“My poor girl. Promise me this—you will not wear black for me. I have always liked you in colours. Bright, shocking colours. Wear scarlet for me.”
I shook my head. “I do not think I could manage scarlet. Edward always said I looked best in pale colours.”
His face coloured sharply and his breath came quickly, wheezing. “Edward was a fool about many things, not the least of which included you,” he said savagely.
“We were happy enough,” I said feebly, stroking his hand. He gentled then, but I could feel his anger seething just below the surface.
“He never should have married you,” he said finally. “That was selfish. He could not appreciate you.”
I said nothing for there was nothing to say. We sat in silence for several minutes. I kept stroking his hand, listening to his breathing as it slowed and the wheeze quieted.
“You should not excite yourself,” I said after a long while. “Especially about the past. None of it matters now. None of it can be changed.”
He turned his hand in mine, grasping my fingers in his. I thought of how familiar his hand was to me. Simon had been orphaned at two and raised by his aunt and uncle, Edward’s parents, at Greymoor. He had been a frequent guest in our home, sometimes invited, sometimes not. It had been a bold Simon who discovered the gap in the hedge that provided us with a shortcut between the properties, a gap we were careful never to show to Father, who would have had it repaired instantly.
And it had been Simon who braved the first introductions, interrupting our game of cricket on the broad lawn that swept from the abbey down to the river. Edward, his elder by some years, had loitered rather shyly in the background. We rode and swam and played games together, and if sometimes Simon went home with a glorious marble that didn’t actually belong to him, no one really minded. We knew that Simon, unlike Edward or us, with our regular allowances, was desperately poor. We were happy to let him keep the odd book or slingshot—or at least most of us were. My hot-tempered second brother, Benedick, once chased him home and thrashed him for pocketing his favorite tin soldier, the figure of Wellington mounted on Copenhagen from his Battle of Waterloo set. But then Father had felt it necessary to thrash Benedick for hitting a smaller boy and had confiscated poor Wellington, locking him into his desk drawer, where he lay for years. Father kept him as a reminder to Benedick that a gentleman must always guard his temper—a lesson Benedick never entirely learned. And naturally, because of the Wellington incident, Benedick and Simon never quite warmed to each other. Of course, it did not help that anytime Benedick’s temper threatened the rest of us would circle him, chanting, “Remember Wellington,” which only served to provoke him further.
After that, Simon thought of Benedick as an unrepentant bully, and Benedick branded him a weasel, the worst insult in the March lexicon. But I liked Simon, mostly for his quick wit and ready smile, and marrying Edward only cemented the bond. In time he had ceased to be company, and I had begun to think of him as another brother. I could not imagine losing him any more than I could fathom losing one of them. I had known for months that he was dying, but I was only just beginning to really understand it. In some ways, his death would be more wrenching than Edward’s. Edward had been my husband. Simon was my friend.
“You are right, of course,” he said, his voice light and mocking, as it had always been. “I should be saving my strength to make a good end.” He hesitated, then reached out his other hand to me. “I have something to tell you, dearest.” His face was thin now and sharply planed, like that of a fasting monk in an old Spanish painting. “I do not mean to linger forever. When the time comes, I will know it, and I will act.”
I stared at him. “You cannot mean it, Simon. You would not—it is a very great sin. You would not be buried in consecrated ground.”
He smiled again. “Dear girl, what do I care for that now?” His grip tightened on my hands, forcing me to hear him. “It grows harder to breathe, my sweet. I feel sometimes as though I were living under water, desperately trying to draw one clear breath. Can you understand that?”
I nodded slowly.
“Then you must understand why I will do this thing while I have strength to do it. But I could not act without telling you first.”
“Oh, Simon. Must you really?”
His expression was gently rebuking. Of course he must. Who was I to judge what sort of pain he was in? Or what would become of him if he destroyed himself? Like all good Christians, I had been taught that suicide was a sin, that it was unforgivable. But I had long since stopped believing in a God that could not forgive, and I knew I was not arrogant enough to prevent Simon from ending his pain.
“When? How long?”
He rubbed at my wrists, a slow, gentle rhythm that felt strangely calming amidst this new heartbreak. “I do not know yet. I should like to see the summer.”
I nodded. “I will bring roses to you. And strawberries.”
He looked at me for a long minute, his flecked grey eyes searching my face, memorizing it.
“I have always wondered what it would be like to kiss you,” he said finally. “I always wondered what Edward felt.”
Wordlessly, I leaned forward. I pressed my lips to his, surprised to find his warm and soft under my own. It had been years since I had kissed a man, and Simon’s lips were nothing like Edward’s. Simon’s were searching and tentative, slowly exploring and remembering mine.
He put his hand to my face and I pulled back, shaken. I had not thought that kissing Simon would be unlike kissing my own relatives. But it felt vastly different, and I realized how vulnerable a woman becomes when it has been a very long time since she has been loved.
Simon lifted my hand to his lips and I saw there were tears in his eyes.
Neither of us spoke. I kissed him again, this time on the brow, and left him. I went to my room and sat on my bed in the dark, thinking of many things.
THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER
There were three ravens sat on a tree,
They were as black as they might be.
With a down derry, derry, derry, down, down.
