Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Princess

Tessa touched his wrist lightly with her hand. “Be brave,” she said. “It’s not a duck, is it?”

He turned to smile at her, dark hair falling in his eyes, just as the door opened to reveal a neatly dressed parlor maid in a black dress and white mobcap. She took one look at the group on the doorstep, and her eyes widened like saucers.

“Miss Cecily ,” she gasped, and then her eyes went to Will. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned, and bolted back into the house.

“Oh, dear,” said Tessa.

“I have that effect on women,” Will said. “I probably should have warned you before you agreed to marry me.”

“I can still change my mind,” Tessa said sweetly.

“Don’t you dare—,” he began with a breathless half laugh, and then suddenly there were people at the door—a tall man, broad-shouldered, with a mass of fair hair streaked with gray, and light blue eyes. Just behind him was a woman: slender and startlingly beautiful, with Will and Cecily’s ink-black hair and blue eyes as dark as violets. She cried out the moment her gaze fell on Will, and her hands came up, fluttering like white birds startled by a gust of wind.

Tessa released Will’s hand. He seemed frozen, like a fox when the hounds were almost on him. “Go on,” Tessa said softly, and he stepped forward, and then his mother was embracing him, saying, “I knew you’d come back. I knew you would,” followed by a torrent of Welsh, of which Tessa could discern only Will’s name. Their father was stunned but smiling, holding out his arms for Cecily, who went into them as agreeably as Tessa had ever seen her do anything.

For the next few moments Tessa and Gabriel stood awkwardly on the doorstep, not quite looking at each other but not quite sure where else to look either. After a long moment Will drew away from his mother, patting her gently on the shoulder. She laughed, though her eyes were full of tears, and said something in Welsh that Tessa strongly suspected was a comment on the fact that Will was now taller than she was.

“Little mother,” he said affectionately, confirming Tessa’s suspicions, and he swung around just as his mother’s gaze fell on Tessa, and then Gabriel, her eyes widening. “Mam and Dad, this is Theresa Gray. We are engaged to be married, next year.”

Will’s mother gave a gasp—though she sounded more surprised than anything else, to Tessa’s relief—and Will’s father’s gaze went immediately to Gabriel, and then to Cecily, his eyes narrowing. “And who is the gentleman?”

Will’s grin widened. “Oh, him,” he said. “This is Cecily’s—friend, Mr. Gabriel Lightworm.”

Gabriel, half in the act of stretching out his hand to greet Mr. Herondale, froze in horror. “Light wood ,” he sputtered. “Gabriel Lightwood—”

“Will!” Cecily said, breaking away from her father to glare at her brother.

Will looked at Tessa, his blue eyes shining. She opened her mouth to remonstrate with him, to say Will! as Cecily had just done, but it was too late—she was already laughing.

London, Blackfriars Bridge, 2008.

The wind was sharp, blowing grit and stray rubbish—crisps packets, stray pages of newspaper, old receipts—along the pavement as Tessa, glancing quickly from side to side to check for traffic, dashed across Blackfriars Bridge.

To any onlooker she would have looked like an ordinary girl in her late teens or early twenties: jeans tucked into boots, a blue cashmere top she’d gotten for half off during the January sales, and long brown hair, curling just a bit in the damp weather, tumbling haphazardly down her back. If they were particularly sharp-eyed about fashion, they would have assumed the paisley Liberty-print scarf she wore was a knockoff instead of a hundred-year-old original, and that the bracelet around her wrist was vintage, rather than a gift that had been given to her by her husband on their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

Tessa’s steps slowed as she reached one of the stone recesses in the wall of the bridge. Cement benches had been built into them now, so that you could sit and look at the gray-green water below sloshing up against the bridge pilings, or at Saint Paul’s in the distance. The city was alive with noise—the sounds of traffic: honking horns, the rumble of double-decker buses; the ringing of dozens of mobiles; the chatter of pedestrians; the faint sounds of music leaking from white iPod earbuds.

Tessa sat down on the bench, pulling her legs up under her. The atmosphere was shockingly clean and clear—the smoke and pollution that had rendered the air yellow and black when she had been a girl here were gone, and the sky was the color of a blue-gray marble. The eyesore that had been the Dover and Chatham railway bridge was gone too; only the pilings were still sticking up out of the water as an odd reminder of what had once been. Yellow buoys bobbed in the water now, and tourist boats chugged by, the amplified voices of tour guides blaring from their speakers. Buses as red as candy hearts sped by along the bridge, sending dead leaves fluttering to the curb.

She glanced down at the watch on her wrist. Five minutes to noon. She was a little early, but then she always was for this, their yearly meeting. It gave her a chance to think—to think and to remember, and there was no place better for doing either than here, on Blackfriars Bridge, the first place they had ever really talked.

Beside the watch was the pearl bracelet she always wore. She never took it off. Will had given it to her when they had been married thirty years, smiling as he’d fastened it on. He had had gray in his hair then, she knew, though she had never really seen it. As if her love had given him his own shape-shifting ability, no matter how much time had passed, when she looked at him, she saw always the wild, black-haired boy she had fallen in love with.

It still seemed incredible to her sometimes that they had managed to grow old together, herself and Will Herondale, whom Gabriel Lightwood had once said would not live to be older than nineteen. They had been good friends with the Lightwoods too, through all those years. Of course Will could hardly not be friends with the man who was married to his sister. Both Cecily and Gabriel had seen Will on the day he died, as had Sophie, though Gideon had himself passed away several years before.

Tessa remembered that day clearly, the day the Silent Brothers had said there was nothing more they could do to keep Will alive. He had been unable to leave their bed by then. Tessa had squared her shoulders and gone to give the news to their family and friends, trying to be as calm for them as she could, though her heart had felt as if it were being ripped out of her body.

It had been June, the bright hot summer of 1937, and with the curtains thrown back the bedroom had been full of sunlight, sunlight and her and Will’s children, their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews—Cecy’s blue-eyed boys, tall and handsome, and Gideon and Sophie’s two girls—and those who were as close as family: Charlotte, white-haired and upright, and the Fairchild sons and daughters with their curling red hair like Henry’s had once been.

All day Tessa had sat on the bed with Will beside her, leaning on her shoulder. The sight might have been strange to others, a young woman lovingly cradling a man who looked old enough to be her grandfather, her hands looped through his, but to their family it was only familiar—it was only Tessa and Will. And because it was Tessa and Will, the others came and went all day, as Shadowhunters did at a deathbed, telling stories of Will’s life and all the things he and Tessa had done through their long years together.