"Jean, darling."

Lucien's soft voice woke her. Her eyes blinked open. The room was dark but there was a dim light coming through the crack in the curtains. "What is it?" she asked, her mind and her voice very groggy.

He gently stroked her hair and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. "I wasn't sure if you'd mind waking up here or not. It's just past four, and we're here in my bed together. We both fell asleep after we made love last night," he reminded her. His voice was barely over a whisper. All he wanted to do was continue their soft moments in his bed, with Jean in his bed, still warm and mussed and smelling like sex. It may have been four in the morning, but he'd never woken up happier in all his life.

Jean did not respond immediately. There was a mighty war being waged in her head, and she had no clue which side might triumph.

Lucien waited patiently for her, continuing his gentle kisses and caresses. There was no heat or passion in his touch, for which she was grateful, only affection and quiet comfort. And that gave her the push she needed.

"I've got to get up," she eventually said. "But I don't want to."

He smiled so brightly, he thought his face might break. "One day, we can wake up together and not worry about the propriety of it."

She sighed. "One day. But not today."

Jean sat up and scrubbed her face with her hands. At least she'd had the good sense to remove her makeup before coming to Lucien's room the night before. Though when she'd come to Lucien's room, staying the night had not been her intentions. Making passionate love to him certainly had not been her intention. And yet, that's precisely what she did.

"Oh no, I don't want to," she muttered to herself, voice muffled against her hands.

Lucien sat up and put his arm around her, pressing more light kisses to her bare shoulder. "Don't want to go?"

"No, but that's not what I mean, I just…" She looked up at him and furrowed her brow in frustration.

"What?" he asked. "Please, Jean, I don't want you to keep things from me. Not now."

"We shouldn't have done that," she said quietly.

His heart dropped to his stomach and he pulled away from her. "You…you regret it? Us?"

Jean felt a lump forming in her throat and so she kept her face in her hands as she spoke, knowing she could not look at his dear face just now. "You are not my husband. Actually, you're someone else's husband." She shifted to hold the bedsheet over her bare body for some semblance of modestly. "What we've done is a sin, Lucien," she whispered. Her voice wouldn't seem to let itself be any louder.

"But darling, we love each other. Expressing that love can't be a sin." Lucien tentatively reached his hand back toward her, his fingertips barely touching the elegant column of her spine. "We do love each other, don't we?" he asked.

"Yes, but that isn't enough." She despised the truth of the words she uttered. "It isn't enough that we are in love. There's a proper way to do things. And we've spat in the face of it."

He sighed, clearly frustrated by her insistent morality. "Why is it not enough that we are in love?"

"Because we aren't married. There are rules, Lucien," Jean insisted. And she was starting to become cross. Was he being purposefully obtuse? She knew all too well that he shirked all religion long ago, but that did not mean he couldn't understand.

"So you do regret it," he surmised with heart-wrenching disappointment.

Jean fell silent. For she did not know what to say. She did not want to lie to him. But she also could not bear to speak the truth. To say such things out loud would be the end of her, she knew.

Lucien allowed the quiet between them. The sunrise was inching ever closer through the tiny gap in the curtains, and given Jean's strange evasion, he knew that she would scurry from his bed sooner rather than later. Why could they not just enjoy this moment? He had woken up so very happy, so full of love for this woman he had missed during his seemingly endless sojourn to China. Without Jean, nothing had made sense. He had been lost and confused and anxious and entirely malcontent. Even with the beautiful reunion with his family, he felt like a part of him was empty. Before, that emptiness was always the loss of Mei Lin and Li, the guilt he felt for their demise. But when he had them back, he felt a different kind of emptiness, and it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize that it was Jean. Jean he missed, Jean he loved, Jean he needed. And now he had her! They had joined together in the most incredible manner, fallen asleep in the shelter of each other's arms after being lost to the throes of passion. He loved this woman, loved her so much he physically ached for her all that time they were apart. But when he had returned home, she had been so distant and cold and cruel with her words to him, only to turn around and come to his room late at night and apologize and profess her love and allow them to fall together. In the light of day—though the daylight had not yet fully risen—what was it that had changed?

She was religious, he knew. Of course he knew. She had gone to church every Sunday and sometimes Wednesdays during the months they'd shared this house together. He knew she was devout. But somehow, he had envisioned her as needing the Church for the community it provided her rather than any actual spiritual tenants she clung to. Perhaps he had been wrong about that. For Lucien, such things had never held much sway, not even when he was a young boy. The idea of faith had long since died in his heart and, much as it pained him here and now, he could not quite understand what such belief could possibly feel like.

Her silence was very telling. She did regret it. He had given her his heart and his life in every way he knew how, and she regretted it. And so he hastened her departure, knowing that having her naked in his bed and regretting how she'd gotten there was far too painful to endure for much longer. "You're welcome to use my bathroom before you go up to your room.

Jean turned and searched his face. What she was looking for, he couldn't quite say. But her search ended quickly. She slid out of bed and picked up her dressing gown from the end of the bed, slipping it on before hurrying into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Lucien fell back onto the bed and scrubbed his face with his hands. A heavy weight of depression was starting to settle over him and, in that moment, he welcomed it.

In the bathroom, Jean used the loo and washed her face and hands, trying to wake herself up. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror scrutinizing what she saw. Her skin looked surprisingly bright. Her eyes, however, had a very worrisome dimness. She caught a glimpse of the red mark Lucien's mouth had left on her breast and she could not help but smile. But she stopped that very quickly. No good would come from that. Jean ran her fingers through her hair, trying not to be too bothered that she'd slept without her curlers and now she'd have a devil of the time looking presentable. She sighed. That was a problem for upstairs. Not something to be concerned with in Lucien's bathroom. Jean quickly tied her dressing gown tight around her body. She could carry her nightgown upstairs to her room. No one would be up this early to see her and wonder.

Her hand paused as it reached for the door handle. What was she going to say to him? What could she even think to say? Her heart and her mind were at war, and she knew now which one was winning. And she could not determine whether or not that was for the best.

But Jean Beazley was not a woman who let her fears overcome her. She had to get on with her day and get on with her life and figure out what to do. Standing in the bathroom paralyzed by all of this would do her absolutely no good whatsoever.

Lucien sat up when the bathroom door opened. "Jean?"

"Yes?" she replied, her voice catching slightly.

"I am sorry you're upset. I can't apologize for what we've done though, for if I did, it would be a lie. And I don't ever want to lie to you," he told her quietly.

And with those simple, kind words, Jean made up her mind to tell him what was bothering her, and she confessed her struggle. "I don't regret what we did, Lucien. But I know I should. I know it was wrong, but I don't feel regret. I love you very much. I wanted to make love to you. And I'm sure I will want to do so again. But I shouldn't. It is a sin to have such relations before marriage and a much bigger sin to have such relations with a married man. I know that. But I also know that I love you. And quite honestly, I just don't want to hate myself for loving you."

Jean scooped up her clothes and swiftly left the bedroom, closing the door silently behind her. Time to get on with the day.