Clothes were soon shed like shackles, and the tender ferocity and utter simplicity of what followed—a pounce, some deeply satisfying grappling, a swift and thorough drilling—left them both stunned and sated. Dumbstruck by their luck.
This need between them simply did not abate. It seemed to regenerate into something hungrier and more profound each time. The pleasure greater. The connection deeper. The terrain of each other’s bodies more familiar, yet more richly exciting.
She lay alongside him, stroking the hair from his eyes, which were closed.
“My son came to The Grand Palace on the Thames to visit,” he murmured. Her gentle hand across his forehead was bliss.
“Oh my. Did he? How lovely!”
When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Or was it?”
“Mmm... lovely, on the whole,” he said.
“How does he fare?”
“He would like me to spend a few days in Sussex with him and his wife. His wife’s birthday is Sunday.”
They both knew what this meant.
She was quiet. “Youmustgo. If he came to you to ask, it means a good deal to him.”
She knew, because he’d told her, in the meandering conversations between bouts of lovemaking, how much he regretted the time he hadn’t spent with his son.
“It means... I shall be leaving for Sussex the day before you leave for Paris. I... I thought I would be here when you left.”
“I know. You’ll miss the Night of the Nightingale,” she said wistfully.
Tell me not to go, he silently willed her.
But what would he do then if she’d said it?
He could not leave his son again. He simply wanted to be yearned for, he supposed.
“At any rate, given that we’ve sold almost no tickets, the crowd will be comprised of just the people who live here, their friends, and the drunk man who leans against the building now and again. I expect he’ll enjoy it, though,” she added. Amused. Resigned. Wistful.
He was quiet. He felt that familiar, sizzling fury at the injustice of it, of people who would deprive themselves—and in so doing, likely others, through their influence—of the elevating beauty of her voice for the nasty, unifying thrill of shunning someone. It was more about a bullying wielding of power than any outraged sense of morality. And it was also cowardice. He suspected that she, in her learning of lessons the hard way and making different choices, was ultimately more moral than that privileged lot.
“I wish it were otherwise.” He meant almost literally everything.
“I’ve sung to smaller crowds before. I shan’t mind that part, really. It’s just that I wanted it to be splendid, as they’ve been so very kind to me here. I’m a little embarrassed. I hoped to earn a good deal of money for the ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames. And I do wish I’d have a string quartet. They won’t play for me, you see. The musicians at the theater.”
Her voice had gone thick on those last words.
He couldn’t speak. The notion that she would need to brace for disappointment, or feel ashamed, or pour her glorious voice into a nearly empty room made the muscles across his stomach tense.
“I would like you to be there, but I do notneedyou to be there, James. I am happier knowing you will see your son. I will stun them with splendor. And then I shall go on to play better roles, and I will look back at this and perhaps... laugh.”
He knew she spoke truth. She’d endured before him. She would likely endure after him.
And she could, and would, leave him.
He wanted to be missed.
He turned his head to look at her. “So we’ve a few more days together,” he said softly.
His heart thudded, waiting for her to speak what to him, in that moment, amounted almost to a vow.
The seconds he waited felt like an eternity.
