Rafe pressed a palm to the glass.
If he were a different man, he would walk with her in the sunlight.
And then he remembered that everything had changed, and if everything had changed, then he could change too. If he chose.
He could choose to keep living in fear of watching someone he loved suffer. Or he could choose to be that different man.
He wheeled away from the window and ran.
Chapter 21
First, Rafe found a straw bonnet and a yellow shawl, flung across a wooden bench. He set his neckcloth down beside them and walked on.
Next, he found a pair of women’s shoes and stockings. Rafe peeled off his damp stockings and laid them down. Barefoot, he walked on.
Then, he found Thea.
She was drifting through the gardens, singing to herself, fingers brushing over the flowers and leaves. Her hair was pinned up but for a few tendrils and one persistently errant lock, and her feet were white against the green grass, beneath her yellow hem. It felt like a lifetime since he had touched her; it was a wonder he had stayed away.
She spared no thoughts for him, he supposed, lost as she was in the simple pleasure of watching butterflies in a flower garden on a warm summer’s day. This was her strength. It was not the kind of strength the world valued, but its power stole his breath. This was what made her a survivor: her gift for transforming the ordinary world into a wondrous, captivating place. Despite everything, no one had taken that from her. If Rafe had his way, no one ever would.
An entrancing sense of lightness swept through him, rushing through his blood as if he had swallowed a drug, but no medicine’s effect was this marvelous. Every fiber in his body itched to dance. Every detail, every color, was rendered clear and crisp. The light was brighter, the bees buzzed louder, the honeysuckle smelled sweeter than ever before.
Thea gave no sign that she had seen him, but the set of her shoulders made him suspect she had. Without looking at him, she skipped behind a hedge.
Motionless, Rafe waited. Her hair appeared over the top of hedge. Then her forehead. Then her smiling blue eyes. As soon as their eyes met, she ducked.
Chuckling, he went after her. Again she skipped away, until she paused to study an orange daylily, her face half turned toward him. Her dimple told him she was fighting a smile.
He edged closer. “You have left a trail of clothing in the garden.”
She laughed. “It’s terrible of me, I know. No decorum at all, and the sun must be doing perfectly horrid things to my complexion. But it feels so good, doesn’t it? The sun on one’s skin, the air so fresh and clean, and so much sky and nature! I shall have none of this in London.”
The breeze crawled over him. He gripped one wrist in the other hand so hard it hurt.
“London,” he repeated.
“I must leave tomorrow, if I am to distribute my pamphlets before the Prince Regent’s costume party. So never fear, I shall no longer be such a trial for you, my lord.”
“You are no trial.”
“No, since you never see me. I suppose, in your mind, I am already gone.”
“You are never gone from my mind.”
Her shoulders flinched, and the flower under her hand quivered. Slowly, she turned to face him. He read the questions in her eyes, in those expressive blue eyes that he hoped to read every day.
“Never,” he repeated.
A satisfied smile spread over her face. “Never?”
“You give me no peace at all.”
“Good. You deserve to be tormented mercilessly.” Abruptly, her smile shifted to distress. “No, no, I don’t mean that,” she added in a rush. “You don’t deserve it. You’ve already suffered in ways you did not deserve… I’m so sorry. I say these things and—”
“Hush, Thea. I know what you meant.”
“Are you… Um.” She nibbled at her lip and tried again. “The bishop said you needed time alone, and I understand that is your nature, to need time alone, but I did worry about you. Are you…all right?”
“Very much so,” he answered and realized it was the truth. “I always thought one could not rewrite the past, but it seems the past is not set in stone. We learn new things about our history, and view it from a fresh perspective, and when we see things we hadn’t known were there, everything changes. That’s what you want too, isn’t it? To make your parents look at what happened anew?”
Her hands were restless. “Is it possible, then?”
“If I could truly change the past, I would make it so no one had ever hurt you. If I could, I would change the whole world, so it could never hurt you again.”
“I wish I could do the same for you,” she said.
Ah, but she could.
He could not touch her, not yet, not when she needed to make the choice. Instead, he rested his fingers on the lily between them, and waited for her to touch him.
In the end, it was not Thea who touched him, but a butterfly. Its wings, pale blue like the English sky, rested open as it landed on the back of his hand. Thea dropped her eyes to it and sidled closer. His senses were so heightened by her closeness that he was sure he felt the butterfly’s tiny feet dancing on his thick skin.
“It’s good luck to have a butterfly land on you,” she whispered. “If you make a wish, the butterfly will fly away and use its magic to make your wish come true.”
“I’ve never heard that before.” His voice sounded hoarse.
“Of course not. I made it up just now.”
“Well, if you made it up, then it must be true.”
Her lips curved playfully and her eyes dipped to linger on his mouth; he was smiling too, broadly, helplessly, undignified dimple on display.
“Will you make a wish?” she prompted.
Rafe made a wish. A wish so bold and true that the butterfly immediately took flight. He followed it with his eyes, the pale-blue butterfly fluttering off in search of his wish. Silly butterfly was going in the wrong direction. His wish stood right in front of him, saying, “Look, it left footprints.”
“Hmm?”
Thea brushed her fingers over the back of his hand, and that left prints. Sensation rippled over his skin like the breeze on the lake, until every inch of him shimmered with the feel of her.
He caught her hand in his. “I’ll tell you my wish.”
“Wishes must stay secret.”
“But I must tell you the wish or it cannot come true. What do the butterflies say about that?”
Another butterfly, or perhaps it was the same one, flitted past. She followed its dance with her eyes and then looked back at him.
“Butterfly says Very Well.”
“My wish…”
His real wish was too important to be left to a butterfly. It fluttered inside him, tender and hushed, its delicate wings stirring up a storm in his heart. He would ask her later; it was a serious question, and not one for butterfly games.
So instead he spoke a subordinate wish. “I wish to kiss you again.”
“That is your wish?”
He wasn’t sure if she sounded pleased or disappointed. Perhaps he should speak his real wish, and speak it he must, because otherwise, she would leave for London the next day. But it was because she meant to leave, because she had never intended to stay, that even with the magic of a million butterflies, Rafe could not quite muster the courage to say the words. Because her answer would change everything, and if the answer was not the one he longed to hear, they would never speak again, and everything would be lost.