He waited for surprise or confusion, but she simply nodded. “May I come in?”
He stood aside to let her pass into the house. His body felt like little more than a mound of insensate flesh in which his mind stirred only sluggishly. She nudged him towards the drawing room.
“Sit. Rest.”
He was too tired to protest. Moments passed untethered from each other, and, at last, Sheba returned, bearing tea things.
Thomas stirred guiltily. “Oh, please don’t ... it’s too much. You don’t work for me.”
“No, but I am a woman, and is not the need to serve and minister inherent to my sex?”
“Yes but—no but—” said Thomas hopelessly.
“Thom,” she cut into his flailing. “It’s a cup of tea, a small gesture of care from one friend to another. Please drink it.”
He drank the tea. It warmed him, though he had not realised he was cold, and steadied him just a little. Like her touch, it reminded him of a world beyond the walls of his own home and the future that was waiting for him with Micha. But, for the first time, hope came swirled with something that felt like grief, for Micha had taught him to see beyond the trammels of his life and shown him a world that was beautiful and full of joy. Nettlefield, with its honeyed summers and deep winters, its fields and meadows, its star-wild sky, and its parishioners, their lives all entangled like strands of bright yarn. And Thomas had been so very blind, so very lost. Unrepentant sinner though he was, he almost thought he could, at last, have been worthy of them, capable of loving and caring for them as they deserved. Yet he was leaving.
And what of Sheba, dear Sheba, and the strange, dour daughter who smiled so radiantly? Friendship had not previously played much part in Thomas’s life, nor, for that matter, in Sheba’s. Duty had restrained his nature; experience had subdued hers. But, equally wary, they were also equally grateful, tending together a shared sense of warmth, a mutual desire to trust and be close. They exchanged small absurdities, shy smiles, delicate confidences, building their intimacy slowly, like children with a jigsaw they did not quite understand. And that, too, he would lose. There would be no more walks from the big house. No more quiet evenings of silence and conversation. No more Saturday afternoons with Hope. No more elephants. No more pirates.
Thomas had been staring somewhat absently into the depths of his cup as if an answer might be curled for him among the dregs, but now he glanced up, wordless, weary, and bewildered. Sheba sat a little way across from him, calm and prosaic, her hands folded neatly in herlap, her beauty undeniable and inextinguishable, as hard and bright as a pearl in that gloomy room.
“How is he?” she asked.
“He sent me away. It’s been ... difficult.” Thomas sighed, trying to speak pragmatically, but unable to banish either the fear or the pain, or the burning remorse that had lately begun to consume him. He knotted his hands together. “Sheba, I think I torture him.”
“It’s not you. It’s the laudanum.”
“I truly had no notion of its power.”
Her eyes held his steadily, reflecting a depth of understanding that chilled him. “Opium is a jealous master.”
“He will hate me for what I’ve done to him.”
“He’s doing it for you.”
Thomas put down the cup and then buried his head in his hands, his body shuddering in helpless sympathy for another’s remembered torments. “For me? I would not wish this on any man, let alone the one I love.”
“But he wished it.” He heard the rustle of her skirts as she leaned towards him, her voice low and urgent. “He chose it.”
“I don’t know anymore, I don’t know, I simply don’t know.” He dragged his head up, cutting himself off abruptly. “And I should not have spoken of this. I must have shocked you.”
The faintest of smiles curled across her lips. “You forget the life I have lived. Very little shocks me.” Like a pale ghost, she slipped across the space between them. “I know well the effects of opium, and I know that there are women who prefer the company of women, and men who prefer the company of men.”
He flinched, on some old, still-unforgotten instinct, to hear such things from the lips of a woman.
“And now,” she said, with a wry look, “I am the one to have shocked you.”
“I think, perhaps, I shock myself.” He had not expected to speak of this with anyone but Micha, and he lacked the words. “The reality of the sins I have committed.”
“It’s simply an act of the body.” She shrugged, and it was one of the few careless movements he had ever seen her make. “There are many such acts.”
Thomas shook his head. “It is more than an act of the body. Far more.” He paused and then plunged on. “I ... it ... that is ... I’ve told him we’ll leave. When we’re ready. Find somewhere we can have a life together.”
“I see.” Sheba sank slowly back onto the sofa, her shoulders slumping. “Actually, no. I don’t see. Why?”
“I cannot lie with Micha and call myself a priest.”
Her voice cracked like glass. “Why not? No one would know.”
