A Winter's Tale

Chapter 18:

Chapter 18:
EMERY'S POV:
The Count....Kane and I were beginning to spend more and more time together over the last few weeks or so. We dined together almost every night, and when he couldn't make it, he'd send William with books, and his sincerest apologies. I looked forward to our midday walks in the frozen garden. We sat in the kitchen for lunch, or discussed books in the library when it was too cold to go outside. He was my friend. I knew more about him as a child, but he always carefully avoided anything that happened during or after his parents' deaths. So, at some point when he wasn't exactly a young boy, yet not a man either, his entire life changed.

I was content with knowing the young him though. He'd been a mischievous, adventurous boy, eager to please, and prove that he could be a brave leader. We would find ourselves laughing by a fire at the stories we would share late in the night when he couldn't sleep. Yes, laughing. I'd finally cracked him enough to get a smile out of him. It was uneven, and his laugh was deep and guttural from being out of use.

Miriam, William, Alice, and Geoffrey loved it, always passing little comments about how they knew I would be the one to change him, or how the wedding wouldn't be too far off now. Alice tried to get me to tell her details, always asking little things about our relationship. It was a strange one. I didn't know him at all really, not about what kept him away during the day and night, or why he would always need a few moments to blink, and gather himself when he came to see me right after leaving the library. I didn't know why his plates came back to Miriam with less and less food on them. I noticed it too. Yes, we dined together, but only I ever really ate. He would take a few bites, then push it away to focus his attention elsewhere.

            He knew more about me than I knew about him, but I was okay with that too. I liked this side of the Count, this open, side. This side that made him a man again, not a tragedy. Some days, the pain was more evident in his eyes. Those were the bad days when he was hurting from never healed wounds. We didn't see each other much those days, and I found myself wanting to hug him, wanting to make him happy again. I realized it one day. It was the middle of the night, and we were sitting by the fire in the kitchen, me wrapped in a cloak and quilts, him in just his cloak. He was talking, telling me a story about one of his many adventures as a boy. The firelight hit him just right, hiding part of his face in the shadows. It left the scarred half visible to me, and between them, was his eye, animated and alight with the story he was telling. That's when I knew, sitting there looking at him.

        I was falling in love with him. With the way he talked, and ate, and his mystifying past, and the secrets he kept. I was falling in love with his scars, physical and emotional, and the way his hands moved around when he talked, and the way he looked at William like he was the only friend he'd ever had, and the way little things never bothered him. I was falling love with the dark side of him too, the side that didn't talk as much, the side with pain in its eyes, and hate in its heart. The side that would turn cold, dark eyes unto a fire and relive a past memory, all the while looking just as ethereal as it did when those dark eyes turned alight with the flame of anger.

He would walk me to my chambers at night, and be there in the morning to walk with me to breakfast. We only ever ate dinner together, so some days, he would be gone all day. The more time we spent together, I noticed the dark circles under his eyes get even darker, and he was getting thinner, his skin paler. I worried he was going to get sick because he never wore appropriate clothes for winter. When he was inside, most times he wouldn't even wear a cloak. I often wore my heaviest cloak, and had a quilt in every room to sit on, or to wrap around myself. The cold and stone went perfectly well together making the inside barely warmer than outside.

        It'd started to snow again, in fact, it was snowing now, which was why the Count and I were having lunch on the floor in the kitchen, in front of the fire. I was eating bread, dipping it into my warm, heavy broth, and the Count would nibble on his bread, his broth long forgotten. We'd fallen quiet, as we often did when we were together, just thinking about what we'd said, and what we would say next. During most of these silences, we would watch each other. It was a game we played. When he wasn't looking, I would watch him, and when I wasn't looking, he would watch me.