Quand on est aimé, on ne doute de rien. Quand on aime, on doute de tout. / When you're loved, you doubt nothing. When you love, you doubt everything.
- Colette.
For someone so brilliant, Lucien Blake was… well, she had always taught her sons it wasn't polite to call someone stupid.
She sometimes wonders if he is blind and doesn't see what lingers on the edges between them, or if he just chooses not to acknowledge it. She can't imagine he's truly that dim, except… She turns in her bed and attempts to fluff her pillow into submission. She never had this much trouble with her pillows at home, did she? She wonders as she tries to find the comfort that eludes her.
There's something growing slow and steady and as sure as a heartbeat between them, despite her best efforts tamp down upon it. Truth be told, perhaps it hasn't been her best efforts. Perhaps she's allowed it to grow - fed and nurtured by thinking about him at these quiet moments at the end of the day. Reviewing and cataloging their interactions, their looks, their exchanges as carefully as if it were evidence in one of his cases. Perhaps, somewhere deep, deep down she has nurtured and even encouraged it. What it is, however, she cannot bring herself to say. Even thinking the word makes her throat swell shut and her heart race.
It's foolish.
She's foolish. Lucien will never see her in this way and…another chance isn't for her. People like her don't get second chances. No, they get quiet lives and numerous hobbies. She takes a deep breath and turns on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. This room is unfamiliar compared to the one she spent the last years in. That was her room and at some point it became her home and if even if Lucien never looks at her again, if he never sees her as someone or something other than Jean Beazley, bringer of tea and whiskey, all she wants is to go back to her house once Ruby and Christopher find their footing as parents.
Mattie had told her Lucien missed her. Of course he missed her - life changed for him when she left and he was a man who didn't enjoy having his way of life disrupted. She needed him to … she doesn't know what she needs from him, not really, other than she needs him to see her. Really and truly see her. She knows he sees her as something other than Mrs. Beazley, that much has become obvious, but he still doesn't see her, doesn't see what was directly before him and so she has to leave. It wouldn't do to sit him down and discuss this over scones and tea in her room as casually as they discussed murder and motives. She wishes she could lay out proof and incidences and examples - evidence of their evolution - but she can't. He has to discover this one on her own as she did. Lucien has to discover these things himself. She needs him to make whatever decision on his own. She has made life easy for him, too easy, under the guise of her role as housekeeper and helpmate - she now needs him struggle on this one on his own. She needs to know that he sees her, that he chooses her. She wants to know he's choosing, not settling for her, not taking the easy route she offers with her presence.
That's what it keeps coming down to, isn't it? She can see him look at her, peer at her like she's a puzzle, like he's trying to solve her, like there's something he wants to say but he doesn't quite know what… But he doesn't see her, not as a woman. Not as she sees him - a man. A dear, sweet, caring, brilliant, broken, wounded, loving, daft man. She can pinpoint the exact moment she saw him as he was - eyes blinking back surprise as she peered at him from the flames of her birthday candles. Her birthday - she can still feel the shiver in her belly if she thinks about her birthday, his arms around her, her hand on his, the warmth of him against her back. It happened so naturally and so instinctively that it terrified her. There, in front of family and friends, he wrapped his arms around her and she let him as if they had done it hundreds of times. Yes, he's an affectionate man but she has never been particularly fond of affection, or perhaps she had just gone without it for so long?
Her thoughts are getting lost in one another and the lingering pull in her belly confuses and upsets her. She squeezes her eyes shut and turns once more onto her side, willing herself to go to sleep.
There is nothing more that she can do except board the bus tomorrow.