“But don’t you ever get hungry?” she repeated. “For more than you allow yourself?”
He put down his fork delicately, then looked up at her. “Alice, I’m always hungry for more than I allow myself.”
She flushed.
He realized she thought he was referencing what happened in the church.
(He was.)
She stared at him, as if coming to some resolve. “Then just for tonight, we must order you something delicious.”
She flagged the serving girl and asked for something sweet. He protested, but when an apple tart studded with currants and dusted with cinnamon arrived, she added extra cream and dug a fork into the center, taking the best part.
He liked the girlish way she licked cream off her fork, closing her eyes in delectation.
She caught him smiling. “I thought you disapproved of rich foods.”
“I do. For myself. But you deserve them.”
“And why is it that I deserve them but you do not?”
“Because I am a sensualist by nature, which goes against my principles. Even a small bit of indulgence and I find myself unchecked and sinning profligately. And so I must impose great discipline to live up to my ideals.”
This time, he was certain he was talking about what happened in the church.
Her face made clear that she knew it too.
“Alice, I’m so sorry.”
She stared at him, a tiny sliver of her tongue resting on a tine of her fork.
“Forgive me, for how I acted,” he continued babbling. “I wanted you, and it was rash, and I hope I didn’t—”
She looked into his eyes. “The only thing that I regret, Henry, is that we had to stop.”
She speared the fork into the dessert again and prepared a perfect bite, with fragrant tender apples, succulent currants, swirls of caramel sauce, and a dollop of cream so sweet he could smell its freshness across the table. She held it out to him.
“Take a bite,” she ordered.
“Alice…”
“I promise I won’t let you have more than you can bear.”
Something came over him, and instead of taking the utensil, he leaned in, opened his mouth, and ate from her outstretched fork.
He closed his eyes in ecstasy.
It had been so long since he’d consumed food of this richness—sugar and spice, warmth and fat, a hint of salt—all the things that made life delicious.
When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, looking as hungry as he felt.
“Apple tart was always my favorite,” he confessed.
“Have a little more,” she whispered.
He wanted her to feed him, but he noticed an odd look from the innkeeper across the room and came to his senses. Instead, he took the fork from her, and fed himself just one more bite.
It was decadent, satisfying. It made him happy.
She smiled at him, pulled the dessert back across the table, and ate the last two bites.
“See,” she said. “You’re not in hell. Just a man who ate a bit of tart.”
He suspected they were no longer talking about tarts. “Are you evangelizing, Alice?”
“I just think you would do well, Henry, to accept that you cannot be sustained by prayer and deprivation. Everyone needs pleasure and joy. I know you get great fulfillment from your faith, but I wish you would not be so strict with yourself about all the lovely parts to life. Did God not create our bodies and our hearts for us to use them?”
“I wish it were that simple.”
She looked at him so sadly that he had to look away.
“I’m sure nothing is simple,” she said softly, “but I do believe you can be a good man without denying yourself everything. You are one, in fact.”
“Stop,” he whispered.
“Oh, Henry, I’m only saying—”
“Stop,” he repeated, louder.
He could not stand to listen to this because his self-denial was a part of who he was.
And until now, he could live with it.
There was only one thing he would regret denying himself, and she was sitting across the table. And he could not look at her any longer without saying something maudlin.
(Or worse: permanent.)
He rose abruptly to remove the temptation, and his knees hit the top of the table painfully. He hissed, and watched a pitcher of cream overturn. A rivulet dripped onto the floor, a waste of sweetness.
Alice stared up at him like she knew exactly why he was leaving, and like she had expected him to do just that, and like it caused her pain.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going out for air. I’ll collect a blanket from the innkeeper when I come back and try not to wake you. I might be late.”
Chapter 28
He cared for her.
She knew it from the way he ate that tart. From the way he had looked up at her, quick and unguarded, and said I’m always hungry for more than I allow myself.
She cared for him too.
She’d known it when he’d touched her in the church, so full of desire, and yet more gently than any man ever had before. She’d known it when his face had broken open when she’d told him he was good.
They cared for one another, and they wanted one another, and it would not change a thing.
He would never act upon it. She was just another sinful thing that he’d deny himself.
And it was a shame, for were it not for the central difference that stood unshakably between their ways of thinking, she could do far more than care for a man like Henry Evesham. She could love a man like that. A man who was so much more generous when it came to her than he was to himself. A man who tried so hard to be disciplined, despite wanting so badly the things he had forbidden himself.
But it didn’t matter whether she cared for, or loved, or wanted him because that single central difference between the way they saw the world may as well have been a continent. A mountain range. An ocean.
She had once asked Henry not to preach to her, and she would extend him the same courtesy. She would not try to convince him that his way of life—his deepest beliefs—were wrong.
She would not ask him to give them up for her.
The kindest thing, to him and to her, was not to give him any further hint of how she felt. To not let him see how he’d somehow nestled in her heart. To not tell him how deeply she desired him. For she was at a juncture in her life where she could not afford to be a sentimental creature. She must be a practical one. She must not focus on the heartache, but the lesson:
Henry Evesham was an educated man, from a wealthy family, with a great deal of responsibility and power. He could choose to have more than he would claim.
Having spent her life unable to claim anything by a simple act of will, to have such opportunity and not use it seemed a tragic waste.
She would not make the same choice.
Watching him eat a single bite of tart like a starving man—watching him look at her with hungry eyes as she offered him herself, and choose to run away instead of take it—she knew she must save herself from the same fate.
She would leave no uneaten scraps of tart upon the table.
She would return to London and take whatever risks she needed to build a life she would look back upon without regret.
She would not ask Henry Evesham to choose her. She would choose herself.
The freedom of this choice made her feel so weightless that she closed her eyes and laughed aloud in the silent, tiny room. She spun around and collapsed onto the bed, languid and light, imagining all the wonderful things that were ahead of her. She could work on Charlotte Street, write music, read books, take lovers.