"Lucy," Simon says to his fiancée shortly before their wedding, "do you still have that false-bottomed box I gave you all those months ago?"
He looks up from his paper, eager for a particular response. He wasn't even reading the thing anyway, as he has little care for current events or society proceedings that he is not invited to. He sees Lucy blushing from behind her book, looking up at him from beneath lowered lids. Simon can't help but wonder if Lucy wasn't reading too.
"Why, yes," Lucy says, placing her book down in her lap. She closes it without even marking her spot and Simon can't help but smirk at this. Lucy's cheeks are a shade or two lighter by now. "Why do you ask?"
Simon doesn't quite feel like responding but brings himself to anyway. "I was just wondering," he says, folding his paper carelessly and throwing it just as carelessly to the side, "what exactly do you keep in it?"
He longs for a certain answer. Simon's eyes sweep over Lucy's features, hoping to find just a wink of mischief among them. But there is no unusual twinkle in her eyes, no smirk on her aristocratic face. All my secrets, of course. That is the response that Simon longs for.
"Oh!" Lucy exclaims as if her intended has just asked her something very shocking and not just what is inside a simple box. She is always doing that—looking achingly beautiful and uncommonly surprised. It's growing rather dull, or at least it is to Simon. Perhaps Lucy is growing rather dull in general. And then, the response. "My hairpins and some special jewelry, and of course…" A blush forms again, but Simon is no longer watching Lucy. "Of course I keep my letters from you. Those are in the bottom."
Simon stands up from the chair, leaving his paper behind, rejected and nearly crumpled on the floor. Lucy's chaperone, some dusty old aunt, looks up from her spot on the chaise. "If you'll excuse me, Miss Fairchild," he says, using a formality they've been past for weeks now, "I did not realize the time. I simply must be going." He walks past her without a backwards glance, headed towards the parlor and inevitably the door.
"Where are you off too?" Lucy calls, too alarmed to rise from her seat and chase after her fiancé. But Simon has already left the room. He is already miles away at some seedy saloon or familiar haunt or gentlemen's club, drinking the best thing available and answering Lucy's question over and over in his head.
It's a secret. It's a secret. It's a secret.