Page 43 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
She shrugged.‘No plan.No purpose.Just… now.’
In the weeks since she’d last seen him, he must have been keeping himself busy with his woodwork, as little nicks and cuts dashed his fingers and ink circled his nails.He pulled his gloves from his pocket.
‘You and Elise aren’t together, then?’she asked in a rush.‘When I saw you here talking about that block, I thought that maybe you and her had… that you were…’
He shook his head.‘Elise is like a sister to me.Not that I need more of them.Don’t you realise?It will take me a lifetime to forget you.’He shoved his gloves back into his pocket.‘If you don’t want to make plans, I understand.Your own life has been a long time coming.But will you accept a promise?I promise I will love you and no other.For all my days.I know it.I don’t want to hem you in, but I also can’t let you go.Can we have that?A promise to be in love?’
‘You don’t know what it means to love me.I can be bedridden for weeks.I cry in my sleep.I am not good at suffering in silence.And I don’t look the way a young woman should.’
‘I don’t care about any of that,’ he said, his voice a rough plea.
‘You don’t care because you don’t know,’ she whispered.‘Mama is out, and Father will be hours once he starts talking ideas.Come upstairs.You need to see what you are promising to love.’
She held out her hand, and he clasped it.With a tug, she led him to the stairs.She took the climb as she always did,left right, left right, but this time, there was no distraction.No paintings or architecture or kisses to conceal that this was how she moved through the world.Each scuff of his boots fell slow and laboured behind her.In her bedroom, she lit the candle as he closed the curtains.He lowered himself to sit on the bed, crossed his legs at the ankles and tucked them beneath the frame.With his palms on the edge of her mattress, he balanced there, his body large and cumbersome in her small, practical room.Candlelight flickered, lending a warm glow to his skin that was absent in sunlight.His dark eyes caught the flame.
She started at her waist.Pulled the tie.Twisted the skirt and unfastened the button.Pulled the petticoat strings.It was a day with no maid, so she was wearing a blouse that buttoned at the front.Johannes’s gaze followed her fingers.
‘You may be having the opposite effect you intended,’ he said through a lusty breath.
‘We shall see,’ she whispered.
Florence untucked her blouse.Pushed it off one shoulder, then the other.Loosened the buttons at her wrist, and with a grunt she lacked the energy to smother, she shrugged it from her shoulders.It fell onto her skirts, suspended there until she pushed those down, too.This was the hardest bit, the stepping out of her petticoats.
But when she wobbled, he held her hand until she regained her balance.
‘Don’t you fall again.I could not bear it.’He slid off the bed, to his knees.As she raised one foot, then the other, he tugged her cotton and flannels from around her ankles.He unlaced her boots, too, and his hair curled around her fingers as she gratefully used him to steady herself.Boots were always a struggle.
Corset, drawers, and chemise.That was all that was left.
He took up his place on the edge of the bed again, his expression unreadable.Or perhaps, she chose not to see what was there.Desire, attraction… all of it would shatter.Like when her husband had first come upon her dressing in the daylight or when she was washing, and he’d turned away in shock, and later, disgust.He had blown out the candle whenever he came to her, until the visits became less frequent, slipping into pointlessness when more than a year later, she had still not fallen with child.She made slow work of the fastenings.Her corset dropped.Her drawers were easier to remove than her skirts, and easier to step out of and kick away.
One last item.
One last piece of protection.
One last layer of flimsy armour.
‘I need help with my chemise,’ she said, once her courage had congealed enough to add a little voice to her whisper.‘I cannot pull it over my head.’
Even seated on the edge of her bed, Johannes was almost eye to eye with her.He only needed to tilt his head to meet her gaze.He caught the hem and used it to drag her into his space until her feet were between his and she stood between his thighs.He traced the tips of his fingers over her knees, across the scars that carried no sensation and the skin that itched, then along her thighs, beneath the fabric, over her hips, catching and gathering the muslin as he moved.He rose a little to draw her chemise over her head, freeing her arms one at a time.
Nothing left, then.Nothing but her and her misaligned shoulder blades and her scars as thick as rope.
He pressed his palm against her, and she turned to his gentle nudge, obedient under his inspection.
She knew every line.Every uneven stitch and every knot of skin that had thickened and swirled into skin like pallid red marble.The indentation where the wire hook had sat exposed for months as the joints beneath refused to heal.The crosses that had been catgut thread, the puckering and the scarred sores where she had been unable to stop herself from scratching.
‘How many times did they cut you open?’he asked.
‘Once on the knee.Twice on my shoulder.I was awake when they took out the wire.I was too scared to go to sleep again.’
‘And it hurt?’
‘Like the blazes.’
She felt his touch with delayed sensation as he pressed against the parts of her that were already dead but the living pieces beside them still registered his impression.He traced her.Cut by cut.Stitch by stitch.Pain by pain.
‘I don’t think I’ve met a stronger person in my life.Not just here,’ he said, kissing the small of her back, then turning her to face him.‘But also here—’ He kissed the place between her breasts, then stood to press his lips to her forehead.‘And here.Every piece of you is stronger than I can comprehend.’
