Society's Expectations & Too Many Complications {Finalist}

Chapter 18

Later in my chambers, after I had dismissed Mary, no longer intent on sharing the night's goings on at this moment, I readied myself for bed, wandering around as if in a dream. My hands drifted up to my lips every so often, wondering if you could still feel the warm imprint of his lingering there.

A rush of cold air made me raise my eyes from my bed to the window. The window swung in the wind; strange, I had not thought that I had opened it. Attending to it, I almost screamed when a figure greeted me at the window.

"Hello Rosalia," Sebastian greeted me, as he held onto the brick-work below my window. Holding himself, he pushed himself upwards, now at the same height as me. "Had to finish what I started."

"What-"

Another interrupted sentence. Sebastian effectively finished that sentence as he pressed his lips to mine, though this was brief and yet like drinking in liquid sunshine for a few moments. All too soon, the pressure was released from me and when I opened my eyes- Sebastian was gone.

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My night was troubled and had wisps of intermittent dreams unlocked in them. Many of them starred Sebastian and kissing- disturbing pictures which both pleased and shocked me to the core.

I had not thought of him.. not in that way, in any matter. He was my friend, my fencing partner, the one that I laughed and bantered with. How could he be anything else?

Suitor had never even appeared in my mind, never even been considered. Suitor was strange and no relation to Sebastian, or had never been. Yet here he was, kissing me. Kissing me and I enjoying it as well.

I... I did not think of him in that way. It was William that I did think of, not Sebastian. The way that he had caressed me... I shook those images away.

When I tried to sort myself out, all I could think of was intense pleasure, and at the work of my friend. Yet I felt usual with William in the suitor's position, vying for my hand. With Sebastian, it felt ridiculous, as if he was staging a ridiculous jest just to hear me laugh.

Yet I had not detected any such jest in his manner, least of all not when he had embraced me. The normal banter had remained afterwards, but everything else had been serious, I was sure not a pretend act.

I was a woman, a woman that was pleased by such acts. It was not love I felt towards Sebastian, not the kind of love that I felt towards William. It was just raw passion, which was a dangerous animal that would not be tamed. I was sure it was so; just a moment of lost thoughts. When I had recovered myself, I had seen the true folly of the situation.

With William, I was matched with in marriage, but it could not be with Sebastian... could it?

These same thoughts circulated my mind with increasing regularity, though I could not puzzle out a definite answer towards them. I was afraid for the next time that I met with Sebastian; had not he been drinking? That would no doubt excuse his behaviour but what of mine? How could I explain away how I had curled my fingers into his hair, kissed him back as one? I blushed at the thought of it.

I was my own worst nightmare. How could I have let Sebastian kiss me? It was uncouth and common of me to do such a thing! I would be disgraced if such practices were heard by others. It was not for me to do any such thing. It was excused, if perhaps you were courting, but I had not been in any such arrangement with Sebastian.

William, I could excuse, though my behaviour had not been right in any matter. At least he had intentions of marrying me, as my mother's smug expression had revealed and in the easy manner in which she sought him out.