Falling from Grace - Bridgerton

Chapter Seventeen

~Epsiode Three~

"The air is blue and keen and cold,"

Her voice, one of an angel

"With snow the roads and fields are white,"

The words from her soft lips falling onto his skin

"But here the forest's clothed with light"

Her body molded into his, the chill of the cold, fighting a battle through tired hearts.

"And in a shining sheath enrolled."

Her eyes like pools of dreams upon him, for he had never seen such beauty in all his life

"Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,"

For she had brought beauty into his life of which he had never known

"Seems clad miraculously with glass"

He wanted to touch every inch of her, he needed to. He had to know it wasn't a fantasy that he wouldn't wake up to frostbiting at his lips instead of hers.

"Above the ice-bound streamlet bends"

But he had lived through this dream before and her voice began to fade as his vision became hazy. Coldness crept up onto him as her lush skin not longed melted into his like wax. 

He stumbled out into the melting snow to hear, the stumbling of horses and a parasol being opened. Her lips found the man that was not him, her hands touched the man that was not him, and he understood that she did not return his love but merely broke it into pieces.

"Each frozen fern with crystal ends."

Days and days went on and winter faded into a lonely summer, a summer without the grand house, without the girl who refused to wear shoes, without the boy who was excellent at polo.

And without lavender clouds.

                                                                                     ~~~~~~~~

Anthony woke up panting, his body covered in a cold sweat. The dream that had haunted him since that morn that made him the man he was today. That put his soul into reality. It brought him into seamless darkness, and yet, he went on every day and pursued his facade.

The poem she spoke lingered in his ears as it was imprinted in his heart for evermore. 

'But here the forests clothed with light,'

Waking up from the dream put a toll on him, but not one he couldn't handle. He lived with reality being his savior and he needed reality to prove to him, things were no longer the way it once was. 

His reality for the night would be her, Grace.

'And in a shining sheath unrolled.'

His dressed feet padded along the halls, her scent lingered in the air, she was everywhere. Anthony walked past door after door the poem continuing to intrude his mind.