Лорен Уиллиг - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

No. Charlotte shoved her mist-frizzed hair back behind her ears. The whole idea was too absurd.

But who else would lay a trail of tarts to catch a unicorn? Charlotte’s fingers tingled with nervous excitement. To catch a unicorn — or a lady?

Depositing her writing desk on her bench, Charlotte followed the tarts. A third tart led down past the dry fountain; a fourth had been pecked but was still recognizable as leading towards the lake; and a fifth brought her across the ornamental bridge. By the third tart, Charlotte’s stroll had turned to a trot; by the fourth, a run. By the time she reached the bridge, she was flying, her skirt lifted high over her ankles and her unkempt hair flapping like a banner behind her.

From the bridge, she could see a shadowy figure by the summer house, half reflected in the water. It was the form of a man, a tall man, in riding clothes, tossing bits of tart to the bad-tempered swans on the lake.

He looked like something out of a picture, out of a tapestry, out of her imagination. Goodness only knew, she had daydreamed him often enough, imagining his step in every squirrel scurrying across the gravel in the garden, every sparrow pecking at the windowpane.

Charlotte skidded to a stop a few feet away from him, lifting a hand to her chest as she struggled for air. He looked, at close range, astonishingly corporeal. Damp had darkened his hair and there was a splotch of raspberry jam on his buckskin breeches where a tart had tumbled wrong side down in the process of being painted.

“Good morning,” he said tentatively, swinging his hat from one hand, and Charlotte realized that he was as nervous as she was, that the whole panoply of pies was as much a shield as it was an apology.

“You didn’t go to India,” she said wonderingly. “You came back.”

Robert tried to look debonair, but he nearly squished the brim of his hat with the force of his grip. “I heard the unicorn hunting was good this season.”

Charlotte wondered how many sleepless nights it had taken him to come up with that line. It sounded as though he had been rehearsing in front of his mirror. The thought made Charlotte’s lips twist in a smile so fond, it hurt. But there was still one little question to be dealt with.

“And if there aren’t any unicorns?” she asked, her heart in her eyes.

Robert didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. “I’m willing to take it on faith if you are,” he said seriously. He held out one gloved hand to her. There was a smear of jam on the palm. “Are you?”

They had stood in just this tableau only a month ago, in the Queen’s chambers. Then, he had been poised and perfect, clothed in a king’s ransom of lace and velvet with a real King beaming on to give his blessing. Now they were alone, save for the irritated swans who squawked and pecked their opinions from the shallows of the lake. No King, no Queen, no courtiers. There was jam on his hand and goose droppings on his boots and the unmistakable spring odor of wet grass, new soil, and incontinent goose as he looked to her for her decision.

This time, it was a question, not a command. And Charlotte finally knew exactly what her answer would be.

“Yes, yes, yes!” she exclaimed, nearly incoherent with glad laughter, and launched herself across the space between them.

The swans were squawking and the squirrels were gibbering, and somehow a tart got squished against the back of her dress in the confusion, but her arms were around Robert’s neck and his around her waist and they were both laughing and talking and kissing all at once and making so little sense that even the swans despaired of them and raised their tail feathers in derision.

“ — love you,” he was saying, somewhat incoherently between kisses. It wasn’t the polished poetry Charlotte used to dream of, but it was more than declaration enough for her.

“You came back!” she exulted, which seemed a perfectly sensible response at the time, and squeezed her arms so tightly around his neck that it was a wonder he wasn’t strangled on the spot. “You came back, you came back, you came back!”

Laughing, he tipped her back and kissed her thoroughly, until her head was spinning and the clouds wheeled overhead in a gray blur and the malcontented mumblings of the local animal life sounded like the cheering of a crowd of loyal subjects.

There was a bench by the side of the summerhouse and by unspoken accord, they wandered over to it together, collapsing onto the marble more by luck than design, since all their attention was entirely on each other.

“Why?” Robert asked, his eyes devouring her face as though she were his own personal jammy tart and he hadn’t eaten for a fortnight. “What made you change your mind?”

Charlotte looked at Robert. Not at the golden cousin she had adored in her childhood or the knight in shining armor she had imagined riding down the lane to Girdings on a cold Christmas Eve. Without even realizing it, she had bidden both of them farewell long ago. The Robert she knew was equally charming, but it was a charm meant to keep people at bay rather than to draw them close; the long, mobile mouth that spoke gallantries so glibly closed tightly around personal confidences. This man was more browned than golden, marked body and soul by those eleven years of which Charlotte would never quite know the whole.

There were pockets of his soul she knew she would never quite know in their entirety, places he had been, demons he had borne, that were as alien to her as the carefully constructed fantasy world she had built for herself was to him.

But, for some reason, they understood each other. And she understood, without having to be told, just how much it had cost him to decide to come back.

“You came back,” she said. “You could have stayed away, but you chose to come back.”

Robert made a wry face, as though contemplating the folly of his prior actions. “As you so wisely pointed out, I had been running away long enough. It was time to come home.”

“Home to Girdings?” It was silly to feel jealous of a house, particularly one she loved so well.

“Home to you,” he said, framing her face in his hands. “That’s the only part that matters. We can stay at Girdings if you like, or set up house in London, or explore the Outer Hebrides. I don’t much care where so long as you are with me.”

“Girdings didn’t feel like home anymore without you here,” Charlotte confessed. “Not for all the books in the library. If you hadn’t come back, I was going to go to India after you.”

Robert appeared inordinately tickled by the idea. “Riding on an elephant?” he suggested.

“Sailing in a boat under the pretense of visiting Penelope,” Charlotte corrected. “I did consider the elephant, but they seem rather large. And I’m not sure they can swim that far.”

Robert looked down at her thoughtfully. “Since I spoiled your plan to follow me, what would you say to going away with me?”

“To India?” The Outer Hebrides also sounded interesting. As Robert had said, Charlotte didn’t care much where they went, so long as they went together.

“We could visit your Penelope. And I’d like to show you where I lived. Parts of it, at least,” he corrected himself. “There are rambling palaces with stonework fine as lace and hidden courtyards filled with flowers and temples grander than our cathedrals, with shrines to gods whose names I could never quite get right.”

“And festivals and elephants and princes wearing rubies as big as your fist?”

“All of that. I can show you India, and when we get back, I’ll need you to show me how to get on at Girdings. You’ll have to teach me how to be a duke.”

“I don’t believe you’ll find it that hard,” said Charlotte.