“Then let me showyou.”
Firewood shifted in the stove. The heat of it burnt his frozen skin. Rain battled at the rattling windows.
Slowly, because he had to, he turned her hand in his and brought her palm to his cheek. He pressed it there, eyes closed. He turned his head. Kissed her palm.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked, her voice unsteady. “That you don’t expect me to forget Alfred?”
“I’ve spent the summer knowing you were trying to forget me. I wouldn’t wish that on any man.”
“So…”
“So I just want you to find room, here in your heart…” His other hand lifted to trace a line down from her collarbone to her breastbone, where her stays cinched the top of her chemise. “I pray you can love the both of us.”
“You don’t believe in God.” There was the faintest smile in her voice.
“I’d believe in anything. If it gives me hope.”
With her free hand, she covered his, pressing his palm against her chest, over her heart. He was no longer cold at all. The swell of her breast filled the base of his palm.
“Shouldn’t you pray to me?” she said, smiling again. “Your goddess Eleos?”
“I no longer know what you’re the goddess of.”
“Vengeance? Justice?”
“I only know I worship you.”
The breath she drew was shaky, but it was with a deliberate motion that she let go his hand on her chest and reached out, running her fingers down his temple, along his hairline, then taking a wet strand between finger and thumb. She let it pass through her fingers, watching the drop that formed on its end, letting it fall to land on his wrist.
She stirred the drop with a fingertip as though it was a magic spell, making the bone and sinew of his wrist glint in the fire’s glow. “You should take that wet shirt off. You’ll catch a chill.”
That wasn’t why he’d shuddered. She knew it.
“I’ll decide in the morning if I marry you,” she said. “Tonight…let it just be this.”
“No…” His hand fell from her chest, but she caught it and brought it to the nape of her neck.
She was close enough to kiss.
Her eyes held his. “I need to know it isn’t justthis. I need to be sure what remains after we…”
“I love you. Madelaine, for God’s sake, Iloveyou.”
“And I can’tthinkaround you. I feel a hundred things, half of them conflicting.”
He searched her eyes, first one then the other, a desperate hunt. “You don’t love me?”
“Sometimes I hate you. I told you that on the beach. Sometimes you frighten me. Sometimes I think you’re awful, and cruel, and cold beyond belief. And sometimes… When I saw you, it was like my life restarted. As though I’d been floating somewhere not quite in the world and you brought my soul backdown to earth, right back into my body. What is that, Sebastian? What is that?”
“Whatever it is, I feel it too.” He traced the side of her face, cupping her cheek. Her unbound hair brushed the back of his fingers. “It’s love. If it isn’t love, then the word has no meaning.”
“It isn’t like it was.”
She sounded lost. A whisper. It plucked a string deep inside him, made him bend towards her, head bowed to hers until their foreheads touched. Their mingled breath made the most intimate hothouse; tendrils seeded, roots deep inside him.
“You’renot like you were. You’ve been through so much. And I’m not him. You can’t love me like you loved him.”
A stray tear tracked down her cheek. A blurred diamond, unfocused, with his eyes so close to hers. He kissed it away, tasting salt, a hot, lingering graze against her damp cheek.
