In ways only a lover truly could.
And then Micha embraced him and kissed him, heedless of any who might be watching, and the sky enfolded them both in the vastness of its forever.
Epilogue
1890
My dearest,
I think Thomas would have wanted you to have these letters. They’re full of you, but also of him. Some of the drawings might surprise you. I’d be a little careful with those—they’re probably not a side of him you’re entirely ready to see. But everything else, these words, this love, are as much a part of him as we are. I hope you will understand.
Do you remember the week we spent together at the seaside? You, me, Thomas and our friend Micha. I think that was when you lost interest in piracy and highway robbery and fell in love with geology. We were all very relieved. It was Micha, you know, who found you that spiral ammonite, the one Thomas would later have made into a necklace—I think it’s still among your things in the rectory, with the sea glass and the cockleshells.
We were all very happy that week. I think of it often, especially now. I have so many memories of Thomas, all of them precious, but these are myfavourites. I remember your cold little hand in mine and your eyes as wide as the horizon. And I remember two men in love chasing each other through sun-bright shallows.
All my love,
Mother
She had forgotten England’s muted beauties, the pearl-pale iridescence of the sky and the deep, golden softness of the light. Her world was full of harsher glories: nights of amethyst and emerald, rolling oceans as black as ink with moonlight glistening upon the waves, deserts where the stars fell like rain, lost lakes, brighter than mirrors, hidden high among white peaks, waterfalls so deep within the rainforest they shimmered in shades of silver and jade, falling into pristine pools the colour of her husband’s eyes. And now she walked briskly through the village guided by an instinctive familiarity that ran deeper than mere memory, and she felt neither homecoming nor alienation, for hers was a restless heart that lived in all places.
Few would have thought to call her beautiful, but she cut a striking figure nonetheless. She looked to be a little beyond her thirtieth year, her movements energetic rather than graceful, her skin honeyed by exposure to the sun, and her pale, coarse hair streaked with bronze. She wore an open-weave linen walking dress, beaded in an almost military style and trimmed in maroon velvet. It could not have been the work of any London seamstress, for it clung to the long, lean lines of her body’s natural form.
She paused a moment when she came to the church, her cool rainy-day eyes sweeping a building that seemed as much a part of her childhood as Thomas’s gentle voice or the silly orange dog she had chased so often through the meadows. She had done her weeping in Ian’s arms, beneath unfamiliar constellations, but these reminders of moments lost to time plucked the scabs from her grief and left it raw again.
In the churchyard, the fallen leaves tumbled brightly this way and that at the whim of the breeze, whisking through the gold-tipped grass like a serpent with a scarlet tail. There were conkers gleaming in the undergrowth, and she bent to pick up the largest she could find. It nestled against her palm, warm and smooth, like a living thing, a little piece of English magic.
Thomas had loved the autumn. The crunch of leaves beneath his feet would turn him as playful as a boy. Together, they would comb the churchyard for conkers, fighting over the most promising of them. They would bear their prizes proudly back to the rectory, where they would bore holes through them and thread them on strings in preparation for battle.
It did not take her long to find the grave. It stood on a slight rise, in a glitter of sunlight. The soil was freshly turned and heaped with flowers, so many flowers, in all the richest hues of autumn. She had come too quickly for tokens, but she wished she had some flowers of her own to cast among the multitude. It seemed beyond comprehension, somehow, to witness all the intricacies of a man turned into a piece of earth.
She would also have liked some moments alone, to readjust her universe about this new-made hollow, but there were already mourners here, two men she did not recognise, one kneeling on the grass, the other with his hand resting lightly on the first man’s shoulder. Something about the way their bodies inclined, the ease of their touching, suggested a deep familiarity. At her approach, they both turned, the intimacy of their tableaux still, somehow, unbroken.
The kneeling man was perhaps some fifteen years her senior, and remarkably handsome, despite the grey that laced his spill of wayward curls. The younger of the pair was not as well favoured, but his eyes were quick and merry, his mouth generous. And there was something about the other man. He tugged upon her memory, like an echo of something not quite forgotten.
An anxious silence hung between them like a veil. And then ...
“Hope?” he said.
It should have startled her, to hear her name on the lips of a man she thought she did not know. But she did know him. He had sat with her in the garden one clear winter night and named the stars for her. His pencil had given form to all her fancies. And he had loved Thomas, an idea partially grasped with a child’s understanding she had only later understood. “Micha.”
He gave a harsh, uncertain laugh. “I’m surprised you can remember me.”
“You remembered me.”
“I know all about you.” He smiled, and the beauty of it would have turned anyone breathless. “Thomas wrote of barely anything else. He was so proud of you. As am I.” Suddenly he seemed to recall the hand upon his shoulder. “Forgive me, I’ve always had terrible manners. Sam, this is Hope Bannatyne. Hope, this is Samuel, Viscount Larcombe.”
“Bannatyne?” The viscount’s sandy brows flicked upwards. “The geologist?”
She recognised his name too. It had been associated with a scandal in the seventies. Arrested with two other gentlemen in a public convenience, he had been charged with conspiracy to commit an act a gently raised young lady should not have been able to comprehend. His family had intervened, and he had been released with only a fine, but his reputation was tarnished beyond repair, and he had fled to the Continent. She regarded him a little curiously, never having met an affront to civic decency before, but she saw only a man, a rather sweet and earnest one.
“My husband,” she explained. “I left him in the Amazon basin and shall rejoin him at the Indo-Australian Archipelago next year.”
The viscount inclined his head politely. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
“As am I.” She caught then Micha’s smile, a very sad and private smile, and she went on, “I believe it was a hereditary indisposition my father suffered.”
He nodded. “We came as soon as I received your mother’s letter. It struck him swiftly, and he did not linger, as his father did.”
