Tessa kept her hand fast in his, through the last soaring notes and the explosion of applause. The singers bowed, and conversations started up below them. Tessa remained facing the stage. “Do you remember”—her voice was just loud enough for him to hear—“during my wedding Mass, how you began to say the vows using your own name?”
“I, Joseph Lazare, take thee, Teresa Conley,”he’d said. “How could I forget?”
“While you were blushing and everyone else was laughing, under my breath I saidmyvow back to you, before I ever exchanged vows with Edward.” Joseph realized she was cradling his stolen glove in her other hand. “So one might say thatyouare my true husband, and that I am unfaithful only when I am with Edward.”
This was not an opera. “Even if you were widowed tonight, I can never stop being a Priest, Tessa. I don’t mean Iwillnot; I mean Icannot. Icanbe suspended; I can be forbidden to exercise my Office; I can even be excommunicated. But in the eyes of the Church, in the eyes of God, I have been irreversiblychanged. I will remain ‘a Priest forever.’”
Almost imperceptibly, without meeting his eyes, Tessa turned her head to him. “Whatever you can give me, Joseph, I will accept it gladly.” She stroked his palm with her thumb again.
He swallowed, staring down at their clasped hands. “On the day I was ordained, when you kissed my palms, you weren’t doing it for the indulgences, were you?”
“I needed every one of them.”
Somehow, Joseph withdrew from her and stood. Not only his hand but his entire body felt bereft, as if a part of him had been amputated. This proximity deceived him into believing the impossible: that they were already one.
Perhaps their captors had relented. Joseph tried the door again. It still wouldn’t budge. His sister must have heard the rattling, because she giggled.
“What if one of us has to use the necessary?!” Joseph cried.
Whispers, sniggers, and then a gale of laughter from the other box. Even Tessa was amused. Joseph turned to see that his father was holding a spittoon around the wall that separated them. “Will this do?”
After the jokers had recovered, Liam called: “Seriously, Tessa—I’m going to stretch my legs. Do you need anything?”
Before she answered, she turned her eyes to Joseph. “Only a longer opera.” Her smile was warm and sad at once.
His sister asked: “Was it worth the wait, Joseph?”
Mutely, he nodded.
“He saysYes,” Tessa informed Hélène. Tessa stood, her gold dress glistening. She still grasped Joseph’s right glove. She moved closer to the next box. “This evening was supposed to be aboutyou, Ellie. Are you enjoying it?”
“Very much.” Then Hélène sighed. “Although, I would be enjoying it more if the ‘Scotsmen’ were wearing kilts…”
Tessa laughed like a harp. Joseph’s father laughed like a kettledrum.
Joseph did not laugh at all. He remained at the back of the box with his overcoat and Tessa’s cloak. He busied himself unknotting his choker, so that he could retie it more loosely. Then again, if he passed out, his father wouldhaveto open the door.
Tessa leaned against the wall of the box, distressingly close to him. She did not offer to return his pilfered glove, and her own arm remained scandalously bare.
He paused with the ends of his choker hanging down his chest.Still he avoided her eyes. “I am sorry I’ve not looked in on Clare—or on David.”
She stared down at his glove. “I understand.”
“They are well?”
“They are.”
Joseph continued his blind toilette. “How is David adjusting to the change?”
“Sometimes, he almost seems happy.” Yet she was frowning. “He treats Clare with such affection and solicitousness; but beneath it… I’ve woken in the middle of the night to find David standing over her cradle, staring down at Clare with such a worried expression on his face. ‘I wanted to make sure she was all right,’ he will say, even though he knows Hannah and I are both there to watch over her. And last week, when I asked David if he wanted to hold Clare, he shook his head at once—as if the thought terrified him. ‘I might drop her!’ he cried. He actually ran from the room.”
Joseph finished with his choker. “I think most boys—mostmen—find babies disconcerting. They’re so fragile and unpredictable. I’m sure it will be different when Clare is older.”
At the edge of his vision, Tessa smiled and nodded.
Her every movement excited her scent. He thought it also wafted from the folds of her cloak. Gardenia encircled him—overwhelming yet not nearly enough. He asked without thinking: “In the Language of Flowers, do you know what gardenias mean?”
“The first book Hélène gave me said ‘purity.’ But the second book said ‘ecstasy.’ So, I suppose ’tis both.”
