“Don’t you think that passage is so absurd, though? That one, about the sun, and its envy for two lovers entwined in real love?”

Anne posed the idle question as she traipsed along leaf-dusted paths of dirt and grass cut across the Roxborough estate; the rain had died away as evening began to settle, and though their clothes were dripping and their horses had had quite enough of the rain and the wind, Lawrence and Anne decided that for her father’s piece of mind, they ought to leave the cabin for the eve and find the way back to the manor. Having lost the innocent flower of womanhood in a manner she had never dreamed as being quite so romantic, Anne’s heart burst with a withering brightness, bright enough to scare away the clouds and welcome back the dying beams of sunlight reaching through gray skies. And yet in spite of her joy, she noticed that her companion, and the man she had so swiftly begun to fall in love with, rode alongside her with little to say. It mattered little, though, as she had quite enough of her own to share; she had held in her heart so many feelings and thoughts, and now that she had found a spirit so close to her own, she felt confident in sharing them.

“I... suppose it is, to an extent,” Lawrence commented coldly, reserved; she noted that the warmth with which she had become accustomed since their time at the stable, that emergent charm that she glimpsed briefly at their night together at dinner, had retreated; it concerned her, but she thought not to pry, wanting to savor the feeling of this euphoric moment for as long as her mind and body would allow. She looked an utter mess, her dress dirty and wet and clung to her frame, and her hair a sopping disaster of stringy waves half-dried against her face, but she couldn’t care any less than she cared right now in the entirety of her life. She had locked lips and fingers and bodies and hearts with someone who understood her, and she began to feel the comfort and he joy that she had read about so frequently in those silly books, stacked high atop the shelves. Her face swelled with a cheeks-blushing smile as she gazed once more upon the man who had captured her heart.

And she found him distant. Aloof. She found his features vexed in much the same manner as they had been that night, at the dinner table - dour, and focused not on her, or on their wondrous experience, but on whatever melancholy stories played themselves along in the depths of his mind.

“Lawrence,” she asked, trying to tug from him warm emotion in a moment that seemed oddly negative to him, “you told me... when we first met, and you’ve maintained it, for some time, I believe, that you’re... not ready, for marriage,” Anne recalled hastily, gripping Midnight’s reins and leading the creature up the dirt path, along a hilly ridge. The pair reached the edge of the estate proper, long grass fields and cool winds inviting them back to the face of the manor.

“I did, indeed,” he gulped, his answers short; simple. Painfully short, in a way.

“I... don’t think you’ve ever really explained to me, what drove you to feel yourself incapable of marriage,” Anne tried to dance gracefully about the subject, pulling Midnight to trot closer to her lover.

“It’s... an issue of trust, of worthiness,” he answered in brief; he avoided looking into her eyes, which harmed her.

“Trust? Has someone harmed your trust so completely that you feel it difficult to love?” Anne probed, curiosity knotting tight in her stomach. His manner had grown painfully unsettling, his silence uncharacteristic.

“It is not a matter of trusting others, m’lady,” he explained with a lilt of misery in his words, “it is a matter of trusting myself. Real love requires... an earnestness and trust of one’s self as much as of another.” Anne’s expression retreated in quiet surprise at the revelation; she had never quite thought of relationships in such a manner. It certainly had not been something all the silly stories she had read as a child had at all mentioned.

“Ho...w,” she murmured with a clear of her throat, Midnight trotting now along loosely assembled stones, laying jagged along a beaten trail that had long ago fallen to pieces beneath the feet of dozens of horses. “I’m sorry, Lawrence, I suppose I simply do not... understand, but I wish to,” she assured him. She pulled Midnight’s reins, her beast drawn closer to Lawrence’s lazy and whinnying old animal, but still the lord remained unmoved; distant. She missed the conviction-filled stare of his deep and powerful gray eyes, and reached with a daring hand to lay her fingers upon his gripping knuckles. She felt him startle when she reached for him, instinctively retreating from her touch; at least, Anne hoped that it was instinct that drove his reaction, and not deleterious emotions towards the woman he had just laid with.

“It is best, perhaps, that you did not,” Lawrence retorted with an obstinate sound. Anne pressed, her heart hardened with a new resolve after the time they had spent together.

“I want to know you, Lawrence. You need not be shy about such details - no longer do you have to... hide, the truth from me,” she assured him, wondering if perhaps those old social strictures had gripped at his heart. “Not with me.”

“I do not know that I am a man made for the capability of love, m’lady, if only because of the spectacular manner in which I fail at it,” Lawrence blurted, his words harsh and stirring. He looked to her finally, and she saw not the piercing gaze of the man she had begun to fall for, but the deep and sullen gaze of a man in the depths of a conflict deep inside of his own soul. Anne tried to reason away the look. She felt her own conflict. It’s only natural, of course...? It hadn’t been an easy transition. But it had been quick, and the struggle of emotions still burned inside of her. So... it must have been the truth with him as well? She thought, hoping that it was only natural for him to retreat as he had.

But a part of her knew that to be a sham of her own selfish design. Something was wrong, and as euphoric as she felt in the glow of the approaching evening sun, after a meeting of mind and body and spirit with someone she had so adored, she felt a storm of emotion brewing at the edge of this bright day, as if the most sinister parts of all their worlds threatened to crash down upon them both. She took a deep breath, searching for pleasant questions she could ask, though she wanted so badly to strike at the heart of what troubled him.

“I think you’re... quite capable of love, m’lord,” she smiled. “Why do you think yourself otherwise?” they trotted delicately together through a mire of mud, dampened by the heavy fall of rain across swaying, grassy fields. The manor came into view, set high upon a hill, the sun’s glow bouncing from its shimmering marble-toned facade, like some sort of stairway to the realm of the divine. It seemed tragically ironic to Anne, to see something so bright, so inviting, while her heart had begun to feel not but fear and anxiety.

“I’ve lived a full twenty-eight years of my life without having known you, m’lady, and so I think it quite accurate to say that there is... much, of me, and of what I’ve been through, that you do not understand. Suffice to say,” Lawrence announced, “IO have no desire to fall into the same traps that the men of my life have so deftly stepped in to.” That, at least, gave Anne something to think on, and her curiosity rushed through her veins as she peppered him with another question.

“How do you mean?” she queried, before blushing; her voice lowered to a faint and delicate whisper. “Of-of course, I have no intention of... prying too boldly, m’lord. I only wish to understand... you,” she admitted.

“What drives this want of yours, m’lady? This want of understanding?” he pressed her boldly, a storminess dwelling deep in a thrumming baritone that would otherwise bring Anne so much warmth and hope.

“I...” she stammered, thinking of a proper manner of phrase for him. “I had... h-had simply thought that, well... we had become closer, close enough that I... my curiosity began to get the better of me,” she cleared her throat with a loud cough. “I had not meant to be presumptuous.” Few men - in matter of fact, no men - could have Anne questioning herself, or backing down from the fiery manner of rhetoric she had spent most of her life perfecting, and she herself did not even know why he brought out of her so meek a nature. Would any other man toss words of suspicion and grapple so crass with his pain before her, she would certainly see that he would up stuck in the mud with only stubborn Old Burnie to help. She realized that her heart had begun to cry, beg for Lawrence; something she had felt not for any man before. Something that made her feel... insecure, in her own way. She strode next to him, pulling her hand away from him and gripping Midnight’s reins as they together began the ascent along the steep hill; a road began beneath them, paved in stone and gravel, helping their steeds to find the way back to the stables. 

“Curiosity can be most troubling,” he commented, an emptiness to his words. “It can lead us to find things about others, about ourselves, that we desire deeply to hate.”

“Do you fear that with me? That you will reveal some great, dark truth to me, that shall turn me away from you?” she whispered. “There is little you could reveal, short of some grand crime in your past, that would deter my feelings,” she laughed through her anxiety. “Lest you revealed yourself to be a highwayman or murderer among the moors or some such.” He took her humor with little reaction, his expression unmoved; almost cold. She had hoped to bask in the warmth of the sun with him, but instead his gaze felt like rain; the rain they had suffered through, icy rain; clinging rain, stuck to every body part, every swathe of skin. A rain one could never get away from. And perhaps he had known that rain his whole life, she feared.

“It’s... not some dark secret, m’lady,” he said, consternation thick. She replied with silence. She wanted to speak, but whatever troubled him rattled deep. “...It is well-known, to many of those in positions of influence, at least, what precisely I come from. What the Amhurst estate has seen. My sister’s...” the subject drew him closed up tight, and he shook his head, voice trailing away, until only the clop of their horses’ hooves remained. She wanted to open him up again; she would do anything, anything in all her power, to hear him speak freely again; to see him smile, to jest the way he had when they rode gallantly through forest; when he saved her from the rain.

“Your sister... she’s... it’s not your fault, m’lord.”

“It is, in more than one way,” he said in disdain. “I do not expect you to understand. I cannot trust myself. None in my family have ever truly been able to understand that trust, and one after another fell in to the gilded cages of distraction and drink and destruction,” he recounted, voice tortured. They drew closer to the stable, and Anne pulled her steed before him. Old Burnie whinnied; they had reached the top of the hill, that simple stone building only a few hundred paces away, and Anne would not end their time together so sour. 

“M’lord, you’ve no need to worry with me. I’ll not judge you, I’ll not—”

“M’lady, it is not you who I worry about,” he insisted. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he had spoken with intentions of finality on the matter, dour expression long and his eyes burning with a negative conviction. She could argue; she could beg with insistence that he need not worry; that she trusted him, and that she knew him to be the finest man in all of England. But none of that would be heard; it would fall on ears unwilling to listen, and ready only to leave this place. Realizing this futility, she hoped that instead time alone would bring him to the conclusion she had come to - the heart cried and healed the most when left to its own devices, she had read, and so infantile and blind did she feel in matters of the heart that she hoped it to be true as she pulled Midnight’s reins away and trotted the horse into the stable. Old Burnie whinnied behind her, and she closed her eyes. She could feel the burn of tears, but she would not give in. Hope had taken root like a lashing weed in her chest and it certainly would not die away now.

“Thank you, Bertold,” Anne said with a gentle nod when she entered the stone building; the young blonde man wheeled rickety stairs to Midnight’s side, and Anne took gingerly steps down, to dismount.

“You got caught in the rain, m’lady?” Bertold asked, noticing the moisture still soaking Anne’s dress, and clinging to her skin. “Are you quite alright?”

“Yes,” she offered her Spartan reply. “I simply need to retire to the manor, perhaps bathe, in something warm.” She looked back; at the other end of the stable, Lawrence hopped from Old Burnie’s back, straightening his coat and the lopsided collar at his throat.

“How about the duke? How did the two of you pass through the storm so well?” Bertold pried. “I cannot imagine riding in such rain.”

“Bertold, it’s not a manner for stable hands to concern themselves with,” Anne said. She felt her cheeks blushing; she certainly couldn’t fight away the pleasant memories of the moment spent in passion with the duke, and young, innocent Bertold shared her embarrassment as he glanced away.

“Of course, m’lady,” he insisted.

“I would... appreciate it, if you kept this to yourself,” she whispered.

“Of course, m’lady, I’d think nothing of your affairs with the lord, as it’s not my place,” he answered with a smile.

“It’s... not, an affair,” she said, swallowing hard. She then noticed that the duke had already made his way from the stable; her heart pounded and she rushed out the door, catching him as he rounded a corner on the path through the garden, dew glistening on blooming flowers along the walkway back to the Roxborough manor.

“M’lord,” she called after him. He moved slowly but with purpose and she caught up with him in a few hopping strides. “M’lord,” she repeated. “Please...”

“What is it?” he asked. She bit her lip as they stood face-to-face once more; a place she had wanted to be for so long, even if she did not know it. She couldn’t overcome whatever wave of emotion began to fill her; tears welled at her eyes, but not of misery; no, tears of joy; fervor, and confusion. Though she fought it subconsciously her muscles moved, fueled with a vim all their own, and she pressed herself to his chest, wrapping her arms in a desperate embrace. She buried her eyes into his damp shirt, closing them to stave off the passionate flow of tears. 

And she felt something she hadn’t expected. They came slow, awkward at first - but he answered with an embrace, arms at her shoulders; a gentle stroke down her soaked hair. Her breathing evened and she sighed out when she felt him return that touch, something she had never felt; a gentle, if gingerly touch of affection, returned to her.

“M’lord...” she repeated. “I don’t... I don’t know, what I feel, but...”

“Please,” he begged her, looking away. She glanced up at him with her eyes alight; he offered her a kiss on her forehead, though she longed so deeply to feel the fire shared on their lips again. “Just... remember it. Hold on to it, and you shall see yourself through the day, m’lady.”

Remember it. With that she felt his arms loosen; a businesslike demeanor filled him. But just once, his fingers lingered; their hands met, tied together, and they shared that passing, intimate moment. 

And then he strode towards the manor doors. Her heart screamed. She begged to know just what he meant. The cold clung to her, renewed; she followed him, seeking the warmth of a bath. Any warmth she could find.