An update at last! I've thought about, and written out this chapter about five different ways and the final product is about a mishmash of those very five. Please feel free to spout theories if you have any and, as always, any constructive criticism you can offer would be helpful. I'm so sorry it took me so long to update, but as my classes are starting to cover more difficult topics, I hope you understand that my freetime is very limited.
Thank you for the reviews I've received on the previous chapter, and again, I own nothing you recognize. The beginning's a fun poke at Kartik/Ithal. :D
The first hour of morn finds me sitting on weary heels, a most undignified, exasperated figure of a man, next to a positively shuddering Ithal, holding a tin bucket to his pale lips as he, with agonizing effort, empties the contents of his night's dejection into it in great, violent lurches.
Needless to say, I've not found his company more pleasurable.
"That is the last time you are ever drinking," I pronounce bewilderedly as Ithal rises, shivering and wan-faced, from the bucket's seemingly bottomless mouth for what I am certain must have been the seventh time within the past, gruesome half-hour.
For all his unceasing trembling and groaning incessantly of pain, Ithal is surprisingly quick to snap back, and with all the pout-lipped defiance of a child.
"I don't recall crawling out of your womb," He grumbles, most disagreeable,
"Interesting. Do you recall vomiting what looked like rat droppings on my crotch, of all places, while I kindly attempted to hold back your hair?" I say pleasantly through a clenched smile,
"Do you want me to say sorry, yet again?"
"If it will help my trousers smell less like years-old vinegar-"
"Stop yelling!"
Ravena's shrill, impatient cry is quite possibly the closest thing one can envision a sharp blade to the ears would feel like. Ithal and I are both startled into jolting by her sudden reappearance; her fair, minute form presently adopting an unnerving stance: hands tightly gripping the waist, and one, tiny foot tapping loudly with disapproval.
"You fight like old couple!" She informs us disgustedly, raising her chest in a mode reminiscent to a sparrow's. Ithal catches the stifled amusement in my look, and a moment later, we both burst into laughter.
"Come now, missus," I say, offering Ithal the mock courtesy of my extended hand. Ithal snorts at the sight of it.
"If anyone's the wife, it's you," He remarks dryly as I pull him up with a deliberate vigour that sends him nearly toppling to his feet.
"Be gentle will you? I'm ill!" Ithal moans, turning a delicate shade of green.
"Whatever my mistress desires," I tease, an all too triumphant smile set on my lips, and Ithal sends me a hot-eyed glare that could surely penetrate all manner and form of steel. Yanking his hand from where I've gripped it loosely within my palm, he thrusts his nose heavenward, wounded, and offers a very amused Ravena the graciousness of his other.
Mistaking her brother's sorry attempt at dignity as some newfangled child's game, Ravena takes his proffered hand rather elegantly, an air of demureness evident in her little gait. She walks as if she were the queen herself, as if her small, fragile toes could part the seas, and with a high, spirited giggle I suspect she's been holding in, she falls back easily into her sweet, carefree toddle, true only to herself.
She cannot know that in the bosom of Spence, in the heart of London itself, there are those who cannot simply fall back. Those who can only continue walking in that invisible, limitary line they've been taught to follow, without a moment's remotest deviation.
A linear path.
I wonder if one's destiny is similar, a title branded upon one's soul at birth: a lady, a duke, a baron. A Kartik. No surprises; only what is expected.
Can everyone truly be satisfied with their place, their role in the grand scheme of things, no matter how small it increasingly makes them feel? Powerless?
Or is it terribly wrong, punishable to hope for something more?
I follow Ithal and Ravena's departing figures with a weariness so heavy, I feel it like a sodden cloak upon my back.
Accept your fate. It is my only shield against such troubling, burdensome thoughts, and it is thinning, weakening by the day.
"Good night, Kartik!" Ravena launches herself savagely upon my waist with the full breadth of her arms, a shy, dimpled smile growing on her lips. "Thank you for bringing my brother back."
I gently muss the top of her white-blonde head, smiling as well. "It is nothing."
Ithal approaches us, his face lowered. "Go now, Ravena. I'll be there in a minute."
Ravena pulls away from our tight embrace with dramatized reluctance, her mouth thrust into a mournful pout. She looks up at her brother's doting eyes, the cool crisp blue of Mediterranean seas, and her voice trembles with a familiar fear.
"Promise? Don't leave me like Papa."
Papa. The very word pierces through Ithal's chest like an unseen arrow, and he shrinks back with the overwhelming throb of it. Their father. It is a matter Ithal has discussed very little... I know only that he blames himself for that sudden, untimely death, and the long, unceasing gloom it has cast over his family.
"I promise." Ithal's tender, beseeching gaze is more an apology than anything else.
Ravena is instantly all smiles. "Okay."
She totters away from the encompassing swallow of our shadows, the dying light from the camp fire reaching out to wander reverently along her milk-white skin.
Ithal turns to me, his expression one of unutterable appreciation.
"Kartik, I-"
"It is alright," I say, discomfort making my voice unnecessarily gruff, "I know you would have done no less for me."
Ithal surprises me with a forlorn smile. "We are more alike than you think."
He claps me hard on the shoulder, and before I have my back fully to him, he adds, so softly I almost do not hear, "In the end, they will always choose to break our hearts."
The mouth of night opens to release a long, piercing yawn of the bitterest cold.
I am alone and devoutly thankful for it, sitting on a worn, dirt path whose destination is distorted, transformed into something frightening to the mind, something no one would dare venture towards as the shadows deepen increasingly and consume it whole.
I raise my face to the starlit sky, the cutting wind running its harsh course against my dark cheeks... myself distressed, though I can scarce imagine why, by Ithal's low, parting words that have since risen to a terrible and fiery crescendo in my ears.
They will always choose to break our hearts.
I should not be troubled by this at all... for it is only the truth, admittedly, and haven't I always known it from the very start? From the very first moment Gemma transcended the tricky plateau from foe to friend with such startling ease?
Friend to something so much more?
But it would appear not, apparently.
Perhaps I've been telling myself only a more palatable version of the truth. The way women, people, I've long observed, often steel themselves against the harsh and unforgiving reality of things they cannot change: "I am not beautiful, but beauty is hardly everything." "I require no husband. I am perfectly content by myself."
And yet, when told not beautiful or surrounded suddenly by peers, whose arms are linked happily to those of handsome, adoring husbands, they realize, with tears smarting their eyes and disillusionment breaking their souls, that they haven't armed themselves at all...
They've surreptitiously permitted themselves to hope, allowed themselves to nurse a secret, burning longing to be informed completely wrong: "You are beautiful." "Will you do me the honour of being my wife?"
"Gemma and I can never be," I speak as I have never spoken to myself before. Clearer. Firmer. Less willing to simply state the truth but eager to truly grasp it.
To understand.
"Gemma and I can never be." Never, ever be.
The keen, biting wind carries my words to some shrouded, hidden place where they will remain forever unheard. And I find I am aching, painfully hollow with the din of one terrible question: Why?
My trip to the boathouse is made thoroughly miserable by the persistence of misunderstood thoughts.
I am weary yet I dread the vicious pull of sleep, where the curtains of my consciousness shall part to reveal another, more sinister reality, a stage burdened with the weight of a thousand otherworldly players, swords raised, fangs bared; Gemma lost, forever irretrievable in my arms until I wake again.
I do not recall thrusting open the door, or twisting the knob of my one gas-lamp to a low hiss. Everything is an incomprehensible blur of sound, emotion, and movement. My heart feels as though it shall fall straight to the floor of my stomach, so heavy it is with the night's events, and it is only the release of a particularly shrill scream that effectively startles me out of misery.
Taken aback, I spin from my place against my makeshift desk, injuring my backside rather painfully in the process.
A sudden hot flush blooms against the umber of my cheeks at what my eyes take in. I very nearly mistake the chemised woman for Gemma, but the hope is dashed unkindly as the lamp-light lends clarity to my eyes...
The girl is much smaller than Gemma, devoid of the latter's long, spindly limbs, and that memorably pronounced, exotic jaw. Her eyes, a shade darker than Gemma's unusual green, are startlingly enormous, like a kitten's, and her chin is elegantly narrow, framed heavily on either side by long, straggly auburn hair.
"You Sir!" She yelps, pulling a sorry-looking threadbare coat up to her not so humble bosom, much of which is on rather prominent display in a daringly cut chemise, "What the devil do you think you're doing?"
"I should like to ask you the very same question!" I demand in what comes out as little more than a strangled croak, and the young woman regards me as one would regard a hopelessly inept child.
"You mean before you came in? Bungling, loud as you please?" She tosses her wild, red hair over her shoulders in annoyance, and it is a most becoming gesture on her. "I was sleeping."
"With whom?" The words are out of my mouth before I am able to reign them like horses eager to run, and her previously narrowed eyes widen in affronted shock.
"I'm not a harlot, sir!" She exclaims, surprisingly wounded, laying an almost tearful emphasis on the word 'sir' as though to point out how sincerely undeserving I am of the title.
"Well," I say, feeling every bit ashamed of myself for the slight, "I do apologize. Although, I must admit I am uncertain of what to think. I do not know many ladies who steal from of the security of their beds to sleep in boathouses in the dead of night,"
"Then you do not know many ladies," She decides, still stung, slipping her pale, delicate-looking arms through the ratty sleeves of her threadbare coat.
"Do you live here?" She prompts all of a sudden, and I stiffen at the terrific wonderment in her voice.
"Made that connection, have you?" I say, turning to lift the moleskin cover of the Odyssey as if I am in the mood for a bit of leisurely reading. In truth, I am overwhelmed. Never in all my life have I been seized with an unfounded desire to stare at a woman for so long. It is an altogether different need. I cannot compare the sensation to anything else except for what I feel when Gemma is nearby. Except then…
"I see, well… I apologize in turn. Indeed, I was unaware." Her voice has grown richer with relief, and I twist my head to restore my gaze upon the smooth, ghostly pallor of her face.
It is a slim face, gaunt, and extraordinarily white as if carved from marble.
"I…" She clears her throat hesitantly, "I've been to the camp, to see Mother Elena. It has been a small tradition of mine to see her every year, to have my fortune read. Unfortunately, at the end of my visit, my horse seemed terribly spooked by these woods and started off without me–"
Her lower lip quivers at the unpleasant recollection, and to my amazement, she buries her head into the cleft of her lap, shuddering with the threat of sobs.
Pity smoothes the creases from my stunned expression like an exacting hand.
"It is alright," I soothe, lowering myself to my knees so that I am able to properly look at her, "I am sure your horse will turn up somewhere nearby in the morning. These woods are known to frighten at night. You... you may stay here, for the moment, if you wish."
She turns those immense green eyes to me in a look of stunned gratefulness, eyes so achingly close to Gemma's I must will myself to turn away lest she find my gaze too searching.
"Thank you so much... Mister...?"
"Kartik," I say sheepishly, when I've realized a second too late that she'd been waiting with unfailing patience for me to reveal my name.
"Cecilia," She returns the courtesy with a shy, watery smile. "Cecilia Radcliffe thanks you."
My vehement pleas and gentlemanly contentions to sleep outside, by the door, have been thoroughly ignored by this vexing Cecilia Radcliffe.
Though we've nearly two feet to separate us and layers upon layers of boat canvases wound as tightly as the thread of cocoons about our bodies to ward off the growing chill, a torrid ache builds within me, and with such a breathtaking ferocity, I inwardly curse being born a man.
For women, as far as I've surmised, do not surrender so easily to the baser of their inclinations.
Truly, what is the matter with me? It is not as if this Cecilia Radcliffe is the first to catch and truly tempt my eye. I've beheld many handsome women before, and on those occasions, have found myself perfectly capable of upholding some admirable degree of composure. So why now? What is different?
Need burns across the planes of me like embers devouring a forest with ease. I am certain I am catching a deadly fever. Sweat seeps into the angry twists of my hair. It soaks my shirt through despite the sighs of cool drifting in from outside. Make it stop. Make it all stop.
Like a dream, she is atop me at once. Her fingertips, delightfully cool as ice, trace feather-light pathways along the sides of my jaw. The lacy, ribboned straps of her sheer chemise have sunk far below the cliffs of her shoulders, revealing the eager heave of her chest as she plants herself delicately above me, straddling my waist with seemingly weightless legs.
I reach for the crook of her neck. Her smile is curved with the promise of fulfillment. Her heat is intoxicating, and she kisses my throat full, kissing and kissing with gathering strength, until she reaches my lips that are half-open in their contented sigh. Her tongue parts them further, and she pulls me in with the exhilarating force of her kiss.
"Kartik," she pleads restlessly against my jaw, her voice rising then breaking to a weak, shuddering moan, "Kartik."
In the part of my mind that is safely apart from the spiralling situation, I long to push her off, to demand fiercely what has happened to the pair of us that has us both acting like lesser beasts. Then. Then there is Gemma. Her face dim, shifting, as though it were a reflection on water.
This is wrong.
As though she's glimpsed something unwelcome in my eyes, Cecilia lowers her sweltering lips to my ear, her voice astonishingly sharp in its whisper,
"You will be the death of her."