Star's Crossing

59: Every Ocean She Had Not Crossed

It would be her path, and she would make it.

"Mare," said Lilith as they approached the drink-laden tables. "I do so dread the idea of leaving you alone, but might you excuse me a moment?"

Mare searched her friend's half-hidden eyes. Her mask was white with silver bead and embroidery; it gave the impression Lilith was hewn of veined marble. "You're sneaking off. To meet whom, pray tell?"

Lilith clucked her tongue and reached for a glass of champagne, but Mare did not mistake the flare of pink that rose in her cheeks.

Impossible. Lilith had procured a suitor so soon? "Who is it?"

"You have had your secrets, haven't you?" Lilith arched a brow and drank. A smile quirked the corners of her lips. "Might I have mine?"

"Yes," said Mare, a bit envious. "Of course. Go."

"I'll find you soon." Lilith squeezed Mare's hand and was gone, swallowed by the throngs of silk and suitors.

"And who was that darling songbird?"

Mare spun, delighted, and threw her arms around Medley's neck. "You came!"

"If I'd known the reception would be thus, I'd have arrived hours earlier." Medley laughed, embracing Mare before pushing her away and adjusting her perfect curls. "My, doesn't red suit you?"

Mare beamed, sliding her gloved hands over the bodice of her bright gown. "I thought to dress for battle."

"Battle is overrated," said Medley with a wave of her hand. She retrieved a pair of champagne glasses and offered the second to Mare. "I'm more partial to dancing. Whom shall I steal? I adore this song."

Mare drank, glowing with Medley's presence. She wore the fine gown and mask she'd shown Mare back at the estate. With her white-gold hair she looked like a fairy queen; someone beautiful but dangerous, written straight from the pages of a tall tale.

Mare didn't mistake the longing looks of boys throughout the hall. Medley was the kind of beauty that made men stupid. Her sharp wit only made them dafter. She'd married a busy but equally dangerous man, whose wit rivaled hers and whose beauty was equal. Mare longed to see them together as she'd seen her other sisters with their husbands; was Medley different in this count, or the same?

"What's going on in that authoress's head of yours, Mare?" Medley polished her drink and replaced it in the same motion. Every movement sent ripples of light over her ostentatious gown; topaz shone in her ears and at her throat. "I appreciate that you've been posting letters, but I am dying to read the conclusion of that novel of yours."

"Soon," said Mare, who'd been procrastinating completing her novel though she now knew the end. Or, perhaps, because she knew it. "And I was wondering of your husband. It's been so long since I've seen him. How is he?"

"Ask him yourself." Medley gestured, and Mare followed her sister's gaze across the room. Matilde, whom Mare recognized for her gown of emerald, was in animated conversation with a sweeping shadow of a man. Mare's parents engaged as well. "Out of the blue, he arrived, determined to bring me. I told him I'd cast myself off the widow's walk if he came; I wanted a night to be free as a naked nymph. To be looked upon lustfully by young, handsome, untouched men."

Mare choked on her champagne and her sister dissolved into laughter.

"And to think, you're the writer!" Medley giggled and drank again. "Of course Aaron insisted then, and look how he's donned his newest suit. It puts all of the others to shame."

"You are a horror," said Mare, but she gazed at her sister with open admiration. "How can you stand it? So much drama?"

"Mare, if I may impart some worldly wisdom and shed light upon this fearful sacrament of marriage." Medley turned, and the full light of her pale brown eyes was incandescent. "If you marry, marry for what you and your man wish alone."

"What do you mean?"

Medley pointed with her champagne flute. "Look, mother and father married for love and family. Mathilde married for equality and career. Mollie married for respect and security. And Madrigal married for travel and companionable silence."

Mare blinked, feeling foolish. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Perhaps you should. The world is changing. Choice is becoming more powerful than tradition, and smart matches are no longer given, they're forged." Medley shrugged. "But to temper them, you must not only know what you want, you must declare it."

I believe in love. Mare's stomach twisted. "It can't be that simple."

"Oh, well, nothing is simple. Certainly not marriage. Certainly not for a woman." Medley sighed and looked across the room at her husband. The spark in her eyes turned to fire, burning. "But the last thing it needs to be is complicated."

Aaron spotted his wife. He wore a mask of black silk and when he saw Medley, his severe, narrow face split wide in a radiant grin. He excused himself from the Atwoods and began to make his way through the crowd as though summoned.

"Your men will be here," Medley said. "Won't they?"

Mare nodded. Her heart, against all odds, fluttered.

"Give them hell, little sister. And please do excuse me. I haven't danced with my husband in far too long."

Medley pushed off the table and spun into Aaron's arms. Startled revelers looked to them sharply, but the pair seemed to exist in a world all their own. They twirled onto the floor and beneath the chandelier they danced, steadily bewitching those nearby to do the same.

But though the floor erupted with merriment and the music shifted to match it, Mare's sister and her husband seemed not to notice. There wasn't enough gold or glamour in the world to turn their gazes from each other; they danced, and all but them and the music disappeared.

Mare envied and adored them so suddenly it hurt. Once Mare was a girl who did not ask questions, who decided on answers and stuck to them, no matter the odds. Now she was infinitely unsure, in a perpetual state of askance; now her curiosity was boundless and leaping, now her hunger made her fingers ache to write.

Mare thought of Philadelphia; of New York City and California; of London and India and France, and every ocean she had not crossed.

The money was hers. She could buy marriage. She could buy love and companionship. She could claim what she'd wished for so long.

But Mare was not sure her wishes were what they had once been; suddenly she was not sure how her story would end.

Then she saw Theodore Bridge, and all at once, it came to her.