Chapter Fifteen
Windermere Lake was an expansive body of water in north western England. Early spring left the grassy hills pale chartreuse and the trees were just beginning to wake from their long slumber. Our position on the lake was nestled within one of the peaks, with a short walk through the forest to the water. There were many mansions hidden throughout the range, all vacation homes of families or seasonal rentals. We arrived two days prior to the Black family, so my father and I had hiked much of the nearest land around us without them.
I understood why the Notts stayed in Lyme; everything seemed different when one was not at home. The unfamiliarity of the sounds, like the house creaking and settling, the chirruping of different birds, and all the new territory to examine and explore, it had a kind of weightlessness to it. As if by being there, a burden was lifted.
When the Blacks arrived, I was two miles or so from the house on a dock, watching the glassy, smooth surface of the lake and a bit of light fog settling across the horizon. The only reason I knew they arrived was because I happened to turn around. From the bottom of the range, I could see the front door of the mansion just as well as someone on the second floor could see me on the shore. Three figures emerged, carrying their trunks behind them, and waited at the door until they were let inside.
Manners dictated that I should have turned back and greeted them, but I wanted to wait a bit longer. The lake was so still and reflective it might have been a pane of glass. I wished I was a painter and could have captured the distinct shadows and reflections, the varying hues of the hills reflected on the outer edge of the lake, and the shades of cerulean on the water. Nature always reminded me that, left wild, people and landscapes were the most pure and beautiful. We had heavily landscaped and proper English gardens on our property, but nothing compared to this.
I thought of the Romantic poets who wrote about the changing of seasons. John Keats and his pledge to autumn. In a letter Keats wrote to his lover, Fanny Brawne, he stated that he almost wished they were butterflies and lived but three days, because the two of them would live more in three days than most did in fifty years. Such sentiment it was, to receive such a letter. Illogical, I hastily discerned, for anyone would want to live more than three days. But I thought, while looking out across the still waters, Keats might have been right about something.
After a few more moments watching the water, I turned back and walked up the lane through the forest to the manor to greet my guests. The trees leading up to the house were in full white buds. As I came up the lane, I noticed petals scattered across the dirt path ahead of me, swirling in the wind over my feet.
I looked up as I made it to the front of the house just before the trees cleared to see Narcissa outside on the porch, frozen in place, her hand wrapped around the last trunk she was about to bring inside. As I lifted my hand to greet her, a great gust of wind rose up and the ends of my hair, which I'd charmed long again, swirled around me. The blossoms from the trees scattered, catching in currents of the strands of white and the black coat I wore over my clothes.
"Hello, Narcissa," I greeted softly, as I tried to untangle the small blossoms from my hair.
The past months hardened her. Her brow was furrowed in a near-permanent etch of worry, and her eyes were darkened from sadness. I might have been the culprit for some of the heaviness she carried, but I was not the only one responsible.
"You missed some," she responded, placidly, coming down the stone steps.
She crossed the distance of yard between us and pulled the remaining buds from my hair and clothes, dropping them softly to the ground beside us. Her fingers tangled one last time through my hair, briefly touching the side of my face enough to make my skin burn where hers had been. My heart pattered softly in my chest.
"Have you been given a tour?" I asked, once she finished.
"No," she admitted, "Your parents took mine to show them the village first. I still had my things to take in, so I stayed."
Magic could have helped her in mere seconds, but I didn't question the true reason why she wished to stay behind. I had doubts that Narcissa wished to join society in any capacity, and no doubt her parents allowed her, given what she was going through. With a nod, I walked up the stairs to the house and plucked the trunk from the porch from its place. I carried it into the doorway and left it with the others, which the servants who remained at the house were moving.
I showed her quickly through the house. The foyer was a narrow room with intricate octagonal tile shapes of white with splashes of mosaic colours to create small flowers across the floor. The staircase was the foremost feature, dark stained cedar with dark knots and swirls of wood. The main floor consisted of a large parlour, a kitchen and formal dining room, and a breakfast room. The upper portion of the stairs held the bedrooms, another parlour with an array of books, and the bathrooms.
"I suppose it is smaller than what you are used to," I said, as I led her back down the stairs.
"There is nothing wrong with small," she remarked, her voice sounding strained. "I've learned as much as of late. Large homes can feel like mausoleums."
I clasped my hands behind my back as I realized I had been swinging them too vigorously. "I…oh, er, yes. I suppose they very well can be," I replied hastily.
A ghost of the former Narcissa appeared for a moment with a soft sneer. I waited for her wicked tongue to unfurl and lash out at my awkwardness, but she did not take the opportunity as she might have had before she rejected my proposal and then I subsequently rejected her.
"My sister has a flat in London," she said, crossing her arms, "Would you ever think to own one?"
"In London?" I answered, "Oh, perhaps I would."
"And where might you install your greenhouse, then?" she asked, teasing and sidling around me, "Or your drafting table? Your book collections? To say nothing of your elaborate wardrobe."
"I suppose the plants, at the least, can be suspended from the ceiling," I quipped.
She laughed lightly. "You're still clever, then. That is good."
Narcissa jumped from the last stair onto the tile floor and turned around as she entered back into the main room. I hesitated on the last step. I could follow her, as I once always would. We could fall into the same chess pattern as we always did, but the words, I was now painfully aware, meant nothing. Verbally sparring with Narcissa was a source of entertainment, no doubt, but I felt intrinsically that I needed something more—something with substance and weight. She was once the most formidable woman I had ever met, and I knew there was a part of her that still was, but the version of her I was so in awe of felt hollow now.
"Do I sense disappointment in you, Lucius?" she asked, sharply, her keen eyes matching every turn of expression on my face, sensing things I did not know I was sharing.
"No," I replied, "You have never disappointed me, Narcissa."
She smiled cruelly. "I can think of a few times at least."
"It's in the past," I said, sighing.
"Is it?" she asked, tilting her head, her braid slipping down her shoulder. "Is anything really in the past? Is it ever gone? I ask myself that all the time. What does it mean to mark such sequences of time? What makes the past the past?"
I hesitated for a moment, verifying her speaking wasn't simple monologue before I answered, "Because you cannot return to the past."
"You can," she argued.
Sighing and reaching to rub the spot in between my eyebrows, I snapped, "Yes, fine, you can technically go back in time. That doesn't exactly change the past for you, though. You, the one who goes back. You know both instances simultaneously."
"Would you take it back?" she asked calmly, "If you could choose not to offer a proposal to me…?"
"I have never taken it back," I burst out, in a heat of anger I hadn't known was inside of me, "I haven't—it's always been there, hanging in the balance. Waiting for you."
What words I did not say was that I had been waiting for her, but I did not think I needed to. It felt like she saw everything inside of me as if I wore translucent skin, my body all exposed wire and bone.
Her eyes went wide. I sat down on the stairs and folded my arms around my knees.
"You don't listen to me," I told her, "You never do—"
"You don't speak!" she shouted, her fists clenched at her sides.
"I never get a word in!" I shouted back at her, "You interrupt me constantly—"
"I don't!" she interjected.
"You just have!" I shot back.
She took two steps back, recoiling as if I had struck her. It was not me, I determined, but the truth finally slapping some sense in her. Finally, the mirror was pointed at her. Narcissa saw her own reflection. And part of me hoped she drowned as a result, so fuelled with petty and pent up anger. So, she had disappointed me. By not being infallible, by not taking the world by storm and living up to the impossibly high standards I dreamed for her. By not wanting me or the safety I could have afforded her, if only she wasn't too stubbornly set on suffering.
"Well," Narcissa said, exhaling through her nose, "I'm far too damaged to live up to your expectations now."
"You are the most profoundly melodramatic person I have ever met," I replied, feeling exhausted.
"Oh?" she replied haughtily, "And have you met many people up in your ivory tower in Wiltshire, Lucius Malfoy?"
I stood up from the stairs, my jaw set tightly in rage. I strode by her and picked up the black cloak I left earlier on the rack by the door. I tucked it over my arm and opened the door.
When I was partially out of the door, I turned and said, "I met you, didn't I?"
"If I recall," she said, "I did a lot of climbing."
The door slammed shut between us and I went striding off across the lawn in a fury. No one pierced beneath the subcutaneous layer of my skin the way she did, simply by existing. And worse, we fought over nothing. Petty digs that worked their way into our existences, but had no bearing on anything. I had no reason to work myself up this way and fight with her nearly every chance I got.
I reached the beach and walked to the end of the dock, and there I paced for some time before I sat down on the ledge, dangling my feet over the side. It was still far too cold for swimming, but the water would be warm enough by the time we ended our stay in early summer. Perhaps, I thought, we might prolong it and become like the Notts.
Try as I might to refocus and calm myself, I was shaking all over with anger. I was certain no one had ever infuriated me so much. She was most assuredly going to live the rest of her life destitute because of her mangled sense of pride. Would she even write, I wondered? All that fear and trepidation over it, yet it was the only life line she was willing to cling to. She could not—would not—marry me under the pretence of helping her, her pride would not suffer for it. Perhaps she felt too that there was something deeply inadequate inside of me.
She did not leave my thoughts when I returned half an hour later. I found the house empty; Narcissa must have joined our parents in the village or forged her own path. This did little to dissipate my temper, and thus I found myself in the guest room she occupied.
Her things were sloppily unpacked. Trunks were turned over, threads of pearls and swaths of blue and green silk slipped out onto the floor. There were dozens or more of books she had taken with her for reading. I wasn't sure if she tore through her things while she was angry or if she was just naturally this sloppy, though I was inclined to believe the latter.
Softly, I sat on the edge of her bed. She brought a blanket threaded like sky blue and embroidered with flowers and trees. It was worn but cared for and I imagined her mother must have made it for her. I could add this to the list of things I did not know about her because she never told me.
Had I not been open with her? My trepidations and fears, worn so clearly on my face she could have mapped them. Every admiration and ambition intertwined in the books I read. The signs were everywhere and she seemed to know them as she knew herself, but I knew nothing about her. She never gave me any signs or indications of how she felt or what she wanted. I might not have said the words out loud, but I thought she knew.
I thought she knew. Was it possible Narcissa understood as little about me as I did about her? Then all of this – all that I thought she understood about it, my reasoning and feelings about the events that happened between us. She might not know.