A/N: Haven't read the book, I'm afraid, but just watched the 8-part, FANTASTIC BBC adaptation with Gillian Anderson. Highly recommended. Lady Dedlock and her tragic past and present are remarkably entrancing and I couldn't resist a small tribute. Title and quote below are both from the original text.
"Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort."
Love, she has found, is great fuel for loss. It burns bright, fast and forever.
Honoria has burned many things in her life. Her heart, for one, is near cauterized.
When she burns James' letters and likeness, it hurts less, somehow, because he is already dead.
(But it still burns.)
...
She does not blame. She does not do much of anything.
Sometimes, she remembers.
...
There was a girl who danced. A girl who ought to have known better, though the woman now is not quite sure how she might have known. A girl who fell in love with dark, serious eyes and slender, calloused hands.
He seemed too young to be a captain.
It was not his fault, she thinks. His hands trembled when he touched her, but his eyes never left hers.
It was not my fault, she thinks, but perhaps it was.
...
Shame was worse than guilt, for it brought fear with it hand in hand. But shame did not rest on her as heavily as perhaps it should have, at first. Her heart swelled with every one of his letters. He wrote often. If she could not have his voice, if she could not have his rare, shy smiles, she could have the flowing lines of his script.
But time is cruel. She learned that in the months of her confinement, with shame and fear.
Time is cruel. People are crueler.
...
The baby came in autumn. They would not let her see. Honoria dies like a candle flame, forgotten in a trail of smoke.
There is nothing to tell James; he is gone, he is gone, and love burns brightest when it burns out.
She writes no more letters.
...
Beauty like hers takes longer to fade. For beauty is in the eyes of beholders, and so it does not belong to her, not really. It is not hers to quench.
Sir Leicester is not gentle by his nature, but he is gentle with her.
That makes it worse.
She is bored, and he does not deserve that.
She is already dead, and he does not deserve that either.
She marries him, and if she ever deserved anything, it is lost at sea, lost in a tiny grave, lost in a bundle of letters that she no longer lets herself kiss.
...
Chesney Wold is grand. London is a blur of social niceties. And she is a great lady, now, and great ladies need not appear to care very much about anything.
She cares for nothing. It is no one's fault, and the easiest lie to live.
Time is cruel.
...
She sees her own eyes in her daughter's innocent face. She sees James' shy smile, and her heart starts beating again only after it has stopped short.
She feels again. It is terrible, it is agony, and she is blindly grateful that she has not truly forgotten how.
...
Tulkinghorn would crush her if he could; he would wrap those long fingers around her throat and watch her gasp and beg for air.
She hopes that if he ever gets his hands on her that she dies without a word, without a plea.
James died in a haze of opium. It is a long while before she lets it hurt her. When it does, she is perfectly silent, but she barely sleeps for a week.
People are crueler.
...
Tulkinghorn gambled too many times, and she feels nothing when he dies—and that itself is a relief, a release.
If she had anyone to talk to, if she had not sent her daughter away, she might say that she was surprised to hear that he had a heart at all.
But better men than he died far worse deaths.
That is nobody's fault. Nobody she knows.
...
Tulkinghorn's long, choking fingers did not die with him. And she does plead, in the end, but not with him. She signs her name with a flourish, and maybe it is for Sir Leicester, who does not deserve this, or for James, who deserved so much more.
She signs her name again for her daughter, who loves her far more than she deserves. Esther, Esther. The handkerchief is still in her drawer. She would not burn it, not even for James.
He would have wanted it so, if he only had known.
Honoria counts her sins and carries her shame with her through the rain, across the English countryside.
She finds the graveyard no one remembers, and wonders how long it will take for them to find her.
Love burns bright, fast and forever, but it has never done very much to keep her warm.