not my serial anything, but yeah. He’s sort of a philanthropist now; I guess you could call it. Travels around meddling with things, fixing things, mostly.”

“You the philanthropic sort?”

“Not particularly. Feel like a bad human being for saying that, but I’m not in much of a position for it. I feel like I do my bit by teaching. Which I am good at.”

“Why do you tag along with this fucking self-absorbed fetus, then?”

“I see wonders. That’s what I say when people ask me. It’s true, but it’s become, I don’t know, automatic. Rote.” She leaned her fist on her chin. “I see wonders, and I see horrors. I see life and death, and it’s the death that stays with me afterward. I don’t know how he does it.”

Malcolm showed his teeth. “You develop a shell around you. Nothing gets through.”

“It’s either that or wake up screaming every night.”

“Fuck me if I’d want that.” So why had he done it? He just kept everybody around him awake by screaming through the days, and fuck him if there was any difference.

“I’d almost forgotten why I was doing it. What I think I was put here to do. Seeing new places is fun, but why am I there? To help? I’m rubbish at helping entire civilizations that have gone wrong or cities on the verge of collapse. There I am, talking to people from a culture I could spend my whole life just scratching the surface of, but they’re dying of plague or something like that, and I’m there to follow orders while somebody else cures them. It’s–”

“Frustrating?”

“Maddening. Anybody could fetch tea for him. Why am I there doing it? I’m pretty good at teaching. I know I’m helping when I do that.”

“Your wanker likes big problems.”

“Yeah. I’m thinking I need to refocus on the small ones. And not just because he dumped me in a random place again.” There was that little flare again, the anger, the spice in the sweetness of the roses.

“Anger management, sweetheart.”

“Going to manage this anger, all right. Going to keep it alive so the next time I see him it can remind me what I decided just now.”

“Well done,” he said, and raised his glass. “To telling the wankers no.” She clinked hers against it, and they solemnly drank to it.

They talked more, over the bad food and the acceptable whiskey, and she stayed interesting. She had a brain, a rather alarmingly quick one, good at picking up on his jokes. Even the sideways ones that relied on chains of reference, the ones the political sheep whose heels he used to nip at had never caught. Especially those. And she gave it right back to him. Not afraid of his tongue at all, not afraid of anything. He was content, talking to this woman. He wanted to talk to her more, talk all night if she’d put up with him. And she seemed to be putting up with him. Miracles did happen still.

Her glass went dry, eventually, and so did his.

“Back in a mo’,” he said.

He’d intended to order a third round for them, but the bar was three deep. He ducked into the gent’s and had a nice long satisfying piss, followed by a sharp look in the mirror to make sure he was still presentable. He ran his hands through his hair a few times. Still painfully thin, but not quite so gray in the face as he’d been, and this jumper didn’t make him look like he was closer to his fiftieth than his fortieth. Before he left he shoved some coins into the machine and bought a couple of rubbers. Couldn’t happen if he wasn’t prepared.

He considered waiting his turn at the bar, but the prospect raised his blood pressure nearly as high as the last time Ollie Reeder had deliberately fucked up. The entire population of the village was there, watching the telly and saying fucking banal and predictable shite at each other about the storm.

He went back to Clara empty-handed. “I got a bottle upstairs,” he said. “Jura fifteen year. Was going to take it home and save it for when I needed a royal piss-up, but this is just as good an occasion.”

“It’s too noisy here now,” was all she said.

She stood and flicked her hair over her shoulder. He followed her out of the bar, watching her pert arse only slightly more avidly than was appropriate for a man ogling a woman he’d met only hours before and had solemnly sworn not to molest. Which he wouldn’t ever do, not he, but he was getting her number before they were on that ferry. And he was calling her the very evening they were back in that fucking poxy city down south. Maybe the second evening. Wouldn’t do to seem too fucking eager to take her out. Or take her to bed. Eager though he was.

Or eager just to talk to her some more. He’d take that. A phone call, that would do him. He could wait for more. Though he’d bought the rubbers, so he was traveling hopefully. Maybe she’d be in the mood. He’d only do it if she seemed like she wouldn’t be treating it as a fling, though. He’d wait for fucking if she needed the time to decide she liked him. Just so long as she kept smiling at him.

“Fuck me. I am a fucking teenaged girl,” he said.

“What’s that?” She was distracted by wrangling the key into the lock.

“Nothing, sweetheart.”

The door came open and they were in their quiet, dark room. Clara made a beeline for the seat in the big bay window, the one with the sea view past the inn rooftops. She unzipped her boots and dumped them aside. Malcolm switched on the bedside lamp. Shoes off, good idea. The bedroom was cool after the heated noise of the pub; he left his jumper on.

The rain drove hard against the windows and the roof. Shutters somewhere outside rattled. Thunder cracked and rolled. The storm seemed near its peak, and there under the roof it felt closer to them. They were alone in a little haven separated from the rain only by a sheet of glass.

Clara was kneeling on the window seat with her face pressed against the glass, hands cupped to block out the light.

“See okay, love?”

“Yeah. The view from this room must be amazing in daylight.”

The Jura was deep in his luggage, in a box safely wrapped in a layer of jumpers and shirts to prevent breakage. Malcolm dug it out and unsealed it. This was the stuff, and he was happy to be opening it for her. He padded into the washroom and looked for something to drink out of.

“One fucking water glass in the entire fucking room. Remind me to burn this place down when we leave.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.”

“What’s good about it?”

“Working roof.”

Malcolm sloshed the glass full. “Cheers, sweetheart. You get first crack.”

She took a swig and her eyebrows went up. “That’s the good stuff?”

He grinned at her. “Welcome to single malt. Like it?”

“I don’t have words for all the things this tastes like. It’s deep.”

“Dark, complicated, biting—”

“Like you,” and she smiled at him over the rim of the glass. She drank again and handed it to him.

Malcolm could think of absolutely nothing to say in response to that. Was she insulting him? Was she flirting? Was it mere politeness? He stared, mouth open, wondering what to do. Finally he raised the glass to her.

At that moment, the room went bright as day for an instant. A crackling, a shudder, and Malcolm swore he could feel his skin prickle. Before he could draw in breath to speak, the thunder shook the inn around them. Deafening. Clara laughed, and he did too, and he couldn’t hear either of them in the roar.

When it faded, Clara said, “Did it hit the inn?”

“Fucking must have.”

Something cracked and groaned outside. There was another roar, not thunder, and the lights went out. They both lunged for the window to look out. It had gone completely pitch outside. Malcolm blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust.

“The oak,” she said. “Gone. My God.”

The lightning flashed again and Malcolm could see the oak tree, splintered down the middle by the lightning. Half of it had fallen across the road and taken a power line with it. There it writhed on the ground, sparking and sputtering.

“Good thing I wasn’t out dashing myself against it. I’d have been fucking flattened.”

“If you survived the lightning.”

Malcolm swore again, under his breath. The wreckage was stunning. Hundreds of years of growth, shattered in an instant. A man came out of the inn, in rain gear with reflective stripes on it. He went up to the fallen half of the tree, saw the sparking, and backed away. There was no way that was going to be repaired in the night. Time to settle in. There was a candle on the dresser with a virgin wick. Might as well put it to use. Malcolm dug into his luggage and extracted the lighter that he always carried on trips, in a pocket next to his granddad’s battered Victorinox.

“Romantic evening in an inn, yeah?”

“Honestly, yes,” she said, and his head snapped around. She wasn’t looking at him; she was watching whatever was going on outside still.

He settled himself on the seat next to her, stockinged feet on the cushions, arms wrapped around his knees. Honestly, yes, it was fucking romantic. She made it so. Lovely profile. Expressive. So pretty, so bright, so bold, so quick-witted, so utterly uninterested in any of the shite he wasted his days on. She’d seen more than he had, somehow, while he’d been wasting his days in gray corridors full of beige morons.

Clara turned to him and reached for the whisky glass. He handed it to her and watched her drink. Just a taste, wetting her lips with it but nothing more. She handed it back. Her hand brushed his, and he smiled.

“You’re looking at me again.”

“Course I’m looking at you. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in the last decade.”

“Careful, Malcolm. A girl could get the wrong idea from that kind of talk.”

“What sort of idea is she getting?” The words were coming out of his mouth all strange and rough.

“The idea that you’re interested.”

“I am more than interested. I am fucking fascinated. I am riveted.”

“Yeah?”

Her voice was unsteady too. He was not imagining it. He reached out, took her face in his hands, and kissed her. Just a closed-mouth peck, not a proper kiss. She didn’t pull away, so he kissed her again, more slowly this time. A third kiss, and this time her eyes closed and her lips parted for him. Her hand was on his chest, resting flat over his heart. If only she knew. It had been hollowed out of him years ago. He was only now recognizing his loss.

“Clara, darling.”

“Yeah?” Eyes open, gazing into his.

He brushed a kiss on the end of her nose. “Tell me if you want me to stop and I will.”

“It’s good. I’m good.”

The words kept tumbling out of him. “There’s no obligation. Give me the word and I’ll stop. Probably have a wank to console myself but I’ll stop.”

“Malcolm. I know. I trust you. Now kiss me again.”

She grabbed a fistful of his jumper and pulled him close.

“I am your obedient servant,” he said, grinning with all his teeth showing. And then he kissed her again. this time with every bit of himself dedicated to the problem at hand. That being how to turn on a woman using only his tongue in her mouth, or hers in his mouth. That was good too. He was flexible. He could adapt.

“Oh yeah, that’s good,” Clara said. “Far too long since I’ve been kissed by somebody who had any idea how to kiss.”

“Been even longer for me, darling. Fuck, I shouldn’t boast about that, should I?”

She tapped the end of his nose with a finger and grinned at him. “Generally one doesn’t. You should instead be reciting a litany of conquests.”

“Conquests. Fuck me. I haven’t fucked anything with a brain like yours in–”

When was the last time he’d fucked anything other than his own slicked-up hand? Oh fuck him, the day he’d received his decree absolute and the nightmare was truly over. Jamie had come over with an armload of bottles and a couple of girls, and poured whiskeys down his throat until he’d let one of them take him to bed. Literally the last fucking time he’d got a leg over.

Fuck. He didn’t deserve this girl. Twenty years younger than he was at the least. What was he doing corrupting her?

“Hey, hey,” she was saying. “What century are we in? I get to have fantastic sex if I want to. You’re not corrupting me.”

“I said that out loud.”

“Now it’s my turn to tell you it’s okay with me if we stop now. I want to get your number tomorrow, but it’s okay if you don’t want to have sex on the first date.”

“First date,” Malcolm said, and the absurdity of it made him hiccup. “Darling, you can have my number, my address, and the keys to my front door.”

She said nothing to this outburst, merely kissed him on the end of his nose. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“I said turn around. Lean back, against me. Yeah, like that.”

Malcolm was half-hunched forward, afraid of resting his weight against her. But she tugged him back, gently, with a hand flat over his heart and another over his belly. Her hand moved in gentle circles over his heart and he breathed out.

“You’re skin and bones,” she whispered. “Nothing under that jumper.”

She tugged it up around his shoulders. Malcolm obligingly raised his arms to let her pull it off. He tossed it aside. Cool in the room, damp, her hands on his shirt buttons, his breath coming short. She was going to let him fuck her. Let him go to bed with her. Make love with her. It was going to happen and all he had to do was relax. His shirt fluttered to the floor beside them, and her hands moved over him. Over his nipples, down his belly, back up to run through what passed for chest hair on him.

Breathe. Calm down, Malc. His cock was jumping in his trousers every time her hand wandered down his stomach. He was going to come in his boxers if she kept doing that. A sorry show that would be.

“My turn,” he said. He swiveled himself around with Clara between his legs, leaned up against him, not so close that his cock was against her. An abundance of caution, paradise deferred, but he was going to have a fucking devil of a time not coming instantly.

He distracted himself by concentrating on her shirt buttons, which were wrong way round, fucking women’s clothing all tiny and backwards. He stroked his way down her shoulders, along her arms, making a little game of touching as much of her body as he could as he got her shirt off. His reward was a shiver from her and his name, whispered.

Oh, Clara, he had only just begun.

Bra unhooked, and Malcolm kissed her spine, kissed his way up to the nape of her neck, while he slid his hands around to cup her bared breasts. Sweet, sweet feeling, nipples under his fingertips, a pinch, her gasp, her head back against his shoulder, a harder pinch, and she moaned. Shifted between his legs, pressed back against him. Malcolm liked this reaction; he could play with her nipples all night. But now it was time to lift her skirt and find out what was underneath. He found the zip on her skirt and helped her shimmy it off. Tugged at the band of her tights.

“Yeah, come on, get these fuckers off so I can touch you.”

“Bossy,” she said. “I like being the bossy one.”

“Not gonna be that easy, darling.”

“Get those trousers off,” she said, exactly as if he hadn’t spoken, and who was he to disobey? He stood and got his trousers off, and his socks because he hated looking like a prat with socks on below a stiff prick tenting out his boxers. Before he tossed them into a corner he dug the rubbers out of the trouser pocket and tucked them under the pillows where he could find them.

Clara had those tights off, as ordered, and was wearing nothing but her knickers, a pink lacy thong that left her arse gloriously bare for his hand to cup. One hand on her arse, pulling her against him, the other on the back of her head, and his tongue in her mouth. Or hers in his mouth, that was fine too, since she wanted it that way. If she was busy doing that, her mouth would be too busy to complain about his hand leaving her arse to wander between her thighs and discover how wet she was already. Waxed bare down there, like a modern girl.

He pulled the thong aside and let his middle finger slip into her. She gasped. He grinned and got his thumb over her clit. Let her find out the fun way that old burned-out husks knew more about sex than the young idiots.

He slid down to his knees taking the knickers with him, kissed her thighs, parted her labia with his fingers and licked her. He put a hand on her waist to steady her and set about finding what made her squirm. He listened to her sharp intake of breath, and the instant he heard her first moan he stopped. He stood again to kiss her with wet lips. Oh, lovely woman, kissing him back without hesitation, and then down she went, returning the favor, pressing a kiss to the underside of his cock, licking him until he swore, then taking him in.

Malcolm tugged her up and sadly away from his prick. He kissed her. “I’ve got only one go in me at my age, darling, and that’s not the way I want it our first time.”

“I haven’t got anything–”

“I do.” Malcolm dug under the pillow and pulled out the rubbers, held them up to show her.

“Oh, prepared for this, are you?”

He knelt up on the bed. Foil off, tossed aside. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” he said.

“Stevenson?”

“Gonna arrive and prove he’s fucking wrong.”

He rolled the thing onto his cock. Encased like a bloody sausage, and the feeling of the rubber on him made him even harder. Pavlov’s dog. Rubber on meant he was going to come. Thank all the fucking gods in the sky that it would slow him down because he wanted this to last. He wanted her to remember this, to remember him, to want another go with him. He wanted her to scream his name.

They rolled on the bed fighting over who got to ride on top. Eventually she let him win, the wench, and he was spreading her thighs with eager hands. He pushed his cock into that sweet quim, pulled out to tease her, laughed when she swore at him. He buried himself balls-deep. Looked as good as it felt, cock tip pressing against bare cunt, cock moving into cunt, woman moaning as he moved. Beautiful woman. Clara. The candlelight did wonders for her face, her hair, her dark eyes. He lay over her and kissed her. She tucked her heels behind his knees.

He said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He braced himself on his elbows and set to work finding out what made her groan. Everything, it seemed. She was as turned on as he’d ever seen a woman. He settled into a steady deep pace with little bursts that made her strain upward under him. Lightning flashes illuminating her beneath him, head thrown back, sweat between her breasts, hair a wreck on the pillow. Breathing hard, moaning for him, but not near coming yet. He leaned down over her to kiss her again.

“What do you need, darling? Tell me. Need my thumb on you? Need me to bite you? Tell me, love. I’ll do anything.”

“Touch me.”

He could do that, up on his knees, two fingers on her clit, reaching out and rolling her nipple. She liked it a little rough, and he pinched her harder and drove his hips.

“Come for me, Clara, do it, oh, darling, do it for me, yeah, come now. Fuck. Sweet fuck.”

She was coming for him, shaking for him, hips thrusting up into him. It was all he could do to hold off, fuck him if he understood why he wanted to hold off, just so he could look down at her face in the aftermath, so he could lie over her close and kiss her while she was still panting under him, whisper sweet things he hadn’t said to anybody in twenty years.

Her eyes opened again and she was smiling at him. Time for his own finish. Face buried in her neck, arms around her, rolling his hips, Christ, he was on the edge, it was building in him, she was squeezing him, and then he was there, he cried out into her neck, called her name, and fucking came hard, white-out in the brain, cock pulsing, emptying himself into her, giving her everything he had. He collapsed onto her, which was ungentlemanly of him, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her fingers were in his hair, petting him.

He was reluctant to part from her, but he was softening and the fucking condom would make a fucking bathetic mess on the bed if he didn’t cope with it. He withdrew from her, gave her another kiss, and set himself to rights. She was under the blankets when he returned. He blew out the candle. She lifted them and held her arms out to him. He slid in gratefully and claimed a welcome-back kiss, a lazy sloppy kiss with a lot of tongue in it.

“How was that?”

That earned him a lazy laugh from her. “Oh, am I supposed to rate you now?”

He could hear the satiation in her voice. He hoped the smug satisfaction wasn’t too obvious in his. “Got a card for you to fill out. From one to five, where one is fucking agree and five is sodding disagree, rank the statement I have been fucked senseless.”

A giggle. “Fucking agree.”

“Fucking agree or sodding disagree, would recommend this experience to a friend.”

“No, sorry, not letting anybody else into the secret of Malcolm.”

“Do you have any comments you’d like to make to the staff?”

“Secret romantic, charming if totally obscene, unexpected treasure of Scotland. Probably evil. Never shuts up.”

Malcolm kissed her. “I like talking. Afterwards. And during.”

“Pillow talk?”

“Pillow talk, rug in front of the fireplace talk, locked in the office closet talk. Any kind of talk. You mind?”

“No, I like it.”

“Turn round, darling. Yeah, like that.” Malcolm tucked himself up behind her, arm over her waist, legs tangled with hers, blankets up to their ears. She was a wee bitty thing in his arms. He could get himself around her completely. She fit him perfectly.

“Post love-making snuggly talk?” she said.

“Yeah, I do that, too. But I call it post-fuck sweet-talking.”

“You would.”

She stroked his hand where it lay against her belly. Nice belly. Thank fuck she wasn’t one of those skeletal models. A schoolteacher. With a brain and a temper. He kissed the back of her neck and made a little mumbling noise into her hair. Probably it was a happy noise, he was that far-gone. As sex with total strangers went, this had been tops. As relationship starters went, it would be even better.

“Still want my number in the morning?”

“Only if you promise we can do this again,” she said.

“It’s yours, darling.”

She made a sleepy noise and squeezed his hand.

Back in London. Seeing her again. Squeezing tender moments in at the ends of hellish days, after spending what little remained of his soul rescuing worthless fools from the just consequences of their folly. What had she said? Anyone could fetch the tea. Fuck the tea. Fuck fetching the tea.

He said, “Maybe we could get lost on the way back to London.”

She was silent for a long moment, long enough for him to start cursing himself fifty times over. Too much too fast, fucking idiot, Tucker you fucker. Then she said, “I have to be back at the school in September. We can be lost until then.”

“Consider it fucking done.”

The Thief

2014-12-24T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor straightened up and reached out for the levers, painfully. He had to get away from there, away from the great gulf of nothingness where she’d said Gallifrey would be. The levers were broken. Sparks shot from the console rhythmically. His doing, of course. He tugged the stubs of the levers over, using his good hand. Nothing happened.

The telepathic matrix. He staggered around the console and shoved his fingers into it. Clear his mind and think of what? Damned if he cared. Something, anything, anything that wasn’t this. He wanted Clara but he was afraid to go to her, because he was just selfish enough to not want to bear seeing her happiness with another man while he dealt with this last blow from his dear friend. It couldn’t be Clara. Somewhere else.

Blood dripped onto the cells of the matrix. The TARDIS creaked and shuddered into motion. The universe wheeled around him; the TARDIS lights flickered and faded. They had arrived. The Doctor pulled his fingers out of the matrix with some effort. It hurt to move. His knuckles were bleeding. His little finger wouldn’t bend. He needed to go to the medical bay. He needed a stiff drink. Several stiff drinks, and a fistful of painkillers to chase them. He needed an entire bottle of painkillers. He needed to be unconscious.

He had no idea where the TARDIS had taken him. He didn’t care. If he regenerated, at least he wouldn’t feel this way any more. He hadn’t felt this way about her before, when he was the floppy-haired giant with the chin, so surely a change of self would change his feelings again. He’d fancied her, yes, in a frivolous way, but his chest hadn’t been a solid mass of ache like it was now. Didn’t much matter that he wouldn’t be himself any more. Gallifrey would still be missing, but he might care less about that, too.

He swung the door open without looking out first and stumbled out into– Clara’s bedroom. Exactly where he always emerged, the TARDIS improbably tucked into a corner.

He stood with hand curled up against his chest, looking around. The bed was made. Everything tidy and ship-shape. No sign of Clara in the flat. Full daylight, no idea what day of the week it was. She’d be at the school, or with the returned Pink, assuming the fellow had figured it out. He’d left the seeds of his own undoing in Pink’s hands. He’d known he was doing it. He’d promised he bring Pink back if he could, and damned if he hadn’t do his best to make it happen. Though it was a thousand knives in his hearts, he owed her not one whit less. Love was a promise.

She would be happy. He had to hope that would be true. One of them deserved it. And that meant he had to leave. Now. Before she came home.

He turned to head back into the TARDIS to beg her to take him somewhere else, but the door refused to open to him. Having a sulking fit; he had hurt her, after all. Damn and blast her for choosing now to do it. He sank down onto the chair before Clara’s three mirrors and avoided his own face. His hand throbbed in the complex rhythm of his heartbeats. He ought to look at it. His knuckles were still bleeding, that much he could feel. The stabbing pains when he tried to close his fist told him he’d done worse than that.

He closed his eyes rather than look.

What was he to do? Wait. Face his fate. Endure his punishment.

The sound of a key in the lock shook him out of his funk. The light had changed; time had passed. He sprang to his feet and leapt out of the bedroom, in case it was PE. The door opened: Clara, his Clara, arms full of papers, her nose adorably smudged with black marker. She was startled to find him in her flat. “Doctor! What are you doing here so soon?”

He studied her: no signs of recent crying. She looked distracted but cheerful. That meant the worst. He’d best find out for sure. “Have you heard from PE?”

“Who?”

“PE,” he said, slowly, watching her carefully for either a stab of pain he’d have to soothe or a flash of joy he’d have to hide from. But she stayed puzzled but politely curious.

“No idea what you’re talking about. Are you all right? You look odd.”

She pressed a hand against his forehead and frowned. The Doctor suffered it to remain there, because an urgent question had come to him. He said, “What’s the last thing we did together?”

Clara’s frown intensified. “You want to know what happened yesterday?”

“Tell me.”

“You took me to see Robin Hood. I got macked on by the sheriff who turned out to be a robot and–”

“Right.”

“And Robin called you a hero.”

He frowned at her. “And I told him I wasn’t one.”

“But you are. Except– what’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Clara. I’m from your future. Months from now. I’ve been with you for months now and I know what’s going to happen to you and I must leave before I reveal anything to you.”

With those words he whirled back into her bedroom and leapt toward the TARDIS. He snapped the fingers of his left hand; nothing. He laid his hand on the TARDIS door. It still refused to open for him. Curse words came to him in several languages; he would have pounded the door if his hand were not a swollen mess.

Clara touched his shoulder. “Doctor– “ She sucked in a breath and gripped his arm. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

He tried to pull it away. She held on. “Got into an argument.”

“Yeah? What does the other fellow look like?”

He bared his teeth in a bitter grin. “Smashed to little bits. Pulverized. Non-functional.”

Clara’s mouth quirked. “The other fellow was a robot?”

“Not exactly.”

She touched his knuckles and he found himself looking at his hand despite his resolution not to. Dried blood, oozing blood, swelling, bruising starting to show itself. No wonder it hurt. How long had he sat there? She said, “You should get this looked after by a doctor.”

He extracted his hand back from her and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “I am a doctor.”

“Not for your own injuries you aren’t. The TARDIS medical bay. Now.” Clara snapped her fingers. The TARDIS reacted, he felt it and possibly Clara did as well, but she did not open to them. Stubborn beast.

Clara looked her question at him. He shrugged. “My punishment. She’s shut me out. This.” He held up his hand. “This is why the TARDIS is angry. I smashed up the console. Needs repair. Can’t repair it with my fingers like this. Can’t repair it until she’s ready to take me back.”

“You smashed– Doctor. What’s happened?”

He shrugged. He was not about to explain; the time stream was in enough danger from the TARDIS’s meddling. “It doesn’t matter to you.”

“You came here to me. It matters to me. But– Why not to me in your timeline?”

He looked down. “It was the TARDIS’s decision, not mine.” It was painful to say that, but also more painful to speculate about why the TARDIS chose to jump him backwards. He’d used the matrix. She’d have known whom he was longing for most. Apparently the Clara of his timeline was closed off to him.

“Tell me what happened.”

“No.”

Clara sighed. She studied his hand for a moment, then he saw the resolve flow into her. “Don’t think for a minute that I’m accepting that answer, but I’ll let it rest for now. Let’s get this sorted. How badly does it hurt? No lying now.”

“Hurts like the devil.” He said it as carelessly as he could. Never show weakness.

“Got some leftover painkillers from when I had my wisdom teeth out. Never took them because I hated them. Can you take oxycodone?”

Bodies. Human bodies had many similarities to Gallifreyan bodies; the two species shared a common recent ancestor. He was the product of genetic manipulation, tinkering with the phenotype to improve it. To improve intelligence, mostly, but also certain other aspects. Reliability. Resilience. Longevity. Healing.

He reviewed what he remembered of synthetic opiates. Wouldn’t kill him; might make him hurt less. He nodded. “Should have roughly the same effect on me as you.”

“Come on.”

She led him into her little washroom and sat him down with his hand on the porcelain of her sink. With the lights on it looked worse, so he didn’t look.

Clara laid a pill on the palm of his good hand and held a cup of water ready for him. He swallowed and felt a twinge of guilt. He ought to be hurting when she did this. He ought not to be here.

She filled the sink with warm water and coaxed him into submerging his hand. Dried blood, fresh blood, floating away into the water, revealing how much skin he’d ripped from his knuckles. He bit his lip and did not make any noise about how much it stung. She washed his hand clean and dried it, then smeared antibiotic on it. She was, he thought, over-prepared. And confident with his injuries. Clara, his Clara, so many unexpected depths.

“Your finger,” she said. “Not sure what to do about it.”

“Just pull it into place. It will heal properly on its own.”

“If you say so.”

He knew so; he’d healed from much worse without intervention. Genetic manipulation by an advanced civilization was a wonderful, damnable thing. They’d never done anything about the pain, though. He’d waxed rhapsodic about pain and its value at PE. She had probably been listening. Her future self, that is. This one– he wasn’t sure what this one understood. More than he had given her credit for. He watched her face, to keep his attention away from what it felt like as she straightened his finger with a tug and how the bleeding had started again.

“I think you only dislocated the one finger,” she said. “But your hand is sort of all grinding against itself. You broke something else.”

“It’ll heal,” he said, curtly.

“If you say so.” She turned away from him to rummage around in her first aid kit.

“Immobilize it, if you would. It’ll be faster if I’m not constantly re-injuring it.”

“Which you wouldn’t do if you weren’t so stubborn,” she said, but it was half under her breath. She wrapped gauze around his skinned knuckles, layer upon layer, hiding all the damage away. Wrapped up like that he wouldn’t be tempted to use his hand for all the myriad things one used hands for: gesturing, using tools, holding, caressing. A wave of something warm flooded over him. Sentiment? Affection? The drug taking effect. His head swam.

Clara wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. “There. That’s done. You coped pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

“And you’re not complaining about the hug.”

“I have come ’round on hugs.”

“Something to look forward to.”

She kissed his hair again. He turned toward her and slipped his arm around her waist. It meant nothing that he was accepting this caress, of course. It was just the painkiller. He went so far as to let his forehead rest on her shoulder. The TARDIS, he understood now, was taking care of him even after his assault upon her. She’d sent him to exactly the version of Clara to comfort him best.

Clara walked him into her bedroom and sat him down on her bed. He watched from a fuzzy distance while she unlaced his boots and tugged them off his feet. He held up his arms obediently so she could strip him of coat and waistcoat, broadcloth shirt.

“So many layers,” she said.

He folded his arms across his bare chest. PE was muscled, wasn’t he? Clara didn’t like them scrawny. This body was nothing like what she liked. He suffered her to coax him into one of her t-shirts, a baggy thing with the name of an American city on it that flapped around his middle. It probably went down to her knees when she wore it.

She pushed him flat onto his back in her bed and vanished. He stared at her ceiling. Boring ceiling. It wanted painting, preferably with time-aware paint that showed the constellations above it. He could do that for her. He raised his good hand and sketched them: Polaris there, Ursa Major there. Gallifrey’s star not visible. Never visible. It was gone. He’d done it, and they were safe, but it meant he was barred from them. Forever alone. Except for Clara.

Then she was in the room again, with a bag of ice. She laid it over his bad hand and stuck it in place with a stretchy bandage. The ice felt good. Everything felt good, rather.

“Your ceiling needs work,” he said to her. “I’ve got just the thing for it.”

“No. You just lie there like a good boy. No glaring, not that you are even glaring at me, which I do not understand because yesterday you were glaring a lot. What the hell happened?”

Her voice had softened and become almost tender. He squeezed his eyes shut because he was going to weep and it would be impossible. This Clara has not yet fought with him and then come to understand him. This Clara didn’t yet love him. This Clara had not yet left him for another man.

“I had a bad day.”

“Very bad?”

“The worst.”

“I can see that,” Clara said, and she stroked his forehead.

He let his eyes fall shut. A hellish day. Letting himself trust Koschei again, like a prize fool. Hopes up then utterly smashed. He’d done what he had to, he and his previous selves, and he was still living with the consequences. Death, death, so much death, all on his head. Gallifrey lost. Koschei lost. Clara about to be lost. To him, at least, and he was selfish enough to care about that.

Fever dreams, restless dreams, eased now and then by his awareness of how close she was to him. He imagined her stroking his hair. He spoke to her in Gallifreyan, and she answered him in the same language. They floated in space above their home and it was not Gallifrey but Earth because Gallifrey was gone. He had sent it away.

He woke with a start. He was in Clara’s bed, under the covers. Clara was in it as well, sitting up against a pile of pillows, with a bedside light on. She was reading a book, a paperback. She was in pajamas, some peach-colored satin-smooth affair that clung to her. She was, as ever, impossibly lovely.

Even Time Lords needed to use a loo sometimes, and this was one of those times. He was going to have to move. He cautiously pushed himself up.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey.”

“Bad dreams?”

He scowled. “Time Lords never dream.” He swung his legs out of bed with more vigor than was perhaps wise.

Clara’s little washroom, with the bathtub he could barely fit inside, and shelves covered with little jars and pots. He’d been here before, washed his hands with her scented soap and been dizzy with feelings he shouldn’t have about it all. The painkillers were set out on the sink. He considered it, for his hand was starting to ache again inside the gauze. The price was too high, however. He’d gone emotionally wobbly. He went back to her bedroom and leaned against the door jamb.

“Have you a blanket for your couch?”

Clara studied him and frowned. “Just– just sleep here. We’ve been in the same bed before.”

Not with this painful new self-awareness he had, that he too could want to embrace someone. But he was weak and selfish and in pain and he would take what the universe had offered him. He slid himself into bed again next to her.

Clara tucked a marker into her book and set it aside. She leaned over him, a hand on his forehead, and made a thoughtful noise. Then she pressed her lips to his forehead. He endured it for a moment then shifted away from her.

She said, “You’re a little feverish.”

“A normal body temperature for me is a couple of degrees cooler than yours.”

“Which is exactly why I think you’re a little feverish. Are you sure you won’t see a doctor?”

“Two heartbeats,” was all he said. She sighed. There really was no rejoinder that could be made to that objection.

Clara switched off the light and settled herself under the blankets, facing away from him. The Doctor lay on his back, looking at the ceiling again. How could he sleep like this, next to her? Surely he had already slept enough for his body’s demands. He would wait until she slept and then get up and do something useful with himself. Read something. Tinker with something. Her breathing was slowing. The Doctor breathed with her, waiting for her to sleep.

He drifted and dreamed. Of Rose, holding his hand, which burned because she was made of light. Of Rose, watching him while he sent Gallifrey away forever, never to be found. Of Clara, stroking his hair and telling him it was only a dream.

The next time he woke, he was wrapped around Clara, one arm over her waist, the other under her head, his legs tangled with hers. The dull ache of his knuckles was still there, a distraction. He was in danger of another sort of distraction, this close to her. If he moved, he would wake her. He clenched his hand viciously, deliberately, to yank his mind away from it, and overdid it. He sucked in a breath and waited for the pain to ebb. It had done what he needed, however.

“You awake?” Clara said, softly.

“Mmm.” His lips were against her hair. She was so small in his arms. He encompassed her, cradled her head to toe. It was not enough for him, but more than he should have allowed himself.

“Who knew you were a cuddler?” Her voice was playful, not angry or tense.

He left out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He stayed as light as she. “Anyone foolish enough to sleep with me.”

“How many people have you lured into your cuddle trap?”

The question startled him. “You’re the only one.”

Her fingers were stroking his, where they emerged from the gauze. She was otherwise still.

He said, “Do you have to teach today?”

“Yeah. Alarm will go off in about ten minutes.”

Ten minutes. He could stretch this indulgence out for ten minutes of heaven, ten minutes of warmth, ten minutes of self-control.

“You know, I’m not letting you get away with claiming you don’t like hugs after this.”

“Oh?”

“You’re getting hugged any time I feel like it.”

“Anything you say,” he murmured. He stayed where he was, breathing her in, until the alarm shrilled and she muttered a curse and slid away from him.

He spent the day fiddling with her appliances with the sonic and a pile of spare parts he’d left in a corner on a previous visit. Her toaster was now slightly psychic and would brown the toast exactly as much as desired, no matter what it was set to. A simple trick, easily accomplished even with only his off hand to use on the tools, and subtle enough that she wouldn’t notice and protest, as she had with his modifications to her television.

Koschei’s taunt was on his mind as he worked, no doubt exactly as the monster had wanted. She’d done a right proper job on his head. He knew this to be true even as he was utterly unable to straighten his head back out again. She’d lied. Of course she’d lied. She would always lie. He’d wept over Koschei’s body so many times and thought their long war over, but it had not ever been over. She’d won. Dead now, and he mourned her and the boyhood friend he’d lost. How many lives had been lost because he’d failed to execute justice on his friend? He’d tried. He’d thought he had succeeded, so many times. All lies.

Danny Pink had not been one of those lives. Danny Pink was offered another chance thanks to her. And thus she tormented him one last time from beyond the grave. Danny Pink would not have existed any more in any form without her scheme. But he did exist, would exist. His Clara would not accept his advances.

His mind went around and around that point, worrying at it though it hurt.

Every moment with Clara was stolen. He’d have to return it. He’d have to pay. She had never mentioned this appearance to him. Did that mean he’d managed to slip away quickly? One night spent holding her he could perhaps get away with. One night of letting himself taste what he wanted and what she didn’t wish to give.

It all depended on his recalcitrant semi-sentient beloved ship, which was not speaking to him. Which he deserved. How long would she hold out? He stood with his hand on her door, seeking that connection he sometimes felt. Nothing.

The Doctor remembered Clara’s schedule perfectly well. Classes through the late afternoon; staff meeting on Tuesdays; some time in her classroom spent prepping for the next day’s lessons; home by five if the buses cooperated. He had some time to fill, which he would occupy with another scheme for pleasing her. He investigated her cupboards and icebox and rustled up an improvised dinner for the two of them. Human cooking was something one of his previous selves had spent considerable time learning. Humanity had occupied an inordinate amount of his life, when he thought to weigh it all out. He might not enjoy cooking much in this regeneration, but he could still follow a recipe.

He was rewarded with a brilliant smile from Clara when she arrived home, once again laden with student papers to grade. He held a chair for her, poured her wine, and asked her how her day had been.

“Domesticated Doctor,” she said. “I like this future you.”

“Don’t get used to it,” he said. It didn’t come out as tartly as he’d intended, for she smiled at him brilliantly. The kitchen timer went off and he turned away from her to finish off the sauce.

He served, and she ate. He hovered and watched.

“This isn’t half bad.” She was smiling when she said it, so he decided to take it as high praise. “And I really appreciate not having to cook tonight. I have more grading than I can believe.”

“I am imposing on you. The least I could do.”

“You know it’s fine by me.” She continued to eat and he continued to watch. Eventually she looked up at him. “So. You’re not injured or loopy from painkillers. Time to talk.”

“Ah. Can’t we just skip that and move right along to the part where we run away from something?”

“No. We are not skipping it.” She set her fork down. The Doctor shifted in his chair. He could yet run. “The big question. Why are you here instead of with your own Clara? Is she, am I time-locked?”

Not the question he was expecting. It had an easy answer, fortunately. “No.”

“Then why me?”

The Doctor drank some wine to give himself time to construct an answer to this question, which was nowhere near as easy. He didn’t know, though he suspected. “The TARDIS made the decision, as I said. I wanted to go– I wanted to go someplace safe where I could heal. And she took me here.”

“But not to me in your proper timeline.”

“You are… otherwise occupied.”

“But you and future me are cuddlier than you and current me. No! No denying it. I was in that bed last night too.”

There it was, the topic he’d been hoping to avoid. The Doctor could only shake his head; yes, they might hold hands, but no, his Clara would not have put up with him in her bed like that. “Things have shifted between us, over time,” was all he could manage to say about it.

“So I get to know you better over the next few months.”

“Hardly a surprise, when one spends so much time with a person.”

“To be honest, it is a surprise. You’re hard to get close to. Going to be different between us after this.”

That alarmed him. “Clara! I won’t remember this when you see me next, because it won’t have happened for me. But you never mentioned this to me. You never said a word. You must never say a word.”

Clara leaned forward, toward him. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets,” she said.

At lying, he carefully did not say. But he’d always known when she had been lying. It had suited him to behave as if the lies were truth. It had been as much his fault as hers. All he said was, “Promise me you won’t speak of this. It could damage the timeline. You could create a paradox.”

“I promise. Don’t worry.”

He subsided into his chair, watching her carefully for signs of scheming. But he could see nothing. The problem was– could he trust her not to speak of this? Clara could be trusted about the big things. Time, space, and the safety of others, of her students: Clara would hold firm to the death. But would she slip up about something so small, from inattention? He could not remember her doing so, but then, he wouldn’t. It would become a closed loop in the timestream, a bubble of events that he would forget, because the self that came here would no longer exist.

What happened then was a matter of argument among mathematicians.

He knew what had to be done to ensure the integrity of his timeline, but he could not bear to think about it. Not yet. Once he’d repaired his TARDIS and could leave– then he would burn that bridge with this Clara. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to. Nothing had happened of note: a few more hugs than usual, which he could dismiss as the painkillers affecting him.

After dinner Clara led him into her washroom, where she undid all the gauze wrapped around his hand. Bloodstained, messy, particularly on the layers nearest the skin, but the hand itself was on the mend. There was pink skin over his knuckles already, and his finger was bending properly once more. The bruising had lightened to sickly greens and yellows.

“You weren’t kidding about the healing.”

“Advantages of being a Time Lord,” he said.

“There are a lot of those.” She stroked his hand and gave a little pat. He smiled at her briefly and tucked his hand safely away in his coat pocket.

They spent the evening in domestic quiet: he washed up while she did her marking. He then sat near her and read the novel she’d been reading the night before: a detective story, well enough written, with a cipher puzzle in it that he sighed at. When he was done with that, he rummaged through her bookshelves and discovered a stash of sudoku puzzle books shoved into the back of a high shelf. He snorted and then found himself absorbed for the next hour.

He had a minor struggle with her at bedtime over where he was to sleep. In her bed again, she wanted, for reasons he could not imagine.

“The couch is fine.”

“The couch is too short for you.” He shrugged. “And we managed to share a bed last night without anything apocalyptic or embarrassing happening.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she swept right along. “It’ll be fine. Go. Change. I’ve laid out pajamas for you.”

He stomped off into the bedroom to inspect whatever she had decided was appropriate sleepwear for a man. This consisted of a t-shirt–this time with the emblem of a football team–and a ragged pair of sweatpants with a drawstring around the middle. Detritus from a past boyfriend, perhaps. They were far too wide and short for him. He felt ridiculous. But she smiled on him when she came back into the bedroom, wrapped in a powder blue robe.

“You know I only sleep an hour or two.”

“That’s fine. You can do whatever you usually do when you’re awake. Read. Break things.”

He scowled, but there was no heat in it.

He lay awake listening to her breathing for a while, until he was certain she was in deep sleep. He then allowed himself to slide downward into sleep. He would possibly need more than usual because of the drain on his body from rebuilding bone and bruised flesh. Down, down into sleep and the dreams that would come no matter what he did. Dreams of a great planet-wide forest consumed in flame, and Clara burning with it, clinging to Danny Pink while she burned and he hovered above it all in the TARDIS, untouched.

“Hey hey hey,” Clara was saying to him. “You’re dreaming again.”

He blinked his eyes open. Darkness, Clara’s face looming over him, feet tangled in blankets. He was sweating. “Was not.”

“Okay. You’re shouting in your sleep again.”

“Oh.”

She made a noise that was half exasperation, half something else. “You had the worst day ever, didn’t you.”

“Yeah.” He was already shying away from thinking about it. Heap dead leaves over it. Pretend he hadn’t hoped.

“Are you ever going to tell me about it?”

“No.”

She sighed. “Turn around. Face away.”

It was hideously inappropriate, and yet he wasn’t going to reject it. Another thing to feel bad about afterward, another item on the giant pile. Another gesture he received desperately: her legs tucked behind his, her arm over his waist. But if he dreamed, he didn’t remember it.

On Saturday he went out with her and carried her shopping home, grousing only as much as expected to keep her from staring at him and asking if he’d lost his mind. He was in fact restless. His usual modus would be to explode about it like a petulant boy, or to invent something to do, preferably something reckless. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to behave like that just now. Impatience was for a version of himself who had not lost his best friend, not for the version who’d stolen a last few days with her. He was going to enjoy them, and make sure she enjoyed them as well, and not try her patience as he knew his past self would try it soon.

He had decided that the TARDIS was playing a game with him. She required some sign that he had recovered himself, not just physically but emotionally, and then she would open her doors to him again. If he convinced her she had won, he could shorten his time here and reduce the chance of damage to everything.

The trouble was that he didn’t want to cut his visit short. He had until Wednesday night, when his prior self would appear and whisk her off to– where had he taken her directly after Robin Hood? Oh, yes, Trantor, the planet entirely covered in city, where statisticians pretended to be able to predict the course of their history. They couldn’t, of course, which was why he’d dropped by. She’d enjoyed that one. And he needed to be out of the way before it happened. The TARDIS knew this as well. It was probably going to make him wait right up until that moment. Infuriating thing.

They went out to her local that night, for a couple of pints and a basket of chips she picked at rather than ate. She was watching him with an attention he found unnerving, and a little smile that he both craved and feared. He never knew what those smiles meant. Several things at once. He’d learned he could smile like that too, and it hadn’t been pleasant. But she seemed happy, so he drank beer and told a rambling story about Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in his youth.

It was raining when they left the pub, of course, a warm late spring shower from clouds moving fast in the evening sky. She pulled a collapsing umbrella from her jacket pocket and unfurled it. The Doctor took it from her to hold it over them both. Clara snagged his free hand and laced her fingers through his. Oh, sweet feeling, her hand in his. It didn’t burn his hearts any more to touch her. He ached, yes, but it was almost a sweet ache. She looked at him sideways then moved in closer. To be under the umbrella, of course, but it was lovely to be so casually close to her.

He allowed her to lead him to bed without protest. He would hold her while she fell asleep, sleep as much as his own body needed, then spend the rest of the night reading. Or walking outside. Or rewiring her microwave. Whatever came to mind.

Clara came in wearing a negligee this time, sheer, in a soft pink that looked lovely on her. He opened his mouth to say something about it, but she raised her hand.

“No insults.”

“I wasn’t going to–”

“Do yourself a favor and don’t talk for a little bit. Just get into bed and do what I tell you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, under his breath. He got into bed, expecting and, if he were honest with himself, looking forward to being cuddled by her wearing that. Face to face this time, apparently, which made him a little anxious, but she was determined. Face to face, pressed together in the dark. Why was his breath coming short?

Clara was wearing scent of some kind. Roses, musk, something a little sharp under that. The Doctor found himself moving closer to it to identify it.

“You okay with this?” she said.

“You smell nice,” he said, because she did.

She petted his hair. It was soothing; he liked it. He petted Clara’s hair in return. She made a sound that probably meant she liked it, and then she leaned in and brushed her lips over his. The kiss was soothing too, to his surprise. So he kissed her back.

The next kiss her lips were parted and so he parted his.

He could stop at any time. It would be the wise thing to do, to stop. But she was kissing him and it felt as if his blood had been carbonated. His head wasn’t right, somehow. It was swimming around and he felt as if he might burst from joy. He could do this all night. He would do this all night if she wanted. Every place he kissed her made him happy. Every place he touched her. Every sound she made. Every caress.

It was far too late to stop now.

She eased herself out of his grasp and knelt on the bed next to him.

He reached up. “Clara?”

“Hush, you. It’s okay.”

He subsided and watched her. The negligee went over her head and she tossed it away. She had on red lace knickers and nothing else. His first instinct was to avert his eyes politely, then he remembered that this sight was intended for him. She was giving this to him. She nudged him over onto his back and tugged impatiently at his sweatpants. He took them off for her and laid himself back down where she wanted him. Now her gaze was on his body, roving all over. He hoped she liked it. He wasn’t sure about it himself. Not a lot of hair, and what there was was gray.

Her hand brushed over his erection. He trembled. Nobody had ever touched him like that. Not in this body. He could barely tolerate being hugged, but that was her hand, on him again, stroking. He held himself as still as he could. Gripped the sheets so he wouldn’t yield to the wild urge to cover himself.

“Breathe,” she said, and he breathed. “It’s just me. You’ve done this before.”

He laughed at that. Not like this he hadn’t. “Still nervous,” he said.

“Lie back. Let me do all the work.”

He laughed to cover his nerves. First time for this body. First time, with the woman who was the first face he’d seen as a living, breathing being in this body. Imprinting. Sworn to her from the first moment. Five feet one and crying and he’d never stood a chance.

She rose over him and reached down to take him in hand. He kept his eyes open to watch, despite the urge to close them and moan. He watched her face, not her hand on him, not her spread thighs, just her face, the look of concentration, the little smile on her lips. She sank down on him slowly. Tight, soft, wet, so warm around him. Not yet open fully, and next time he would ensure she was, he would bring her to the brink with lips and fingers before he lay over her and became one with her. Why was she going so slowly? It was torment and that expression on her face said she knew it.

The moan finally broke free from him and her face lit up. Joy, that was joy on her face, and he could not help but respond.

She said, “Yeah, that’s–”

“That’s good,” he said, the burr he could not explain as thick as it ever was.

She settled on him, leaned down and kissed him. He kissed her back. Then she sat up again and began to move. There it was, that rhythm, that feeling building. He didn’t deserve this. It didn’t belong to him. She wasn’t for him. He’d do anything if she asked, even incredibly stupid things. Koschei had said it.

She stilled over him. “Stop thinking. I can tell you’re thinking. Stop. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

“Lookin’.” Clara, nude, astride him, hands on either side of his head, looking down into his eyes, hair framing her face. “Beautiful,” he said.

“Yeah? Keep talkin’.”

“Can’t.” For she was moving again over him, and it had been so long since he’d felt these things. This feeling, this tension, this hunger. His hearts beating, his breath coming faster. The feeling of his body inside someone else’s, someone he loved. Her face, flushed and sweating. Moving with intent, now, hard and fast over him. He reached down and held his thumb against her. There was her moan, and yes, she was close already. She shuddered around him. It was too much and not enough and he could not reach his own crisis yet.

He let his instincts take over, did what he had used to do in previous lives: rolled them over and lay over her and entered her again, this time easily, oh sweet feeling, and thrust hard. Turned off his mind, let himself feel it, feel her, hear her gasping underneath him, and opened himself to it. To her. Let himself shatter.

He collapsed onto her afterward, all awkward elbows and knees. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and tugged him up, closer. She had tiny breasts, hardly a handful, sensitive nipples. He licked and kissed and sighed against them and laid his head between them. She ran fingers through his sweaty hair.

“Okay?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Your face goes all red, just like a human.”

“Happy to have provided you with amusement.”

“Shut up. Not allowed be sarcastic when you’re naked in bed with somebody.”

“Lyin’ on top of somebody,” he said. She was warm beneath him. He could feel the sweat on his temples, on the back of his neck. Sex was a lot of work. Joyous work, but draining. He rolled onto his back and tugged her over against him. She pulled the blankets up and he let himself slide down into sleep.

Dreams again, unruffled on the surface but with roiling currents below, creatures in the depths waiting their time to breach and be known. And yet he did not dream of Gallifrey slipping away, and he was grateful.

He woke in the small hours. She was cuddled against him, sleeping. The stars wheeled overhead, unseen. The earth spun and revolved. He felt it all. Everything was centered on her. His entire being, all wrapped around her. He remembered this feeling. He’d had it before, in previous lives. It had destroyed him utterly every time. And no matter how he warned himself against it, he would let it keep happening. Rose, now Clara. Both of them in the arms of other men.

He’d stolen this time. It was not his by rights. He lay awake staring at the bare ceiling wondering what he was going to do when he had to leave.

He extricated himself from her gently and slid out of bed. Found his sweatpants on the floor, pulled them on. He would make himself a cup of tea and read, perhaps. And then he saw it: the TARDIS door was open.

He went up to it cautiously and peeked inside. All seemed normal. He rubbed a hand against her to express his contrition, then slipped inside. He had that moment of relief he always felt when he came through that door. He was home; he was safe. The sounds of the machinery humming around him, the awareness of the size, the mass, the power around him. His to command, or rather, to coax into cooperation with his mad schemes.

He laid his hands on the console. “I’m sorry, old girl.” There it was, a flare of response somewhere inside. Now he would make his amends by repairing what he had broken. He took himself down into stores to find parts for what he wanted for that facet of the console: something more more modern and clean, something less Edwardian. Something special, to make his apology as concrete as he could. Tools, parts, carried up in boxes. And now to clear away the smashed panel.

He became aware of time when he hear Clara’s voice calling out for him from the bedroom. She came running into the TARDIS in a robe and bare feet. He set the synesthic down and ran up the steps to meet her. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

“I was afraid you’d just leave,” she said.

“Can’t. Need to repair the console.” He gestured toward it; she went all the way in to take a look. He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She looked at the bent levers, the levers she would be pulling so often with him. Had pulled.

“It’s a wonder you only broke one finger.”

He kissed her shoulder. “I’m sure I broke more.”

“Still not going to tell me why?”

“No.”

He followed her out of the TARDIS for morning tea and a bit of breakfast. Clara had a school event; her day waited for no one. He made her a cuppa and some perfect toast, then kissed her goodbye at the door, a lingering kiss with passion in it, a promise for the evening to come. He had cast the die; the Rubicon was crossed. Taste joy while he could.

He worked in the TARDIS for hours, aware it would take him days to complete. And through it all, he was careful to keep track of time so he was ready when Clara came home in the mid-afternoon, dressed all in black with his hair brushed and his hands clean.

“Do you want to go out again?” she asked. “Drink at my local, film?”

“Anything you want.”

But her hand was on his chest, her fingers slipping inside his shirt, caressing him. “Or maybe we could stay in,” she said.

He would have answered but his mouth was better occupied with her throat, with the line of her neck down to her shoulder.

He dreamed that night of time loops and paradoxes, the uncountably many terrible things that could happen when one meddled with one’s own past. Reapers. Entire timelines vanishing. Rips in time. He woke covered in sweat. No sense forcing himself to endure sleep he didn’t need, dreams he didn’t want. He dressed and slipped into the TARDIS to work, leaving the door open so he could hear Clara if she called.

He needed to work. He had a deadline. On Wednesday evening his earlier self would appear. On time or maybe even early, eager for reasons he did not yet understand. Or admit to himself. He himself must be gone before then, gone and all the mess he’d made of Clara’s life cleaned up. Tuesday evening would be safest. Tomorrow evening. So he repaired the TARDIS console while she was at school, working with a concentration and intensity he only brought to bear when desperate. And yet he did not want to leave. Every moment he could he spent with her, in bed, kissing, embracing, sweating, crying out, and then sleeping.

By Tuesday afternoon the TARDIS control console was functioning perfectly again, with some new features even; he took her out for a shakedown run to Jupiter and back just to be sure. He landed in Clara’s bedroom again, in precisely the same place. He was tempted to run, run run run away from the consequences of his selfishness, his utter pudding-brained self-indulgence, but he knew better. He had to clean up his mess. He had to do it now, before his past self arrived to take her on her weekly adventure.

When she came back from school he’d do it. He’d talk her into it. And then he’d go. Where, he wasn’t sure. He’d have to face his Clara again, the future Clara, the one who loved Danny so much she’d betrayed him. Not right away, at least. He would give himself as much time as he needed.

He paced her kitchen, arguing with himself about what to do. There was only one path out of this thorny thicket. He knew what he had to do to fix it. He’d known from that first evening, when he’d allowed himself to fall asleep in her bed, what he’d have to do to repair the damage. Wipe her memory straight away? Give her no choice about it? The idea of that nauseated him. Some of his past selves might have been able to do that, but he remembered what it had been like for Jamie and Zoe. For Donna. It was a crime. Not without her permission. Could he talk her into it? He had to.

When she came home from school, he was no closer to knowing how to go about it than he had been earlier. She knew something was up. She knew it was his last night with her; she knew his past self was due tomorrow. He took her hand and sat down with her in the living room, and braced himself to do it.

The TARDIS phone rang in her bedroom. He raised his eyebrow at Clara, who shrugged as if to say, search me. He ran in, snatched up the receiver, and it was Clara, his Clara, the one he hadn’t meddled with.

“Clara! What– are you okay?”

“Hey. Doctor. Look. There’s something I need to tell you. Something happened. Meet me at our usual cafe at 8:30 Saturday morning.”

He drew a calmer breath. There was nothing urgent in her voice. “Which Saturday?”

“The one in two days. Look, I’ll just show up there every Saturday until you figure it out.”

“Okay.”

He heard the click on her end, then hung up the phone. Clara, past Clara, the Clara he had to leave, was in the doorway of her bedroom, watching him.

He said, “That was you.”

“I could tell. Your face went all soft and happy and then worried.”

He scowled, to counteract whatever it was she thought she’d seen in him. He was not a soppy mess. Not. “You are summoning me. I am to meet you at our usual cafe on Saturday morning.”

“We have a usual cafe?”

“We do.”

Clara smiled at him. She’d taken him to mean something other than what he meant, but he could not bear to correct her. “Also, I’m still alive. That was something I was worried about. You let slip that we were together, but I was seriously afraid you’d come back here because I was dead.”

“I let slip– That was why you–” He broke off. Something he’d said. She’d believed they were together.

“I’d been wanting to, but you were so standoffish I didn’t even dare hint. When you showed up and started hugging me it was the best news in the world.”

The Doctor turned away to hide his face. He’d let slip more than that, he’d wager. He hardened himself as much as he could and turned back to her.

“Clara. I can’t let this wait any longer.”

“Let what wait?” She was already suspicious.

“Can’t let you remember this week. It’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“There’s nothing in my memory about this– you never said a word. We never so much as kissed.”

“No. I refuse to believe that. There’s no way I didn’t tell you how I feel. No matter how prickly you are, I can see right through you.”

“You don’t tell me. And, and other things get in the way.”

She folded her arms. “You won’t tell me what.”

“No.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe what you like. You didn’t. That is fixed time for me.”

“No.”

He grasped her hands and pulled her to face him. “Clara. This is critical. You must not speak of this. No matter what. You’ll create a paradox and I canna tell what may happen then. Reapers? Worse. We’ll lose even this, this, this week. It’ll be locked off in a time loop.”

“I’m not letting you wipe my memories with the sonic. It’s, it’s horrible. The idea.”

He let go of her and turned away. He chewed on his thumb. “That’s not what I want to do. I can bury your memories. Bury them deep. So they can be recovered later. A trigger phrase, a gesture.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You have to, to let me into your mind.”

Now it was her turn to pace. Back and forth, across the kitchen floor, one arm tight across her chest, the other raised so she could chew on her nails.

She stopped. “If I say no. Could you do this anyway?”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes. For a little while. Then it unravels. The mind wants to remember. A mind that hasn’t consented will fight to remember. It will remember eventually.”

“Would you wipe my memories if I said no?”

He shook his head. His younger self might have been able to, but not he. Not to her. Not to his Clara. “I will not force you. Ever.” No matter the consequences. He would let the universe burn. He took her hand and squeezed.

“It’s not a wipe. Just until our timelines are synced again. I’ll use a trigger phrase and you’ll remember everything.”

“You’ll use it? You promise?”

His hearts stabbed him then: love is a promise, he’d said. “I promise.” Then an idea occurred to him. “Not a phrase. A gesture. A kiss. I’ll kiss you. It will all come back.”

Clara smiled at him, so heartbreakingly sweet and trusting and pleased that his hearts ached. “A fairytale wake up.”

“Yeah. A fairy tale.”

“Okay. I’ll let you. Now?”

“Now.”

He touched fingertips to her temples and roused an ability he had left untouched completely in this regeneration. Touch telepathy was merely a burden when he could hardly tolerate being touched by anyone. Anyone who wasn’t Clara.

She welcomed him in. Oh, what a mind. Quick, alert, searching, questioning, never at rest. A mind he had loved even without the fire of regeneration burning a connection between them.

The affection for him was wound everywhere in her mind, tangled up in everything they’d done together, a single strand from the moment of that phone call from his past self to now. Undoing it took all of his concentration. He had to leave her as she ought to be, as he remembered her, friendly but irritated with him, impatient with him, willing to haul off and slap him when she was angry, unwilling to get into bed with him. And he had to bury the memories of this week.

She cooperated with that, true to her word, but she resisted his attempts to bury the love, the longing. He had to insist, pushed himself a little deeper in than he wanted, and ruthlessly took it all away and hid it. He left her with the impatience he remembered, the searching for somebody to be with, somebody who wasn’t him. It would unravel eventually, as he had warned her, but it should last long enough to get them to the waiting meeting in a cafe.

He withdrew from her mind slowly. Of all the things he had done to her, from leading her into living his life with him, lying for him, and growing heartless with him, this was perhaps the worst.

And now to finish it.

“Forgive me, Clara, when you remember this. Be angry, and then forgive me.”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. Her eyes fluttered closed. She was deep in trance state now. He let himself linger, touching her one last time. He released her, took one step back, two. Steeled himself. He snapped his fingers. Her eyes opened and she shook herself. Her eyes focused on him and she smiled for a heart-stopping instant. Then her brow furrowed.

“What are you doing here?” Bright, happy, a puzzled: no caress in it. She was as she had been. “And what is the TARDIS doing in my bedroom?”

“Isn’t it Wednesday?” he said, plaintively, as if he were the same man he’d been before this week.

“It’s Tuesday night! I have marking to do. Shoo! Come back tomorrow.” She made brushing gestures at him, kindly enough but firm.

He wheedled half-heartedly then sulked, because it was what he would have done. “I’ll just jump forward a day, see if I’m troubled by your petty calendars,” he said.

“Fine. Just– fine. Begone.”

He backed into the TARDIS, his eyes locked with hers all the way, and closed the door. Closed his eyes. It hurt again, as badly as it had hurt when he’d landed. Worse. He’d tasted what he’d merely longed for before. Now he knew what he was denied. Paradise lost.

Well and truly punished for his theft.

He let his fingers run over the new console, the stark new sleek black levers. Austere, minimal, all black and silver, not a single touch of magician in it. He liked it. He set the time for when her phone call had come from, then pulled the levers to send himself into the vortex. The TARDIS was taking pity on him, it seemed, for she shuddered into motion more quietly than was her wont. Off to his own timeline, to the cafe, to their cafe, for coffee and news.

Not yet.

“Not a good man,” he said to the TARDIS. “An idiot. Give me a little time before we go to her. I can’t. In this state I can’t do right by her. I need time.”

Time to spend sitting on the floor, back against the console, arms clasped around his knees, thinking. Brooding, he knew, but there was no one there to point it out to him and laugh him into better humor. He didn’t want anyone there. He wanted Clara. He would always want Clara. That was the trouble. Regeneration came with barbed hooks.

Maybe Pink hadn’t worked it out. Maybe he’d declined to return. Maybe the databank had lost power too quickly. In that case his Clara would need him. He would play it by ear. If Danny had not worked it out, he’d kiss her. If Danny had returned, he’d hug her, bestow his blessings on her, and go. He wouldn’t be able to bear it, seeing them together, not after this week. Not after learning what he wanted. The thought of her in Pink’s arms again– he couldn’t grudge it her. He wanted to see her happy. He could not let himself be in the way. He would not. He wouldn’t touch what they had. He shouldn’t have touched her. Shouldn’t have let himself. He’d poisoned the timestream, nearly, with his selfishness.

He pushed himself to his feet painfully. How long had he sat there? Long enough to stiffen up. He set his coat and hair to rights. Had to look good for her. A calm and unruffled exterior.

A hand on the levers, and the TARDIS shifted out of the vortex at the time and place specified. A cafe they’d been at before, a cheerful place. Mid-summer rain, light early morning custom. She was there already, looking a little grim and determined.

He strode in and sat down, bantered with her. Looked at her straight on. The bracelet was on her wrist. And she had bad news. She looked at him sadly, and that was pity on her face, he knew it. The Doctor clenched his hand once, to remind himself that he didn’t deserve her, that she would never have touched him on her own, and smiled.

“I’ve found Gallifrey,” he said.

Stars on his fingers

2014-11-20T12:00:00+00:00

The Doctor put the TARDIS into geostationary orbit above the gas giant’s major storm system and let his instruments run. Boring. The numbers were boring and so were the three-dimensional visualizations of plasma flows. No intelligent life anywhere, and fascinating as gas giants might have been to some people, they weren’t to him. He was was bored. Two days without Clara, and he was bored.

Time to ring her up. It was always time to ring her up; that’s what time machines were for. He threw the lever and shifted the TARDIS into the vortex, aiming it Earth-ward toward the right point in their shared timestream. Clara’s mobile was a mere button-press away. To his great pleasure, she answered immediately.

She sighed at him. “I know I told you to come tonight, and I do want to go out with you, but this time there’s a problem.”

“A problem?” The Doctor squinted at his view screen, which showed nothing problem-like in any distance that he might call reasonable. The entire Earth solar system was just as boring as the previous system had been, if he was to be blunt about it– and why not be blunt?

Clara sighed again. “I can’t do any running. And with you it’s always running.”

“Not always!”

“Always. But I can’t. I twisted my ankle running down the hallway. One of the students brought their new puppy in, and then there was a spill and I was sliding and the new caretaker was in the way and–” Clara huffed forcefully enough that he winced. “You can imagine.”

“I am imagining. Vividly.” The new caretaker was no doubt completely at fault. He knew he shouldn’t have given up the post. “What happened to your ankle?”

“It hurts and is all wrapped up and I’m not supposed to walk on it. And did I mention that it hurts?”

He scowled at the console, though it wasn’t the console’s fault Clara was hurting. “Do you want me to come back later?”

“I just want– I want a night in. At home. With quiet company. While my ankle is all swollen like this. I want a pajama party.”

The Doctor heard “quiet company” and knew he could provide that. And possible he’d take the opportunity to do something sneaky and helpful with her ankle. He clapped his hands together. “Right! A pajama party you shall have.”

There was a pause, just long enough for him to start wondering what a pajama party might be when it was at home. Then Clara said, “That was unexpected.”

“I’ve always enjoyed a good pajama party. I’ll be by shortly.” And he rang off.

Shortly, of course, was a matter of relative measure when one was in the TARDIS. “Shortly” gave him the space to do what he needed, which was to arrange the most perfect pajama party possible. He locked onto that moment in her timeline, so that he might appear mere moments after their conversation, and set to work. He spun the second view screen around in front of his face, alongside the one with the gas giant data.

“Pajama party, pajama party! Show me… pajama parties.”

Both view screens changed: a rapid-fire succession of images of girls at sleep-overs, movies showing teenagers eating too much candy, staying up too late, watching movies, listening to music. Painting each other’s nails.

Teenagers. Candy.

What hell had he promised to endure this time for the sake of his Clara?

The Doctor squared his shoulders. Nothing a man of his abilities could not cope with. Of this he was certain. “Nail polish, we’ve got that below stairs,” he said, to himself or to the TARDIS or perhaps to both. He’d got through gallons of it back in the days when Jack Harkness has been on board, back when he’d had the ears. Rose had liked it.

The screen flashed to new images. Party games it read. Spin the bottle. Truth or dare. Rules thereof. Example session.

“Truth or dare,” he said, and licked his lips out of sheer nerves. That one might cause problems. Would cause problems, if he knew his Clara, which he did. Best to avoid that. Best to lay in a supply of films of approximately the right Earth era, on whatever media it was she was using this year. And nail polish. And a supply of sugary drinks and candy. In fact, he’d better get a bag for all the things he’d need. Two.

When the TARDIS materialized inside Clara’s flat,it was about fifteen minutes later in her time, and only a couple of hours in his. He had been quite laudably efficient in his preparation. The TARDIS had been unusually helpful as well. He held a bag in each hand. The door swung open to reveal Clara. He marched out, triumphant.

Clara hopped away from the TARDIS door. She was, he saw, standing on one foot. The other had an elastic bandage wrapped around it and over that an ice bag.

“Sit down, sit down. Wouldn’t want your delicate human tissues to suffer permanent damage.”

Clara collapsed backwards onto her couch. He proudly set the bags in front of her.

“What is all this stuff?”

“Supplies. For the pajama party.” He waved his hands around to indicate the living room, site of the party that was about to be, the product of intricate Time Lord planning.

Clara did not look impressed. Instead she looked distinctly concerned, almost wary. She dug into the nearest bag and pulled things out. She held up a six-pack of colored glass bottles in blobby interlocking shapes, and peered at the animated labels.

“Cherry-flavored Sugar Bomb Pop?”

“England’s most popular fizzy drink in 2060.”

Clara set it down on the floor and reached into the bag again.

“Nail polish.”

“Wouldn’t advise drinking that.”

“The complete John Hughes filmography on a single datacube.”

“Essential.”

“Jelly babies?”

“Who doesn’t like jelly babies?” The Doctor snagged the bag from her before she could toss it back into the bag and stuck it in his pocket.

“An empty Coke bottle.” Clara gazed into the mouth. “There’s dust in it.”

“I had to go a long way to find that. Found it sitting on a rock in the middle of a veldt.”

“What’s it for?”

“You spin it and when the open end points to you, you have to ask a question. Clara, it’s perfectly obvious what the bottle is for. I don’t know why you’re asking me. It’s required for a pajama party.”

Clara was staring at him. “We don’t have enough people for spin the bottle. We’d end up getting each other every time and that would be just weird.”

The Doctor stopped with his mouth open. He hadn’t thought of that. He ought to have rounded up a lot of her friends for this. But he didn’t really want to do that. He wanted a pajama party with Clara, not a pajama party with a lot of tedious humans.

She was still talking. “Look, this is all incredibly sweet of you. But this isn’t what I had in mind.”

“It isn’t?”

“When adults do pajama parties, they drink wine and watch romcoms. Preferably ones with Hugh Grant in them.”

“I don’t like Hugh Grant.”

“Well I do, and it’s my pajama party. This is how it’s going to go. You are going to change into pajamas, I am going to open a bottle of wine, and we are going to watch Hugh Grant. With a big comfy blanket over us.”

He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.” This idea was much better, except for the Hugh Grant part, though possibly he could work on his wormhole plotting problem instead of watching the film. Just with the back of his mind and not his chalkboard, because the blanket part was definitely the best aspect of her plan.

“Where are your pajamas?” she said.

The Doctor riffled his hair, which was probably not completely behaving because it never did. He knew he’d forgotten something. “My pajamas,” he said. “I’ve got some on the TARDIS, I think. I’ll just–” Flee in terror. That would do.

“I’ve got some for you. You left them, ages and ages ago.” And she hopped off into her bedroom.

He was not the blushing sort but he blushed then, because he remembered that now, and remembered the circumstances, and it was not precisely what he wanted to remind her of tonight, when he wanted her thinking of him not of that fellow her boyfriend. Who’d been him.

Clara returned, hopping, with a bundle that she thrust into his arms. He unfolded them. Oh yes, he remembered these. Flannel, cuddly– if he was the sort to use that word– and covered in little rocket ships. Clara pointed to the washroom. “Put ’em on. I’ll pour the wine.”

They were too big. His previous self had had broader shoulders and a larger waist, though he’d been shorter. The Doctor softly cursed the big chinny lug and tugged the ties around the waist as tight as he could. He risked a look at himself in the mirror that turned into a wince; hands run through his hair in an attempt to sort it out, then sod all, couldn’t delay any more. Out he went, glancing only once through the opened door to her bedroom, then out to her sitting room and the television. Which he had taken the opportunity to make some improvements upon the last time he’d been left alone in the room, not that she’d noticed.

He tiptoed out and waited for her to cast judgement on how he looked in pajamas, but she merely smiled at him. She was already on the couch with a tartan wool blanket at the ready. He insisted she stay put on the couch while he cued up the film, which was on spinning shiny disks this year, quite primitive. Simple to manage, though. He set himself up next to Clara, six carefully-judged inches between them: close enough to make it clear he was not afraid of her, not so close he touched her and upset her.

She’d opened the wine bottle and poured for them. Red, mid-price, French. She held out a glass to him.

“I’m more the whiskey sort,” he said to her, hopefully, but she merely thrust the glass toward him again. He’d drink wine and like it, then. His previous self hadn’t; yet another advantage he had over the gangling chin-man.

He tasted the wine. Acceptable. He fished the jelly babies out of his pocket and tipped the bag toward her. “Jelly baby?”

She screwed up her face at him. “Those don’t go with wine.”

“Nonsense.” He bit the top half off a jelly baby and filled his mouth with wine. Stopped. Chewed and swallowed as quickly as possible. There was no chance he was going to give his reaction away to her. He tucked the jelly babies away for the future and concentrated on the wine. Not nearly strong enough to affect him, of course, but it was pleasant-tasting and Clara was happier when he shared with her. She liked cooking for him too. All those souffles, which she’d become adept with.

Clara dug back into the bags he’d brought and pulled out the collection of nail polish. It was from a ways in her future, if he remembered aright, but the basic principle was the same. Bottle, brush, apply, let dry.

She fiddled with it all. He smiled secretly. It was lovely to see somebody using all those silly cosmetics again. Amy had been more restrained and less likely to go for the fun things.

Then she said, “Let me do your nails.”

He gawped and then glared. “No.”

“Yes.” She was glaring right back, that round face all set and determined. A moment of contest of wills, then she smiled at him. “Come on. Trust me.”

He scowled for an instant. “Yeah, all right.” The smile had bested him. As usual.

Clara took his left hand in hers and set it onto her knee. She stroked his fingers once. He was almost immediately profoundly aroused. He snapped his gaze away from her and toward the television. He breathed carefully, evenly. He had command of himself. If she looked she would see it, but she seemed absorbed in whatever she was doing to his hand. The film– he’d have to distract himself with the film. Or the smell of the nail polish, which took him back a very long time indeed.

The film was already in motion. Two people in a carriage, one of them a cad and the other a shrew, were discussing a will and whittling down the amount of money that was supposed to go to the cad’s sisters. None at all, was the conclusion. The Doctor found himself miffed. It was quite unfair. He turned to complain about this to Clara, but she wasn’t paying the least attention.

“You’re missing the start,” he said.

“Oh, I’ve seen this loads of times. And I’ll be teaching the book to my fifth formers.”

“Why do you put it on, then?”

“Comfort. Same reason as the pajamas.”

She had a bottle out and was dipping a little brush into it. It came out gleaming with some dark color. Black? The Doctor leaned over to look. She touched the brush to his littlest finger. He twitched.

“Hey! Hold still!”

“It tickles.”

“Hold still or I’ll get this all over your fingers.”

The Doctor muttered to himself and turned back to the screen. Unshorn sheep on an English hillside, costumes from a time he’d visited a handful of times, and on cue, there was the stammering Hugh Grant. He rolled his eyes but found himself charmed by the way the fellow was kind to the tomboy child. He’d have done the same if he’d been in that position. And soon enough he found himself absorbed in the film, despite all his resistance.

Right about the time Colonel Brandon was telling Elinor all about what a cad Willoughby was, Clara spoke up. “Take a look.”

The Doctor pulled his attention away from the screen reluctantly and looked at his hand, still laid flat on her thigh. His nails were, as he expected, black. He scowled because that was what he did, but black was a color he could accept. He was the black nail polish sort, yes.

“Do you like it?”

“Well–”

“Look at it properly.”

He held his hand up before his face and squinted. She’d painted his nails black, yes, but she’d done more than that. On each one was a spatter of little silver stars. Glittering stars, all over the black of space. And on his thumb was a blue police box: the TARDIS, with a tiny white square where the sign was.

“Oh!” he said. “That’s– that’s–”

“Have I rendered you speechless?”

“Not possible.”

Clara merely smirked at him. “Takes a lot to shut you up.”

“Nonsense. I can shut up any time.”

Now she was laughing at him. There, he’d got out of telling her what her stars on his fingers meant to him, the idea of which terrified him in a way that truly robbed him of speech. He carefully laid his hand on his knee, where he could see the stars any time he liked, without giving himself away.

“Hey, not done yet. Got to put a finish coat on them. Give them some chance of lasting a few days with what you get up to with your hands.”

She took his hand again, which was a feeling that made the whole thing worthwhile. He watched her put the final coat on his fingernails. Eyebrows together in concentration, completely absorbed in her work, a little smile on her lips. Oh, how he wished he were allowed to touch them. But he wasn’t. Too old-looking, too much not her boyfriend, the floppy-haired one with the chin. But– his long fingers in hers, her face screwed up in concentration as she paid attention to him– to him, not to anybody else. She still cared for him, even though he didn’t look like the floppy-haired fellow any more. She would spend an evening painting the stars on his fingernails.

She finished quickly, too quickly, because his excuse for watching her was gone when she was done. An idea came to him.

He said, “Do you want me to do yours? I can, you know. I know how.”

Clara smiled at him. “I’m good. Let’s just watch the end part. Where’d that blanket go?”

She nudged his arm. He stared for a moment then understood. He was to raise it and she would tuck herself underneath, legs curled under herself, head against his chest. Did this count as hugging? She wasn’t hugging him. She’d lured him into hugging her. Clever girl, his Clara. Devious. He had an arm around her. Both of them under a blanket, in pajamas, lights low, the bottle of wine nearly empty.

He had no bloody idea what was going on with the film. He didn’t care. His arm was around her; her head was resting on his chest. This was anything but boring. It was, for the moment, perfect.

Lipstick

2014-11-18T12:00:00+00:00

“Where has my lipstick gone?”

The Doctor answered from her bedroom. “The laser one? Last time I saw it you’d just dropped into the acid pit on Glaxifrastorica.”

“Not the laser one! Though you need to replace that because I used to use it all the time. A real, actual, lip-coloring lipstick.” The one she’d just started using before the Doctor had materialized the TARDIS in a corner of her bedroom, as was his new habit.

“There are dozens of them here,” he said. “I was just looking at them.”

Clara groaned and made her way back into her bedroom. The Doctor was sitting at her vanity, in front of her mirrors, another one of his new habits. Clara thought he secretly enjoyed glaring at himself in triplicate.

“Looking?” she said, suspiciously. Her vanity looked as if he’d been rummaging around with everything on it. Again.

“Sorting.”

Clara closed her eyes for a moment and breathed. Once. Twice. “Sorting. You were sorting my lipstick.” By implication: that was why the one she’d just used was missing.

The Doctor waved his hands around. “By color. Well, luminance. When viewed under ultraviolet. I was curious about what you look like to a bee. Or to a native of Polychromatoa. Since we’re going there as soon as you’re ready. See, here they are, all sorted. You’ll want one from the lighter end if you want to show up most clearly. Hurry up, now.”

And now he was doing the long-suffering routine, exactly as if she were holding him up rather than the reverse.

“You know what? I don’t need makeup for this.”

“Of course you don’t,” the Doctor said, under his breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He was giving her an utterly baffled look. “You’re perfect as you are right now. Don’t see why you need to change anything.”

Clara dove at him and managed to press a kiss to his cheek before he scrambled away. “Polychromatoa, you say? Let’s go.”

The Wedding Tree

2014-11-06T12:00:00+00:00

The ceremony concluded with a great cheer. The giggling children of the village circled around Clara and the Doctor, then linked hands and skipped in a line away from the fountain. The children each had a glowing spark orbiting their head; the globes looked like tiny stars in the gathering dusk. The Doctor took her hand and they followed the children across the grass. They were leading the way toward the great tree in the center.

For once an encounter with an advanced civilization was not going to end in war, catastrophe, disaster, or even a pell-mell run toward something or away from something. The planet they were visiting was cultured, well-educated, and going through a peaceful period of its long history. And the Doctor had just done it a massive favor, returning an historical artifact thought long-lost. They’d been so pleased they’d put on this ceremony to thank the Doctor–to thank them both, to Clara’s pleasure, for she’d been a major participant. They’d poured wine into each other’s cups, toasted each other, and been gifted with their own floating fairy light globes.

Some time during the ceremony their globes had fused into a single, larger one that pulsed with soft colors. It was gorgeous, in Clara’s opinion, though odd, because nobody else seemed to have shared lights. All of the adults had single globes about the size of oranges, and the children had those adorable sparks. Their big blobby light globe followed them now, about a foot over the Doctor’s head. The procession mounted the stairway that wound around the bole of a huge white-barked tree. The stairway wound up and up, narrowing as it went: the children appeared to be leading them to the very top.

The Doctor said, “Look at this, Clara! This tree! This civilization has such high technology that they appear to have none at all. This walkway, for instance. See the vines? And what appear to be planks?”

Clara looked and then was sorry she had, because while she wasn’t especially afraid of heights, looking down through the wood slats meant admitting how high up they were and how flimsy this whole vine skyway thing felt.

“Nope,” she said, “not looking any more than I must.”

The Doctor ignored this reply, predictably. “See? It was grown, not made. They persuaded the tree to grow what they wanted, without harming it. Very clever. We’re meant to spend the night at the top. It’s apparently a great honor.”

The grin on his face made it clear how pleased he was by the gesture. He went on about it more while they climbed. Clara listened to him with half her attention while she concentrated on not falling to her death. He was in the best of all his moods, pleased with himself and with how this visit had turned out. She was happy with her part in it–the identification of a crucial symbol hidden in the dust–and with how little running they’d had to do. Though maybe the next planet should have some running on it, just to keep things interesting. She’d have to bring that up to him.

They were near the top of the tree now. The branches were thinning out and Clara could see glimpses of the sky through the treetops. The children led them out along a swaying vine bridge, arching up to a platform at the very highest point. Clara breathed out in relief when she reached the platform, which was solid. She was resolutely not going to think about having to climb back down tomorrow morning.

“See? This is grown as well!” the Doctor said. He spun around almost gleefully, pointing down at the platform. Not a platform, she saw, because it really was the branch itself, flared out flat. They were standing on bark. Very nice slightly spongy white birch bark, but it was definitely tree. The whole thing was made of plants coaxed into useful forms, in fact. The other half of the platform was hidden behind a curtain of vines that made a sort of living hut, with a little roof, like a tiny house.

The children circled around them and sang a song. Clara tried but couldn’t catch the words–it was in what sounded to her like Middle English, which meant it was a traditional song for them, too, not in their daily language. Whatever it was, it was short and apparently hilarious. When they were done they all ran down the bridge toward the trunk, giggling, most of them looking exactly like they were about to pitch over the edge and fall. But nothing terrible happened, and Clara was left smiling down at them as they vanished around the tree. When she turned back she found the Doctor gnawing on a forefinger, which wasn’t a good sign.

“Everything okay? We going to have to make a rapid escape?”

He shook his head. “There’s no danger. Just–” He fluttered his hand in front of his face. “You might not like the accommodations.”

Clara looked her question at him, but he had no more to say about it. She ducked through the vines to take a look for herself.

It was a hut, sort of. There was a the vine wall, and a roof, but the other side of the platform was open to the night. The view was terrifying but gorgeous: tree branches and fireflies and the glow of sunset and a whole lot of nothing until the ground far below. On a low table was a glass bottle filled with something green and two glasses–more of the wine they’d drunk earlier. And there was a dish of something that looked like berries. If this were a hotel, Clara would be making incoherent noises of delight. Except it wasn’t, and they were about two hundred feet up in the air, and there was one bed in the middle of the hut. One oddly circular bed, piled with blankets and round pillows. Over the bed, their joined light floated. It glowed warm and green and flickering.

One bed.

“There’s only one bed,” Clara said.

“Yeah.” The Doctor gripped one of the branches that held up the roof and peered over the edge. “I think it would insult them if we refused to sleep here,” he said, almost apologetically. “I think it’s a high honor to be given this platform for this occasion. But you don’t have to stay. You can go down to the TARDIS and I’ll stay.”

“Not in total darkness I’m not going down there.”

“It’s hardly total. There are those green firefly lights floating everywhere.” And now he was leaning right out over the edge, trying to get a better look, or perhaps to get himself killed. Clara wrapped a hand around his belt and braced herself.

He straightened up and scowled at her. “You needn’t worry. I have a preternatural sense of balance.”

Clara snorted. She’d just seen him nearly fall off a larger tree branch because he’d been so distracted by the pattern of vine growth.

“Besides,” he said, “that’s what the soul globes are for. They’re guardians. If you were to blunder off the edge, with your merely human reflexes, your globe would catch you. And of course they light your way, guide you around the city, that sort of thing.” He flicked his hand at the tree-city below them.

That was considerate of their hosts, in Clara’s opinion, with just one catch. “We don’t seem to have one for each of us any more, you notice that? We’ve got just one big one now.”

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at her. “One globe. Odd.”

He spun on his heel and strode to the center of the platform. He stood on the bed–in boots no less–and pointed his sonic at the glowing fairy light. It whirred. Normally that was a sound that made Clara happy, but here, among the leaves and wind-chimes and fireflies, it jarred.

“How do they work?” she said.

“Nanotechnology. Very advanced. Linked to us somehow. Like a–like a mood ring. Empathic. The color. Reflects internal status.”

His tone had softened; he approved of this culture, however annoyed he was about the bed. The bed he was standing on. The bed that was clearly a little small for two people, especially when one of them was a stick insect. The bed she was already thinking about speculatively, because of how exciting and long the day had been.

She yawned despite herself.

“We’ve spent the night in the same bed before,” she said, because it was true. Sometimes in the most dire circumstances.

He made an noise that she interpreted as assent, glared at the sonic, shook it, and aimed it at the globe again, then at her. He frowned at it.

She said, “No big deal this time.”

He made a different noise that was not so easily interpreted as assent, then stuck the sonic into his jacket pocket. Clara watched him, frowning. He seemed nervy all of a sudden. She could probably make it down if she felt like it without falling. There were all those fireflies in the air, after all.

“One globe. One bed. Clara! Have you asked yourself why our soul-globes joined?”

Now that tone of voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “No, but I have a feeling I’m not going to like the answer.”

He jabbed a finger up at their joined lights. “The soul globes aren’t anything to do with souls of course since no such thing exists. They’re merely reflectors of emotional state. Floating mood rings. Only this one is linked to both of us right now.”

“Both of us?”

“Then there’s the question of the tree. The song. They named it. The tree is really–” He broke off and turned away from her, fingers crooked over his mouth.

“What? The tree is really what?”

“I believe I may have mistaken the nature of this ceremony. Earlier in the day. When they asked me if I wanted to do it. They asked me who you were to me and I explained you were my companion, and then they proposed this–” He broke off and waved his hands around again. “A special evening, they said. I think–”

“Out with it. Now, Doctor.” She used her scariest do-as-you’re-told-now voice, not that this ever worked on him. “What is this tree?”

“The song. You heard the song. What they called the tree.”

“Doctor–”

“It’s the wedding tree. It was a wedding ceremony. Maybe.”

“A wedding–”

“They married us. Maybe.”

“Married. Us. Married.”

The Doctor glared at her. “I’m not happy about it either.”

Clara folded her arms. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up and tell me all you know about this ceremony.”

“I knew it was a bonding ceremony, but I thought it was just for us and the village. They were claiming us as their protectors. A bit old-fashioned, for them, but quaint and charming. An excuse for a civic holiday.”

“But it wasn’t a protector ceremony.”

“It was! I wasn’t wrong. I was just wrong about who was being bonded. And to whom.” From the hand gestures he was making, Clara could see he was annoyed, though whether he was annoyed with himself for having to admit being wrong about something or annoyed with their hosts, she wasn’t sure.

“They bonded us,” she said, because that was the part she was stuck on. “Married us. And we went right along with it.”

“Said all our lines like the obliging idiots we are. The thing I can’t work out, though, is why. Why interfere? They aren’t the sort of people who’d have played that trick on you. They asked me. They can’t have known what you wanted.”

Now Clara had to speak up or else. “Yeah, about that. One of them might have asked me… something. Something about staying together. And me. And you. And I might have answered.”

“Aha! It’s your fault.” The Doctor pointed at her.

“No, you’re not pinning this one on me. They asked you too.”

“What about P.E.? Didn’t you tell them about him?”

“We broke up months ago. After he figured out I was still traveling with you.”

He frowned. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“You never asked about him. Would have said something if you did.”

“You should have told me. I’d have taken you out for ice cream or whatever consolation you humans require,” the Doctor said, in a cross voice.

“As if that would have helped. You don’t pay attention in the least. And now we’re married.”

Clara stomped across the weird bark-covered platform and sat down at the point furthest from where the Doctor was standing. He should have asked. She dangled her legs over the edge–why not? she had a guardian mood-globe–and gazed out into the deepening dusk. The sky was just barely lighter than the leaves now. The nano-lights floated everywhere below them, down in the main city, faint pinpricks of color, almost as pretty as stars would have been. Insects were chirping somewhere.

Married. By accident. To the Doctor. What did she think about that? Besides being annoyed that she hadn’t been asked properly. Asked by him, on one knee. He probably hated every second of it and had already found a way to get out of it. Which should please her, but to her surprise it wasn’t that clear. If one of them was going to reject the other, she was going to do the rejecting. The Doctor wasn’t going to reject her. Except that she should probably want him to.

Asking herself what she really felt about him was dangerous. She knew she loved him, but that was easy. She loved lots of people: her grandmother, her father, most of the kids she taught. The Doctor was tops of that list any day. She was afraid of looking at it any more closely than that. Fortunately she didn’t have to. He made all the decisions about what their relationship was. And he mostly decided it involved going fun places together and hugging only on special occasions. Not getting married.

Eventually she lay on her back and stared up into the sky watching the stars come out. The constellations here were different than on Earth. Probably they had names. Probably the Doctor knew them, which was predictably annoying of him.

Soft footsteps on the bark: the Doctor came up behind her. He sat down near her and scooted himself forward until his knees also hooked over the edge. He didn’t say anything, which was good. Clara was not ready to hear him blither on just yet.

It was fully night now. The air was warm on their faces and gentle breezes rustled the leaves and the chimes hung in them. Nano-fireflies darted past. Or maybe real ones. As wedding nights went, this would have been a hand-down winner in the romantic getaway contest. Tens from all the judges. Clara was finding it difficult to be properly angry. She wasn’t sure who to be angry with.

The squaddie had dumped her, and she’d deserved it, and they’d both moved on. And she’d taken to spending more and more of her waking life on adventures like this one. Even being chained up to be eaten by the sand piranhas had its charms, when you were sure you were going to escape every time. When you trusted the person you were with implicitly, with every fiber of your being. Which–right. She sat up. The Doctor was sitting with his arms around one knee, watching her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Should have told you.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I am sorry to have missed the chance to comfort you. Nothing more.”

“You did that anyway, trust me.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, as if to tell her what he made of that suggestion to trust her, and Clara giggled. Then she said, “Not, but really. Are we married? In a cosmic sense?”

The Doctor waved his hands around his head. “We swore oaths to each other and to the community and we exchanged tokens. What else does it take?”

“A piece of paper?” He fixed a gaze on her so withering that she bristled. “Well, marriage where I come from needs that.”

“Not through most of your history it hasn’t.”

“Yeah, but right now it does.”

“And on Gallifrey at the time of my birth it required that the partners tell each other their true names. You don’t have one and mine would be just a string of syllables to you.”

And he most definitely hadn’t told her his true name. So they weren’t married, except that wasn’t what he was arguing.

“You’re saying we can be married if we want.”

He shrugged. “Or we can not be married. We can do whatever we like about it. I’ve been married four times. Ignored it a couple of times. The times there was a shotgun pointed at my back.” His eyebrows came together and he frowned. Whatever that memory was for him, he was still grumpy about it.

Clara had an opinion about this–she had a dozen opinions, each more fiercely held than the last. Her main one was that she was going to find out what he felt about her once and for all. Or else. If it took an accidental wedding to figure it out, she was going to take advantage of what fate had offered her.

She said, “What do you want to do about this one?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do about it?”

“I asked you first.”

The Doctor stared out away from her, off into the trees. He had that remote look on his face, the one he got when she strayed onto topics like what it had been like on Trenzalore, and what had happened to his family if he’d been a dad once. The one he got when he was hiding something.

“I’m not your boyfriend,” he said, eventually.

Clara blurted out, “Right. Silly idea. Would never have done it ourselves if asked. Ignoring it, then.” She’d been striving for chipper when she spoke. She wasn’t sure she’d nailed it.

The Doctor gazed at her sidelong, eyebrows furrowed, and it did not make her feel comfortable in the least. “Right,” he said, eventually. “Okay. We ignore it.”

He got up and vanished behind her.

Clara sat staring out into the night and breathing. She’d been braced for his answer, but not well enough. She focused on the toes of her boots. Breathe. In, out. Dammit. She’d wanted it. And she’d known she’d wanted it for months. It was why she’d been such a jerk to poor Danny. Well, now she knew. Her chest hurt.

What a day. Get married by accident; find out that he still doesn’t want to be your boyfriend; figure out at last that you wanted it more than you knew. Like an idiot.

“I’m not going to cry,” she muttered. “I’m not. I’ve still got everything I had before.” He would still pick her up on Wednesdays, still show her the universe. She still had her job, her own life. His friendship. At least that wasn’t gone.

The Doctor came back with the glasses and the bottle. He sat back down beside her, this time close enough that his knee brushed hers. Confirmed: friendship still intact. Would probably stay intact if she didn’t give herself away. Stiff upper lip, Oswald. She watched him pour wine into the glasses. He offered one to her.

Clara sniffed at the glass. Green, bubbly, suspicious-looking. “What is this stuff? Some kind of aphrodisiac? I don’t trust these people any more.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It’s just wine.”

“That’s okay then. Cheers.” She’d managed chipper that time.

“L’chaim,” he said, and clinked his glass against hers.

Clara had a healthy swallow. It was strange wine, not made from grapes probably. Alien wine. Sweet, fizzy, easy to drink. And the Doctor drank with her, sitting so close to her that she could feel his warmth in the cooling air. After a while he began to talk. He told her a story about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the true origins of “Kubla Khan” in an alien being’s attempt to meddle with time and undo the catastrophe that had commenced life on the planet. She wasn’t sure the story was true, but he was happy to be telling it, and it made her happy to see him smiling. And to feel him sitting so close to her. Maybe it had relaxed him to get this thing between them settled, to have them both in agreement that they weren’t a thing. It was almost worse for her, then, when she had that thought, because evenings like these were the evenings that made her love him most, this awkward grumpy Scottish Doctor with the aggressive eyebrows. She loved watching his face, so expressive and changeable, and his hands, dancing before his face as he talked.

The story was a long one, and had a happy ending, involving Bach and more music than one human could write in a lifetime. When he wound to a close, the bottle was empty, and it was time for bed. He helped her to her feet and they retreated from the night toward the little bed in the center of the platform, where their soul-globe patiently waited.

Clara unlaced her boots and set them by the bed. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from the Doctor, and wrestled with her stockings. Then her earrings and rings, all tucked away inside one boot for the night. Behind her were the sounds of the Doctor’s boots hitting the floor, one, two, then rustling. She turned to look. He had stripped to shirt and trousers. His feet were bare. He had cute toes, she thought, then had to stifle a giggle. Toes. She was thinking about his toes. She must be a little tipsy after all.

The giggle burst out a moment later when he tried to lie down on the bed. The villagers were closer to her height on average than to his. There was no way he could fit himself on the bed without his feet hanging over the edge. It was beyond ridiculous. He wriggled around and then finally laid himself across the exact center. The look on his face dared her to say something about it.

Clara curled herself onto the half of the bed he was facing. There was enough room for her if she snuggled close to him. Shove her backside against him? Hardly. She decided instead to lay her head against his chest. He cooperated, at least, stretching out an arm for her, then pulling the blanket over them both. Cozy.

The soul-globe dimmed to a low orange, like candle-light, as if it knew they wanted to sleep. And why wouldn’t it know? It was empathically linked to them.

Sleep. She was supposed to want to sleep now. Clara reminded herself she was tired. But here she was, with her head on the Doctor’s shoulder. Things had changed. She was now utterly aware of him as a man, a man with a body next to hers. He smelled nice. Odd but nice, as he always had. There was a faint whiff of cologne, a little bit of sweat. Two hearts beating, familiar to her from many close encounters, though she hadn’t been this close to this version of the man before. She’d missed it. He’d begun to relax with her a little bit, this prickly one, had begun to take her arm every now and then, to tolerate her head against his shoulder, but he wasn’t a cuddler.

Except–He was stroking her shoulder. That was new. The anti-cuddler was cuddling her right now. Clara held completely still lest she startle him.

After a while, he said, “The ceremony.”

“What about it?” Softly, trying not to break the mood.

“I remember it now. It wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t–the soul globes wouldn’t have fused if we–” He sighed. “It wouldn’t have worked if we hadn’t meant what we said. Both of us.”

He’d meant it. He was saying he’d meant it. Hope was a painful thing: it made Clara’s heart beat fast and her breath come short and if he let her down again she might not be able to bear it. She waited for him to do it, waited for him to break her in two again.

“There are so many reasons why I shouldn’t want what I want. Or shouldn’t allow myself to have it.” His voice was strange, so rough.

“What do you want?”

“I can deny myself everything, but I could deny you nothing. Clara–”

“What?”

“Tell me. I need to hear it.”

It surprised her so much she hesitated. “Hear what?”

“You know what.”

Oh. That. And it was easy to say. “I love you.”

“The way you say it–”

He tipped her chin up and kissed her. Clara laid her hands on his chest and he kissed her again, cool, sweet, gentle, hesitant. Clara wanted to cry, except she couldn’t, because he was kissing her again, hands on her face, stroking her cheek, reaching down and taking her hands. He kissed her fingertips. Now she was breaking in two, but it was possible to break in two in a happy way.

Long slow kisses, deep kisses, that went on and on, his body pressed so close against hers. He seemed so cautious, so shy. When she let her hand wander down near his belt buckle, he froze. He closed his hand around hers. “I’m not ready for more just yet. Sorry, I–.”

Clara slid her hand back up to his chest, to safe territory, over his hearts. “It’s okay,” she said. “There’s no rush.”

He sighed. “You know I want you, yeah?”

“I know.”

“I’m terrified.” That she hadn’t known. “Been such a long time. I was there so long, alone. I almost forgot. Forgot what it was like to be held.”

He sighed again, and rested his forehead against hers.

“I used to be braver.”

“We have time.”

“Time. Oh, my Clara, I have learned never to trust time.” His voice was almost hoarse now. He took her hand and set it on his buckle again. “Carry on.”

Too much too quickly starting there, she felt, so she took pity on his nerves and lifted her hands deliberately to his shirt collar. One button opened, two. He lay passively while she worked her way down, lips parted, watching her, until his shirt was open. And then he reached up and found the buttons of her blouse.

The wedding tree. It was here for wedding nights. The whole village had to know they were up here, doing this. She’d have to remember to be embarrassed about that later, maybe tomorrow morning when she had to look at the faces of the people she’d met earlier in the day. But right now she didn’t have time for embarrassment. She was helping the Doctor unbutton her blouse, reaching up and pushing his shirt off his shoulders, running her hands down his bare back, gasping when he touched her breasts for the first time, laughing when he could not figure out how her skirt was zipped. And finally, undoing that belt buckle.

First time sex: a little fumbling, a little clumsy, noses bumping, trying things and listening for that intake of breath that meant it was the right thing. Hands exploring bodies for the first time. He was pale and smooth, spare, almost bony. He used his tongue when he kissed and he liked it when she licked his ears. He discovered that she liked to be kissed along her throat.

She was so aroused by the time he knelt above her that it was easy. He was inside her as if he’d held her a thousand times before, as if this body was meant to be there. Clara sighed in satisfaction and pulled him down so he was pressed against her as tightly as he could be.

“Clara,” his rough voice in her ear, “why did we wait?”

Afterwards they lay in bed and simply held each other. Clara was tempted to wrap a blanket around herself, but didn’t, because she liked how he could not take his gaze away from her, and how he blushed.

He woke her in the deepest night to make love to her again. Any doubts she’d had about his commitment vanished that second time. Once he might pretend hadn’t happened. Twice? With that much intensity? Clara lay awake afterward thinking this over, with a sleeping Time Lord wrapped around her. He’d never say it, never ever, but his feelings were clear.

As she lay awake, she watched the soul globes disentangle from each other and commence slowly revolving around each other. One of the two was dark now, with little blue sparks flaring inside now and then. She decided that one was the sleeping Doctor’s. The other was more orange, still hot at the core but dimming. Hers. Separated now but still together, as their bodies were now. The ceremony was complete.

Clara woke alone in the bed to bright sunlight filtering through the leaves, to birdsong, and to a single smaller globe floating above. She sat up and wrapped a blanket around herself and said a bad word. She’d been wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. He’d fled. She just had to hope he hadn’t fled all the way off the planet with the TARDIS.

Time to get dressed and find out how bad it was. Her clothes were scattered over the platform. His, of course, were all gone. Clara found her knickers on one the side of the bed, and her skirt on the other, near her boots.

There was a single flower in her boot. A long stalk, yellow, something like a tulip but not exactly. Oh. She picked it up and sniffed. It had a faint scent, pleasant, like rain far away.

Also poking out of her boot was a folded note with her name on it in black ink, in handwriting she recognized. Fetching breakfast it read, followed by an odd circular symbol of the kind he’d been writing on his blackboard. PS: Washroom in the tree trunk. She got dressed and stuck the note in her pocket where she wouldn’t lose it. She would ask him to translate that circular squiggle later, though she suspected he wouldn’t.

She was almost bored enough to start making her way down the tree again when she heard grinding sound of the TARDIS arriving. It materialized against the edge of the platform, very neatly, positioned precisely where it did not disturb the tree.

The door opened and the Doctor stepped out. “Good morning,” he said. He had a tray in his hands. Clara smelled coffee. Moments later a globe shot up from far below them and settled itself above the Doctor’s head. He scowled at it, but Clara knew that was for show.

“Good morning.” Clara grinned up at him. He smiled down at her almost shyly. “You took the TARDIS up here rather than walk?”

“You slept very late. I’ve been down and up and back out again. I said our farewells to our hosts already. They asked me to convey their congratulations to us both and well-wishes to you.”

“That was sweet. And aren’t you forgetting something?” she said.

“Oh! Your coffee!” He handed over a paper cup.

Clara took it and turned it around in her hands to look at the logo. “You went back to Earth to get me coffee?”

“That’s what I needed the TARDIS for. I think I got the kind you like. Hazelnut?”

“Yeah, you did, I like that, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re forgetting something.”

She took his coffee from him and ostentatiously set both cups on the platform. She stepped right up to him and laid her hands on his chest.

“Oh!” he said.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. His eyes were closed but she kept hers open, and that was how she saw their soul-globes spin around and trade little blobs of color, like a shower of sparks, like that binary star he’d shown her once, joined by streams of fire.

She broke away from him and pointed.

“Ah,” he said. “They interact when we–when we–when we, you know. And do other things, I suppose.” Was he blushing? She certainly was.

“Can we take them with us?”

“We will leave them here, and they’ll find us if we should ever return.”

Clara rescued their coffees. “I like them. Seems like it might be a great place to celebrate our anniversaries. Does an anniversary mean anything if you’re on a time machine mostly?”

The Doctor brightened instantly. “Yes! Tracking them correctly is a fascinating problem. I can solve it though. Quite solvable.” He drank a swig of coffee to punctuate this.

Clara poked him in the chest. “Yeah? How?”

“Let me show you. I can build a calendar using the TARDIS’s chrono-circuits. The principle is easy to understand once you have the background. Which you’ll learn.”

He opened the TARDIS door for her and bowed his head. Clara flourished a gracious wave to him, with coffee cup, and preceded him inside for a lesson in calendar-making.

Entangled

2012-07-22T15:54:00+00:00

His body’s timing was bad, as always. Was it disastrously bad? Did he need to beg off from the demon hunt now? Giles gnawed on the earpiece of his glasses and counted days. It would be close, but he had a margin for error. They should be done and back to Sunnydale in plenty of time, more than twenty-four hours before it would start. And if the demon gave them any trouble, if there was any sort of delay, he had ways of coping. Staying home was unthinkable. He couldn’t beg off, not so soon after the unification spell and the renewal of their friendship. Not so soon after his Slayer had accepted him as part of her team again. It would be fine. All he had to do was plan, and he was good at planning.

Giles pulled open his bedside drawer and put together his emergency kit. Plug, lubricant, discreetly wrapped in a t-shirt and tucked into the back corner of his bag, tools to help him get through the heat if it started while he was with them. The suppression drug would ruthlessly damp the worst of it, though he’d be logy and tired under its influence, and then the plug would satisfy the urges that survived even the drug. That mindless urge to be penetrated, to be seized and claimed by someone. Strange that anything survived that horrible drug. Bloody stuff. Brutal stuff. He hated having to resort to it, but there was no way he was opening himself up to that risk again. Not with those two near him.

Xander he could cope with well enough, but Buffy, Buffy was difficult. She had blossomed into an alpha in the second year he’d known her, to his deep dismay. Of course his sodding Slayer had to be an alpha. The Council had seemed unsurprised. They’d sent him a parcel of the drug and ordered him to take it. Not that that he’d needed the order. Once a month he’d swallowed the drugs, be damned to the long-term consequences, just to avoid the hell of having her turn her head and sniff. If she’d crooked her finger he’d have been doomed. If she hadn’t, it would have been worse.

Better that she never, ever know.

And for that reason, this trip had to be quiet and this demon had to die on schedule. Fortunately he had enough advanced intelligence to know how to kill the thing. He knew the species, the nesting spot, the line of approach. It would take fire. Xander had the oil torches they’d made yesterday; Willow had done the magical prep work; Buffy would provide the brawn. Giles’s own role would be to hang back, observe, and tweak the plan if needed. And afterward to give Buffy feedback on her performance. She’d asked him to work with her more closely through the summer. Was he going to muck that up by not going with her on this trip when she’d asked him to? He was not. The timing would damn well have to be good enough.

He carried the bag downstairs and let it drop noisily by his front door. One last thing and he’d be ready. The drug was in his medicine cabinet, inside a prescription box for painkillers. He’d take one of the pills with him, just in case. It likely wouldn’t matter. If all went well, he’d be safely back in his flat with the door locked when this month’s heat came. Take the suppressor, ride out what it couldn’t damp down, use the plug and masturbate when it crested anyway. It was miserable and lonely, but it was safe.

Damn, it would be difficult to be near two alphas and unable to let either one of them touch him. He missed sex with a proper alpha. Olivia had been a beta, not completely satisfying, but at least he hadn’t been alone. Going through it with a beta was good, but being with an alpha was best. So sweet. Ethan, back in February, that disastrous visit, no doubt timed for when it would have been rising in him, had had the masterful touch Giles craved. He’d always had it. That had been good sex, intense sex. The last sex he’d had, for he’d made certain to have the suppressor at hand in the months since. Bloody opportunistic Ethan. His own Slayer had nearly killed him. A fine humiliating end that would have been.

His front door slammed open and Giles nearly jumped out of his skin. Buffy, followed by Xander and Willow, all in mid-conversation about some movie they wanted to see. The pair of alphas, so dangerous, along with his safe friend Willow.

Giles shut his medicine cabinet. He drew in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and went out to greet them.

All was well on the long drive up the coastal highway to the famed state park where the “grizzlies” were eating people. All was well on the first night, when they were a happy talkative group in a single motel room. Giles listened to his Slayer and her friends chatter in the dark long after they ought to have fallen asleep, and felt himself happy. His Slayer was safe; his young friends were getting on together; and he himself was welcome in their lives. He had purpose again. He was happy enough to listen that he didn’t bother grousing at them to shut up and sleep, as they likely expected him to. They woke readily enough in the morning when he rousted them out of bed, at least. All three demanded to be driven to the Denny’s in town for a breakfast that might dismay even an Englishman.

The drive to the state park was uneventful, and so was the hike up to the scenic overlook where the chaos demon had made its nest right out in plain view of horrified hikers. Which it then paralyzed and bundled up into its nest, like a digger wasp. A very large digger wasp with slimy deer antlers. How had anyone mistaken it for a bear?

Finding the nesting spot was no difficulty indeed. The four of them stood on the trail contemplating the slimy egg cases.

“Yup, that’s a nest,” Buffy said. “And can I just say that I am never watching Alien again? Yes, I can say that.”

“Face-hugger!” Xander raised a clawed hand up at her, which Buffy swatted away.

“Jerk.”

Giles turned away and scanned down the trail back the way they’d came. If the demon were following the reported pattern, it would already be hunting them, having mistaken them for more unprepared hikers. Did he see movement in the underbrush off the trail to the left? He did. He shouted.

His Slayer ran past him with her sword already drawn. He opened his mouth to warn her to be careful, but she was already well down the trail. The demon was there, grappling with her. It was a big one. The sword flashed but the thing did not fall; the pair rolled together and separated. They clashed again. Giles ran down the trail, to help, but it was over as suddenly as it had begun. The sword bit home. Buffy swung again and again. It was dead.

Buffy marched back up the trail with demon head in hand. Green blood dripped from the severed neck to the ground and it smoked where it struck. Buffy held it well out to the side, where the blood couldn’t get on her clothing. She wore a disposable poncho just in case. Into the nest it went. Giles and Xander followed more slowly, each with a demon leg in hand, dragging it up the trail on a tarpaulin. That went into the nest as well, along with the ruined tarp.

Buffy said, “Grossness level about seven out of ten. I have killed grosser things.”

Xander snorted. “Can I say that I’m glad I haven’t been there to help for those?”

“Shut up and give me the torch.”

Xander handed it over. Buffy held the business end out to Giles, who carefully lit it with a long wooden match. The flame was pale in the sunlight. It wavered, then flared up. The oil had caught. Buffy turned and paused with the torch poised over the nearest egg.

“Are you sure this isn’t going to burn all of Big Sur? Because that would suck.”

“That’s what I’m here for,’ Willow said. She had already begun the casting, Giles saw. Little clouds had already begun to gather over her head.

Xander said, “And are you sure that stuff won’t blow up and cover us with goo? Because I saw a movie like that once.”

Giles glared at him briefly, then turned to Buffy. “Do it.”

The torch dipped and the oily slime caught fire instantly. Flames roared up into the sky, shot through with green and blue from the otherworldly flesh they burned.

Xander and Giles stepped back. Willow’s chanting rose in volume; the clouds swirled around the nest and rained upon its circumference. Dark oily smoke roiled up from the burning corpse of the demon. The heat was intense. It burned white-hot with demonic fire and then everything collapsed into flaking ash within minutes. Giles took Willow’s hand and lent his strength to the spell for the final wash of cooling rain over the embers.

It was over, and it had gone exactly according to Giles’s plan. No one was injured, not even his resilient Slayer, and no more civilians had lost their lives. And as a bonus, he would indeed make it home safely well before his heat began.

The four of them packed up their tools and began the hike back down toward the coast. Buffy led the way, with most of the gear strapped absurdly to her backpack. She didn’t seem to notice it.

“Giles plans like an omega general,” Xander said, with admiration in his voice. Giles flinched and schooled himself to look away from Buffy, but Xander’s comment seemed to have been entirely innocent. It was a common saying, he knew: you wanted omegas planning your battles, alphas on the front lines, and betas in your capital city negotiating the rest of the idiots out of the war. He hated the cliche, if only because it was exactly how things were for Watchers and Slayers. Well, Watchers, anyway. He had his suspicions about how often Slayers turned out to be alphas. The Council never told one the important things.

“Well,” Giles said, “this plan went well enough. For once.”

“Celebratory dinner?”

“So long as we’re home early tomorrow. I have–”

“Yeah, yeah, your appointment.” Xander elbowed him cheerfully and, Giles suspected, even affectionately, then loped ahead to join Buffy. Giles watched them walk together, his Slayer and her friends. They were getting on again. That was good. If the unification spell was to have any long term effects, he would prefer it to be that one. He’d hated watching them at odds with each other. He’d hated being at odds with them. And now he had his Slayer back. His prickly, distant, endearing Slayer. She really was quite a lovely woman now. And so was Willow. And Xander too, handsome indeed with all that dark hair. The three of them, most attractive.

Giles shivered. It was unseasonably cold for May. Or rather, ordinarily cold. The California coastline was a hell of fog and brisk wind even in the spring. He curled his fists and pulled his hands up into his over-long sleeves. Handy things, these baggy jumpers. He felt quite odd. Had the thing been poisonous despite everything his text had said? Or perhaps he was simply coming down with a cold. He slowed his pace and let the others pull ahead of him.

Willow noticed and hung back to let him catch up. She plucked at his sleeve.

“You okay?” she said.

“Feel a bit peaky.”

She took his hand in hers– slim cool hand, capable hand, soothing hand. Giles clasped it and walked with her down to the parking lot at the trail head. Xander and Willow were already at the car, talking. Xander was waving his arms around, imitating something. Giles shivered.

Willow stepped into his path and brought him to a halt. She laid her hands on his arms and looked into his eyes. “Giles. Are you going into heat?”

Giles opened his mouth to snipe at her for having dared speak it aloud near the other two, then he snapped it shut again. Hot flashes, dizziness, prickles on his skin. Bugger.

“It’s early.”

Willow cast a glance over her shoulder at the other two, bickering even yet. “Do you need to get away from them?”

“I’ll just take the suppressor. I have it with me.” He thrust his hands into his pockets, searching. Rental SUV key, house keys, a few coins, motel entry card. Back pocket? Wallet. No little plastic strip of pills. Bugger again. “Back in the motel room. If I can last until we get there, it’ll be fine.” He tried to speak reassuringly as much for himself as for Willow. She looked doubtful.

“If those two don’t tear each other to shreds before we get back. You’re probably already signaling it. Giles, they’re going to figure it out.”

“Bloody hell. Help me cover. Drive us back now.”

“You should just tell her. She won’t be upset with you.”

Giles hunched over in misery. “She thinks I’m beta. Nice safe unthreatening boring beta. Not in the game.”

“Giles–”

“Not going to argue with you about this. Get me back to the motel and keep them away.”

“If you want.” Willow did not argue with him further, but merely tugged at his sleeve until he found it in himself to stumble into motion again. In motion toward those two, toward his Slayer, toward certain doom. Damn his body to hell and back.

“Guys, Giles is feeling sick. We need to get him back to the motel and let him sleep.”

“Aw, poor Giles. He’s going to miss the swimming party. Xander and I have decided we’re going skinny dipping in that river back up the trail.”

“Not ‘miss’ as such,” he said, because it was what they expected him to say. He tried to give them a wide berth on his way to the car, but Buffy was too solicitous for once. Why couldn’t she be indifferent as she’d been all year? But no, she was there taking him by the arm. Touching him. He shuddered and then Xander was there as well, being helpful at exactly the worst moment. Their scent overwhelmed him and his body responded. His head swam. He went down on his knees between the two of them. His hand reached for his collar; his clothes chafed him.

“He’s not sick,” Buffy said. She and Xander looked at each other. Their nostrils flared. In the next moment they were upon him, hands plucking at him, each of them seeking to tug him closer to themselves.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t bloody touch me.”

Buffy and Xander both moved away instantly, though there were near-identical wounded expressions on their faces. Giles snarled at them and they shied away again.

Willow stepped between him and the pair of them. “Okay, guys. Stay away from Giles. Ten feet away. Good. I’m going to drive us all back to the motel now.”

She reached into Giles’s pockets with a murmured apology and pulled out the keys to the rental SUV. Her touch was completely unlike the touch of the two alphas: soothing, not arousing. She helped him to his feet again and led him to the car. Giles had regained enough self-command by that point to buckle his own seatbelt.

Willow drove them back out along the fire road away from the trailhead. When they got to the main road she looked at him and he pointed left, the way back to town. She shook her head at him and turned right. Bugger again. The pair of alphas in the back were already quarreling over him. His erection, already bothersome, responded by becoming almost painful. He hunched up in the seat. Damn this heat. Damn how it stripped his dignity from him.

Xander said, “Which one?”

“Me.” Buffy was firm about it. Something inside Giles leapt with joy even as he cursed his stupidity in allowing her to find out.

“He gets to pick.”

“He’ll pick me.”

“Maybe he likes me better.”

“You already lost that fight.”

That last was punctuated by a thud. Then Willow’s voice cut through it all. “Guys. Stop. Now. Giles decides. And what he’s decided is that he’s going to take a suppressor. So chill out or I knock you out. Don’t make me do it.”

The pair of them went silent. Giles wrapped his arms around himself and clenched his fists in his jumper. He was a rational man. He was a modern man. All he need do is hold onto his self control until they got back to the motel. He could do that. All he need do was count to ten. And do it again, in Latin. Again, in Greek.

The passenger-side window whirred down. He thrust his head out and breathed deeply, slowly, of fresh clean ocean air. No alpha scent. Behind him in the car he heard voices bickering again. They were tempting voices, but he mustn’t pay attention to them. Breathe. Count.

Willow made them wait outside the door while he rummaged in his bag for the pills. He couldn’t find them. His hands were shaking and he could barely think. Willow sat him down on the bed and unzipped the bag further.

“There’s just the regular medical kit in here, Giles. Are you sure you packed them? Do you have another bag in the car?”

“Not in the shaving kit?”

“No.”

Giles bit back the obscenity he wanted to snap out; there was no use inflicting his frustration on Willow. He’d left the pills at home. He was already in heat; there was nothing he could do. Willow stroked his hand, but it was no comfort at all.

Something smashed against the door.

“Oh, blast it.” Willow was gone from his side. The motel room door came open and Xander and Buffy came tumbling through. Buffy had Xander in a headlock, but he was flailing at her.

“Mine!” he said.

“No way. He’s my Watcher and you’re not touching him.”

Willow stamped her foot and shouted. “Quit it! Right now. I’ll call the police if you don’t calm down and you can get fined and spend a whole weekend in therapy with a bunch of other jerks and you know you’ll hate that so don’t make me.”

The two separated. Xander stood up and straightened his shirt out. He looked furious; Buffy looked calm.

“Giles chooses. You know that.”

“Giles chooses whichever one of us wins,” Xander said.

“Which is me.”

Willow stood between the two of them and pushed Xander away from Buffy. “Giles, do me a big big favor and pick one of them right now. I know you don’t want to but it’s too late. Choose. Now.”

Choose, choose one. Giles couldn’t look away from the both of them. They were ungodly beautiful to him at that moment, strong, commanding, potent. Both of them. But his Slayer– He stepped toward her and fell to his knees before her.

She reached out to him but did not touch him. “You want me to take you? You submit to me?”

“Yes.”

Xander made a strangled noise. “Come on,” Willow said. Giles was vaguely aware of her dragging Xander away. He had no attention to spare for the loser in the war for his body, however. Buffy was upon him. Her fist twisted in his jumper and hauled him even closer. Her hold on reason was even more tenuous than Giles’s own. He had many more years of experience with this than she did, after all. He wrapped his arms around her waist and didn’t strip himself right then, in front of the other two.

Xander and Willow were saying something, but he had no idea what. The door closed. Now. Now he could do what he needed to. Giles struggled with his jumper until it somehow came off over his head. Then Buffy seized him by the back of the neck and bit at his mouth. She thrust her tongue in. Her free hand unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down over his hips. She cupped her hand over his erection and he struggled to rub himself against her.

“Hold still.”

He obeyed instantly. She bent down and kissed him again, deeply. She thrust her tongue into his opened mouth. They kissed for a long time just like that, his hands on her waist, her hands in his hair pulling his head back to expose his throat.

He felt so much calmer now, so much less frantic, now that he was properly on his knees for his alpha. Those first kisses always settled him when a heat had begun. Something in the saliva, they said, more pheromones, transferring from one to the other. Letting the blood know that they’d each found a mate. Whatever it was, it was the way his alpha always started: tongue in the mouth, hand on the throat.

She was calmer now too. “Stand up,” she said. “You need to be naked.”

Yes, he did. His body was chafing all hidden away like this. Buffy methodically undressed him. He cooperated but otherwise remained standing where he was. She tossed his shirt at the corner. His boots and socks followed, then at last his jeans and his damnable shorts.

She pushed on his shoulders and he sank to his knees. Giles sighed and settled himself properly, knees spread wide, presenting himself as completely available and ready for her. She sat on the edge of the bed and tugged him over to kneel between her spread thighs. Giles wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head against her stomach. She petted his hair and scratched at the top of his head. Soothing him, for he was still trembling against her.

“You cut it close,” she said.

“It came early.”

“You were in a car with two alphas for hours. Of course it came early.” Her voice was chiding and there was an edge in it. Was she angry with him? He shivered.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought it would– We couldn’t let this demon live another day.”

“We could have handled the demon without you.”

Giles flinched. “You don’t want me?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I want you. You smell amazing. Best omega I have ever smelled. So good.”

She pressed her lips against the top of his head. Love-talk from alphas, telling their omegas how good they smelled. Giles disbelieved it more often than not, particularly afterward when sanity returned. It might even be true in the moment for them. It was true for him at this moment, though it was easy to say it to Buffy. He’d known this since she’d first matured, since her first mating. Even when not near heat he’d known it. She smelled wonderful to him, as desirable as any alpha had ever been. More so even than Ethan, with whom he’d been in love. And now that he was in heat, he was overwhelmed.

He shuddered.

“I’ve got a lot of time to make up for. You’ve been avoiding me way too long.”

He wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but in the next moment she took him by the hair and pulled his head back. He yielded to this and exposed his throat to her. She set her teeth in him and bit, hard. He trembled and stayed very very still, waiting. Submitting. God, yes, submitting at last. She bit again, marking him just under his jaw, then sat up again. The bite stung. He wanted her to bite him again, harder. He moaned.

“That’s right,” she said. “You’re mine now.”

He leaned his face against her thigh. Jeans rough on his cheek, mud on the knee from the fight on the trail, the scent of alpha over that. He felt dizzy with relief and desire at once. Soon, it would be soon, and it would be a proper encounter. She would satisfy him and he would do everything his body could to satisfy her. He wondered what Buffy would like. She would of course allow him to be inside her at some point; neither of them would find peace until that happened. Would she fuck him? He hoped she would fuck him.

Buffy petted his head again. “You want to be fucked, huh?”

He’d said that out loud. He pressed his face into her leg and tried to stifle the urge to whimper.

“Of course you want to be fucked. I’ll find something to fuck you with if you need it.”

“My bag. I brought something.”

Buffy stood. Giles resettled himself on his knees and watch her stride over to his bag. She ripped it open and scattered the contents over the bed. His plug and the little bottle of lubricant came tumbling out. Buffy seized them and carried them back to him. She held up the plug, which was made of black silicone, and stroked it. He whimpered again to see it.

“You like it thick, huh? This is almost as big as you are.”

Giles flushed, but she didn’t seem to mind it. “Don’t have my harness with me, but I can fuck you all you need with this. Yeah?”

“Please,” he said, and he flushed more deeply.

“On the bed. Hands and knees.”

She’d pitched that as a command and Giles scrambled to obey. Up onto the bed, on all fours. She followed, gripped the back of his neck, pushed him into the position she wanted. She moved behind him and pushed his thighs wider. Giles knelt with his face down in a pillow, knees well spread, trembling, waiting for that first touch.

He heard the sound of the cap on the lube bottle opening. The bed shifted. Something being set on the table between the beds. Then Buffy was behind him again. She laid a hand on his backside and he shuddered. Her thumb rested on him just there and moved. Slick with lube, a little cold. He jumped. She steadied him and set her thumb against him again. He breathed deeply and as he exhaled, she pushed into him.

“Yeah, that’s right, open for me.”

His body yielded further on that command. Her thumb slid deeper inside.

“God, you’re sexy when you moan like that. Keep doing it.”

Not that Giles had control of himself enough to stop. She was working him open slowly, teasing him horribly, stopping to stroke his thighs and play with his balls. She paused to kiss the small of his back and lick her way down. He held his breath, wondering if she would dare to do more, then yelped when she sunk her teeth into his buttock. He begged her to bite him again and she laughed and said she would later, perhaps, if he were as perfectly submissive as she knew he could be.

Could he submit any more deeply than he was now? He would find a way. She’d returned her attention to his arse. Her thumb moved in and out of him, opening him wider. If she were a male alpha, she’d be inside him already, whether he were open or not. Though some of them liked doing this to their omegas, liked making them wait and prove their submission.

The plug’s tip nudged at his arse. Giles groaned. He wanted it so much. Needed it. Needed her. A stronger push and it breached him. Sweet Buffy, his Slayer, his alpha, penetrating him now, agonizingly slowly, filling him. He closed his eyes and let himself feel it. The promise of relief, the promise that he’d be taken care of, that his alpha had him.

“Yeah, that’s what you need,” Buffy said to him and he could only whimper in response. She knew. There was no point pretending otherwise. His alpha would have it out of him one way or another. She thrust it into him and pulled it out again, slowly. God it was amazing when he was in heat, being fucked, feeling his alpha moving inside him. It felt good even when he wasn’t in heat. He’d always liked being taken by Ethan this way. But when he was in heat– it was what he lived for. He could come just from this, though of course Buffy wouldn’t let him. She’d need him coming inside her. He’d need to come inside her. He was already thinking ahead to it, imagining it, wondering what she’d feel like around him.

She pushed it all the way into him, so the flare just below the base held it in place.

She rolled him onto his back. Giles let his hands rest on the bed palms-up, waiting for what she might ask of him next. He was in that lovely between-state, where he knew he was in the hands of an alpha he could trust to carry him through, but he hadn’t yet been given his first orgasm. He was stretched and full and he ached where she’d bitten him and soon he would be inside her.

Buffy smiled down at him. “Good man,” she said to him. “Now we both get our reward.”

“Condoms in my bag,” he said. “If you need them.”

“Always carry some,” Buffy said. But she found the ones in the mess she’d made of Giles’s luggage. He watched anxiously, then lay back when she returned to the bed. She rolled a condom onto his penis carefully, then took him in her hand and stroked him. That strong hand, his Slayer’s hand, on him– Giles thrust up into her fingers. She pressed him back down onto the bed with a hand on his hip.

“I’m a lucky alpha,” she said to him. “Love how big you are. You’re going to feel so good inside me.”

Love talk, more love talk that was the same every time. But Giles knew it was true anyway. He was a big man. He could satisfy her better than any other omega could. He was better than they, more desirable, more willing, more submissive, more fertile. All she had to do was look at his cock to see it. Or feel it. She was going to feel it soon. He was going to be inside her. He was going to come inside his Slayer, and he didn’t care that he’d just moaned with the need for it.

She held his penis in place under herself and shifted until it just brushed her own sex. Giles snapped his hips upward but she moved away instantly.

“Hold still.” She closed her fingers around his balls and tightened them painfully. Her point was clear. He whimpered and subsided onto the bed. He let his hands fall back down to his sides. He tried to radiate submission at her. He was hers; would she take pity on him now and let him inside? Yes, at last, she straddled him again and accept him. She sank down onto him slowly. Far more patience than he’d expected from her, far more patience than he had himself. It was all he could do to hold himself still as she’d ordered.

The plug filling him, his Slayer’s body surrounding him, her scent all over him, her hands on his skin stroking, her voice telling him to move now, to find his pleasure in her– this was perfect, this was what he’d been longing for.

It took time despite his pitch of excitement, time and her slow steady movement around him. It was almost too much for him despite the hormones in his blood, the very thought of it: his Slayer, that was his Slayer riding him, his Slayer moaning with pleasure from his touch, the woman he’d been obsessed with for good or ill for five years over him. At last she knew what he was, at last she’d accepted him, at last he had what he’d been longing for in secret since she had first come to her maturity.

There it was, orgasm, rolling over him in a slow wave from his prick on out, from the place where he was joined with her up to the top of his head. She followed him and trigger him into the second wave of orgasm, where he remained for long breathless seconds.

Then he came to himself again, breathing hard and sweating.

They remained where they were, alpha straddling omega, moving slowly on top of him. Her face had changed already, now that orgasm had had its way with her. She looked distant, distracted. Closed off from him again, as she’d been all year. Giles’s chest ached even as he lay beneath her, cock still hard inside her. Neither one of them wanted to make the first move to disengage, however, for the hormones were still their master. Now was when he would conceive, in these minutes after orgasm before his erection eased. If the condom were not in the way, that was. But they were responsible adults and therefore he would not bear his Slayer’s child as a result of this accident.

It was still pleasurable of course, this lingering union. It was merely that his head was clearing already and the haze of his arousal was lifting. For a couple of hours, at least. Then the second wave would hit and he would be even deeper in her thrall. But now he could look up at his Slayer and wonder what things would be like in the morning, when it was all over.

He could feeling himself softening at last. Buffy made the first move to separate. She knelt up over him carefully and rolled onto the bed beside him. She looked down at him, studying his body. Giles wanted to cup his hands over himself, but there was no point. She’d seen his body, had her fingers up his arse, and heard him beg for more. There was no salvaging his dignity now.

She said, cool and calm, “How many for you usually?”

Giles stared for moment. She meant waves. Orgasms before it ended. “Three. Sometimes four if they’re not very good.”

“I’ll make sure they are.”

With that she turned away from him and curled up around a pillow. She was asleep already. Alpha hormones again; she could no more stay awake after sex than he could refrain from getting hard when in heat. He was exhausted as well, and try as he might he could not find the energy to leave the bed to clean up.

Willow watched Xander uneasily. He was driving the van competently enough, with no outward sign of distress, but the hormonal shift triggered by proximity to Giles had to be troubling him. In an hour or two he’d be calm again; alphas had close encounters with omegas they couldn’t touch all the time, and an alpha who couldn’t handle it was an alpha that ended up in therapy or prison. But Xander’s temples were still wet with sweat from the clash with Buffy in the motel.

She’d let them fight longer than she should have. It was something they’d covered in health class, the one for betas that was different than the one for alphas, which was in turn different from the one for omegas. Once you knew what you were, once the school had confirmed it with a test, they zipped you right into your class and told you how to cope. Alphas got material on self control and aggression management, and a course on sex technique. Omegas got material on defensive planning and cycle prediction and birth control. Betas got practical tips on how to break up alpha fights, how to substitute in one role or another in a pinch. How to help your unfortunate friends adjust to their newly-unruly bodies.

That was in modern Californian schools, anyway. Willow wondered if Giles had learned anything like that in school.

The town a mile south along the Pacific from their motel had a coffee shop and a cafe-style restaurant on a promontory jutting out into the Pacific. Willow bought coffee for the two of them, extra-large, flavored syrup, and carried them over to the table by the window where Xander sat. Or fidgeted, rather. He was still all worked up.

Before she’d managed to slide all the way into her chair, Xander said, “Giles is omega.”

“Yup. You like hazelnut, right?”

Xander popped the lid off his cup looked at it, then put it back on. “Giles is omega.”

Willow ignored him and drank her latte. Decaf, of course, because she knew better now than to caffeinate herself. Xander drank some coffee and made a face at it. His was decaf as well, not that she told him that. The last thing she wanted was an overstimulated horny alpha on her hands.

“You knew,” he said.

“Yeah, I knew. He told me. We were talking about things. Back when I was first getting together with Oz. I’d just figured out what I was and I couldn’t decide if I was happy about it or not. I mean, yes, we run the world, but sex is a lot more fun for you guys.”

Xander popped the lid off again and stared at the foam for a while. “Sex is more fun if you get to have it,” he said. “Sucks to get revved up then have to stuff it all down. Sucks to have a crank just hanging out there waiting for anybody to turn it.”

He was still sulking. Still simmering over. Simmering so badly that Willow could almost smell it on him. That was the main difference between them, as she understood the current research: her pheromone glands were undeveloped, and the brain structures that processed the signals from the receptors were dormant. Xander was producing I-will-take-you signals like mad, but all she could notice that he was more attractive than usual.

“That’s kind of what Giles said. Only the way he put it was that the loss of control was disconcerting.”

“Stuffy. How the hell did he hide it, though? Damn, he had to have been going into heat the whole time, right under my nose.”

“The Council kept him supplied with suppressor so he could keep his head during, you know, apocalypses.”

Xander looked a little horrified. “Shit, that’s dangerous.”

“Sometimes he had somebody. Miss Calendar. Then Olivia. But mostly he takes the drug. Especially once Buffy, you know.”

“Damn. We’d have taken care of him. He knows that, right?”

“I think he was looking for somebody more his own age.”

Xander shrugged without agreeing. Typical behavior from an aroused alpha, that was. Smell omega in heat, take omega in heat. It wasn’t that they were stupid, the pheromone people. Giles had always been the smartest human being Willow had ever met. It was just that they stopped thinking when it was on them. Alphas had it worst, really. The saying was “stupid as an alpha in a crowded room,” and that got shortened to “stupid as an alpha” a whole lot. The fact that they got elected President nearly every time didn’t help; they all had beta VPs who were always said to be really the ones running the country. At least that was what betas told each other. What everybody hoped was true.

Xander had hated that part, once he’d gotten over the thrill of knowing he’d get to sire kids. He’d won the genetic lottery. Willow had lost it. There were circumstances in which she might yet win; betas did tip over one way or the other if stuck in circumstances with too many or none of a needed kind. But mostly she probably wasn’t going to.

She missed Oz. Oz hadn’t cared. He’d been happy to be off the merry-go-round, as he put it. It freed him to spend more time on math and computers. They’d started coalescing into a family troop, even, Willow and Oz and Buffy and Xander, with whoever Buffy and Xander were seeing that month. Willow had been waiting for those two to settle with steady omegas, then she might even have said something. Giles might have fit in, if he hadn’t been so reluctant to let Buffy know. And then Oz had been bitten and changed, and he’d been in a worse state than the worst of alphas. And he’d left.

Willow sighed and drank her coffee. She was mostly over him. Mostly. Times like this she missed him, because he’d have known what to do with a simmering Xander and a Giles who’d planned badly.

Xander was muttering, “Hate this shit. Mating. Survival of the species. Socio-biology. Fucking DNA. Need to fuck somebody willing, and there’s nobody.”

“There, there,” Willow said, even though that stung a little. She was fuckable, after all.

“Easy for you to say.”

“You should be calming down now, though, right? You’ve been away from him for a while now.”

Xander breathed in deeply through his nose with his mouth open. “Oh hell. There’s somebody else here.” He sat back in his chair and stared around the room boldly. An alpha responding to the call. “Woman over at the corner table.”

Willow peeked. “Girlfriend with her, arm around her shoulders. Stand down.”

“She should get the fuck out of here before she drives everybody nuts.”

“Xander. Not fair. You’re just on edge because of earlier.”

“Can we get out of here? I know we just got here. We can get this stuff to go, right?”

Out in the open air Xander was better. He breathed in and out steadily, just like they taught them to do. He was now rock-hard in his cargo pants, not that Willow was supposed to notice, which meant he’d had a stronger dose than she’d realized.

“C’mon. Let’s go back to the motel.”

“They’ll be there. It’ll be depressing.”

“We’ll get another room. I’ll take care of you. You know that, right?”

“Will, you don’t have to. I can, you know.” He made an unmistakeable gesture. “I hate making you do this.”

“You’re my bestest bud. It’s what we do.”

“No, really, it’s okay. I’ll get over it.”

Xander’s shoulders relaxed, but she still claimed the car keys back from him. She was glad she had, because he was twitchy and restless the whole drive back. He kept rolling down his window and rolling it up again.

“Wait in the car,” Willow said. She glared at Xander when he looked like he was about to protest and he subsided.

First she went to the motel office and got a second room. Then she went to the room where Buffy and Giles were. She knocked gently. No answer. She pressed her ear against the door; nothing loud enough to make it through. She opened the door with her card and tiptoed inside. The place wasn’t nearly as wrecked as Willow had expected. The contents of Giles’s bag were on the floor between the beds, but nothing was broken. The two of them were in the far bed, under the blankets, Buffy sprawled on top of Giles. They appeared to be asleep.

Willow snagged her bag and Xander’s. There was no way she was letting him sleep near Giles. Giles had been claimed for this heat so he would smell different to Xander, no longer maddening. But the room still smelled like sex. And most likely the heat wasn’t over; they’d wake in a few hours to mate again. And again.

She wrote a quick note explaining things, addressed to Giles, and stuck it on the floor by the door where he would definitely notice it.

Xander was still sulking when she led him to their new room. He went straight into the bathroom and ran the shower. He didn’t come out for a while. Coping with it by himself, then. It was a relief, because Willow so wasn’t in the mood for sex right now. She dug in her bags for the textbook she’d brought in case of quiet moments like this one. Organic chemistry, not an easy class, so she was glad to get some extra study time in. She deep into it when Xander finally emerged, a towel around his waist, his hair wet, but no tension on his face.

He changed into clean clothes right in front of her. Willow blushed and looked away. Alphas. Stupid poopy-head alphas, marching around blithely certain that everybody wanted them and their stupid bodies. Or maybe it was that she just didn’t register sexually: not another alpha to worry about, not an omega to impress. Therefore, ignore. Either way, stupid alphas.

Then Willow felt guilty, because, well, Xander. Xander wasn’t mean or self-centered or anything other than clumsy sometimes.

“Feeling better?” she said.

“Of the muchness.” He flung himself face-down on the bed next to her, so hard her textbook bounced. “What cha readin’?”

“O-chem.”

“Boring or interesting?”

“Interesting.”

“That’s my Willow. Brainiac.” He sounded genuinely proud of her, not digging at himself at all. Getting that construction job had been good for his self-esteem. Willow would never, ever say that to him, though.

“This is making me feel stupid sometimes, though.”

“Unpossible.”

“It’s good, though. I’m thinking this might be my major. Maybe. Computers are still interesting too.” Willow read through the next page aware of Xander’s close attention on her. Finally she gave up and closed the textbook. “So,” she said. “What’s bugging you?”

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

“I know.”

“Can I make it up to you?”

“Nothing to make up.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“No, really. We’ve been friends since we were five. Not going to stop now.”

“Not even when I’m in full on hormone mode. God, it sort of kills me. Giles is omega. I am so going to enjoy fucking him next time.”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Assuming Buffy lets you.”

Xander made a face at her. “You think she’s going to monopolize him?”

“She’s always been possessive of him.”

“When she’s not ignoring him. She ignores him next month, zing! I’m in. She has to let me some day, anyway, if we’re a family troop thing. Rude not to.”

“Assuming we become a troop.”

“We already are. At least–” Xander flushed red. “We’re a troop. Trust me.”

“What? What aren’t you telling me?”

“You know how it works. It’s embarrassing, that’s all.”

That meant Buffy had taken Xander at some point. Probably recently. Probably after first beating him in a fight, a fight that had been hopeless for Xander from the start because who could beat the Slayer? Had they been fighting over somebody? Or just working out who was in charge?

She said, “Love you, but you’re an idiot. You know it, right?”

“She tied me up,” Xander said, all wounded outrage. “And then did it to me all night without letting me, you know.”

“I don’t need to hear this. Putting my fingers in my ears. La la la.”

“Anyway, troop. Buffy’s working her way through us. Me, Giles. You?”

“Not yet.” Buffy had yet to approach Willow sexually. Would Willow say yes? Yeah. Though until recently she’d have guilted herself out about Oz first. Maybe that was why Buffy hadn’t. She was a good friend when she wasn’t too stressed out by Slaying.

“She will. Soon. Now that she did Giles. I was sort of expecting it sooner than it happened, to be honest. After that unification thing it starting feeling even more right.”

Willow chewed on her pencil. As plans went it was decent. They were family already in many of the ways that mattered. The Slaying and the keeping humanity safe jobs tended to make it difficult to bring outsiders into the mess. And she already loved the three of them. But– “We need more. At least another omega so you two aren’t always fighting over Giles.”

Xander sat up, all eager and happy. “Your friend Tara. I know she likes us.”

“She’s kinda shy.”

“She came to me last month.”

“Wait, what? She didn’t tell me. And I thought she–”

“What?”

“I thought she was with this woman in our wicca group.”

“She said that chick been all into empowering her and groveling apologetically about her own alpha-ness and it had been the worst time ever.” Xander made a gesture of contempt. He had no truck with politics about biology. Assuming he knew they existed, which Willow wasn’t sure he did. “But she liked me and she knew I was good friends with you, so she wanted to know if I would be with her for her next time.”

“You took care of her?”

“You know I did. Didn’t say anything about it, cause, you know, she seemed like she was shy. Like you said. Also no guarantee she’d want to do it again. But I so would. I like her. I gave her my number and tried not to be, you know, too pushy.”

Which could mean anything, coming from an alpha. Though it was Xander, and that meant it had been good-hearted. Come to think of it, Tara had said something nice about him recently, on one of their coffee study dates that were maybe dates, maybe not, Willow wasn’t sure yet. Though she sort of liked this idea. If Tara joined them, if they were getting together as a stable family thing, she could maybe go out with Tara in the for-sure way. In the going to bed way. Willow felt her ears turning pink.

Just then the phone rang, and she went to answer it.

Giles woke some time later, clear-headed and miserable. The plug was still in his backside, his neck was sore, and he was thirsty. Buffy was still asleep beside him. Dead to the world. He extricated himself from her and slid out from under the blankets. Where had his glasses got to? He found them on the table between the beds. He tiptoed out to the little bathroom. There he washed up, removed the plug, then washed up again. She would want to take him with it again when the urge rose in him in the next hours, but for now he would give his body some relief. He studied himself in the mirror. She’d bitten him on the throat and shoulders, and once on his left buttock. It was deeply satisfying to see the marks, to know she’d give him deeper ones if he begged. And he would be begging before it was over.

He sighed. At least the sex had been good. She had thrown herself into it completely and it had been wonderful.

He ran a cool shower and stepped into it. He hissed when the water hit bruised and scratched skin. She’d been rougher with him than he’d realized. Slayer strength.

Buffy was working out to be the most intense alpha he’d ever been bedded by, and he’d been bedded by Rayne when they were both young and stupid and in love. There was something about her that made this encounter something different even from that. That she was his Slayer? Now that he thought about it, it made some sense that they were alphas. The destiny ensured they could sire children if they wished, but would never be dangerously vulnerable from bearing them. And Watchers– Giles had always assumed they were betas, and that his condition had been an aberration. But then Pryce had turned out to be an omega like him. He’d seen the suppression drugs in the man’s attache. And Giles’s father had never mentioned it, but he was fairly certain that he’d been the one to bear Giles, not his mother. He’d only worked out years later that the woman who’d raised him as his mother had been beta anyway.

Family relationships were tangled and not worth untangling. That was proverbial in most cultures. But he did wonder. Had his father been taken by his own Slayer, back in the day? Had his father’s Slayer been Giles’s own sire?

Unknowable now.

What would happen in the morning? Was this a union of convenience for her? Would it shatter the partnership they’d only just begun to repair? Or would it bind them closer than ever before? More unknowables, at least in the moment.

Giles turned off the taps and rubbed his face into a rough motel towel. It all depended on Buffy. If she considered this a one-time coupling, something done to sate the urge with no deeper mating intended, there might be no change at all. He had no idea what she felt about this. He barely understood what he felt. Did he want Buffy to take him again?

God, yes. Again and again.

“The heat speaking there, Rupert,” he said to his foggy reflection in the mirror.

Giles slipped out of the bathroom quietly. Where were Willow and Xander? They might have returned to the room any time in the last few hours and he wouldn’t have noticed.

On the floor by the door was a piece of paper with his name written on it. Willow’s handwriting. She and Xander had rented a second room. She hoped all was well and reminded him to call them if they needed anything, such as perhaps dinner. So polite and circumspect, Willow was. A sweet girl. Giles sat and thought for a moment, calculating how much time he had before it rose in him again, how hungry he was. He could feel it in the distance, like rain clouds on the horizon on a summer day. Best to plan now to ensure they would all be fed later. None of them were in any fit state to head out to a restaurant. Giles yielded to expedience and dialed for a pizza delivery from the local restaurant that had left flyers in the room.

He picked up the phone a second time to dial the room number she’d left in the note. She was awake and able to take the call, and happy to hear he was okay. She’d wake Xander and bring him by in a few minutes. Giles rang off and considered the timing again. He should be able to eat before it began. He hoped. His body was erratic and unreliable this month. Or his head wasn’t entirely in the game; he was reluctant to examine the question further.

Time to wake Buffy. He went to the bed and laid a hand on her shoulder. She stirred. “You were on the phone?”

“Ordering pizza.”

“Good. I’m starving.”

She sat up and tugged him down onto the bed next to her. One hand moved up to grip him by the throat, the other down to cup his balls. He wasn’t hard, but she wouldn’t expect him to be. He spread his legs to give his alpha better access to whatever she might desire of him, even in this between-waves state. He wanted her to know his body was hers.

Buffy let go of him. She fiddled with her hair, which was a mess. She seemed to realize this and give up. “Where are they?” she asked him.

“They took a second room for the night.”

“Xander couldn’t hold out, huh?”

Giles frowned. It wasn’t done to refer to rejected alphas that way. Buffy didn’t seem to be malicious, but even if was kindly meant, she was still celebrating her conquest at Xander’s expense. Her conquest of Giles’s body. He flushed; damn this. Damn his hormones.

All he said was, “They’ll join us for pizza.”

“Think you’ll last that long?”

“Should do.”

She smiled at him with an innocent cheerful Buffy smile he’d seen a hundred times before, but now it made him shudder. “If I ordered you to stay naked when they come over, would you?”

Giles hung his head. Yes, he would. The urge in his blood was to be naked for her, and the urge to obey her was nearly as deep. Ethan had often liked to keep him naked. Back then Giles hadn’t minded being shown off to their friends. It had all been a great game, flaunting it to everyone around them. Now it was more than he could take. “Please don’t,” he said, to her bare feet on the floor. “I beg of you.”

“They wouldn’t mind. You’re one of us.”

“Xander would mind.”

“Xander will do what I tell him to do.”

Giles looked up at her sharply. Was it that way with them? An understanding between them? If so, this encounter would change more than he’d thought.

“Yeah,” she said, to his unspoken question. “Xander and me, we have an alliance. After that spell thingie it just made sense.”

“Oh,” he said. The three of them were together, then. That did not surprise him. She stroked his face. Giles closed his eyes and breathed in her scent. She’d abandon him after tonight, more likely than not, but she was magnificent right now.

“I’ve been wondering what to do about you. Whether I should just take you or what. I was getting sick of pretending not to notice.”

Giles opened his eyes in shock. “You knew?”

She snorted. “I’ve known since I matured. Came in one day and smelled it on you and I knew. But you obviously wanted to avoid me. So I played along. Was conveniently slacking off on your heat days.”

“I– oh God.”

“I thought it was because you weren’t attracted to me, you know? Maybe Watchers weren’t hot for their Slayers. Like maybe we’re related? But you don’t smell like you’re related.”

“Far more complicated,” he said. His voice was all strange and hoarse.

“So you were hot for me?”

“The whole bloody time.” The confession was a miserable one.

“Good to know.” She was staring at him, eyebrows together. “Well, you’re taken care of now. Xander will take care of you if I don’t next month. If I let him.”

He pulled away from her. “If you let– I get to choose.”

“Poor Giles,” she said, but her voice wasn’t sympathetic. “Not tonight you don’t. Put on your jeans and nothing else. I’m going to take a quick shower.”

And with that Buffy vanished into the bathroom. Giles pulled his jeans on over bare skin. A compromise, granting him his modesty but only just. She wanted to flaunt him to Xander. Wanted to make the point to him. Slayer and Watcher, such a sodding farce. He’d never had any authority over her, not even before she’d matured, certainly not after she’d passed Cruciamentum. He hadn’t wanted it. She’d never tolerated it. Resisting her was even more impossible now. Society and his body agreed on that point; he would do as she commanded. His head might be clear but he was her omega until the heat was over.

He occupied his hands with cleaning up the shambles she’d made of his bag and her own. Found the rest of his clothes where she’d thrown them, folded them, tucked them into his bag. He wasn’t likely to be allowed to wear anything more than these jeans until it was over. He’d just finished remaking the bed when there was a knock at the door. He flipped on the light by the door and opened it onto the night. Moths flitting about the light, Willow standing there smiling uncertainly at him, Xander hovering behind.

Giles stepped back, polite but cautious as ever. Willow hesitated on the threshold. Xander collided with her.

“Is it okay?”

Giles smiled at her wanly. “Should be.”

She hugged him on her way in. Xander gave him a wide berth, out of respect for Buffy’s superior claim on him. And her position over Xander, he suspected. An arrangement, she’d said. An arrangement Xander had challenged when making a play for Giles earlier, though who knew if Buffy would be upset about that. Alphas had their own rules.

“Yo, Giles. Where’s the pizza?” Xander said.

“Here soon.” Giles felt something inside him relax. He could cope with a food-obsessed Xander. He could not cope with being fought over by two alphas again.

“Hey, guys.”

Buffy had emerged from her shower. She marched into the room wearing nothing but a towel, which she casually undid to rub at her hair. Arrogant alpha. Xander stared at the floor. Willow looked at Buffy then blushed. Giles stared at the floor, then let himself look at her. He ought to be admiring his alpha, oughtn’t he? It was only polite. Right and proper, even, since she was his alpha. She was thin, some might say too thin, but she was all lean muscle. Slayer muscle, which was the sort he liked best. Small breasts, not as much as a handful each, but he liked them. Perhaps she would let him bite her nipples in the next round, if she wasn’t too busy biting his. His cock reacted to this idea. He liked being bitten.

Damn, she was putting proper clothes on and hiding that body away. He knew he ought to approve of her discretion in front of Xander and Willow, but a corner of him didn’t want it. A corner of him wanted his jeans off, so he could show her his re-awakening body.

The pizza had best arrive soon.

Xander relaxed a little now that Buffy was dressed again. He flung himself onto the bed across from Giles and made it bounce. “So, hey, Giles. You’re omega. You never said.”

“No,” Giles said. He looked at the floor rather than meet Xander’s gaze. No, he hadn’t told Xander, because then he’d have been rolled onto his face and buggered into oblivion on his very next cycle by a man more than twenty years his junior who’d never read a book willingly in his life. The hormones didn’t care about Xander’s age or his literacy level or his sweet nature. They cared about Xander’s muscles and his shaggy dark hair, though. And his prick. Everything about those was quite pleasing. If he had first encountered Xander as a stranger, he could have submitted willingly. But he hadn’t. And there had always been Buffy, looming between them with her claim on his attentions.

“Somehow I thought Watchers were betas. You know, power behind the throne types. Never thought you were hiding this from us.”

Giles shrugged. He’d be hiding it still if he could. Though if what Buffy said was true, that she’d known all along, Xander had been unusually unobservant.

“Are Watchers ever betas?” Willow said. Then she made an apologetic gesture at him. He understood her curiosity, however.

“Travers was,” Buffy said. “No smell at all.”

“I have a theory,” Giles said. “That the ones who end up with Slayers are not. We’re omegas. I’ve known three for sure and I have my suspicions about another woman I knew.”

“You, Wesley, who else?”

“A man who died years ago.”

“Oh jeez, Wesley,” said Xander. “It was so hard not to just take that guy.”

“He would quiver when I stared at him.” Buffy flopped down next to Xander, who shifted aside to give her room. She was still pushing on him, apparently. Giles watched this with curiosity. Would Xander fight back at any point?

Xander said, “He would flinch when I came near him, like he was gonna go down on his knees any second and start begging me.”

Giles frowned. “He was on the drug.”

Buffy and Xander both shrugged. “You covered a lot better.”

“Out of necessity. They read me the riot act. I was not to reveal it to you until you were of age. I was to maintain control as often as possible. He was probably under the same orders.”

“So that was why,” Buffy said, quietly. She was staring at him. Giles took off his glasses and made a show of polishing them. It was why, yes, but it was only part of the reason. When she’d come of age it had been such a mess between them. Angel, dark brooding Angel, back from hell. It had taken Giles some time to forgive her that. And by that time she’d been busy with college and ignoring him and things had begun to fragment. “The other guy who was omega– who was that?”

“My father,” Giles said. He saw Buffy register that and think it through.

Someone knocked at the door. The pizza had arrived. Xander popped up and snagged the cash from the table to pay. He seemed quite himself again, relaxed and cheerful. Attractive. Giles wouldn’t mind being taken by him, not really. He objected on principle, but his body knew better. He’d enjoy it. If Buffy weren’t there. He’d thought about it before. Then he felt a wave of guilt. He paced across the room, away from Buffy, where she was putting more than her fair share of pizza onto a paper plate, so she couldn’t detect that he’d thought about another alpha even for an instant. Then another wave of emotion came over him. He knelt next to Buffy because the idea of being anywhere else was impossible. He had to be near her, touching her, sheltering against her. And on his knees, because he couldn’t be naked as he ought to be. Buffy petted his hair and fed him pieces ripped off from her slice of pizza. He ate them from her hand. He would possibly be ashamed of the memory in the morning, something told him, but he couldn’t imagine why just then.

Certainly it was making the other alpha, the one he didn’t belong to, glower, and that was lovely to think about. He came fully erect just thinking about that. He squirmed a little where he was kneeling, because his jeans were binding. He reached into them without thinking and adjusted himself so his prick was upright against the fly. Much better.

“Is it starting again?” his alpha said to him.

Giles stroked a hand over the bulge in his jeans, showing himself off a little. “Yes.”

“Sweet,” she said to him. She gave him another piece of pizza crust. He licked her fingers. She tasted good, his alpha did. His Buffy. And it wasn’t just the pizza. She slipped two fingers into his mouth and he sucked on them eagerly. She wasn’t male, so there was no point in showing off his skills, but he wanted her to know he was willing and ready and completely hers.

“What a mouth,” the other alpha said, the one hadn’t won him. Xander. That was his name. Giles flared up in anger.

“Shut up. Show some respect.”

“I respect Giles!”

“He’s mine and you can’t touch him.”

Another wave of need rippled over his skin, prickles of desire. He had no dignity left at all, now, not a scrap of it, because Buffy was stripping him in front of the other two and he could not bring himself to protest. He needed her too much. He was angry anyway, because she ought to have thrown Xander out first. Alphas and their damnable games with each other, with panting omegas as their pawns. Damn him for eating from her hand. He would have his revenge later when he maneuvered them as he wanted them, but for now he was on his knees on the bed, with his hands clasped at the back of his neck, arching his back and spreading his thighs wide, showing himself off to his infuriating Slayer. Damn her.

She kissed him and he almost forgave her. Soft lips, delicate tongue in his mouth, thrusting into him. Her hands were all over him as well, pinching his nipples, tickling his stomach, stroking over the insides of his thighs. She wasn’t touching his cock yet, frustrating woman, but she was touching everywhere else. His balls, the line leading back from them to his arse. God, yes, touch him there, please. The wave was on him fully now and that meant his entire body was sensitive and alive and any touch from his alpha would give him pleasure. But there especially, his arse and his cock. He begged her to touch him there, to give him what he needed.

She knew it. She moved around behind him and spread him wide. Dignity, to perdition with his dignity, he wanted her fingers inside him again. And yes, there it was, the cool slick lube on him, then the pressure of her thumb. He opened for her immediately. If she were male she’d be inside him now, but of course she wasn’t. She was female. He’d be inside her soon.

“Hold onto your hat, cowboy. You’ll be inside me when I say you can be, and not a second earlier.”

“Sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sorry, though. He wanted her. Damn, he’d said that aloud, for she was laughing at him.

“You want me, huh?”

“Course I bloody well want you. You’re my bloody Slayer. My infuriating, difficult– fuck!”

She’d penetrated him, hard and fast, giving him no time to adjust, no time to breathe, even. She pushed him down with a merciless hand on the back of his neck, so he was face down on the bed with his plugged backside in the air. And now she was fucking him with the plug, just as roughly. He braced himself as best he could, fingers dug into the sheets.

“Difficult? I’m difficult?” she said.

“Yes, dammit! Oh fuck, please–”

“Please what?”

“Please let me inside you. If I’m gonna come, I want it to be inside you.”

“Take it back. Tell me I’m not difficult.”

“Can’t. Won’t lie to you. You’re bloody difficult. Infuriating, contrary, disobedient, frustrating, lovely, desirable, brave, strong, sexy–”

She slammed into him on every word out of his mouth, but he wouldn’t stop. His body was hers but damned if his mind was. She was his Slayer. “My property,” he said. “Mine.”

“Yours? Haven’t you got that backwards?”

“My Slayer,” he said. “My alpha.”

She’d stopped fucking him. He let his head drop down to rest on the bed. He was covered with sweat and breathing hard. He’d almost come, had no idea how he’d managed not to. Desperation. He would come inside her or not at all, if it killed him he’d hold off for that pleasure. Breathe, Rupert, breathe. Count. English, Latin, Greek.

He let out a long breath. The wave of impending orgasm had receded.

Buffy’s fingers were in his hair, not entirely gently. “Yours, huh? I always thought you were mine.”

“Mutual. All tangled up with each other. Been that way since I met you.”

“All tangled up,” she said, softly, echoing him.

She nudged him over onto his back. Her eyes were on his cock, curving up over his belly, as hard as it ever got. She stroked it almost idly. Giles breathed in and out, slowly. His control over himself was even more ragged than it had been through the first wave. He could remember her name and his own name when he concentrated. Count from one to ten in English, in Latin, in Greek, in Japanese. He couldn’t do it. Why was he trying?

She had put a condom on him, and that meant he was about to get what he needed. He lay back and waited. But she was lying down beside him and tugging him onto his side.

“Come here. I want you on top this time. You can do all the work. Since I’m yours.”

Giles knelt up again between her thighs and looked down at her body. Lovely. Ready for him, wet and open. He took his cock in hand and leaned over her. “As hard as you were fucking me just now?”

“As hard and fast as you want.”

“As slow as I want?”

She smiled up at him. “As slow as you want. You don’t want slow, though.”

Giles snarled. “You have no idea what I want.”

The surge of defiance rose in him. He was going to make her wait for it. To take her slowly, deliberately, giving himself time to enjoy each push into her, to squeeze down on the plug inside him as he moved and let that pleasure spark through him. To at last bend his head to her breasts and bite at her nipples and make her gasp. It took almost more self-control than he had to do it slowly, to make her whimper and complain and plead with him to go faster, to bring them both off already. Orders from his alpha, so tempting, so important, less important than her first order to go as fast or as slow as he wanted. And he liked hearing her moan under him. A little added spice, a little naughty transgression, this business of doing all the work while his alpha lay passive under him panting.

It was no surprise to him when she eventually lost patience and rolled him onto his back unceremoniously. It was going to end as it began, hard and fast and brutal. He rose to meet her as she slammed down on him, giving her what she wanted as she gave it to him. There was no stopping it in him now, no more delays possible. The orgasm exploded through him, from his balls to the tip of his cock, running up and down his body, long moments of shuddering as he emptied himself into her.

Then the slow come-down, while she remained astride him and the aftershocks finished. His breathing returned to normal, slowly. Second orgasm, more shattering than the first. This one had been– God, it had been soul-destroying.

“Bloody hell,” Giles said. He let himself fall back onto the bed. What was the next one going to feel like if the second was like that? “That was–”

“Yeah. It was. Next time I know exactly what I’m going to do with you.”

Giles pushed himself up onto an elbow to ask what she meant by that, but Buffy was already asleep.

Xander was watching Buffy and Giles have sex without seeming in the least embarrassed about it. Willow couldn’t say the same about herself. She looked away, if only because Giles deserved some respect and would probably appreciate it once his heat was over. Once he’d regained that control he so prized. She couldn’t stop up her ears, though. She’d never heard Giles moan before and now she was never going to be able to unhear it and it was sexy but embarrassing. She would never ever mention it to him, not even in the face of certain doom.

She tugged at Xander’s elbow. “We need to go back to our room.”

“What?”

He was hard again and his hands were shaking. His temples were wet with sweat. Pupils wide, face flushed. Oh, damn, that was a bad sign. The pheromones had done it to him again. She should never have let him go back into the room with those two, no matter what he said about it being okay. It wasn’t okay.

“Come on, Xander. You can have sex when we get back to our own room.”

“Yeah? With you? Really?”

“With me. Come on.”

She took him by the sleeve and led him out. He followed eagerly, his hands wandering. She fended him off just long enough to walk along the length of the motel block to their room.

Xander was grabbing her the moment the door closed behind them. She distracted him for a minute by telling him she needed to use the bathroom first. She locked herself in and washed herself and drank some water and listened to him pacing. She loved Xander. Always had, as long as she could remember, and always would. She could do this and it would be okay. She opened the door. He leapt on her, picked her up, and carried her to the bed.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened with her and Xander, but it had been a long time since that once. Oz had been too hurt by it. He’d understood, because every beta knew it was something you did for your friends sometimes, but he’d hated it. Xander and Willow had both quietly made sure it hadn’t happened again and they’d been successful until now. Today had been too much, Willow could tell. Exposure to Giles had been too much. Too long in one car together, too long in one motel room together, too long fighting with Buffy over him. Damn Giles for letting this happen. Then Willow felt guilty, because Giles hadn’t wanted it either and he’d gone a long long time without any slip-ups. Her college friends were always messing their cycles up. And high school had been chaos.

But here she was, being stripped naked by a hyper-attentive and scarily focused Xander, who seemed incapable of even imagining that she might not follow his orders. Or be sent into a haze of desire by what he was telling her they’d do next. He was puzzled by her slow responses, in fact. Too decent a human being not to notice them, too much an alpha not to take them as a challenge to his technique.

Finally she tipped over the edge from wary obligation mode to turned on in the moment mode. Xander noticed instantly and smiled, showing all his teeth, and then he nipped at her throat. Bitey, he had been bitey last time too. Was that a thing? He was nipping his way down her throat, bite and lick, bite and lick, until he found his way to her breasts.

“Nice breasts,” he said. He bent his head to them and kissed each nipple. A little teeth, a little tongue. Willow liked the tongue and he did more of that. He rolled himself all the way onto her and got himself ready to penetrate her. Willow squeaked at the first touch of his penis on her body. It had been so long since Oz.

He pulled back immediately. “Condom. Do I need a condom? Dammit, am I screwing up?”

“It’s okay, Xander. No condom.” He’d forgotten she was a beta, which was nice.

“Fuck yeah. Gonna come inside you.”

The idea obviously made him almost wild with excitement, which was a turn-on for her though it wasn’t her paradigm, as Oz might have said. A little twinge of guilt for thinking about him right now, over in another moment because Xander was urging her to come so he could too, he was right on the edge, ready to pop. Willow needed a little more before she could get there, though, a little eyes-closed concentration, a little bit of fantasizing, a guilty second of imagining what it might be like to touch Tara’s breasts, and then she was coming. Xander followed immediately, triggered by her. And of course he wanted to lie on top of her, still inside her, for a while afterward, all heavy and hot and itchy, but it would be impolite to object. After a while, though, she nudged him off. He didn’t object. He fell asleep right away, though, half on top of her with his hand on her throat. She nudged him away. He grumbled but didn’t wake up.

Willow got out of bed to do all the things she needed to do, like put on pajamas and brush her teeth and comb out her hair and wash off her makeup. This changed– what did it change? If Xander was right, it would change a lot. It was all up to Buffy, though. Xander on his own wasn’t about to found a family. Definitely when he was older. Many people never ended up in troops. Betas paired off, as often with omegas as each other, but alphas floated around. Nobody would judge them for it. There was a lot of romantic movies about alphas settling down with that one true omega. Everybody liked that idea. In action movies they didn’t, though. They screwed the good-looking willing omegas and then rode out of town afterward with their cowboy hats on. Ronin alphas.

Xander was the settling type. Buffy was not. She was ronin cowboy super-spy ride out of town all the way. Except there was Giles and that was an emotional entanglement Buffy would never escape. Or want to. Giles protected her in ways that omegas never protected alphas. Buffy ought to protect him that way in return. Troop? Only if Buffy wanted it. She might want to pair off.

So. It all depended on what was going on in the other room. They had seemed sort of angry with each other when she’d dragged Xander away. She hoped they’d gotten over that.

Xander was awake when she came back into the main room. He was sitting up in bed with the blankets over his lap. He’d grown more hair on his chest than the last time Willow had seen him naked. How had she not noticed that earlier?

“You good?” he said. He sounded anxious. Willow did her best to reassure him: she was okay, he hadn’t pushed her into anything she hadn’t wanted or enjoyed, he’d been great, he should just chill out and feel okay. Finally he agreed that yes, Willow was okay.

He rumpled up his hair and sat forward in the bed, elbows on knees. “Think there’s any pizza left?

Willow smiled at him. “You ate the last slice just before we took off. Besides, you’re not going back in that room until it’s all over.”

“Damn. I’m hungry.” He flopped back on the pillows. “C’mere. Cuddle with me.”

Willow was okay with that. She’d been cuddling with Xander for a long time. Cuddling was good. She got settled comfortably with her head his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her. She was a little sleepy now but apparently he wasn’t.

“If I asked you if you wanted to make love again, what would you say?”

Willow shrugged. “I would say maybe. I would need to be persuaded.”

“Huh.” Silence for a while. Then, “You wanna know what’s weird?”

“What?”

“You can have sex any time.”

“Well, yeah. So can you.”

“Technically. But I don’t. No sweet pheromones, no sex. Doesn’t even cross my mind. There’s usually somebody around going into heat often enough that I can fake it. But you, you can be persuaded. You get into the mood without somebody being around smelling good.”

“So that question was just theoretical.” Willow felt a surprising pang of sadness at that. She’d felt wanted for a little while, and now she knew better.

Xander looked uncertain. “Um. Maybe not?”

“No pheromones, no sex.”

He disentangled himself from her and leaned over her. Nose to her neck, a long sniff and a lick. He sat up again and he looked even more puzzled than before.

“You smell good to me. Mostly betas smell, I don’t know, meh, like nothing? I mean, I can smell that it’s you and we had sex recently but it’s not the same as, you know, usually, except you smell good right now. I want you. Yeah?”

Which jumble Willow eventually untangled into a repetition of his earlier question, only not theoretical this time. Even as she said yes to him, Willow’s mind was filing away a resolution to go back and read that paper on troop formation dynamics her replacement psych prof had mentioned a couple of classes ago. It was relevant. Probably. Later. Right now, she had a happy aroused alpha on top of her.

Xander was in his right mind this time and it was a lot better. Tons better. Some of the best sex she’d ever had, though she felt a little like she was betraying Oz’s memory by thinking that. She was slower coming this time because it was soon after the first time, but Xander didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to consider it a challenge to his skills. He was really good at observing what she reacted to then doing more of that, bringing her right up to the edge and holding here there, then backing off and doing something else entirely. He was still bossy in ways that Oz had never been, but that was something she could ride along with.

The orgasm was good and it lasted a nice long time, seconds of feeling those waves of pleasure, and that sent Xander to his. And then Willow let herself fall asleep at last.

Giles surfaced to wakefulness. Buffy was on top of him, most uncomfortably, and most deeply asleep. He needed to use the loo. He extricated himself from her and was happy that she did not wake, for it gave him time to regroup. He was sore all over, sore where she’d bitten him, sore where she’d taken him so roughly with the plug. He would feel worse in the morning, for it wasn’t over yet. One more wave, if he held true to his usual pattern, and this one would be the most intense. He could feel prickles washing over the skin of his arms and his stomach, which meant it was not far off. What little remained of his control over his emotions and his actions would soon be stripped. He would be groveling and begging his Slayer to take him, to sire children upon him, to do whatever she wished with him. His entire body would be an erogenous zone and he would then experience, according to Willow’s textbooks, the most intense orgasm human beings normally experienced. The blessing given to omegas, that orgasm. Consolation enough? For many, yes.

For him? This time… perhaps. It was Buffy this time. That changed everything. She’d said she wanted to do it again. Did she mean to claim him? She hadn’t used the word. If she asked would he agree? He shuddered. He would agree to anything. It was so fraught, this business of mating with the people one loved. It was so much easier with strangers. One thrashed around, had orgasms, said things that no one took seriously, and walked away in the morning.

If she walked away it would break him. God, he needed her.

It had already started. Giles swore and washed his hands hastily. He almost ran back to the bed. She was awake and waiting for him. He climbed up and knelt beside her the way she liked. He saw her nose wrinkle, then she breathed in deeply. She smiled: alpha scenting her mate. He spread his thighs wider to better show off his body, heavy balls, thick cock rising before her gaze, assets any alpha could appreciate in an omega. His backside was also something she would like, and it was there her hands went first, fondling, squeezing.

Every touch was erotic now. It wouldn’t take much. But he had to be inside her. Now. He begged her for it, pleaded with her. She teased him, squeezed his backside, laughed at him, and asked him what he wanted from her.

“Take me, take me please. Sire your children on me. I’m ready now. See me? Ready for you. All yours.”

“I thought I was yours.”

“Both ways. My Slayer.”

“My Watcher.”

“You know it. Take me, please. I can’t bear waiting any longer.”

Then she thrust her tongue in his mouth and silenced his begging if not his whimpers. He clung to her and kissed her desperately. She kissed him back, just as desperate, hold him tight against herself. Soothing kisses, as always. She was here, she had him, it was going to happen. He would not go unfulfilled and desperate. No lonely masturbation this time. Buffy was going to take him.

“It’s time,” she said. She shoved him down onto the bed. No submission games now, no time for that. She was in charge and she would do whatever it took to make it clear. He was hers and he would do whatever it took to prove it.

There was something they were forgetting. What? It came to him.

“Condom,” he said. His voice was hoarse. Buffy snarled at him but got one from the bedside table. He lay on his back, palms up, and struggled not to thrust up into her hand while she rolled it onto him. Even that felt wonderful to him, almost enough to make him come all on its own.

And then she was astride him and he was inside her and in heaven. No mercy, no slow gentle union, this. She rode him hard and fast, driving them both to the brink and beyond, until he couldn’t bear it, he was going to burst out of his own skin, he was going to catch fire, he was surely going to die. Die the little death, which he did, losing himself in her, giving his essence to her so that she might give it back and change him.

He lay under her and breathed. His mind was slowly returning to him. Aftershocks of orgasm ran through him, little shivers as she moved slowly on top of him. He wouldn’t dream of asking her to separate from him. Not now, not ever. Fill him, sire children on him, make him hers forever.

Fading, fading now. He felt himself begin to soften. Buffy rose away from him and collapsed onto her back. Giles sat up and dealt with the condom. Blessed invention of blessed civilization, for indeed he had begged her to sire children on him. Love-talk from omegas to their alphas, best not treated seriously because they rarely meant it once the hormones had faded. Giles would not have wanted anyone to ask him now if he’d meant it. The answer might disturb him. She was his Slayer, after all, and his suspicions about Watchers and Slayers were very likely correct. He couldn’t even make resolutions this time. He might swear to himself that he’d have the drug at hand next month, that he’d bar his doors against her, but he wouldn’t.

Resolutions were pointless anyway. She might not even come to him.

He lay back on the bed and swore very quietly to himself. He needed a shower but he was too sore and stiff already to want to walk across the motel room. That enviable orgasm had its downsides; he would be even more sore tomorrow. Drained. Nothing left in him. Now was when the alpha was supposed to be wakeful and protective. Protective? In romantic fiction. As often as not they fled as soon as they’d recovered from their own post-orgasmic haze.

Buffy was stirring now, and sitting up. He kept his face as blank as he could. Whatever it was he felt about her, it would have to be bottled up again. There was no telling how she would react now that the pheromones were gone. There was no obligation for her to stay with him. They’d used a condom. He had no hold on her. She would likely not mock him, but she might return to her prior attitude of indifference and distance. It would break his heart if she did, but he was determined to give no sign.

Buffy pulled her tank top over her head and got out of bed. She paced the length of the motel room, door to bathroom, and back again. Giles watched her pace, bare legs and slim backside. Why had she put on the shirt but not covered her sex? He remembered how she’d felt when he’d been buried all the way inside her, so hot and wet. What would it have felt like to be bare inside her, flesh to flesh? Exchanging seed with her as they lay joined together afterwards? He bit his lip. He wanted it, though he suspected it would never happen, even now as the heat faded away he wanted it. What was she working up to tell him? That this ended his relationship with her as her Watcher? Please, not that. He’d give up everything else to keep that.

Damn his rationalizations to himself, to risk coming on this trip, to have let this happen to them. He’d never forgive himself if she disengaged now.

Then she climbed back onto the bed and straddled his hips. Giles lay still below her, waiting for her to speak.

“I’m claiming you,” she said at last. “Slayer claims her Watcher as a mate. Do you submit?”

Giles was grateful to be on his back, because he’d begun trembling when she’d said the word. He was silent, trying to think despite the emotion that made his chest hurt. She’d said claim. Formal language, the stylized language of the proposal of alpha to omega. And she’d said Slayer and Watcher. She meant more than just the monthly night of lust. Her face was still, her brows furrowed, and she was focused on him. Poor Buffy. So little luck with her partners. He’d sworn to be faithful to her even when the rest of the world was not. He’d sworn to be her Watcher until death parted him from her, and that oath was binding on him. There was, he realized, no way he could ever have refused this once she asked it. He must have known that all along. The Council must have known it. Bastards.

Only one thing frightened him. He swallowed.

“Are you going to sire children on me?”

Her face changed. Giles knew Buffy well enough to read what he saw there, or at least to guess at it. She was as taciturn as he was about the emotions that mattered, but they leaked through sometimes. Then her chin set. “Yes.”

He shivered underneath her. Very well. He would take his place in the long line. He would bear the next generation of Giles Watchers.

“I submit to your claim.”

She smiled at him, very briefly, then went solemn again.

There was a ritual for this in every culture Giles had ever studied in his long career as an historian. The modern world was more casual than most of what had gone before it, but even Californian Buffy wanted to treat the situation with the gravity it deserved. And it deserved a great deal. He’d just handed himself over to her and agreed to bear her children.

He offered his throat to her. She leaned over him and sank her teeth into the flesh just below his jaw. She was being careful with her strength, he knew, but even so the bite was deep and painful, just short of breaking his skin. He moaned half in pain, half in ecstasy, for now he had secured an alpha for himself. He was, to his utter shock, half hard again.

She released him and sat up. He raised his hand to the sore place on his throat unconsciously.

“I’ll give you a token when we get back to Sunnydale. Probably a bracelet, if you’ll wear one.”

“I’ll wear whatever you give me,” he said. It would have her name on it, and he would take it off only under duress. She would spent the next month courting him, giving him little gifts, taking him out to dinner. And he would spend it waiting in fear until his next heat when they would solemnize the relationship. Some pairs postponed it so they could invite family to a formal dinner on the night of the heat, but he suspected she wouldn’t wait. And he had no family left but the the three of them.

She helped him out of bed and half-carried him into the shower. She’d been rough with him, far rougher than even Ethan had been typically. Slayer strength, wielded by an alpha in the throes. Buffy must have terrified that poor boy she’d bedded back in the fall. Giles smiled wanly to himself. His bruises would fade. The bite marks would fade. In another month she’d renew them all, inadvertently. He’d love every moment of it, beg her for more. And then, if luck were with them, he’d bear her child.

She was gentle with him now that that it was over. She washed his hair for him, used a light touch on the places where she’d bitten him. Still, he was at the end of his endurance. She laid him back down onto the bed and pulled the blankets over him.

“I’ll deal with the mess,” she said. “You sleep.”

Giles obeyed.

Willow let herself sleep in the next morning, with a gently snoring Xander wrapped around her. They’d been up a long time having sex, talking, then having sex again. And now it was the morning, and time to pack up and head back to Sunnydale, where her final exams were starting to loom. She had a paper due that week and would be happy to get back in time to get it started. She kicked Xander out of bed– literally, because he complained but didn’t open his eyes when she took the pillow away– and got everybody wrangled and packed and out to the truck.

Giles seemed shy to see them, but calm and collected again. He was moving slowly and gingerly, and there was a spectacular hickey on his neck. He was making no attempt to hide it, which meant it was deliberate. Buffy was still showing him off, then, still taunting Xander. Xander was in a good mood, though, more or less un-taunt-able. He’d gotten himself laid last night after all, more than once. Willow could understand, after that, why Giles was sore. Alphas were unrelenting when the pheromones were in their noses.

Not that she was complaining. It had been good sex. More orgasms in one night than she’d thought possible.

They packed the truck with their stuff and piled in. Xander drove this time and headed straight for Denny’s. They got a booth, because Buffy wanted Giles right up next to her. He was quiet, a trifle withdrawn and thoughtful, but he seemed content enough to do exactly as she asked. She even ordered his breakfast for him, which he let pass with only a raised eyebrow. It was the same one he ordered normally anyway, as Willow remembered it, so this was just Buffy in hyper-protective mode. Maybe making up for leaving that hickey on him.

The waitress swung by and topped off their coffee cups. Caffeinated, because Willow had forgot to say anything.

“So,” Willow said. “Everything good?” She was looking at Giles, who didn’t answer. Instead he looked at Buffy. The two of them stared at each other for a bit, until Giles finally nodded to Buffy.

She said, “We have some news. We’re– I’m claiming Giles. He’s mine.”

“Congratulations,” Xander said to Buffy, with a surprising amount of grace.

But it was Giles Willow looked at. He’d flushed and hung his head when Buffy had made her announcement, but he looked happy. That was what mattered to her. She nudged his shin with her toe under the table.

“Congratulations, Giles,” she said. He met her gaze and nodded to her.

“I’m claiming you guys as well,” Buffy said, magnificently indifferent to whether they wanted to be claimed or not. But Xander had been right. They were in Buffy’s troop already, Xander because of that incident that still shocked Willow a little bit, and Willow because of, well, close connections. And because she wanted to be there.

“Okay,” she said. And it was done. Simple as that.

Buffy pulled a serious business face. “Been thinking it was time to set up a household. I know I’m supposed to wait until I’m out of college, blah blah, but whatever. I might not last that long.”

Giles made a harrumphing sound that Willow echoed, because it was good form to object. As alphas went, Buffy would be a very strong leader as long as she lived. That was the painful part. Giles would plan things for them all, including what would happen if Buffy died again. In a couple of days, that was. Once he was fully calm again. Then he’d be giving Xander orders and Xander would be obeying, with even more snap than he’d had before because now they were officially together.

“I guess we’ll have to find a place for us all,” Willow said, to change the topic.

Giles cleared his throat. “I’ll cope with that. Shouldn’t be difficult. Sunnydale’s real estate market is a bit, er, depressed. Just the four of us, or, um, the traditional household?”

“I’m gonna ask Tara,” Xander said.

Buffy looked at Willow for approval, to her surprise. Willow said, “That would make me happy.” Happy and a little wriggly with nerves, because she and Tara had kissed maybe a couple times, but not much more. But now they would be closer for sure.

“Okay then. Need one more. Somebody for Willow.”

“No rush,” Willow said. “We’ll meet somebody.” The implication was, Oz wasn’t coming back any time soon. Giles would hear that message for sure.

Xander said, “We’re overlooking something vitally important here.”

Buffy tilted her head at him. “What are we overlooking, Xander?”

“I get to kiss Giles now.”

Xander wriggled out of the booth and went around to Giles. He looked at Buffy for permission, then when he got it, he half-dragged Giles out onto his feet. When he kissed Giles, he did it alpha-style, with a hand curled around the back of Giles’s neck and another gripping his belt. Giles yielded with good grace, perhaps even with pleasure. The kiss went on open-mouthed for some time, until Buffy announced that that was enough. Giles was hers for the next several months, and so was Xander for that matter. Giles went back to her side immediately, flushing bright red.

He liked being fought over, secretly. Willow could tell. She winked at him and he made a face at her. Buffy stretched out a hand across the table. Willow took it and squeezed. That was Buffy’s way of saying they’d talk soon. And probably do more than talk, which made Willow feel all goopy and strange inside. In a good way.

The waitress showed up then, with a tray full of plates. “Who gets what now, hon?” she said, addressing no one in particular.

“Grand slam’s mine,” said Xander. “You know it.”

“No, it’s mine.” Buffy reached for his plate.

Giles said, “You both ordered them. Stop bickering.”

And wonder of wonders, they shut up. Willow grinned at Giles and he grinned back.