He didn’t mean to laugh, but the titter escaped him before he could stop it, his free hand coming up to try to catch it before she could hear.
Those eyes of hers narrowed. “Oh, is that funny?”
“Yes,” he admitted, attempting to sound apologetic. “It is… unexpected, anyway. I thought everything was easy for you. Is your singing voice very terrible?”
She flashed her teeth at him. “Yes,” she said curtly. “I sound like a drowning hen.”
“Harriet,” he said with complete sincerity, “I should very much like to hear you sing someday.”
She stared at him for a moment, clearly baffled by this, her lips forming around several potential opening words to say in response and then puffing them out into the air before they could take shape.
She was glowing just now, opposite the glare of sunset, her hair and dress set off like fire in profile, and she didn’t even know it. He suspected she never knew it.
“What other languages do you struggle with?” he asked, his voice gone soft and deep. “Where else do you falter?”
“What?” she replied, a little choked.
He took a step closer, setting the lantern onto one of her upturned sheets. “Tell me,” he entreated. “Please.”
She shook her head, color rising in her face. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You love words so much,” he continued. “Aren’t there any that you hate?”
“I…” She cut herself off, swallowing with some apparent effort. “I hate acronyms.”
“‘Acronyms,’” he repeated, unable to stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Why?”
She made wrinkled up her nose. “They are lazy and trite. I hate them. There is nowhy.”
“You just said why,” he pointed out, smiling wider when her glower deepened.
“You said I struggle to communicate, despite my languages,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and hugging them close. “I… think that might be true sometimes. Like people have a secret silent language with no letters or grammar or punctuation, and it is the only one I will never have the opportunity to learn.”
“‘A silent language’?” he asked, wishing he could touch her just now, that he could test the temperature of the glowing side of her face against the one in shadow. “You mean adjustments in posture and expression and so on?”
She shook her head, shrugging, and gave her body an agitated shake. “I don’t know. Perhaps.Youhave never struggled with that language, Elias. Even as a boy, you seemed to know when someone was cross or tired or about to tell a long, boring story before they ever said a word. How? You don’t know, do you? I’ve asked others like you. They never know.”
“Perhaps it is instinct,” he suggested, watching the way she seemed to resonate with fury at this thing that was locked off to her. “Nothing more, and nothing all that special, if you have met so many who can do it.”
She gave a huff. “If it weren’t special, I would not covet it, I think,” she said. “Or perhaps it is all the more galling that I cannot access something the world considers pedestrian.”
“You think you don’t communicate with your body, but you do,” he told her. “You’re doing it right now, vibrating with indignant rage, hugging yourself like a phantom mother comforting your child self.”
She furrowed her brow, dropping her arms and looking down at herself. And then, frowning, she looked back up at him.
Her eyes traveled over his form, studying his hand resting on the lantern over the sheet, the crook of his elbow, the bend of hisknee. She took a step closer, peering at his face, and shook her head. “If you are doing the same,” she said, “I cannot translate it.”
He smiled at her, offering his arm again as he took up the lantern. “I wish you’d told me this when we were children,” he said. “I think perhaps it might have changed things between us.”
“Why is that?” she asked, floating forward and accepting his elbow, even though she was clearly still disgruntled.
“Who can say, now?” he replied, rather than stating the obvious. “Perhaps it might have just given us the opportunity to teach one another something, instead of clashing as we did.”
“Well,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “I suppose I’m not completely hopeless at using my body in some forms of survival. After all, I did learn to swim. Rather abruptly, too, if you recall.”
“Thank God for that,” he replied with a chuckle watching the way her mouth curved into a shy little smile as they moved to exit the master suite. “Harriet French is many things, but let none forget that she was always a strong swimmer.”
Part III
