The voice from the door made me jump, my fingers landing on the keys and plucking a tuneless melody before I snatched them away. Sioned stood in the doorway, an apron tied over her dress and a dusting brush in hand.
“Sorry, I did not mean to intrude,” I said, getting to my feet and shutting the lid of the instrument.
“You’re not,” she assured me. “The only reason it’s in here is because Miss Ponsonby prefers the piano. You’re as welcome to play this one as you are that.”
I should not have given in as easily as I did, but I was so keen to play Kitty’s melody on the instrument that suited it best that Sioned’s encouragement was all it took. I gave her a grateful smile and sat myself back down, readying the instrument before the melody poured out of my fingers. It was better than I’d ever played it, smooth and confident and exactly as it sounded in my mind. Even when a hand on my shoulder made me jump halfway through. I looked over to see Kitty nudging me aside so she could join me on the bench. Glad to make room for her, I didn’t break the melody as I slid along and pressed a kiss to her temple. When I finished it, she knocked her shoulder softly into mine.
“It’s still beautiful,” she said. “Just like its composer.”
I turned my face into her hair to hide my smile, kissing the crown of her head through the curls.
“I wrote it for you,” I admitted. “I started working on it before I met you, but I could never get it to sound right. And then I did meet you, and it became clear that you were what it was missing. So I rewrote it to sound like you do when you laugh or smile or talk endlessly about the Continent. It’s yours.”
Kitty was quiet for a long moment, long enough for me to worry that perhaps I had offended her. When I gathered together the courage to shift away and look, I found tears in her eyes. She reached for me, stopping me getting too far, and rested her forehead against mine.
“I love you so deeply I forget there was a time before I felt this way,” she said, the words whispered and sacred and mine. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”
“And you to me,” I replied, kissing her softly before wrapping her into an embrace I did not intend on breaking anytime soon.
It was easy to forget this was only a temporary pause in our journey and we soon needed to move on. When everything felt so safe and so freeing, I never wanted to focus on leaving, but when we reached our fourth morning in Wales, Lady Butler joined me in the library and broached the subject as gently as she could.
“I don’t wish you to think we’re trying to hurry you out, but have you thought about your plans for the future?”
The question shattered my serenity. I had curled up by the fire, Darcy’s old coat around my shoulders and one of Kitty’s hair ribbons pulling my curls out of my face, not putting on any kind of act or obeying any kind of rules from the pages of an etiquette guide. Plas Newydd was not the kind of place where such things were necessary, but idyllic as it was within the house’s walls, time outside did not stop.
I closed my book—Candide, ou l’Optimismein Voltaire’s original French—and gave Lady Butler my full attention. She was right that I needed to face up to reality. We had already overstayed our welcome.
“Kitty wishes to travel,” I said, because I had promised her she would get to and I intended to make good on my word.
Clearly I was not as convincing to Lady Butler as I sounded to my own ears.
“And do you?” she pushed.
That was not quite so easy to answer. There was plenty to keep me occupied overseas, so many books I had no access to in England, and sites to be visited. Besides, someone had to keep Kitty out of trouble and translate for her when she tied herself in linguistic knots. Not to mention the increased level of difficulty it would bring to the notion of either of our families finding us and dragging us home. Still, something about the idea of having no true home left me uneasy.
“I would give her the world if I could, but travelling the Continent with her seems likely to be as close as I can get,” I said, deciding to focus on Kitty rather than myself.
“Certainly only one of you knows how to sit still. Do youtruly want a life constantly on the move? Travelling can easily become running.”
“We do not have the money for a home,” I said.
“You do not have the money to travel, either,” she reminded me. “Have you given some thought to contactingyour brother?”
Candidewas suddenly fascinating to me. I kept my gaze on the volume in my lap, tracing the edge of the binding with my thumb as I blatantly ignored the question. Lady Butler let me suffer in the silence for only a few moments before she broke it with a change of subject.
“Do you read poetry, my child?”
“I read everything,” I said, grateful to be allowed to focus on books.
She got up and headed directly for a shelf near the fireplace, knowing exactly which volume she was reaching for without having to search. When she handed it over to me, I surrendered the familiar comfort ofCandideand reached for the soft brown leather-bound book she held out. I noted the name in gold tooling down the spine:sappho. Before I could ask, Lady Butler was answering.
“The dog is named after her. She was an ancient Grecian poetess, and I daresay you may find you have something in common with her inclinations.”
The sparkle in her eye said everything her words did not. Instinctively, I tightened my grip on the book as if someone might take it away from me. She could not truly mean I was holding a published account of someone like us. Like awoman possessed, I frantically turned the pages, desperate to read the words inside. Lady Butler left me to it with a gentle squeeze of the shoulder, allowing me to get lost in the book.
I read the volume cover to cover, over and over again until I had memorised every word. I wanted to be sure I understood it truly and had internalised every possible interpretation of this poetry that seemed to echo in my heart. I quickly learnt it was an English translation from the original Greek, which the library sadly seemed to lack, so I appeased myself by attempting to translate the fragments back to Greek in my mind as I read, wondering exactly which words Sappho had chosen to describe how the sight of a beautiful woman left her awestruck.
I was entirely unaware how much time had passed until Lady Butler returned, but when she disturbed my reading again, the sun was beginning to set through the windows and I suddenly found myself aching from sitting in one position for too long, and my stomach twisting from the lack of a midday meal. I had noticed she was there only when she moved to stand directly in front of me, blocking the light by which I was reading.
