Page 8 of Better in Black
“I’m sure,” Tessa said. They had passed out of the square and onto the Rue de Castiglione. She could see the green fringe of the Tuileries Garden up ahead of them.
“So we got married, you and I,” Will said, glancing down at her as they crossed the street. “We must have been in love.”
His voice went up at the end of the statement—it was clearly a question.Were we in love?Tessa felt her heart cracking. “We went through a lot together,” she said. “Good and bad.”
“So it was more of a shared friendship? Warm feelings, but notromance?” Will actually sounded disappointed. Tessa thought of the other night, in the hotel bedroom, and felt her cheeks turn red.
“Certainly not,”she said.
She thought she saw Will smile. “All right. When did I ask you to marry me?”
They had reached the garden. Standing among the windblown greenery, Tessa closed her eyes. She thought of a cold night, of snow falling white and crisp and perfect, of the stars visible above, where the clouds parted. Of the music that poured from the Institute.
“At the London Institute,” she told him now, her voice whipped away by the wind, “at Christmas. You said that I should marry you and stay with you and never leave you, for you could not bear another day of your life to go by that did not have me in it.”
Will took her hands in his. Passersby parted around them, hurrying past what must have seemed like just another pair of lovers in Paris. Tessa paid them no heed. She was looking up into Will’s face, seeing every part of it that was beloved to her: every curve and angle, every scar. “Those words,” he said. “It is as if I am hearing them not with my ears, but with my heart. I know that I love you—Ifeelthat I love you, and yet there is so much I cannot remember. Our first kiss…”
His voice trailed off, his blue eyes troubled.
“This memory spell,” Tessa said, “it can be removed, with the help of a warlock. Please, Will. I know this is not at all what you would have wanted. It is not only me you have forgotten, but so much that is precious to you.”
He held her hands tighter. “Yet I wished to forget,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me what I wanted to erase from my mind.”
“But it won’tmeananything to you,” Tessa cried. “I can tell you that you forgot Ella, your sister. Yoursister,Will. And Jem, yourparabatai.”
“I have aparabatairune,” Will said quietly. “But it is white. A scar. Myparabataiis dead?”
The question hit like a blow. “Not exactly—”
“But I lost him,” Will said. “There was some separation. I know that much, just from the look on your face. I want to remember you, Tessa Gray. But I am terrified of what else there might be that I have forgotten. What kind of pain I felt that I could not bear to the extent that I wished it away. My sister—”
“Is dead, yes. I can only tell you, Will, that you were still happy. Even having lost what you lost, you were happy.”
“I want to believe that.” He folded her hands inside his own, trapping them between his palms. “I want to believeyou.I just—” He glanced away, up at the darkening sky. “Let me have tonight, at least, to decide. Let us do something Parisian and romantic, as any wedded pair might do.”
Tessa took a deep breath, inhaling past the pain lodged in her chest. “What sort of thing?”
Will was still gazing at the sky. “The opera,” he said. “I have always wanted to go to the opera in Paris, I think.”
That was Jem’s wish, not yours. If you wanted to go, it was to accompany him, and see how much he enjoyed the music.
But Tessa only nodded slowly. A plan had begun to form in her mind, born out of desperation. A plan that depended on her knowledge of Will and of his heart. Even if his mind had changed, his soul, she felt, had not.
“All right,” she said. “Let us go to the opera.”
—
They made their way back to the hotel quickly and in silence, hurrying to return before the sun set. Upon reaching the lobby, as they crossed the parquet floor to the grand staircase, Tessa caught sight of a familiar sign.
THE WORLD BEYOND?
Tonight, for the special pleasure of our guests, the MEURICE is hosting A GREAT SÉANCE, led by the famed Madame Dorothea…
Tessa drew her hand out of Will’s. “Go on upstairs,” she said. “I must fetch a new book from the reading room. I shall meet you in the suite, in a moment.”
Will assented with a lack of surprise that told Tessa that even if he did not remember her specifically, he entirely expected that he would have married someone who enjoyed books. He took himself off upstairs with only a quick reminder that the maid would arrive in their suite soon, to help Tessa get ready for the opera.
Tessa made her way to the reading room. She found the door closed, but eased it open as quietly as she could, her pulse jumping as she peered into the gloom beyond and saw Madame Dorothea moving about.
