The Broken Ones

CHAPTER 3

GWEN

There is a single white streak high above the temple in his dark, almost black hair, but the blue eyes that look at me are as I remember: piercing and unchanged.

He is paler than I remember, with shadows under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks. But he is as handsome as ever, with a bone structure more Renaissance than Greek: a long, aquiline nose, the steady line of that mouth, and deep eyesockets under the straight black bars of eyebrows.

Stephen murmurs I take it you two know each other, or something like that, and then steers his wife away.

A waiter appears at my elbow with a tray.

"Wine for you, ma'am?"

I take a glass. The waiter disappears into the crowd.

There is a burst of laughter from one corner, but it seems distant; detached. The world falls away. There is only us. Lucian and I. I and Lucian. Lucian's dark gaze on me. And mine on his.

Just like that night ---

--- that night we saw each other for the first time ---

--- that night our eyes met across the white linen-clothed table ---

--- that night we exchanged a long, startled look ---

--- that night it happened ---

Love at first sight. Yes, that happened. That trite, overused phrase, and yet what had actually happened had been more like recognition, the unspoken Oh, there you are. I've been waiting for you all my life.

He told me later he had felt exactly the same way.

We fell in love between the beef wellington and the Christmas pudding. Though I was then barely conscious of Lucian's handsomeness, except that he was tall and dark, and must be in his mid or late twenties. I saw only the intense blue eyes under heavy black brows, the beautiful smile directed only at me.

In the present:

"Your health and fortune," Lucian says quietly. He raises his glass to mine and drains it. I grip the stem of my champagne glass until my fingernails ache; until I feel like my fingers might break. I wonder if it is only me who has stopped breathing. But then I see the little telltale pulse beating in his right cheek, and I know that the encounter is as startling to him as it is to me.

"I did not know," he says, "that you would be here tonight. You must believe that."

The hand that holds the glass trembles very slightly, and his voice is hard, queerly abrupt.

"I work here, at the gallery," I answer, my voice perhaps as oddly flat as his. "Norwich is my home now. I moved here after --- " my voice dies off.

He inhales sharply.

"I need some air." He looks around, tugging his collar as if he is suffocating. Without a word, I set my glass on the side table, and he does the same. Wordlessly, I step through the side door that leads to the small garden outside, and I feel his presence following behind me.

I look silently at the roses in full bloom. I should say something --- inane, careless remarks, like: How beautiful the roses look. It's draughty, isn't it? Rather chilly for a May evening, don't you think? They say Spring is getting shorter. It wasn't this chilly this time of year last year. These are phrases I have never yet used in my life, even to a stranger, but they seem, at this moment, to be what are needed for the occasion. They rise to my tongue, and tremble on my lips, but I can't frame them, because my throat is strangled with tears.