Choosing Eternity

by Bridget Essex

  But it seemed to be making me breathless now…

  I inclined my head so intently toward the window that Tommie chanced to glance out of it with me.

  Her jaw tightened.

  “Who is that? Out there, among the flowers?” I murmured to her.

  “‘Speak of the devil, and she doth appear,’” growled Tommie, lifting her chin.

  “What?”

  “That,” she pronounced in heavy tones, “is Kane Sullivan.”

  Kane.

  The woman in my sights moved easily along the stone walkway of the garden. She had her head bent, her hands clasped behind her, her sloping shoulders draped in a thick woolen cloak.

  Like Tommie, she did not wear the traditional garb of a woman of our age, and I had never seen anyone besides these two do such a thing. For Kane’s part, she wore high-waisted black trousers, a waistcoat—of some fabric I couldn’t quite make out in the dying light—over a white starched shirt.

  The cloak hid any curves she might possess, and her face was downturned, her eyes pointed to the ground, her jaw set as if she were in deep contemplation of something that vexed her. If she did not have that long blonde hair—so blonde it put me in mind of snow or jasmine flowers—unbound and cascading over her shoulders, I don’t suppose I would have taken her for a woman at all. Apart from a singular sense she gave me…

  I stood at the window, my hand pressed against the glass, my heart in my throat and my blood pounding through bone and vein. I knew not why. She was but a woman striding through her garden, head bent as she thought on something pressing. I could not even see her face. What about her was pulling me forward, tugging, as if she’d caught the hem of my dress and was drawing me to her like an anchor holds a ship?

  These things—anchor, ship—are connected. And in the first heartbeat of seeing Kane, I knew I was connected to her, too.

  Odd to say, truly. I had never felt a connection so quickly to anyone or anything. I was a pragmatic, practical woman, for all of my artistic inclinations. I had to have a good, strong head on my shoulders to make a living as a painter, and a woman besides. It wasn’t easy, but I was scrappy, and I succeeded, and I flourished. But I did so because I was cautious. Because I considered things…

  But you didn’t consider journeying to Northampton, a little voice chided me. You simply did it. Your heart called you to do so, and you answered.

  Was my heart calling me to this woman now?

  That was preposterous, wasn’t it? This was the age of reason. The pretty trappings of love that people wrote Valentines about—they were not for me.

  But I pressed my hand hard against the ancient pane of glass in the window as I watched Kane walk along the pathway. I pressed so hard, in fact, that I heard a great crack.

  And a spiderweb fracture appeared in the glass.

  I took my palm away from the origin of this crack and stared down in dismay at my hand.

  There was a thin gash across the skin of my palm, and—as I watched it—a blossom of blood rose in a line that mirrored the crack in the window.

  “Oh,” I sighed, opening my reticule, taking out the handkerchief and wrapping it about my palm. “I am sorry about the window,” I told Tommie, turning.

  But she was gone.

  That was…strange. I knew she’d been there but a moment ago, right before the crack in the window. I stared down, puzzled, at my palm, wrapped in the handkerchief, the blood already soaking through the thin cloth.

  Perhaps Tommie disliked the sight of blood.

  She had told me to exit the room once freshened, and that the dining hall would be down the hallway to my right. But I clicked open the little pocket watch that hung on the front of my dress and glanced at the time. Past sunset, of course, but just a little.

  I…thought it might do me good, a light stroll before dinner. It might clear my head.

  And the sooner I met Kane Sullivan, the better.

  After all, what was this nonsense, this tugging in my chest, just where my heart must reside? These were feelings I was not familiar with at all, and they made me feel frightfully uncomfortable.

  So I would meet them head on. If I met Kane in the garden, it would put an end to this odd sensation. And if I did not, the fresh air and flowers would be lovely.

  I made the decision in haste, and I exited the room, shutting the panel behind me. It did look like a door, I supposed, out in the hallway with the dim light. I hoped I’d be able to find it again as I set off down the hall, not in the direction of the dining room but back the way Tommie and I had come…

  Back toward the front entrance, the only way I knew to exit the Sullivan Inn.

  There was no one about, and no one at the front desk when I finally reached the entrance again. The gas lamps flickered in their sconces, and with such a low light, with such a blood-red color upon the floor…it made me feel uneasy as I rested my hand upon the front door. But I’d already made the decision to have a walk, and once I made my mind up about something…I simply saw it through.

  So I let myself out into the darkness of the June evening, shutting the big door behind me.

  It was warm enough outside, I supposed, but a chill had descended with the darkness that made me wish I’d brought my shawl with me. I set off at a brisk pace around the edge of the building, along the flagstone path. The pine trees that reached far above me toward the heavens whispered softly in the wind, a sibilant hiss that made me shiver a little, glancing upward.

  The first star of the evening was just now shining brightly above.

  I turned the corner of the Sullivan Inn, and then there were the gardens.

  Out here, in the evening air, the scent of the blossoms had already reached me, even before I set foot into the gardens themselves. The perfume of a countless number of flowers rose like prayers into the evening sky, and, oh, it was glorious. The season of roses had just begun, and there were new blossoms along a throng of thorny bushes that bordered the entrance to the garden. I leaned low, brushing my lips against one of the petaled beauties, and I inhaled its heady fragrance.

  There were many flowers, of course, that were already closed for the evening, but still, their rich perfume lingered in the evening air. As I began to walk the circular paths, I saw a trellis that stood alongside the wall of the inn itself. And there was a riot of moonflowers, their pale faces lifted toward the rising moon and the shoreline. It was from them that the strongest perfume emanated, and I couldn’t help but drift close and inhale as deeply as I could, wishing I could somehow retain that intoxicating scent inside of me.

  As I made the rounds of the gardens, even though the moonlight was just now revealing to me a beautiful space, even though the perfume of those lovely blooms seemed to twine about me, keeping company…

  No one but myself was in the gardens.

  I was alone.

  Kane…had gone.

  Perhaps that was just as well, I realized, as I followed one of the longer paths that bordered the cliff face. What would I say, after all, if I ran into her? “You have a lovely inn here,” and other such pleasantries. It was all meaningless. What I wanted, Kane could surely not provide. I was chasing a fleeting feeling in my heart, the winsome wish for true companionship that romantic poetry seemed to all but boast of.

  I wanted a love like that, a love that transcended all of the petty traits of my mortal self and was, in and of itself…extraordinary.

  These were my deepest longings, and I was startled at myself for having permitted such precious thoughts to reach the forefront of my mind here and now. I normally only brought them out in the pitch darkness of a moonless midnight. Then and only then might I while away a sleepless hour contemplating something I knew I would never possess.

  Because how could I? I lived in a time and place where the love I dreamed of was an impossibility…wasn’t it?

  Mine was a secret life that could beget no happiness.

  Even if I wanted it, wanted it with all my heart.

  I shoo
k my head, pushing away these melancholy thoughts.

  There was an inexplicable sadness that existed deep in my bones, because I craved and ached for something I could never possess: a love without limits.

  Frustrated at myself, I picked up my skirts and followed the path as it began to gradually slope down through the thickets, wending back and forth, back and forth. Lost in thought as I was, I hardly noticed how steep the pathway had become…

  Until the thickets and trees disappeared on either side of me.

  And I found my slippers standing on sand.

  I glanced ahead, startled. The thickets formed a sort of arbor through which I was now peering, out onto the shoreline of the ocean itself. Surf pounded against the sand, and to my right, the cliff face rose up and away from me, the very cliff face whose path I had just navigated. Now here I was, standing at the sea.

  I was poised to turn, to make my way back up the pathway once more and return to the inn…but I paused. The stiff salt breeze was chill, surely, but it was also invigorating. I’d grown up on the shoreline, and the sea called to me in an almost ancient cadence.

  It called to me that night, and I had to answer it.

  So answer it I did. I strode out from beneath the arbor’s thicket, out onto the beach, tilting my face up to the moonlight, to the salt wind that blew off the water. I inhaled, and deeply, and I let the breezes caress my skin, the salt kissing my lips so that I licked them, tasting the ocean’s brightness on my tongue.

  I walked slowly toward the shoreline, my skirts still hitched up about my calves so that I could step along the damp sand with ease. There were so many rocks gathered along the shore, a comforting coastline that reminded me of my childhood home. Soon my slippers were finding pathways among the rocks. The moonlight was bright enough that the tide pools shone with undiscovered treasures, and I crouched low to watch a little crab scuttle through the water in a shallow pool, his shell seemingly iridescent.

  As I crouched upon the rock, my skirt’s hem drifting into the salt water, the ocean’s scent rising around me like its own briny perfume, I lifted my chin to the sky and beheld the moon, a smiling crescent rising in the east.

  I felt as if I stood between heaven and earth. I felt as if I were out of time, out of place, and I remembered the stories my mother had told me, brought with her from Ireland, of the fairy folk, and how in these liminal moments they often stole mortals away with them to the fairy world.

  She’d always chastised me when I was small. “Don’t let the fairy queen get you,” she’d warn in her thick Irish brogue. “She’ll take you away to the land of the fairy!”

  Unfortunately, this caution often worked against her, for it never felt like much of a threat to me.

  I wanted to go away to the land of the fairy.

  I wanted the fairy queen to take me away.

  I wanted…

  I stood, chin still lifted to the moon, my arms wrapped around myself.

  It really was quite cold.

  And the rocks weren’t dry, of course. The waves were robust, and water had splashed continually onto the rocks as I found my footing, moving farther and farther way from the shore—farther and farther out to sea, picking a path through the water upon the stones that rose, not realizing how far away from shore I truly was.

  Inevitably, my foot slipped upon a rock, and I began to fall.

  It happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to be surprised. I was standing there one moment, wondering at the heavens, and then the next, by sheer accident or, perhaps, a brush with bad luck, I was poised to die with my head cracked against a rock, unconsciously tumbling into the water…drowning.

  Hardly the way I wished to end my days.

  The knowledge of my impending fate flashed through my mind in but a fraction of a heartbeat.

  And then…

  A hand caught my arm. I hung suspended over the abyss of the sea, my back to the emptiness, and in one smooth motion, I was pulled back.

  Saved.

  The hand was cold, and the body I brushed against as I was pulled out of the air felt icy, as if the person had stepped out of a wintry landscape. I looked up at the face of the woman who had saved me, and when I breathed out, I will never forget it: My breath hung suspended in the air between us like a ghost.

  She gazed down at me with a peculiar expression. Her bright blue eyes, a blue so potent and powerful that my breath fully left my body, opened me up like a key in a lock. Everything around us was painted in monochrome, done up in silvers and blacks and grays, beautiful as only a moonlit night can be beautiful.

  But the blue in her eyes… I saw it clearly.

  Clearer, perhaps, than I’d ever seen anything before.

  There were other things to notice, of course. She was taller than me by about a head, and I had to lean back to gaze up into those captivating eyes. Her jaw was strong, her full mouth forming a frown that was sumptuous in its curve, a curve I craved to follow to its conclusion. Her long blonde hair—white in the light of the moon—flowed over her strong shoulders, down her back, over the black woolen cloak that lay about her like resting wings.

  This was the woman I’d seen out in the garden, prowling between the rows of roses, lost to thoughts I could not touch.

  This was Kane Sullivan.

  She knew her own strength, for her long fingers, curling over my wrist, gripped me with a gentleness that belied the power in her frame.

  As I stood upon the rock, surrounded by ocean, her strong but gentle hand against my skin, I thought of my mother’s story.

  I thought of my mother's warnings about the fairy queen.

  “Be good,” she’d told me so often, “or the fairy queen will come to take you away.”

  I stared up into Kane Sullivan’s bewitching gaze…

  And I wondered.

  She let go of my wrist just then, and I shivered as her cool fingers grazed the skin of my palm before her hand fell beneath her cloak. She regarded me with her piercing gaze for only one heartbeat more before she spoke.

  The pounding surf behind us, the rolling of the ocean waves…all of it faded away to nothingness as her words filled the space between us.

  “Pardon me,” she intoned, nodding her head to me. “Are you all right?”

  Her voice was smoky and low. It reminded me of velvet, of incense, of the spiral of milk in a good cup of tea.

  It reminded me of delicious things I’ve tasted, or wished—very much—that I could taste.

  I stared up at her, and somehow, I remembered my manners. I cleared my throat, inclined my head, gave a courteous smile.

  “Yes. Thank you. I think I might have fallen into the sea if you had not caught me. I’m all right. My slipper found a damp patch of rock, and I slipped. Thank you,” I said again, glancing up at her, “for saving me.” I proffered my hand between us, and I smiled. “I am Melody Westfall.”

  For a long moment, she did nothing. Her blue gaze caressed my face, or that’s what it felt like to me. There was a sharpness to her eyes, yes, but there was also an exquisite gentleness. I’d felt that gentleness in her hand as she had wrapped her fingers about my wrist, preventing me from descending into the dark waters.

  She reached out, and she took my fingers.

  Then she was turning my hand with a slowness that mesmerized me as I gazed down at it between us. She undid the mother-of-pearl button on the back of my gloves, and she tugged the material down, just a little, revealing the back of my hand.

  And she bent gracefully at the waist, her hair cascading over her shoulder like a waterfall of starlight.

  And her lips brushed against my hand in a cool, chaste kiss.

  My heart rose into my throat as I felt her lips against my skin, the chill of them an intoxicatingly unfamiliar caress. No mouth that had ever found itself upon my body had ever been cool to the touch. I was used to the heat of lips and tongue. I was not used to this cold.

  But, I decided, it was something I could very much get used to.r />
  My heart beat loud enough and fast enough for three of me as I stared, spellbound, at the beautiful woman’s mouth against my hand. She straightened quickly—the kiss lasted but a heartbeat, or perhaps half of one. I would be foolish to translate this gesture as an overture of affection.

  However, men kissed women’s hands.

  And now a woman had kissed mine...

  She lifted her chin, then nodded to me, offering a formal half-bow. “I am Kane Sullivan. Welcome to my inn, Miss Westfall. I trust your journey was uneventful?”

  “Well, I am here,” I said with a tight smile. No reason to tell her of the coachman’s reticence to drive me up the hill. No reason to tell her of the blacksmith’s disparaging condemnation of the place.

  “And I am glad you are,” said Kane.

  I glanced up at her in surprise.

  Her eyes were narrowed as she gazed down at me. She turned and, with a half-smile, she offered her arm to me, like any gentleman would.

  And, like any lady, I took it, wrapping my arm around hers.

  I felt the pulse in my hand from the cut across my palm, the gash from the window, which was still broken far above us in the Sullivan Inn. I winced a little as I loosened my grip on her arm, and Kane stiffened beside me.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, and when she gazed down at me…

  It was strange, but—in that moment—it seemed as if her eyes had darkened, just a little.

  I shrugged, glanced down at my palm in its glove, the glove a little bulky from the handkerchief within it. “I cut myself on some glass,” I said, offering a faint smile. “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re bleeding?” asked Kane gently.

  She could not see the cut, could not even see my skin within the glove. She could not have known there was a handkerchief staunching the flow.

  I shrugged again, a little uncomfortably. “It’s nothing,” I repeated, and we began to make our way across the rocks, back toward shore.

  Kane did not speak, and though the silence was unusual to me, I did not break it as we sought our footing. Her body was chill against mine, but it was not just her coolness that I was aware of. I was aware of the way her boots clicked smartly upon the stones, of the soft hush of her cloak as it moved around her shoulders. Was it just my imagination, or did her hair sound like a satin dress sliding over a thigh as she turned to gaze down at me?