Page 102 of Unforeseen Affairs
Someone in the hall shouted a question, asking about the identity of the unconscious man on the floor.
Charlotte’s gaze dropped to the fizzing, golden liquid.
Just outside the door, the voice of the authority figure responded, “We’ll bloody well find out, won’t we?”
Colin glanced through the crack in the doorway, but he could not see anyone in full; just a churning mix of humanity passing back and forth.
Then a new voice cut in, high-pitched and demanding: “And where’s Sir Colin Gearing? Someone said he’d be available for commentary!”
“Blast,” Colin hissed. “Newspapermen.”
Charlotte looked at him, clearly quite amused.
“I saw him myself! He threw himself atop that young lady!” another new voice called out.
“No, he didn’t,” cried a young boy. “She was nearly crushed like that Mr. Bass, wasn’t she?”
Charlotte’s grin quickly faded; she looked down uncertainly at her champagne.
Colin’s chest tightened. “Well?” he whispered, not wanting to alert the mob to their presence just yet.
“I saw my mother.”
A chill immediately ran through him, and he caught his breath. For a moment he found his gaze drawn to her glass as well, staring with undue attention at the tiny tracks of bubbles rising to the surface. He set his own glass down on the floor next to him and sat back on his heels.
“Do you not believe me?”
He looked up into her eyes.
“Of course I do,” he said, realizing just in that moment that he meant it.
She nodded almost imperceptibly before continuing.
“She was on the stage out there.”
Colin strained to hear her over the noise outside the door; the men were shouting now about the damage to the theater.
“She was looking for me. I… I just know it, with such certainty, almost as if she’d been calling right into my ear.”
Thankfully, the noise of the crowd outside finally began to fade; their calls and footsteps moved further away, deeper into the maze of backstage halls.
“Was it before the curtain came down?”
Charlotte nodded solemnly. “Right before Mr. Trenwith took hold of me. She was looking… and I whispered back, but… I do not know if she saw me. I think she did. I think I felt her, but… I am not certain.”
To Colin’s shock, a single tear fell from her eye, and traced a path through the dust down her cheek. He recalled her in the back room of Mrs. Stone’s shabby little shop, her eyes fiery with determination.I want to know… everything. What exists beyond these decaying, corporeal vessels.
Her mother. She’d always longed for her mother, who had been ripped from her life so prematurely. The only parent she’d known. The only person who had loved her in those first fifteen years of her life. Colin did not know much about Nancy Jutton, but he felt Charlotte’s deep longing, the ache of the wound her mother’s death had left her with. In some ways it echoed his own loss and despair for Bernard, dead for so many years now. The loneliness of being the only child left behind, with all of his parents’ hopes and expectations now pinned unfairly upon him.
But it was not quite the same. For Charlotte’s longing was something rather greater, so intense and consuming that it cameoff her in waves, lapping at his own feet no matter how far from her he was.
Colin reached for her, and brushed away a second tear with his thumb.
“She saw you,” he breathed. “I am certain. She knew you were here.”
“But how?” Charlotte choked, her voice barely above a whisper. “If you did not see her for yourself?”
“Because she loved you, more than anything. And love like that, it…” He paused, hoping that his sentiment could rise above the clumsiness of his words. “It does not leave the earth when the body perishes. It cannot help but find its way.”
