Title: Shadows of Light

Fandom: Tess of D'Urbervilles

Characters/Pairing: Angel Clare, Mrs. Angel Clare; Angel/Tess

Rating: PG (slight sexual references)

Summary: It gets harder and harder for her to remember she loved her sister.

Dedication: To the Percy; who alone understands my deep hate of the tragic ending of Tess of D'Urbervilles. Alas, this piece isn't very happy either. My deepest apologies.

Warnings: Spoilers for the book

Author's Notes: I have a love-hate relationship with this novel. On the one hand, I applaud Thomas Hardy for daring to address how female sexuality was feared in a patriarch society, and for creating such a heart-warming female character, who even after becoming a murderess, still acts from motives of love. On the other hand, I hate the fact that Tess doesn't get her happy ending with Angel after all of the suffering she has undergone by the hands of both Angel and Alec D'Urberville.

Mrs. Angel Clare had yet to celebrate her wedding night. The night when every young bride drew back the crisp, laundered sheets on her marriage bed, slipped her cold feet under the covers, drew the sheets up to her neck to protect her modesty, and waited for her groom to climb in on the other side, turn his back on her and blow out the tiny flickering flame that danced on the candle's wick. By morning, the bride would be transformed into a wife, a woman forever separated from the girl of childhood. Mrs. Angel Clare was still a bride. She'd been one for two weeks.

His skin yellow and his eyes too bright, Angel had yet to cross the threshold of their bedchamber, preferring the outdoors to any contact with her. Once, she had entered the breakfast room to dine with him. As soon as she had poured herself a cup of tea and opened her mouth to greet him with a salutation, her husband stood from his chair, and without a word to her left the room. This happened more often then Mrs. Angel Clare cared to admit.

She would watch him from the window as he strolled through the yard, his legs striding without purpose and his hand stretched out searching for the corresponding hand to take it. She had only taken his hand a few times: when he proposed; when he stood outside the gaol and listened to the drums announce her sister's death; and when the priest joined them in marriage. Angel did not smile that day. He didn't smile any day. He had no interest in it. She sometimes imagined how his lips must have pulled back in a grin before he touched them to Tess' on their wedding day. Tess would have fought to keep her smile in, hardly daring to believe that she could be so lucky after Sorrow, but in the end she would have failed to properly hide her happiness of being Angel's wife.

She didn't really remember Tess before Sorrow's birth. She recalled that Tess seemed lighter before then. There had been shadows in her eyes when she'd returned from the D'Urberville residence, her cheeks sticky with the tears she would cry no more and her belly full of Sorrow. She dimly recalls Tess as she screamed at their mother demanding to know why she was never warned of the dangers of men.

"There'll be no marriage for me," Tess foretold as she held Sorrow for the first time after hours of pained whimpers escaped from clamped lips.

She told Angel about Sorrow on the morning three weeks after Tess' death and two weeks after their marriage. She didn't know why she did it or what she wanted him to say. She'd loved her sister once, but she hated her ghost. Angel stared at her as she talked, rubbing his tongue over chapped lips. He leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped in front of him, his eyes staring at her, searching for any sign of Tess. When he couldn't find his first wife in his second, he looked beyond her to where he could and watched as Tess dipped her pinky finger in the water from the night pitcher and drew a cross on her unwanted babe's wrinkled forehead as death drew ever nearer.

He thanked her for telling him Tess' dark secret and left the house. He disappeared for three days, and returned at dusk on the third. Rain splattered against the roof tiles and against his thin coat as he entered the hallway of their cottage, mud slipping off his shoes to smudge her floor. She stopped just in front of him, unsure if he would receive her embrace, and he smiled at her. Her heart slowed.

"He wasn't mine, but I thought Tess wouldn't mind if I put flowers on his grave anyway." He fell silent, rain dripping off his hair and coat tails, and he stared at her.

Mrs. Angel Clare swallowed. She inched forward and touched his coat with the nail of her pointer finger. She drew back and Angel continued to wait for affirmation that he'd done Tess proud. She'd once loved Tess, but it was getting harder and harder to do so.

"She'd 'ave kissed you for it."

Angel beamed and she was sure her heart stopped this time. He walked past her, wet coat dripping, and moved into the drawing room and stretched his hands out to the fire. The tips of his fingers were blue. She hung back and watched him as he rocked back on his heels, so pleased that he had done something to honour the dead wife he had abandoned for the lies she refused to tell him. His eyes danced in their shadows.

It was rare that she heard from Angel's relatives. He point-blank refused to allow them into his house, citing that they had allowed and encouraged him to make the biggest mistake of his life and they should not have the chance to do so now. Perhaps if she had persuaded him to allow them to visit she would have noticed sooner how skeletal he was growing day by day. With the aid of his mother and father, she would no doubt have been able to carry enough authority that she could have stopped him from hurrying along his own death. But she was only a bride and not a wife and she carried no authority, only the shadow of her sister's image.

She did bring it up once, but Angel stopped her words at once and even raised his voice as he ordered her to end all of her enquires into his actions. He apologized later for his harshness, but that didn't stop him from refusing to eat, and going to bed in wet clothes.

Death was not coming fast enough for Angel Clare.

But it was coming. He started talking to her sister and holding whole conversations with the dead woman. She was in the room when he attempted to rewrite their wedding night.

"Darling Tess, I have a confession to make before we go in." He rubbed his hands together as if to force warmth into them. "Before this, before I decided to learn the ways of farming, I was in London. There was a woman there, Tess. I cannot look at you, I'm so ashamed of it, but I was with her."

He paused, turned his head and looked at a spot on the carpet, his eyes half-hidden under his long lashes. After a considerable pause, in which something like horror entered his face, he broke into a smile and reached out to cup his darling ghost's cheeks.

"Thank you," he said to the shadows, "for telling me the truth."

His second wife stood behind him, bit her lip, and folded her skirts in her fists.

"It's alright, Tessy, darling Tess. Don't cry; no one can hurt you now or ever again. I won't let them, Tessy. I swear." He drew a shuddering breath. "I love you. No, no that hasn't changed. It won't ever change. It won't, Tess Clare. I love you."

The second Mrs. Angel Clare called for the doctor after that incident. He told her she'd left it till too late.

Angel was put in his deathbed, where he proceeded to wait for his coming death. His mother, father and brothers crept out of the neighbouring villages to see him. His mother left in tears after he spent the entire interview thinking that he was talking to Tess. Mrs. Angel Clare the Second swallowed her tongue as her mother-in-law recounted how Angel had discussed his plans to take Tess to Spain where the warmer climate would surely agree with them both and be an ideal place to rear children. She'd had to leave him when he'd started discussing potential names for girls.

***

"I'm scared."

The Second Mrs. Angel Clare turned from the bureau on which she had placed a fresh pitcher of water and stared down at her husband in name only. "What's that?"

Angel's fevered eyes stared back at her. "What if I can't find her? She begged me to promise that I would, but I couldn't. There's a special ring of hell just for her." He drew Tess' name in the air with a pointer finger. "So many rings, you know, and horrible people in every one."

"You're not going there. Stop it."

He peered at her under his eyelashes. "Where else would I go?" He turned his head away from her to feast his eyes on the warm summer garden flourishing outside his window. "Do you think she'll mind having to wait just a bit longer before I can find her? Oh." His hand fell to the mattress, palm up. "There you are, darling Tess. Oh Tessy, is that the dress you wore that day? I remember the ribbon."

"Stop it!" She grabbed the pitcher and threw its icy contents on the invalid. He gasped and reached out.

"Is that your Sorrow? He's a fine boy. He has your eyes." His fingers curled over phantom fingers. "You're still wearing your ring. Did you ever take it off? That's very kind of you, but you always were kind, Tessy, always." He beamed at his ghost. "I knew you couldn't go anywhere bad, not you, it was a mistake, you could never hurt anyone. I could only ever hurt you. Oh Tess." His body released one final deep sigh, and he fell. "I love you."

The widow exited.