“You don’t need to ask.”
Their lips met, and the world seemed to narrow to that single point of contact, everything else falling away. There was no measured restraint in it, none of the distance he maintained so effortlessly in every other moment.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips.
“I love you more.”
And then, from somewhere beneath the table, a sound emerged. They both stopped and looked down to see that Soot was sitting directly beneath them.
“She was under there the whole time,” Temperance said.
“Apparently,” he said.
“How long do you think she has been there?” she said.
“I have stopped trying to understand how she gets into rooms,” he said. “Or how long she has been in them.”
He reached down and picked Soot up, and she settled against his chest.
EPILOGUE
“You are not allowed to stand at that window any longer,” Albina said.
“I am not standing at it,” Temperance replied, though she had not moved, her hands still resting lightly against the frame as she watched the slow arrival of carriages along the drive.
“You have been there long enough to form an attachment, and if you do not step away from it now, I shall have the curtains drawn.”
Temperance allowed herself the smallest hint of a smile, though she did not turn immediately, her attention lingering for a moment longer on the figures below, on the movement of people gathering, on the subtle, unmistakable shift of a day that had already begun without asking her permission.
“If you draw them,” she said, finally, “I shall simply open them again.”
“You are being married in less than an hour,” Albina said, stopping just short of her, “and instead of allowing me to ensure that everything is precisely as it ought to be, you are standing here behaving as though this is an entirely ordinary morning.”
At that, Temperance turned, slowly rather than abruptly, the light catching across her face as she met her mother’s gaze with a composure that was not forced, not constructed, but settled in a way that felt, even to her, unfamiliar.
“It feels like an ordinary morning,” she said.
Albina looked at her for a long moment, as though waiting for the rest of the thought to follow, and when it did not, she said, more quietly than before, “But it is your wedding day.”
Temperance tilted her head slightly, considering her with mild curiosity rather than resistance.
“I am aware.”
“And that does not concern you?”
“It did,” she said, moving away from the window at last, though without any haste, as though the act of turning away required no effort now that she had decided to do it. “Yesterday, and the day before that, and several times last week, in moments that were neither convenient nor particularly well-timed but I feel at ease now.”
Albina studied her face with a focus that bordered on scrutiny, as though she expected to find something concealed beneath the calm but whatever she was looking for did not present itself.
“That is not how people usually behave,” she said.
“I have never behaved particularly well in that regard,” Temperance replied lightly.
Albina made a small sound, neither agreement nor disagreement, and reached forward to adjust the fall of Temperance’s sleeve, smoothing a crease that did not, until that moment, seem to exist.
“You look entirely composed,” she said, her tone shifting almost imperceptibly, “which suggests that either you are perfectly certain of what you are doing, or you have not thought about it nearly enough.”
Temperance’s smile softened, though it did not fade.
