Bunny.

Spring drizzled ever onward. But as the chill rains gradually subsided into a somewhat brighter April, the torrents in my mind and soul continued to storm on unbounded. As my only confidant and the second fount of my fears, Raffles received the brunt of my relentless weather-beating; and as time wore on he did so with ever-lessening sympathy and patience.

'Bunny, you're being ridiculous,' he sighed, shaking his head and looking down his nose at me with curling nostril and remorseless grey eye as we sat in his sitting room after an otherwise pleasant evening together. Pleasant, that is, until Raffles had seen through my weak excuse to go out in order to buy yet another evening paper, though I'd already purchased and skimmed through three. This had been a decision against which Raffles vehemently protested, and which had started yet another spiralling argument between us. 'I'm not in the mood for another of your ridiculous conversations; if you go out, you can go home. I shan't let you back in here with another blasted paper to fret over. Do as you will, Bunny, but do it in your own flat and on your own time. I want no part of it.'

'It's not a ridiculous conversation,' I snapped at him. 'I'm not the one being ridiculous. For once in my life I'm actually talking sense; and you'd know it too, if only you'd listen!'

'I have listened, Bunny; I have listened incessantly since this debacle of a trial began, and quite frankly I'm sick of listening. Go home and — sleep it off.'

'Sleep it off!' I cried. 'Would that I could! This won't just go away, Raffles; this is real. It's real, and this' — I gestured between him and me — 'is becoming far, far too much of a risk! It always was, really, but now it's even worse. The Wilde trial has— it's brought attention to— to people like us. The world is watching, A. J., and yet you sit there and tell me to sleep it off? Good god, to have your sanguinity! Raffles, the risk—'

'There is no risk,' he interrupted, waving my words away with a flippant flick of his elegant fingers, 'which is my point, if only you'd pay attention to me rather than your precious rags. You wind yourself up and blow things all out of proportion, Bunny, like some sort of mad windmill. It's a libel trial; hundreds of 'em go through the courts every day. What of it?'

'Not like this one, Raffles, and you know it. What if Queensberry's found Not Guilty? Then what?'

'Then he shan't get a fine, or a prison sentence, or whatever it is one gets for libel these days,' Raffles shrugged.

'No, Raffles; if he's found Not Guilty, that means his accusations are not baseless. If they're not baseless, then — then that will serve as a basis for prosecuting Wilde himself! Prosecuting him for—'

'I know what for, Bunny. And I don't see how they can prove that either way. No, don't tell me that I would if I read the papers, because I do read them; I simply don't need to attend my every waking thought to them in order to catch their drift. You worry far too much. We're in no more danger than ever we were, which is really very little.'

'I'm not such a fool as you believe me to be, Raffles,' I replied with some heat, 'and nor am I a child to be cosseted and lied to! Give me that much respect at least, for god's sake!'

'Oh, well, what do you want me to say?' he snapped. 'That there is some small increased risk? What good will it do you to hear that from me? Life is a risk, Bunny! Stepping out into the street on a morning is a risk! One can't sacrifice living for the sake of risk.'

'Stepping out onto the street is one thing; wilfully hurling yourself beneath a hansom is quite another!'

Raffles uncrossed his long legs, then, and leaned forward on his elbows, pinning me with his cold stare like a cat would a mouse, talking through a snarl. 'What, then? Your proposed course of action is what, exactly? Let us follow your thoughts through to their logical conclusion, shall we? Come now, Bunny, don't falter!'

I winced. I had wanted his attention, but now I had it, I wasn't so sure. 'Raffles…'

'No, no, I thought this was what you wanted. You keep telling me that I don't listen to you; well, here I am, listening, and more than willing to hear you out. So tell me, Bunny, precisely what you think I should do. Take heart! Buck up! Commit to your cause, for once in your life.'

I don't know whether his sharp tone and sharper words were deliberately intended to goad me into frank speech, but they certainly did the trick. 'Fine,' I seethed, sufficiently taunted, 'if you're going to be like that about it... Well, we really should consider— That is to say, this is— We are—' I took a breath and pulled myself together, clinging to the arguments I'd written out in my mind. 'Point One: ...By being together as we are, we're committing a crime. No, I know you don't agree. That's not the point. Whether it's morally wrong or philosophically wrong is irrelevant, because in the eyes of the law it's wrong, Raffles, and that's all that the judges will care about when we're dragged before them.'

'If, Bunny, a very big and unlikely if... '

'It could be an if the size of the moon for the difference it makes, A. J., if it's there at all! And Point Two: We're not subtle. We've not been careful. Don't look at me like that, you know we haven't. Have you forgotten that night in Ireland?'

The cynically languid expression which had hitherto graced his sharp features brightened at my rhetorical question, a warmth melting through the ice in his now twinkling eyes. 'Of course I remember,' he said. 'I shan't ever forget it, Bunny! Countless stars shining over us like diamonds littering a blue velvet sky; strains of music from the ballroom carried along on the zephyrs of that golden Indian summer; the richness of those sweet-blooming— what did you say those particular red flowers were called?'

'...Viscaris,' I muttered, knowing full well that he knew what they were, and knowing precisely where he was heading with it.

' —amidst those sweet-blooming viscaris flowers, and all the rest! And you ask whether I forget it, Bunny? Go on and ask me if I forget your eyes shining in the moonlight; if I forget that glimmer of mischief which flashed through them as you handed me that flower and told me its meaning; if I forget the warmth of my hand in yours as my other fell upon your waist and you gave me permission to take the lead. That was our first dance, rabbit! Forget it, forsooth...'

'And our last!' I exclaimed, rallying against his entirely transparent, though not entirely unsuccessful, attempt at charming me around with pleasant half-memories. 'You've conveniently forgotten the part where Lady Evelyn and her damned dog stumbled upon us at it! I'd steal the Ardagh emeralds by myself ten times over before facing that even once again!'

'Yes, Lady Evelyn, Bunny,' Raffles sighed, 'who lives with her bosom companion, the exquisitely beautiful and devilishly intelligent Mrs Frances Dalton, American heiress of husband unknown. Formidable ladies, the pair of them, but not quite Queensberry territory, wouldn't you agree? And I'm quite sure they would take great offense at you calling little Sapho a "damned dog" — as do I on their behalf! She really was a sweet little mutt, once you got past the yapping.'

'Oh, that's not the point, Raffles!'

'Isn't it?'

'No, it's not!' I cried, cursing his ability to toy with my emotions as easily he did. I paused to take a steadying breath. I had long-since rehearsed this speech whilst pacing my room, lying in bed, washing my face — my mind seemed willing to dwell on little else. Now that I had worked up the courage to speak it aloud to Raffles, I wasn't about to let either his charming, disarming words or my own weak spirit lead me from it.

'The point is,' I continued, voice tenuously resolute, 'that if anyone wished to make a case against us, I don't doubt that they could. Ireland is just one example, A. J.; I could point to a dozen more occasions over the years where we've been indiscreet somehow. And right now everyone is scrambling over one another to make accusations to sell to the papers, and the most innocent of things can suddenly become enough. You always seem to think yourself untouchable, Raffles, but you aren't, not for burglary or for bu— '

'Oh, Bunny, must you,' Raffles complained, cutting my blunt and admittedly coarse, if accurate, assessment short.

'Grow up,' I snapped, though he paid my chastisement as much heed as he paid to anything else I said. 'You can't hide from this. You can't simply close your eyes to it, and—'

'How little credit you give me,' Raffles interrupted me with a sardonic curling of his lip. 'Close my eyes to it! Bunny, surely you know me better than that? You speak as though I run heedlessly into danger headlong, with no plan, no foresight, no conception of ever hitting a sticky wicket or getting into hot water!'

'That's not what I mean and you know it's not what I mean.'

Raffles merely gave me a half shrug and a dismissive shake of his head in reply. This conversation was boring him, and he was trying to end it. I did not intend to let him off so easily. Not when there was so much at stake.

'You aren't as uniquely special as you think you are, A. J. Raffles,' I bit at him, hoping my stare was every bit as cold and cutting as his own. 'You treat life as if— as if it were a storybook and you the main character! As though no matter what happens, no matter how many "sticky wickets" you come up against, you'll always come right in the end; no matter how much "hot water" you find yourself in, you'll always be able to swim your way out. But one of these days you won't, Raffles, and you're going to drag me down with you. Or vice versa! — No, shut up, you will let me finish! Because Point Three: There is no reason for you to be with me. Not when you could just as easily go off and marry some nice girl and be every bit as happy. It's an unnecessary risk; I'm an unnecessary risk. It's foolish.'

Raffles laughed aloud then, but it was not a nice laugh.

'Oh, yes, I forgot about that, Bunny. Of course. How silly of me. I'll just go and get married, then, shall I, just like that?'

'I don't see why not,' I growled, feeling jealousy nipping at my heels even though it was I who brought the matter up. 'You've loved women before, haven't you? And there are endless numbers of them who would marry you in an instant, and with whom I am sure you could be very happy — and more importantly safe! Happier and safer than with me, at any event!' I knew what I was about to say, and regretted it even before I spoke. And yet still I said it. 'Like — like Teddy Garland's wife.'

It was a low blow on my part, and one I should have been better than to take. I liked Camilla Garland, a great deal, in fact; and once so had Raffles. That was rather the point. Camilla was the one woman I'd ever met who was a true match for A. J., in temperament, courage, beauty, and wit. Once I would have been, if not happy, then at least glad, and perhaps in some strange way relieved at the prospect of Raffles falling in love with her. At the very least I was certainly sympathetic to the much better life he would have had with her than he could ever have with me. It may have been a low blow, bringing her up, but it was a precision one. It was a pointed one. And yet still in some ways a foolish one. I knew how Raffles felt about Camilla; I also knew how he didn't, and how he couldn't. I knew him well enough to know how the affair had distressed him, even if he'd refused to speak to me about it. And I knew him well enough to know that it was an unforgivably cruel thing for me to have said, no matter how relevant. I found myself on the cusp of apologising, in fact, when Raffles laughed bitterly, seeing through me as though I were plate glass.

'Or Teddy?' he sneered. That was a sore point, and his words, so cruelly spoken, must have made me visibly flinch, because Raffles immediately softened and relented. 'Oh, that was unfair of me, Bunny. I'm sorry.'

'I knew you and him were—!' I spat, rising to my feet, not even able to finish my sentence. 'You swore you didn't, that you weren't, but I knew it!'

'Oh, for goodness' sake!' Raffles cried, throwing himself back against the sopha, shaking his head in exasperation. 'Absolutely nothing of the sort, Bunny — and well you know it. At least when you're using your brain, you do. I was making a point about these — stories you create in your own mind, so completely removed from reality! Teddy was more like a little brother to me than anything else, if even that! You know this, Bunny. And Miss Belsize—' Raffles turned away with such a thinly veiled grimace that were it not for his subsequent words I would have felt deeply sorry for my own. As it was, I soon found myself far too angry to feel anything like remorse. 'By Jove, Bunny, I'd no sooner have married Camilla Belsize than I'd marry Lord Lochmaben!'

How Raffles always had such an infallible ability to land on precisely the worst possible thing he could say, I have no idea. For all his innocent expression, I knew all too well that he was fully aware of my painful history with Lord Lochmaben's niece, as well as the role Raffles himself had played in ruining it — though in point of fact his role was far less than that which I'd lead him to believe. Still, he didn't know that, and so his calculated insult was none the lesser for his ignorance.

'What is that supposed to mean?' I hissed through my teeth.

'Bunny, you get entirely too worked up over—'

'Why Lord Lochmaben?' I cut in, impatient in my anger. 'Of anyone? Of anyone you could have said, why on earth would you choose him?'

Raffles tried to laugh it off. 'Well, he's not the most attractive of chaps, is he? Even if he were, that awful character of his would turn even an Adonis into an Hephaestus. Never met a meaner, crueller ruffian in any underworld den of iniquity than that old snake sitting up in the House of Lords.'

I did not laugh. 'That's not why you said it. If you're going to insult me, I ask that you at least do it openly!'

His own laughter faded and his jaw set hard. 'You are so quick to suggest, Bunny,' he came back with a cool equanimity which shook me far more than had he merely shouted, 'that I would run off and marry some girl so easily — and so quick to imply that I want to. And yet you yourself have come far closer to lawful matrimony in your time than I ever have. It's a bit rich, I have to say.'

I did laugh, then, although there was little humour in it. 'You dare to— You do know that she and I were barely even engaged? Her family never even acknowledged it! And they never would have, either. It was never anything formal, never even close! It would have had to have been a Gretna Green affair, if it ever got that far, which it wouldn't have done, unless— But of course, you know better, I suppose? You, who always knows so much more than I do about everything, you who always keeps me in the dark! Perhaps you know more about my own affairs than I do, Raffles?'

In spite of the painful subject matter, I confess to taking an unsportsmanlike pleasure in seeing Raffles forced onto the backfoot, just then. It was rare that I knew more than him about anything, even myself at times — or at least so it sometimes felt. It was rarer still that I had the opportunity to capitalise upon his ignorance in so satisfying a fashion.

'I— No,' Raffles replied, frowning, hesitant. 'I was under the impression that you had both been quite serious about the thing. You didn't specifically say, but— Well, you didn't say much about the whole affair at all, and I didn't want to press you on it.'

'Well, we weren't anywhere near to getting married! It wasn't like that, we were— She was—' I found my words now tangling on my tongue. In my desire to score cheap points against Raffles in an argument I never wanted to have in the first place, I had inadvertently backed myself into a corner I did not want to be in. Long distant as the whole affair by that time was, the memory of it was still deeply painful to me, in more ways than one. 'She was my friend. I cared for her a great deal, and I still do care for her, I miss her — no thanks to you! … But marriage?' I shook my head, grimacing involuntarily. 'It would never have worked. I loved her, and I thought she loved me, once, but I didn't— We weren't— It wasn't—'

'It wasn't like this,' Raffles interrupted, calmly finishing my sentence for me. He said it as a statement, simple and self-evident, and though his presumption and arrogance infuriated me, I couldn't deny that he was right. It hadn't been like this, with her. How could it ever have been? I never loved her like I loved him — I never could have! I had never loved anyone or anything like I loved Raffles. That's what made it all so damned impossible.

'Look here, Bunny,' Raffles continued, leaning toward me, his clear eyes penetrating the very depths of my soul and drawing me out from the tangle of my own dark thoughts, 'I understand what you're saying, and why you're saying it, and I do appreciate the sentiment, misguided as it is. To an extent I can't even say that you're wrong. Perhaps in some other life you and I both married nice, clever, beautiful women and had lots of bright, rosy-cheeked little children, and lived the wholesome, traditional life fully on the straight and narrow. But that's not this life, Bunny. And having tasted this one, I personally wouldn't swap it out for the world.' Raffles turned his hand palm upwards, holding it out to me, free for me to leave or take. No pressure, no demands, no insistence. 'Would you?'

As always, Raffles gave me a free choice, and in doing so left me with none.

'...No,' I said with a sigh, taking his hand in mine and letting him pull me down onto the sopha beside him, wrapping me up in his arms, curling us up together like a pair of cats. 'Of course I wouldn't, not for my own sake. But Raffles—'

'Bunny, if you wouldn't swap it for your sake, why should you get to do so for mine? Have I no say in this? Can I not make my own decisions?'

'I'm not a good decision though, Raffles. I'm about the worst you could possibly make.'

He brushed a lock of hair from my forehead with a sigh and a sad smile as I spoke; a smile so soft that the rest of the world seemed to blur at the edges, leaving him the only clear thing that I could see. 'I contest that assessment, little rabbit. But even if you were right, I don't know if you've noticed, but seemingly bad decisions are rather my modus operandi. I would have you no other way, Bunny; you are just right exactly as you are, and exactly the right sort of a chap for me.'

'But I'm not worth it, Raffles. I'm not worth the risk...'

'My dear boy, your opinion of yourself is abysmal! Look, if you can't believe in yourself, can you not at least believe me when I say that you, Bunny Manders, are worth one hundred times the danger we are actually in. Whatever the risk, whatever the trouble, whatever the world might throw at us, it's worth it ... You're worth it, Bunny. By Jove, I'd tear down the gates of Hell themself for you, and consider the effort a bargain at the price!'

'I'd do the same for you,' I replied, nuzzling against him in spite of my misgivings, his careful, sincere affection winning me over as it never failed to. 'But that's exactly why I said everything I've said, A. J. I don't want you to take risks for me; I want you to be safe for me. And it is more dangerous for us right now, whatever you might think. You need to take this more seriously, for my sake, if nothing else.'

'I do take it seriously, Bunny,' he said, kissing me on the nose as I looked up at him. 'I take everything seriously.'

'You take nothing seriously…'

'I take keeping you happy very seriously.'

'It's not about me being happy, A. J., it's about—'

'Bunny, please let's not talk about this apostasy anymore?' he interrupted, the pained expression which flickered unexpectedly across his sharp, handsome features cutting me to the quick. 'I know you think me a heartless beast, but all this talk, it's— I'm not ice all the way down, you know.'

I had to look away, instead tucking my head under his chin, resting my cheek against his chest, weaving my arm about his waist. I could feel Raffles' heart beating through his shirt, the quiet rhythm comforting in its familiarity, troubling in its fragility. I did know. I knew all too well. That was the problem. That was the point.

'I didn't mean to —'

'I know, Bunny. I know.'

'...I love you, you do know that?'

'Of course I know it, rabbit. Just — let's leave it, hm?'

And I did love him. Worse still, though he didn't often say it, I believed that Raffles loved me, too. It was precisely that love which made me so afraid, for myself as much as for him. Love drives men to their best, their worst, their most reckless of deeds; I didn't want to be the driving force behind A. J. running headlong into his own destruction. I didn't want to be the cause of his downfall. The inevitability of that path had always hovered, distant, in the back of my mind, but that year, those months, those weeks it seemed to be rushing towards us like a steam train at full throttle, and eventually I knew I would have to either push him from the tracks or leap myself.

But that night, safe in his rooms at the Albany, with he and I alone together, curled up in our own little Inferno that no one else could touch, I could hold onto the hope that we would be all right. In that brief moment there was no train speeding to destroy us, no great new danger, no sword of Damocles dangling above our heads. There was simply Raffles and me, together and loved, and far from the reaches of an unkind world.

So, at least, I could pretend.