They all tried to answer at once, floundering, laughing at nothing that was funny. I noticed almost everyone that spoke to her had this same reaction. She was so unbelievably beautiful. In her presence, you felt like you were watching living art move.
I couldn’t wait to move her on the dance floor. Though we had to share our time with the guests, this night was ours, and I’d be damned if we didn’t spend it together.
We danced deep into the hours of the night, but when my ballerina of a wife said that her feet hurt, it was time to go.
Before we left, Maggie Beautiful tugged on Scarlett’s hand, her words whispered, the kisses she placed on her cheek loud. Italian kisses, Scarlett called them. The vibration was enough to make cheeks jiggle, she said.
On my other side, Violet had helped Maja Resnik find me, and the old ballerina pulled me down and whispered something in my ear. Then she winked at me. Violet must have caught the advice because she threw her head back and laughed.
A vintage looking carriage, one with a box-shaped top, windows, velvet seats, and a lantern, waited to take us to the castle. The two black Friesians stood steady; their breath produced clouds of smoke.
Guests were seeing us off, fireworks exploding in the sky, and the two powerful horses seemed ready to move.
Scarlett released my arm and took my hand. I used the other to get the fluff behind her under control, attempting to get her in without much issue. I slipped in easily behind her. The attendant waiting to shut the door after me took his seat before the horses. He had on a top hat and suit that looked vintage, coattails included. The carriage rolled on at a slow pace.
Entering the carriage seemed like entering a new reality. It was eerily quiet, the only noise the clap of hooves against the ground and the occasional huff out of a horse’s nostrils.
Fog was so thick that it seemed like we were cutting through layers of clouds, blindly trying to find heaven. The castle’s lights burned steadily, but the torches hanging on the castle and lining the drive glowed like matchsticks against the almost impenetrable walls of white. When it touched the horse’s coats and manes, it made them seem like silk and ribbons.
My wife sighed, a soft, content sound, and looked at me. We both smiled.
Her face was flushed from all of the dancing and a single glass of champagne. The scent of roses and frost wafted from her skin. When I took her hand, she squeezed, and our rings clinked, vow against vow, but she almost seemed shy, hesitant.
She gazed out of the window, eyes searching. “I can’t see a thing,” she said, her voice so light that it seemed to float. “My mother accused me of being insane for choosing to get married in winter. ‘Everything’sdead!’” she mocked her mother’s voice. “Unlike Charlotte, who’s marrying in spring, when everything is in bloom!”
Her mother was a sore spot. She tried to talk Scarlett out if it, preaching that she was too young, that she hadn’t explored the world or her life enough. But her father had been stern about paying for the affair and her grandmother about letting the girl live her life. Caught between the two of them, Pnina participated, but I doubt she truly conceded. She was mostly coerced.
I smiled at her theatrics. “Maybe,” I said, lifting her hand, rubbing her rings against my bottom lip. “But it’s still beautiful.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” She crossed herself with her free hand. “Did you just compliment something?”
“Other than you? Yeah, I think I did.”
“A wedding miracle.”
“You never asked me why I thought it was beautiful,” I said, falling under the spell of her shimmering eyes.
“Why, why, why,” she almost sang.
Lifting her cool hand a little higher, knuckles to my mouth, I placed a warm kiss on each one. “The nights are longer. Life gives me more time to love you.”
She blinked at me, a constant flutter of black feathers against the paleness of skin, until she cleared her throat.
“That’s what Maja Resnik told me. She said that I would find a reason to be thankful for the freeze. Her words make more sense now. We have more time.” She turned back toward the window. “She likes you, you know. Her Italian lover—the painter obsessed with her naval—he was it for her. But she couldn’t have him. I think something about us brings back nice memories for her.”
“She gave me some advice before we left.” Her eyes flicked to mine, persuading me to go on. “To be gentle with you in bed.”
She started to laugh, not scandalized by her grandmother’s advice. Maja Resnik had fallen deeply in love with an Italian painter who felt the same about her. His life had been cut short, though, and he had found success after his death. His letters to her grandmother were recovered, and a book was created from them. Scarlett had read it—a racy read, she had said. She loved romance novels.
When I slipped a fingertip up and down her cheek, her laughter faded and she released a trembling breath.
“Gentle, ah? Or do you need something else, my wife?” Either way, I needed to be inside of her, more than I had ever needed anything else.
She shivered and turned to face me, turning the full power of her eyes on mine.
Our eyes connected.
Scarlett had once called it asummoning of our soulsin a letter she had sent to me. No better way to describe it.
