“So?” said Tom.
“So?”
He propped himself up on an elbow and adopted a posh voice. “Will you do me the honor, Juniper Blythe, of becoming my wife?”
“Well, kind sir,” said Juniper, in her best impersonation of the Queen, “that depends on whether one might also be permitted three fat babies.”
Tom took the cigarette back and smoked it casually. “Why not four?”
His manner was light still, but he’d dropped the accent. It made Juniper uneasy and somehow self-conscious and she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Come on, Juniper,” he pressed. “Let’s get married. You and I.” And there was no doubting now that he was serious.
“I’m not expected to get married.”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
A silence fell between them, remaining unbroken until the kettle whistled in the flat downstairs. “It’s complicated,” said Juniper.
“Is it? Do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then it isn’t complicated. Marry me. Say yes, June. Whatever it is, whatever you’re worried about, we can fix it.”
Juniper knew there was nothing she could say that would please him, nothing except yes, and she wasn’t able to do that. “Let me think about it,” she said finally. “Let me have some time.”
He sat abruptly, with his feet on the floor and his back to her. His head was bowed; he was leaning forwards. He was upset. She wanted to touch him, to run her fingers down the center of his back, to go back in time so that he’d never asked her. As she was wondering how such a thing might be done, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. It was folded in half, but she could see there was a letter inside. “Here’s your time,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ve been recalled to my unit. I report in a week.”
Juniper made a noise, almost a gasp, and scrambled to sit beside him. “But how long …? When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. When the war is over, I suppose.”
When the war is over. He was leaving London and suddenly Juniper understood that without Tom this place, this city, would cease to matter. She might as well be back at the castle. She felt her heart speeding up at the thought, not with excitement like an ordinary person’s, but with the reckless intensity she’d been taught to watch for all her life. She closed her eyes, hoping that it might improve matters.
Her father had told her she was a creature of the castle, that she belonged there and it was safest not to leave, but he’d been wrong. She knew that now. The opposite was true: away from the castle, away from the world of Raymond Blythe, the terrible things he’d told her, his seeping guilt and sadness, she was free. In London, there’d been none of her visitors, there’d been no lost time. And although her great fear—that she was capable of harming others—had followed her, it was different here.
Juniper felt a pressure on her knees and blinked open. Tom was kneeling on the floor before her, concern flooding his eyes. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She’d had no need to tell Tom any of it and for that she’d been glad. She hadn’t wanted his love to change, for him to become protective and concerned like her sisters. She hadn’t wanted to be watched, her moods and silences measured. She hadn’t wanted to be loved carefully, only well.
“Juniper,” Tom was saying. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t look like that. I can’t bear to see you look like that.”
What was she thinking, turning him away, giving him up? Why on earth would she do such a thing? To follow the wishes of her father?
Tom stood, began to walk away, but Juniper grabbed his wrist. “Tom—”
“I’m getting you a glass of water.”
“No,” she shook her head quickly, “I don’t want water. I just want you.”
He smiled and a stubbled dimple appeared in his left cheek. “Well, you already have me.”
“No,” she said, “I mean yes.”
He cocked his head.
“I mean I want us to get married.”
