Lips That Lied || hs

Fourteen

Calais, France
Autumn 1832

It had been four months since Thomas had last seen Victoria, but despite the lengthy passage of time, there had not yet been a single day during which his thoughts were not fixed on her. Images of Victoria consumed his mind, her striking smile teasing him relentlessly to remind him of the mistake he had made in letting her go. He had done it for her, but no amount of justification could ease his guilty conscience from the fact that he had lied to her when she had so trustingly left him. Victoria had returned home in June with the belief that Thomas would join her in Newcastle, and that their wedding would soon follow. He had known then that such an event would be impossible, and he knew now even more so that it still was.

Despite the fact that Victoria occupied his every thought, Thomas sought to employ his mind elsewhere. He had rejoined his father in Calais after completing his schooling to become a lawyer, and now he was working on reading and negotiating contracts for his father's trading company. The work was tedious and time-consuming, and there were many days when he would never return home. He would fall asleep at his desk, only to wake up with her on his mind. Thomas was frustrated with himself for his weakness that would not allow him to move on, but he found that he couldn't help it and had no choice but to live with it.

That was the recurring pattern of Thomas's life. He would work until he couldn't keep his eyes open, then he would dream of Victoria and her stubborn confidence. It seemed that even in his dreams, Victoria's stubbornness was what kept her there. It was ironic, really; the very thing he had loved about her proved to be the source of his misery. Thomas didn't really believe that, though. He knew deep down that his pain was his own doing, and he had no one to blame but himself.

Within the first few weeks while he was still in Paris, the crying had stopped, and Thomas had prided himself on that. He thought that if he could learn to master his emotions that he should be able to forget her, but this soon proved to be a false surmise as soon as that first letter arrived from England. She had written to him in the most innocent of fashions, narrating the nature of her journey to Newcastle as well as the longing she felt about seeing him soon. She wrote to Thomas lovingly and she used the prettiest language to describe the love she held for him. Her words were like poems to him, filled with deep meanings that only he could understand, and he loved them. As each night passed, he found himself reading and rereading Victoria's letter before he went to sleep. Her words gave him solace in the fact that she was so far from him, but at the same time, they had allowed him to hope for some further encounter with her despite the fact that he knew it to be an impossibility. Thomas wrote a reply, but he did not send it.

Several weeks passed before the second letter came to Thomas, this time in Calais. Victoria had repeated the general expression of love that she had declared to him in the first letter, though there was a slightly different tone about this one. She wrote with a sense of urgency and almost a touch of fear. There was a lack of confidence in her words now, and though it was only a letter, Thomas could feel her disappointment through the dried ink. This letter he decided to hide from himself, for he could not face the fact that Victoria was coming to realize how he had lied to her. He didn't want to think of the pain she was surely beginning to feel, but despite his efforts, he found his mind to be consistently fixated on her. Thinking it may give him some peace of mind, Thomas wrote a reply to this letter as well, but just like the last one, he did not send it.

Again, the weeks passed by, and each day plunged Thomas into a deeper realm of tortuous misery. He couldn't focus on his work and eventually came to despise it. Each contract and every trade deal frustrated him more than he could express. There were even some days when he could scarcely make it through more than four pages of work without calling it quits and going home. It was on one of these days when Thomas had returned to his father's house just as the mail had arrived. Thomas was used to receiving letters everyday, but he nonetheless thumbed through them, subconsciously hoping that one of them should be from her. He knew he didn't deserve a letter from her, but he still couldn't help but long to hear from her.