Fëanor was sitting on a bench in the Botanic Gardens. It was quarter to three and Marisa was late. He'd been waiting for the last forty-five minutes, but had thankfully thought to bring a book so he could look as if he hadn't been checking his watch every ten seconds.
She was doing this on purpose, as usual. She was trying to mess with him, but he refused to be messed with any more than he already had been.
He turned another page, but he barely took in any of the words on it, he couldn't focus on anything but the woman who was going to meet him.
"May I sit here?"
It was her: of course it was her.
"You may… I'm sorry, have we met?" He hadn't planned to throw her words back at her in that way, it had just slipped out.
"No, I believe not. My name is Marisa Delamare."
She didn't use her husband's name, for the first time. Presumably Delamare was her maiden name, although he didn't care about that so much as what it represented: she was free to love him, even if she was still married.
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Delamare," he replied, extending a hand in greeting. "I am Lord Asriel."
She took his hand in her white glove (putting on a show, as she always did, even without the audience; he wondered if she ever stopped worrying about her appearance and the act she put on).
"Will you walk with me?" he asked, getting to his feet, not letting go of her hand.
"I will," replied Marisa, allowing him to tuck his arm in hers and lead her across the park.
He hadn't thought about where he was going to take her at all: not to his apartment, but somewhere else. "Stay with me," he said impulsively. "I have a manor house near Oxford. Come and live with me, just for a week. Now that you're free."
"No," said Marisa immediately. "I can't."
"Can't you? Whatever happened to being able to do whatever you wanted if you set your mind to it?" He was hurt by her refusal, by the way she never even considered the possibility.
"This is different," said Marisa. She sounded sad, regretful, as if she was dreaming of what could have been, and couldn't see it as still possible. "You wouldn't understand."
He did understand, more than she would ever have imagined. Marisa was mortal, and as unusual as she was, she was still constrained by the society she had grown up in, by a million unspoken lessons which taught that there was only one way to go about achieving your ambitions and there was no point in trying to make your own way, because it wouldn't work.
Perhaps he'd expected too much of her. It was unfair to presume that even she would have been able to take him up on an offer like this. But he still felt a deep regret that he would not have her by his side when he put his plan into motion.
"I do understand," he said quietly. "Much more than you would ever think. You can join me, but you believe that you can't. That is the difference between us: you have never had the courage to work outside the system, the Magisterium. I have never seen the need to confine myself to work within it."
Marisa said nothing for a long time.
"If you won't come with me… at least give me one night. You must want to keep this going, if you sent a message. What do you want? Eager to come and find me as soon as your husband's outside of the country, and then too afraid to take a chance and do what your heart tells you?"
"I – I'm not afraid, Asriel, I'm not a coward, but there are limits, not everyone can just push straight through as if they're not there…" she paused, struggling for words. "One of these days it'll catch up with you, you won't be able to just keep ignoring the rules like that, they do exist and the Magisterium, or the CCD, or whoever, they'll find you and they'll…"
He smiled, completely unphased by her implied threat. A lot of people had said that to him, in a lot of worlds, and none of them had ever been right. "If that was going to happen," he said, "it would have done by now. I'm not afraid. Are you coming? Just for one night?"
Marisa hesitated, but he could tell she wanted to accept, and sure enough she said, "All right. But we have to be careful, we mustn't do anything stupid – "
"Marisa, I am never stupid. I'm surprised you could think that of me."
"I never said that you were stupid, I said that you could do stupid things. And I'm sure you've done a lot of things you later regretted."
Only about a billion. Marisa's innocent words had dredged up long-buried memories of the Oath he'd sworn, that had torn apart a whole kingdom and brought ruin upon an entire people. He would never be free of that for as long as he lived, but he'd learnt to avoid dwelling on these memories, to always have a new goal pushing him forward so that there was no time for reflection.
"Maybe I have. Maybe those are things I'll never, ever tell you about."
"Won't you?" asked Marisa. "I can be very persuasive."
There were many possible implications to what she had just said, but he knew that no matter what she tried, she would never be successful. "I'm sure you can," he said in the exact tone of a parent whose toddler was proudly boasting of a new skill. "I'm sure you can."
He would regret that night, as well, for many years. And for many years more, he would think that it was the best thing he had ever done, worth more than Silmarils.