“Come back to me.” He said it to no one. To the fire. To the air. He didn’t even really say it, only muttered it between numb, dead lips. For the thousandth time he tried to imagine himself as the husband he ought to be, cheerful and pleasant, with Minette smiling up at him in her vivacious way. She should not have become his wife. That Robert fellow, with the ginger hair, he would have made her a fine husband. Bancroft, Everett, any of the chaps who’d pined for her, they would have done better than him. Arlington, even. Arlington would have done everything properly and made Minette happy.
Come back to me. Out of all of them, I love you the most.
He fell asleep at some point, waking occasionally at a crackle from the fire. He hoped it would be easier to sleep without her in the bed. Folly. He could sleep better with some brandy. He turned to pour himself some and fumbled the glass, then thought better of things and put the bottle’s neck to his mouth. Rich flavor burned down his throat. His father’s brandy. His father’s glass, embossed with a B. He flung the horrid thing into the fire with a satisfying crash. People were starting to call him Barrymore already. He had to make peace with it. He wished to become one of those cold, emotionless aristocrats who never smiled, who never betrayed the least hint of feeling. He’d be hard and icy as frosted glass, so no one could ever shake him. He intended to become that unflappable person, at least in a day or two, when he was finished breaking down.
His father was gone, buried. Why did he still feel his ghost in the room? He saw a motion out of the corner of his eye and gave such a start he nearly dropped the brandy. He put the bottle down and lurched to his feet. No, not his father’s ghost, God save him. His wife stood in a black traveling gown with a box clutched to her chest. He felt disoriented, confused. He’d only had a swallow of brandy. She was supposed to be at Warren’s, wasn’t she, to leave for Oxfordshire in the morning? He had already kissed her goodbye.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Are you sleepwalking?”
“No, Warren brought me.” She took a few steps closer. “He said he wouldn’t come in. He’s angry, I’m afraid. Not at you. Well, perhaps partly at you, but mostly at me, because it’s late and I made a big fuss and forced him to bring me here when he didn’t want to.”
“You’re...not...?” He swallowed hard. “You’re not leaving with them in the morning?”
“I know I ought to go for Josephine’s sake, but I can’t. I had to come back. I—I wanted to show you this.”
She crossed the room toward him, becoming more and more real with every step. Minette was back. His heart’s jubilation warred with dread.
When she stood before him, she pried open the box’s lid. “I found it in my old bedroom at Warren’s. I told you I still had it.” She gazed up at him with a hopeful, almost desperate look. He had created that desperation, just as surely as he’d given her the porcelain figure nestled in the tissue paper. She took the swan out and held it right up to his nose, as if he might not recognize it otherwise.
My God, she’d really kept it all this time.
“I found it in my little box of treasures.” He heard a wobble in her voice, a devastating note of misery. “I have loved you so long, August. I’ve loved you more than anything and anyone, except perhaps my brother. I’ve loved you more than my parents, because I never knew them. I loved you before I understood what love was, because there was something special about you.”
Tears welled in her eyes. He couldn’t bear to see them. “You ought to go back to your brother and Josephine,” he said roughly.
“I can’t. I love you. I never should have left.”
“You didn’t leave. I encouraged you to go.”
“I’m your wife.” Her indignant exclamation rang out in the silence. “You’re supposed to want me to stay. I love you.”
“You shouldn’t,” he groaned, turning away from her.
She was instantly at his side, tugging at his arm. “I love you, August. Until recently I never understood why, but now I do. There’s a secret person inside you who’s dark and hurting, who hides away because he’s ashamed or afraid or unable to ask for help. But I knew about that person. Do you understand me? I think I knew about him even as a child.”
The more she spoke, the more tears overflowed her lids. He stared at those tears, watched them drop onto the swan’s glossy back and roll off the painted-on feathers. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted to clap his hand over her mouth but he knew he’d never silence her. He pulled away instead, and put distance between them.
“I know you, Method,” she cried. “And everyone has always said that I was put on this earth to bring brightness to the world, but I think I was put on this earth to bring brightness to you. Because you’ve lived long enough in this darkness and fear, and sadness, and loneliness—”
“Stop.” He threw out a hand. His voice echoed off the paneled walls of the parlor. He turned away so he couldn’t see her cry, or perhaps it was so she wouldn’t see him cry. Icy. Emotionless. Frosted glass. “You don’t belong with me,” he said. “I have enough darkness inside me to eclipse us both.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving. I’m meant to be with you, to bring light into your world. Don’t you see, that’s why we belong together, that’s why I’ve always been drawn to you, even though everyone said we were so different.”
“You’ve been drawn to me because you developed some childish fantasy when you were a girl.” He spun back to her, eyeing the swan clutched against her chest. “And I encouraged you because yes, I was lonely, and yes, I only had big, mean sisters who taunted and laughed at me. I thought you were cute. A cute little sister. I still think you’re cute. I think you’re adorable.” He said adorable in perhaps the cruelest way it had ever been said.
“You treat me like some fragile trinket,” she said, advancing on him. “Like this swan, but I’m not a swan. I’m not fragile, I’m not your little sister. I’m not cute and adorable. I’m a grown woman and I want to be your wife. I want you to accept me and let me love you, and bring cheerfulness to your life.”
“You can bring all the cheerfulness you want,” he shot back in a hard voice. “It’s not going to change our unsuitability for each other. It’s not going to change who I am.”
“It doesn’t matter. I love you beyond all reason, beyond all meaning, whether we are suited or not. Why won’t you love me back? I want you to love me. I want you to love me!”
Her voice had risen over the course of her speech to a level of hysteria, and on the last word, she raised her arm and flung the swan toward him in her fury. In the dismal space between them, it crashed to the floor and shattered into a hundred pieces.
For a second, two seconds, they both stared down at it. “Oh, no,” Minette breathed. She rushed, weeping, to the pile of shards.
He hurried to her side and pulled her back. “Don’t pick up the fragments. You’ll cut yourself.”
“It’s broken.”
“Don’t touch it.” He carefully extracted one of the larger pieces from her hand. “Don’t. Don’t cry. I’ll get you another one.”
She turned to him in a rage. “I don’t want another one, damn you. I want you to love me.” She pulled her hands from his and beat them against his chest. “I hate you, August. I hate you! I hate that you won’t love me.”
“Minette. Please.” He struggled to contain her attack. “I love you. I do.”
“You don’t.” She turned away from him, sobbing as if her heart had broken into more pieces than the swan. “You don’t love me. You don’t want me, and I can’t bear it.”
“Minette.” He bore her down against the floor, covering her with his body to make her be still. She twisted away, looking over at the pieces of her broken swan.
“I’ve loved you forever,” she shouted, crying through her anger. “But it hurts too much to be the only one in love, so if you won’t love me, then I’m going to leave you, and then you’ll wish that you’d loved me, because no one else will ever lo
ve you as much as I do.”
It was the truth. It was the raw and brutal truth, every word of it. He let her beat on his chest a moment longer before he captured her wrists and pinned them over her head. With his other hand he took her chin and held her face still, and gazed down at her. “No one will ever love you as much as I do, either,” he said. She struggled as he pressed his lips to hers. They half kissed and half fought as he nudged her farther away from the glass. There were tears in her mouth, on her lips, on her cheeks. He licked them away between gentling kisses and nips with his teeth.
“I love you,” he said against her lips. “Listen to me, darling. I love you, and you’re not leaving.”
“Yes, I am. I will.” She arched beneath him and kicked, narrowly missing his balls.
“I love you,” he insisted. “Until recently I never understood why, but now I do. There’s a secret person inside me who’s dark and hurting, who hides away because...” His throat closed up. He had hurt her so badly, when she’d understood everything exactly right. “My God, I need you.” He gazed into her eyes and forced the words out past fear, past desperation, past suffocating dread. “Please don’t leave me. I need you to light the darkness inside me.”
She shook her head at him. “I can’t be a child anymore. I won’t be your little sister.”