“Adorable,” I deadpan, thrown by the sudden nostalgia.
She must remember my ill-chosen words about Edmund, and I watch that fondness turn brittle at the reminder. Her finger drags down the cracked spine of my book, still forcing that smile to hold the fort.
“Aunt Edith says Edmund’s scowl was no accident. He’s been angry almost his whole life, I think, not that I can blame him. Angry at Uncle Hamish for reasons we’ll never understand, then with Grandfather and Pascoe. Even Bertie wasn’t really spared.”
I turn over her response, cataloguing it. Doubt she even realises she’s given me more than memories. She handed me motive. Edmund doesn’t hate the men in his life; that’s too simple. He sees them as guilty of proximity. Hamish is tethered to his beloved mother; Pascoe dotes upon the granddaughters as though they’re his own; Frank stands loyal at Sylvaine’s side; and Bertie appears to be close with both girls.
Patterns don’t lie once they’re all lined up.
“If I were a more suspicious man, I’d say your cousin hates men standing too close to the women he loves.” I give her a sardonic little smirk. “Which, unfortunately, makes me Number Five.”
Her lips part, but it takes a second for her words to string together. “He’s always been protective of us. And he doesn’thateyou.” But her knuckles go white where she grips the book. “He just doesn’t know you yet.”
“Yes, and what exactly comes after the ‘knowing’ stage? Mourning?”
The look she gives me would’ve withered the balls of a lesser man. “Alright, Hamlet. Can we get back to the subject at hand, please?”
I play dumb. “Which is? Because I’ve got a few contenders in mind.”
“That you’re the most insufferably brilliant man I’ve ever met. You purposefully changed the conversation to the paintingjust to avoid me saying something kind to you. Are you always this emotionally constipated?”
She’s irritatingly right. I swirl the wine in my glass, unable to look at her. “Constipated implies something waiting to be released. I’m quite empty, thank you very much, so the word you’re looking for isrepressed.”
“You’re going to let me compliment you, Eric.”
“Am I?”
She thumbs over the cramped ink lining the margins. “Yes, because I was going to say you’ve basically drawn maps for every character in this book. Never pegged you for a literary cartographer.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I fill my mouth with more wine. I’m almost scared of what she’s seeing the more she reads, book balanced across her knees and a mischievous smile pulling at her full lips. Should’ve burned that fucking copy, I swear.
Who even reads marginalia?That’s why I wrote it, because I knew nobody would give a damn. In my father’s words, my patterns are a little too obsessive.
The fire burns low over the battered cover, but my attention is locked onto the way her eyes track the page. She might be at the bit where I wrote about Cathy, how she loved Heathcliff because she recognised herself within him. Francesca’s mouth tilts.I tense, fidgeting with the stem of my glass and fighting against having my fourth. Her face is too unguarded, too awed, and it’s making my lungs tear like parchment.
And by fuck, does she take her fucking time.
She taps the margin where the ink lay. “Interesting, very interesting. You believe Cathy chose Heathcliff because he was himself? Not because of his morals or… or his soul, but just because he was him?”
Of all things she could’ve fixated on.
When she proceeds to read my notes aloud, I nearly vomit and butt in. “Fate’s a lazy concept, alright. Is that what you wanted to hear? People use it as a way to detach themselves from their decisions. I don’t find it comfortable, nor poetic. Love isn’t exactly divine intervention, Francesca; it’s selection.”
With a little more heat than I’d expect from somebody like her, she asks, “So if you don’t believe in fate, then what does love look like for you? If one day, you loved someone like she did him, what would you call it then?”
Devotion, maybe. A sort of discipline.
I laugh under my breath at her peeved expression, and out loud, I say, “It would be waking up every day and choosing her. Over and over again, especially on the days where I don’t feel particularly…soft. Repetition is what makes patterns meaningful. That’s enough for me.”
She smiles faintly, and the shape of it does something painful to my ribs. “You make it sound so simple, like waking up and, I don’t know, charging your phone.”
“Exactly. Nobody gets dramatic about it, yet they do it every morning.” I shift in my seat. “Did I miss the part where this suddenly became about my thoughts on love? I made a note in a book. Finished.”
She lets it go. That may just be the worst part, the fact that she could’ve pressed and chose not to. I wonder how many men have stood before her and choked on their emotion, holding their breath until she permits them to release. Either she’s being merciful, or she’s merely fattening me up for a later slaughter.
“I was fifteen when my tutor whipped out this book, and I remember being so irritated because I hated it,” she mumbles, too absorbed in my annotations to note that I’m losing it. “I didn’t understand any of Nelly’s thoughts or why Cathy was so frustrating and angry all the damn time. Everything was too overwhelming. Too noisy.”
That’s when she glances up, tucking her hair behind her ear and saying, “The font thing makes sense.”
