You have sinned, and now you know what you must do, my child.
Did you see? The doctor's wife is back in town.
Keeps his wife in a hotel and his housekeeper close by, no doubt about what's going on there.
Can you blame him? She's a fine looking woman.
I can't blame her. I mean, have you seen him?
I want you to know you're not losing anything.
Some men just need to be saved from themselves.
It was very late, and Jean's head was spinning, a thousand voices whispering to her in the darkness while her conscience shredded itself to pieces and her heart ached as fierce as if each of those words were a knife, shoved in deep. She was caught in a strange, interminable hell, a fish on a line, twisting and leaping and yet unable to prevail against the inexorable force of her own fate, drawing her out of warmth and comfort into the chill harsh light of her own damnation.
Forgive me father, I have laid with a man who was not my husband.
This sin she had committed with a joyous abandon, relegated her soul to the flames for the sake of the love she carried in her heart, for the sake of the hope that had whispered to her, told her that soon enough he would be her husband, all hers, forever.
Forgive me father, I have laid with another woman's husband.
This sin she had committed all in ignorance, and Lucien, too, for he had received word shortly after their first tryst that his wife was long dead. The widow and the widower, they had believed themselves to be, their assignations uncolored by the specter of adultery. Until that night, that terrible, horrible night, that night when Jean had for one single shining instant held everything she wanted in the palm of her hand until the wrath of God himself had descended upon her in the form of one small, wild-eyed woman.
Lucien? Who is it?
My wife.
Strange, how those two words had left her red-faced and gasping, fighting back a rush of tears as if she had just taken a punch to the gut. Strange, how two simple words could so completely shatter her very soul. One moment Lucien was sitting beside her with a ring in his hand, his lips parted, the one question she longed to answer more than any other hovering in the air between them, and the next he was standing in the corridor with his arms around his wife, his wife who was not Jean, his wife who he had search for, for years uncounting, his wife who had borne his child, who had known him as Jean had only ever dreamed of doing. His wife, real, and here, and alive, and Jean did not need a priest to tell her what she already knew. He was her Lucien no longer, this brave, beautiful man to whom she had given every piece of herself. He belonged to Mei Lin, and no words whispered to her in the stillness of the kitchen would change that. You aren't losing anything, he'd told her, and she'd fought back against a sudden wild urge to strike his face; Jean had lost everything, already. Perhaps he still loved her, perhaps he still wished he could have married her instead, but so long as his wife lived, Jean could have no part of him.
And yet she remained in his house, cooking his meals, fetching his tea, haunting the halls late at night hoping for a glimpse of him, hoping to never see him again. She had gone for confession the week before and slowly, haltingly laid the sum total of her sins at Father Emory's feet. She had told him all, how she had carried on with a man who was not her husband, how she had recently discovered this man was married. It was hard, telling him that truth, knowing he would recognize her voice, knowing that the anonymity of the confessional booth could hardly apply in her particular circumstance, and yet likewise knowing that her heart would not find peace until she had spoken her sins aloud, and done her penance.
"You know what you must do, my child," Father Emory had told her, and Jean had begun to weep, because she knew that he was right. She had sinned, had done so gladly and without care, and now the time had come for her to face the consequences. To save her very soul, to protect her reputation, her future, Lucien's marriage, she knew that she would have to leave him. She could not stay in this house, so close to him and yet unable to reach out to him, surrounded by temptation and bitter memories while Lucien pushed his wife away and followed Jean everywhere she went with hungry eyes. The price for her salvation would be the sacrifice of her every dream. Knowing this, knowing that it was vital she depart, and soon, she lingered yet, not quite ready to tear her heart asunder, for good and all. Tortured by his proximity and devastated by their separation she remained a shadow in that house, head bowed, lips closed, silent tears soothing her into sleep at night.
Earlier that evening she'd found him sitting behind his desk, alone in the darkness, and she'd tried not to think too long or too hard about how those circumstances mirrored their own turmoil. They had been alone, both of them, lost in darkness for weeks now. Nothing made sense, any more. Even the smallest things, the old familiar things, sharing tea and a smile and a quiet conversation, felt wrong, stifling, unbearable. The old gold band weighed heavy on her finger and the darkness weighed heavy on her shoulders and Lucien's voice weighed heavy on her heart; it was all too much for her to bear. And yet, when she stumbled across him, when she'd seen how he sat staring into the middle distance, oblivious to everything around him - lucky him, she'd thought, that he can so easily block out the rest of us - she had been unable to turn away. She should have done, knew she should have done, and yet she had only turned on the light, had only spoken to him softly, drawn to him the way she always was, a moth to a flame.
And oh, but he was a flame, destined to destroy her, if he had not done so already. It wasn't all his fault, she knew; Lucien had believed his wife to be as dead as Jean's own husband, had been ready to make his overture to her in good faith, with that sparkling little ring in its little box clutched in his trembling hand. Nothing had been right since the day Mei Lin returned to Lucien's arms at last, not for Jean, not for Lucien, not even - she suspected - for Mei Lin herself. Lucien had not known that each time he held her he was adding adultery to the endless list of their sins, but Jean wasn't entirely sure he would have cared. After all, he was not particularly preoccupied with repentance, this man to whom she had given her heart, her time, her body. He was a worldly man, an ungodly man, a man who drank to excess and smoked and paid no mind to the company he kept, but he had with his charm and his gentle heart swayed her, urged her with his devil's tongue to overlook his many faults, and she had done so gladly, and lay with him more times than she could count.
Lie down with dogs, her mother used to say, and you get up with fleas.
Well, she had them now, in abundance, her skin prickling everywhere she went as people whispered, pointed, stared. You know what they're like, the voices followed her, even here, to this house, this place that had once been a refuge and was become now more like a prison. Carrying on, always too close, and now his wife's come back, and good for her, I say. Even when they did not voice their displeasure the eyes of her neighbors spoke loudly of their judgment. Her relationship with Lucien had always raised eyebrows, but the gossip had never been as ubiquitous as this. Added to that was the knowledge that each time she looked in Mei Lin's eyes she was looking into the face of a woman she had wronged, a woman whose husband's affections Jean had stolen for herself. She was left squirming, uncomfortable, with no safe quarter to turn to, no friend to steady her, only guilt and recrimination and the howling vortex of disappointment that swirled within her chest. They had come so close, but Jean's dreams had been dashed, yet again. Not for you, such a happy life, the very universe seemed to tell her. It would have been different if they'd been properly wed, though Jean had thought about it at length and found she could not determine which would be worse, to be an adulteress or a bigamist. Whispers and nightmares and tears and her conscience tearing itself to pieces and having to call another woman Mrs. Blake; Jean wasn't sure how much more of it she could take.
He locks his wife up in a hotel and keeps his housekeeper at home, the whisperers said. Wonder how much he pays her for her services? Wonder if she's worth it?
Jean understood why Mei Lin had left, why she had chosen the hotel over Lucien's bed; what would have been the point in her staying, after all, while Lucien refused to share that bed with her? They looked at one another with the hollowed eyes of old soldiers, Lucien and Mei Lin, jumped when they found themselves in close proximity like two people who'd just caught sight of a most distressing ghost. Lucien wanted to do the right thing, Jean knew, but it was as if they hardly knew one another, Lucien and Mei Lin. Every other word out of his mouth offended her in some way, though he meant no harm, and her gaze wounded him each time her eyes turned his way. She's a stranger to me now, Lucien had told Jean once in desperation.
She's your wife.
That was a truth Jean could not escape, even if she did not want to face it herself. What would you do in his place? She had asked herself while they talked, while Lucien's eyes flickered towards her, an agony of indecision written in every line of his dear sweet face. If it were Christopher, back after seventeen years, what would you do?
Sitting in that chair with her heart cracked and aching, Jean wanted to believe there would be no question what she'd do. After all, she'd spent nearly two decades mourning for her husband, praying for his soul, worrying over his children, still wearing his ring no matter how much time had passed. Jean wanted to believe that if she were given such a gift, her husband returned to her arms at last, she would have embraced him without reservation, would have done whatever it took to rebuild their life together, would never spare a second thought for Lucien Blake and all that he had promised her. And yet, she could not silence the little voice that whispered in the back of her mind, urged her to see the truth she so desperately wanted to avoid.
You would be just the same as Lucien, that voice told her. Seventeen years is a long time. People change. You aren't the same woman you were the last time you saw Christopher. You know you aren't. Lucien isn't the man Mei Lin remembers, either.
Thus the course of her thoughts had run, while she and Lucien unpicked the riddle of the hour, sitting too close together while the night shimmered darkly beyond the curtains, running their fingers over the candle flame of temptation, too close for comfort and yet not close enough to ignite. Her gentle words had done the trick, had lifted him out of his fog of melancholy and pointed his feet upon the path to answers, and Lucien had leapt up from his chair like a dog called to heel, taken her face in his hands and pressed a reverent kiss to her forehead before bounding away, to what purpose she could not say.
That kiss; she had buried her face in her hands the moment she heard the front door close behind him, and allowed herself to weep. There had been no passion in his touch, no desire; it was a comforting, longing, loving gesture, borne of his great affection for her, an affection that could not be allowed to blossom while his wife languished alone and unloved in a hotel across town. If it were only lust that bound them together, only base need, it would have been no difficult thing for Jean to draw away from him, but this love, this deep, heady, heart-rending love was an altogether different sort of beast. It was not only Lucien's body Jean had stolen, but his heart, as well, and he held hers in the palms of his trembling hands. This dance they followed now was a delicate sort of annihilation; two steps closer, one step back, hopes rising only to be shredded by disappointment, each touch between them a needle-sharp stab of grief, and yet addictive as the whiskey Lucien depended on for his own sanity. The brush of his hand burned her hot as fire, and she craved her own destruction.
No more, she told herself as she made her way down the stairs, intent on a cup of tea. Her mind had been spinning since the moment Lucien pressed his lips against her skin, and she could not face spending another moment alone and idle in her room. The tea would give her something to do, would keep her hands busy, and hopefully calm her unsettled nerves. She did not know where Lucien had gone after he kissed her, but the hour was very late indeed, and she was not certain he was coming back.
And it's not your place to ask, she told herself sternly. You're not his wife.
That thought was bitter, and black; she had come so close, so damnably close, to being his wife, had begun to feel rather as if she was already, but Mrs. Blake was sleeping in a hotel across town, and her face bore no resemblance to Mrs. Beazley's.
She tapped her foot, brought down the sugar bowl, bit her lip, poured her tea, and then settled herself at the kitchen table.
I have to leave this place, she thought glumly. There were other people who could do this job as well as she, and perhaps Christopher would like to see his mother. That had been the answer once before, a trip to Adelaide, a few days cuddling her granddaughter close. There would be no lover chasing after her bus in the broad light of day, this time, and though it grieved her Jean knew that was all for the good. It would take a few days, perhaps a week or two to make the arrangements; she could have most of her belongings delivered to her sister Eadie's house for safekeeping, just until she was settled. She could ring Christopher, and arrange her bus fare, and make a few discreet inquiries until she found a suitable replacement. Perhaps Evelyn Toohey would be willing to step in again. And then she could leave, and never look back.
Other changes would have to be made in the meantime, she knew. While she set her plan into motion she would have to speak to Lucien, would have to tell him to keep his hands and his kisses and his pleading expression to himself. They had tortured one another enough already, Jean thought; if he kissed her again, she was not certain she would be able to withstand her love of him, and she knew that such a transgression would surely break her in half.
It was the right thing to do, she knew, but never before had the right thing felt so wrong.
And so she sat, and planned, and brooded, until her tea went cold, and she rose at last to make her way up the stairs and to her bed once more.
It was very late, when Lucien came shuffling in through the front door. He'd spoken to Matthew Lawson, drunk more whiskey than was wise, driven to his wife's hotel and stared forlornly up at the cold facade until at last he gave in and did what he had wanted to do all along, and went back home to Jean.
Home, their home, a house that belonged to her every bit as much as it did to him, four walls that would be empty without her, as was Lucien himself. Jean, his Jean, brilliant, gentle, virtuous and kind, she had given him a home at last, and how could he think to give that up? He knew that Jean believed he must abandon her for Mei Lin, his wife who was proud and sometimes disdainful, sharp tongued and broken, brittle and beautiful and desperate for peace. He feared he could give neither woman what she desired of him, for he could not turn his back on Jean, and he could not be the man Mei Lin needed him to be.
Just inside the door he hung his hat upon its customary peg, and when he turned he felt the breath leave his lungs for there she stood, his Jean, lovely and so very sad that the sight of her was nearly enough to make him weep. Her progress halted there by the stairs, her eyes haunting and dark without the sparkle that he had come to know over the long months of their dalliance; would she turn away from him, seek her bed without sparing a moment to speak to him, or would she linger here with him, bless him once more with the soft sound of her voice?
She did not move, and so he made his way to her at once. It was very late and she was dressed for bed in a soft satin nightdress, pale pink and demurely cut, her face washed clean of makeup and her hair falling unbound all around her angel's face. Some things not even grief could shake, and Jean's loveliness was one. She had endured so much strife already, had learned long ago how to continue on when all seemed lost, and she stood straight-backed now despite the weight of their troubles. Though nothing else about his life made sense she remained his touchstone, the still point of his madly spinning world, steady and reassuring and so damnably beautiful.
"Jean," he breathed as he stepped up close, closer than he had come to her in a fortnight, and though her eyes darted from his face to the stairs and back again in a desperate sort of way she made no move to leave him.
"It's late, Lucien," she said softly, a hint of rebuke in her tone, though he was not sure whether she meant to chastise him for standing with her alone in the corridor after dark or for coming home so late without telling her where he'd gone in the first place.
Yes it was late, and Charlie had long since gone to bed, and all the world was asleep save for the pair of them, standing alone and hovering on the precipice of calamity. It was precipice from which Lucien longed to leap, with Jean in his arms; he could bear this stalemate of civility no longer. He only wished she would say something, anything; shouting, even, would have been a blessing, so long as she was still with him, and sharing her honest feelings.
"Can we talk?" he asked her desperately. "Please, I just want to talk."
He just wanted to hear the sound of her voice, just wanted to hear her tell him that everything would be all right, just wanted her to take him in her arms and hold him close the way she used to do, just wanted to believe, if only for a moment, that they might find their way through this madness together.
"There's nothing to say," she told him, and turned away.
The sight of her stepping back from him, the knowledge that she was withdrawing in more ways than one, the sheer incredulity he felt at her words caused something deep within his chest to shatter like glass. Nothing to say? There was everything yet to say, he thought, as they had not once discussed this heavy awful truth that hung between them, as not once had he told her outright how he still loved her, how he wanted more than anything to make this right, how he could not bear to lose her, as she had not once told him plainly her own feelings on the matter. There was so much left to say that he could hardly hear over the cacophony of words rattling around inside his skull, sloshing like little boats borne aloft upon the stormy sea of the whiskey he'd drunk earlier in the evening. There was so much left to say that he could not let her go, and so he reached for her, caught her hip in his hand and turned her easily, drew her closer.
A little gasp escaped her, her hands rising up to press against his chest, caught between their bodies as he held her, his body rejoicing in the warmth of her even while his mind scrambled for something to say, some way to keep her near.
"Please, my darling," he begged her, though he hardly knew what he was asking for.
"Let me go," came her answer, but her hands only smoothed across the plane of his chest, not pushing him away as she should have done.
"I can't," he answered.
They were so close, his nose brushing against hers, her breath washing over his lips, her body pressed tighter to his by the second, and he could no more have stopped himself from kissing her in that moment than he could have torn the beating heart from his chest. His lips slanted overs and she tilted her head back, accepted him at once, and the great beast of hopefulness roared to life in his chest. This was what he needed, what he'd longed for every day since his wife had returned; just to feel, if only for a moment, as if nothing had changed, as if Jean were still his to hold, to love, to cherish. Til death do us part.
He had said those words to Mei Lin once, and the truth that he was only just coming to realize was that death had already parted them. Oh, the pair of them still lived, but they were not the people they had been, before. The old Lucien Blake had died in Changi, and the old Mei Lin had perished on the boat to China. Death had dogged their steps, stolen their friends and their family, turned them into shadows. Whatever Mei Lin had to offer him, it was not life, not hope, not a future. Jean, though; Jean had brought him once more into the light, and he needed her more than he had ever needed anything in his whole life.
His tongue surged into her mouth and her hand wrapped around the back of his neck and together they banished his doubts and his fears. There was love here, and need, and hope, in the press of her lips, the softness of her body molding itself to him. On a quiet night more than a year before Lucien had come to her in the darkness and they had reached an understanding, begun to heal one another's hurts, and as he kissed her now he began to feel as if such benediction was not beyond their grasp. Jean was still here, holding him tight, blessing him with her touch, returning his ardor with her own desperate passion. His heart exulted in his chest, and the bitter sound of his conscience urging him to prudence faded into nothingness.
Eagerly he pressed her back, and she followed where he led, let him ground them both against the wall while his hands traced the shape of her back down to the curve of her bum and her fingers tangled in his hair. She even tasted like hope, her gasping breaths, her soft sighs, her tongue winding against his own giving him reason to believe that they could survive this conflagration unscathed. Jean sucked his bottom lip between her teeth and held it there and he grinned, bright and feral, to see that she could still tease him, want him, need him the way she had done before everything fell apart. Hungry now he tightened his hold on her, lifted her up, and with an ease borne of practice she locked her legs around his waist, her nightdress bunching up around her hips while his hands found their home on her soft pale thighs. Skin like velvet warmed beneath his touch and his heart pounded louder than the bombs that had destroyed his life decades before and a heat like he had never known raced through his veins. The corridor was a dangerous place for such intimacies, even if Charlie was asleep, and the hour was late, and Jean was not his wife, but he wanted, oh, how he wanted.
His lips found the curve of her neck and her panting breaths fell upon his hair while his right hand traveled the length of her thigh, rediscovering all those little secrets she had shared with him so readily before the truth of their circumstances revealed itself.
"Lucien," she breathed his name, a whispered plea, and though later he would realize why her voice sounded so sorrowful in the moment he could only think that she was hungry for more of him, and continue his progress. A bit of lace and the slide of satin and he was acting on instinct, now, hungry and unable to stop, operating with a sense of purpose as if by touching her, taking her once again he might thrust them both out of this nightmare and into a beautiful morning where they were husband and wife, as they always should have been, and the last few weeks no more than a strange dream to be dismissed over their morning tea.
"Oh, my darling," he groaned against her skin as his fingertips brushed against her soft folds, found her wet and hot and aching for him. This he could do, could bring her pleasure, could touch her, reassure her with his hands and his lips and his fervent tongue that she meant everything to him, that he would be lost without her, but as he started to slip one finger inside her Jean jerked in his arms as if he'd struck her and sank her nails into his neck. Her touch brought him no pleasure, but it was not intended to, for when he yelped and lifted his head to stare at her incredulously he found her eyes full of a heat that had nothing at all to do with lust.
"Let me go," she said again, punctuating her words with her palms pressed to his shoulders, and Lucien acquiesced at once, letting her feet drop to the floor and drawing away while shame and devastation swirled like a maelstrom inside him. His lover was trembling from head to foot, and he nearly dropped to his knees before her, wanting to lift his hands in supplication and beg her forgiveness for having done such a thing, for having dared to touch her in a way that left her so cross instead of mewling with want, for having dared to wound her, this woman who meant more to him than the world itself.
"This is wrong, Lucien," she told him in a quiet, quivering voice. "You know it's wrong. What about Mei Lin?"
His heart sank, and he bowed his head, unable to face her recrimination. She was the best of women, his Jean, and attended devoutly to her faith, and he should have known that she would not consent willingly to this sin, no matter how much her body seemed to yearn for it. That was just one of the many ways in which Jean was stronger, braver, better than he could ever hope to be, for while he could not find the strength to deny himself the joy he found in her arms, she could.
This is wrong, she'd said, and as she spoke those words she had revealed to him every ounce of pain she felt now that she knew that he belonged to someone else, and not to her, no matter how Lucien had promised to make her his, no matter how close they had come to such joy. That she should feel such grief, such bitter disappointment, such hopelessness on account of his own failings was more than Lucien could bare, and he lifted his head at last, gazed at her pleadingly and reached for her hand.
"What about you?" he asked her softly, wanting to tell her that he could not forget the love he bore her, that he could not turn away from her, that he needed her more than his next breath, but she refused to let him.
With a sharp tug she withdrew from his grasp, wrapped her arms around her waist, and drew herself up to her full height, back straight and her gaze tragic in its iron certainty.
"I'm not your wife, Lucien," she told him grimly. "And I won't be your whore."
With those words echoing loud as gunfire in his mind he watched her turn her back on him and walk resolutely up the stairs, away from his arms, perhaps out of his life, forever.