Star's Crossing

60: This Life, or the Next

At once the music fell away. 

Perhaps it was absent only in Mare's mind, because as it vanished so too did the company. Her sisters, her parents, her friends, her enemies; steady as the sun at set the world faded, and all that remained was Mare, and Theodore Bridge, and the thousand words they'd swallowed and left to silence.

He froze when he saw her. It was the red, wasn't it? Mare had declared herself with the gown. She could not be unseen or hidden. She was a column of fire, and Teddy knew the language of her heat.

She took a step forward as he did the same. A perceptive musician began a deep, mournful tune on a single violin. The company, encouraged, followed his lead. As Mare reached Teddy, the song began in earnest. Wordless, she lifted her satin-gloved hand, and in answer, he placed his palm against hers.

Let lips do what hands do. Did he hear Shakespeare in his mind, read soft by candlelight? Did he think of their kiss, fated and fine beneath the bur oak in the woods? Did he remember the way he'd pulled free of her, and turned his back?

Mare and Teddy danced, alone on the floor. Alone in the world. Together.

"I was surprised," he said at last, so gently she had to turn her head, his breath against her hair, "to hear from you."

Mare turned in time to the song. They had danced this way an eternity ago, when the world spun on entirely a different axis. Then Mare had sought the love of her life; now she knew him. She had kissed him.

But she had never possessed him, and he had not possessed her. It seemed, after everything that had transpired between them, neither ever could.

"Mare." His fingertips traced hers as she pulled from him. These were the steps of the dance, yet they felt cruel; she turned her back on him, and remembered the cold knife of his voice, the defeat in him, when he told her they could never be. "I have missed you so."

She looked back to him. Beneath his silk mask were those same deep brown eyes; God, how she loved them. It was an ache in her belly, in her bones. Her love for him was cancerous, and it had made its home in her marrow. If she did not escape, it would consume her. Body. Soul. Words.

She said nothing as she returned to Teddy's arms. His hand on her waist was pure danger; a loaded pistol, a leveled blade. She wanted him with such fury it blinded her for a moment, and she forgot that they were not already bound by marriage, by passion, by love made in candlelit rooms and recited in ink, page after endless page, to the breathless and blushing.

You love him, don't you?

"Talk to me," he whispered, his hand on the small of her back as they danced. His cheek was pressed to hers. His lips moved against her ear and every inch of Mare's skin ignited. "Please. You owe me nothing, my friend. But your forgiveness, if it can be given, I beg of it. Mare."

"You have it." She spoke to his chest. She was so close she could feel his heart beating, and the heat of him. "I had forgiven you from the start." Yes, she had. It'd taken ages to acknowledge this: that there was little in the world Theodore Bridge could say or do that would estrange him from her grace.

Was such a love not dangerous, corrupt?

Teddy danced. He held her. The ball room remained gloriously empty, music summoned from some distant ether. After they'd spun and spun again, he said, gently, "It is not enough, is it?"

Mare slowed but continued to move. "No."

"I betrayed you."

"Teddy."

He stopped. The room slammed mercilessly back into focus: they stood in the center of the dance floor, the revelers around them halted though the music strained solemnly onward. All eyes, masked, were upon them.