Locks
For he is an Englishman,
And he himself hath said it,
And it's greatly to his credit
That he is an Englishman!
Strathfearn was the last place to which Jamie Beaufort-Stuart expected his mind to wander on the way back to their hotel. The final chorus of HMS Pinafore tumbled through his head on repeat as the sights and sounds of nocturnal Edinburgh jostled their way about him, yet despite the vibrancy of the surrounding city, his thoughts drifted endlessly back to that last sun-drenched summer on the River Fearn. Impressions, unformed and elusive, assailed him one by one, glancing as insubstantially and as fleetingly and as piercingly as light off the surface of water.
"What did you think?"
"Hm?"
A memory shimmered just below the surface of his consciousness, its image distorted by the refractions of time and space and love and loss. There was no way that Jamie would be able to pluck it out by aiming for it straight on, so he pulled himself back to the present.
"What did you think of the production?" Maddie was asking him, snuggling her cheek into his shoulder. Her voice was drowsy and content, and he appreciated the comforting way that her body fit against his.
"Charming," he replied with a game smile, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her a little bit closer. "Solid orchestra, clever choreography. Excellent patter."
"Not too much English bravado for your proud Scottish heart there at the end?" Maddie inquired cheekily.
Jamie started to laugh, and the sound caught and died before it reached the chilly night air. He cleared his throat.
"No," he replied with more curtness than he had intended, for although he was as proud of being Scottish as any of the Beaufort-Stuarts, he knew full well that Maddie did not draw the association on his account.
Maddie shifted her head slightly on his shoulder so that she could shoot a glance of concern at her husband. For a moment, Jamie's face was closed off, prematurely old, dwelling in a reality that usually lurked in the shadows of his waking hours, a part of himself that he intentionally kept shut away from her. It had been five months now since the war ended, but a part of her knew that such dark remnants of the past would haunt them for the rest of their lives; it was mostly a question of how much they chose to unbolt the locks to their hearts and shed light on those tenebrous corners for one another's comprehension. She did not speak another word until they reached their hotel, choosing instead to simply rest her head once more on Jamie's shoulder and let him run his fingers absently through her hair.
As Maddie readied herself for bed in their suite, Jamie sat down in front of the vanity at one end of the room and stared critically at his reflection, at his fair hair and lithe frame and fine features. The elusive memory that had tormented him like an itch since the end of the operetta was finally coming into focus. Maddie was half-singing bits and pieces of Pinafore under her breath, having listened ad nauseam to the recording on the gramophone back home:
A maiden fair to see,
The pearl of minstrelsy,
A bud of blushing beauty...
Jamie ran his hands through his hair, remembering that damned wig of yellow curls they'd made him wear to play Josephine; remembering how gleefully they'd paraded it to its funeral pyre down by the river; remembering how sometimes, in the dim light of the dressing room at Eton, he'd suddenly catch sight of himself in the mirror and, for an insane second or two, think that his own costumed reflection was Julie, with her hair twirled into a frenzy of golden locks...
Julie.
She had told him, back after that whole fantastical summer, that people kept mistaking her for a boy, with her hair cropped as it was. You are quite as pretty as me, she had teased him, that first morning in Strathfearn when he had offered to primp her shorn tresses. Anyone who took only a quick glance at the two of them might have thought that they were twins.
"What is it?" asked Maddie, coming to stand behind Jamie and laying a hand on his shoulder with the light steadiness of a pilot's touch.
Jamie seized Maddie's hand, kissed it, and pressed it to his cheek.
"Will you tell me something truthfully?" he asked her, meeting the reflection of her gaze with vulnerable eyes. "When you look at me, do you often think of her?"
Maddie did not respond for a long moment. And then she wrapped her other arm around Jamie and bent down to give him a gentle peck on the cheek.
"Never," she murmured.
"What, never?" he asked lightly.
Rather than finish the exchange, Maddie kissed him, forcefully at first, and then softly, her fingertips tracing the tears that coursed silently down Jamie's cheeks as he turned away from the mirror and towards her.
(Once, long ago, a figure very much like Jamie's had cried herself to sleep in Maddie's arms, and Maddie had held her just this close, just this tenderly, her nose buried in the scent of golden hair just this color. But that was then, and this was now, and the war was over and done.)
"Jamie Beaufort-Stuart," she told him, her voice breaking, "my love, my dear Pobble, I would never have married you if I didn't love you for exactly who you are."
Jamie nodded, the ghost of a smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.
"I know," he whispered as Maddie kissed him again. "I know."
Author's Note: For those less-familiar with Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, a classic and oft-repeated refrain throughout Pinafore runs, "What, never?" / "No, never!" / "What, never?" / "Hardly ever!"