A Kiss For Midwinter

A part of her even welcomed his approach. Maybe he’d look at her and he’d say something outrageous, something that would drive her tears away, allow her to replace this ache inside her with anger.

But he didn’t say anything. He stopped in front of her. His eyebrows drew down. He leaned down to her—so close, she could smell a hint of bay rum on his collar.

Even now, he turned her upside down.

He didn’t say anything. Of course he didn’t; he was still holding to that stupid wager she’d forced on him. Lydia found herself unable to speak as well. Unable to move away.

His eyes met hers. He smiled—not brilliantly, but almost sweetly.

When had she realized that he was sweet? He hid it so well behind gruff speeches, but she’d seen the evidence of it on those days spent with him. The way he talked to Mrs. Hall, setting forth her options so clearly. The way he’d browbeat Henry Westing into accepting an offer of “employment” when he’d been injured and had no other income. The anguish he felt over his father’s impossible situation.

Even the way he talked to her. It was outrageous. It was blunt. It was impossible. And it was…precisely what she needed, the truth boned and filleted without garnish or flourish, placed in front of her for her decision. He made her wants seem ordinary instead of dark and dangerous.

He stopped in front of her and bent down. Lydia’s breath stopped. He made it seem so uncomplicated to yearn for his touch, so simple to lean into his hand when he set it against her cheek. He ran his thumb under her eye, wiping a tear away before it could slip away. His fingers played against her nose, her mouth. And then, bending just a little further, he touched his lips to hers.

It wasn’t a kiss like the one they’d exchanged a few days past, hot and whole-mouthed. It was lighter than that and yet far deeper, a kiss made more of longing than lust. It was the kind of kiss that never happened in fairytales. This wasn’t the meeting of lips that woke princesses from a sleep of a hundred years. It wouldn’t break enchantments or seduce dark knights from their unholy destinies.

It was the kind of kiss a man might give a princess whose enchantment had been shattered years in the past, a woman who was struggling to understand a world without ensorcellment. His fingers against her cheek acknowledged her deepest hurts, and that made his kiss the subtlest kind of magic.

He straightened, pulling away from her.

“Jonas…” she began.

But he set his finger to his lips in an unmistakable gesture. His eyebrow arched confidently—annoyingly even.

“What are you—”

This time, his hand went over her lips. He smiled at her. And then, he sat next to her and kissed her again, this time harder, his breath hot, melding with hers, his hands taking hold of hers.

Anyone could have seen them there, but she couldn’t have pushed him away. He was warm, and she needed the feel of his hands, his lips so dreadfully.

“He used to call me darling,” she confessed. “Tom Paggett did. Lydia darling, he’d say, Lydia darling, I can’t wait until we marry.” She found herself choking on those words. “I wish I were rational like you, but it is hard for me to bear. To hear anyone say those things. It stirs up old memories that I thought I had put to rest.”

His hands squeezed hers. He leaned against her.

“I didn’t want it to change me. I didn’t want to admit that it had any effect on me at all. But it did. It did, and I can’t deny it any longer. I used to think that so long as I kept smiling, so long as I never admitted that anything was wrong, it couldn’t be. But it was wrong inside me all along.”

It was comforting, in a way, to have him keep silent. He didn’t offer answers or solutions, just warmth. Strength.

“The truth isn’t a gift,” she told him. “It’s a terror. And every time I look at you, I feel it. I heard a few words from you and scampered away in fear. You scare me. You always have. Feeling that passion again. Feeling that I’m losing myself, giving myself over to another person without any thought as to the consequences.”

He gave her another smile, this one wry. He looked upward, briefly, and then shrugged.

“It was an utterly terrible thing for me to do to you. Your father—you must be hurting, wondering what to do about him. Do you know what hurt the most afterward? Not the memories that you brought up, but remembering the look in your eyes as I left. That terrible, cold, lonely look. How could you ever forgive me?”

If he could speak, she suspected he would say something awful right now, something awful and wrong. She suspected he would make her laugh. As it was, her shudders had faded. There was nothing to her world but the warmth of his hands, the way he stroked her shoulder.

“I wish I knew why you were doing this. Being so kind to me.”

Without saying a word, he opened his black bag and took out a book. It was labeled carefully on the front: Visits, 3 September 1863 to… The end date was blank. He opened it to the middle and then dipped his hand in his bag and came up with a small pair of scissors. This he used to slice a page carefully from the center. He withdrew a pencil and wrote something on the paper, and then, just as carefully, he folded it into a perfect square with crisp edges.

Then he stood. He took her hand, and in perfect silence, slid the paper into it. He closed her fist around it. The corners dug into her palm as he kissed the tips of her fingers. He didn’t say anything, not even at that point. He simply turned, picked up his bag, and walked away, leaving Lydia to stare after him, dumbfounded.

It was only after he’d disappeared that she unfolded the page he’d taken from his book.

I only said I would stop talking to you, he’d written. I never promised to stop loving you.

She stared at those words, strong and steady, unmoving. It was a strange feeling, accepting that—that she hadn’t destroyed everything, that despite everything she’d done, he cared for her still.

It scared her, the truth. The truth was… She liked him. The truth was, ever since the beginning, she’d looked at him and felt that shower of sparks in her belly. He made her feel so carnally aware, and so she’d pushed him away as hard as she could.

She sat on the bench for a half-hour, this time recalling everything she knew of him. The straightforward way he’d described prophylactics, not flinching at using words like penis or cervix.

As if carnal exercise and sexual longing were just…things. Regular things, functions of the body, and no cause for embarrassment. As if desire, like the truth, could be a gift and not just a source of shame and terror.