Mare chose to remain behind when her sisters went to the station to greet Madrigal. It'd been several years since Mare had seen her second-eldest sister, who frequented London more than the states, and her letters had ceased appearing in the post nearly as long ago. Mare always thought Madrigal took the most after their mother, which in recent days, seemed less a reason to avoid her than to seek her council.
But the last week had been a whirlwind of housework—an alien but welcome distraction given Leslie's condition—as well as paying calls around the loud, busy suburbs of the city. Nights consisted mostly of brandy and scouring the local papers for odd bits of news or stories that summoned a laugh.
Mare played with her nephews when they were home from class, gathering her skirts to chase them through the yard, batting them with nets as they attempted to catch summer locusts and broad-winged butterflies. And at night, the three of them crept beneath the cypress and oaks, bent at the knee in pursuit of lightning bugs. Captured, Mare thought they looked like wil-o'-the-wisps, coaxing them all deeper into the dark.
All in all, Mare had more than enjoyed her time in the big city. She found her brother-in-law Thom to be most charming, and his adoration of both his boys and Mare's sister was more than romantic; it was the stuff of great poems and Shakespearean sonnets. It was true and real, stoic as the old bur oak in Star's Crossing. It required no daggers in hearts nor poisons in vials; sacrifice came in different, gentler forms: a moment spent apart, hands lifting children rather than being held.
Mare did not even envy them when she watched their interactions. She praised them, for the world saw something silly or something cruel when looking in: an ugly man, a lovely bride; a woman of small fortune, a man of great inheritance. Society plucked reasons like roses, ignoring the thorns. But her sister's marriage was like a small boat on rough seas, rumor the waves buffeting its sides and snatching its oars.
They were safe in there, and the water would never know that sentiment.
Mare was in her day dress now, afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows. Up in hers and Matilde's guest bedroom, a desk was beneath them, soaked in daylight. Matilde used it for most of her correspondence, but only in the afternoons and evenings. Matilde was aware Mare worked best in the very early morning and very late night; Mare did not miss the pointed looks or open inkwells and blank sheaves of parchment.
Until today her solitude had not felt complete, however, and as she stood over the desk, she felt called to the paper for its emptiness. Her hand ached for the weight of a quill. Her heart ached for release.
But every time she smelled ink, she thought only of her letters. Gone, now. In the hands of a man who betrayed her.
And suddenly, her heart began to ache in a different way. When the clatter of a cart on the street jolted Mare from her reverie, she was relieved. She left the blank paper and took to the stairs. Words were no longer Mare's responsibility.
Love, she realized, was no longer a possibility. It was a disappointment. Muddled, bloodied, soiled.
Most importantly, gone.
***
For such a small house, dinner was quite an affair with so many sisters gathered round to partake.
It began with chilled cauliflower bisque and dense nutty rolls from a local baker, and moved to baked potatoes and roasted carrots, and then a pheasant pie which left Mare dazed and pleasantly heavy. Last came a custard with fresh strawberries and a slice of lemon, and then sweet plum wine in the parlor, the late dregs of sunlight painting all the family in generous strokes of Renaissance oil.
"Rumor of my dear sister has not failed to cross the seas," said Madrigal. She was attending her needlepoint with the same rigid precision Mare had come to expect of her mother during the same task. "Who have you chosen, Mare?"
Matilde snorted. She was flipping through the business pages, Thom peering over her shoulder, directing her to this bit or that. "Should she not simply take all of them?" Matilde's keen eyes lifted above the paper.
Thom laughed, and Mollie, darning one of the boys' socks, nodded sagely, expression quite serious.
Mare was certain she was well beyond scandal after a week in the company of her sisters. She merely smiled and closed her book, Mollie's copy of The Iliad, replete with an inscription from their father on the inner cover. "Though with your advice, I'm certain I could train all three gentlemen to my exact specifications, I believe it'd be all too much work."
"What is marriage if not work?" Inquired Madrigal, gazing above her spectacles very seriously. She was the most severe looking of the Atwoods: raven-black hair, piercing black eyes, a Queenly jaw and Patrician nose. She looked Gothic; like a woman walked from a painting. It only accentuated her beauty, and the rareness of her smile rendered it a thing of great value, as the knighting of a common man.
"It is not marriage I fear navigating," Mare answered, sipping her wine and turning her gaze to the black of night beyond the window. "But who I might become within it."
"Marriage does nothing to a woman of confidence," reported Madrigal. Her deft fingers moved in blurs: pierce, pull, pierce again. "And you, Mare, of all of us, are that."
Mare laughed, feeling a bit ridiculed, but when she turned back to the room, she found her three sisters staring at her quite sincerely. "Me?" Mare said. "A woman of confidence? I assure you, it is but façade. Well-practiced. A mask of my own making."
Matilde laughed, returning to the paper. Unlike the rest of the room, she'd requested coffee, and sipped it black, still steaming. "She truly believes it, as I told you."
Mare blinked, looking back to Madrigal and Mollie, who were in the midst of exchanging their own communicative glance. "What has she told you?" Mare had grown to quite enjoy the dare and danger of Matilde's company, but she was still wary. Matilde was the invisible hand, the cloak and the dagger. "How can any of you possess any grasp on who I am? I certainly do not."
"The Atwood curse," clucked Mollie, sipping her wine with brows raised. "We are who we are told to be until we decide that we are not."
"Hear, hear," said Matilde, toasting with her coffee without looking from the paper.
"Is that not the curse of all women and men?" Offered Thom. He looked like an anxious student offering an answer to a question he knew was incorrect.
But Mollie simply placed her hand on her husband's knee and smiled, most affectionately. "Of course, my dear. But you were not raised by our mother."
Mare laughed lightly with her sisters. In the warmth of the parlor, as summer took its bows and welcomed autumn to the stage, Mare felt more in love than she had in years. It was merely another kind of love. For her sisters, for her mother and father. For her entire family and her brothers-in-law, and all of the kindness and sincerity that bloomed where scorn attempted to scorch the earth.
Of course sincerity made her think of him again, for she could not escape his hold. Teddy Bridge shone in every shadow; she heard his laugh on the wind, and felt the press of his lips, his hands, when she dreamed. She imagined what they would have been together. A force to be reckoned with. Storm and siege. They could have married and lived out their poor years at Thatcher House on the sea, and written a thousand novels that broke and warmed hearts all across the world.
They could have been something extraordinary. Now they were doomed to carry scarred hearts rather than glowing ones; now they were destined for the same fate as all those who fell in love with the wrong people, who denied themselves and took paths well-traveled.
They were doomed to fall apart, and they had. True love was not something that required repair or even as her sister would put it, work. True love was meant to be instinct and ease. Unflinching as gales off the sea, dazzling as first sunlight. True love was reflex and passion, undeniable and unstoppable.
What Mare and Teddy had...Mare knew nothing like it. There were no pages or characters from whom she might take direction or cue. This was uncharted territory, off the map. This was where there be monsters, and Mare was not ready to take up the sword.
There was nothing to be done, she knew, but to let him go. She would likely be a spinster, living like a wretch in a dusty room in her parents' house, for the rest of her days. She might like being a schoolteacher like Miss Cressida, or perhaps she might work in the bookshop. Taking pleasure from touching first editions and making recommendations. Mare would never be ablaze, but would glean heat from the fire of others' passion by holding her palms aloft, the glow painted on her face.
Mare's own fire was burning low. Soon there would be nothing of her old heart but ash.
Already it seemed to have fallen cold, for as Mare thought this, she felt a surge of relief. Then peace followed, and quiet, and she felt very small in the grand scape of things. Small was something she could not recall having ever felt before.
It was not so bad, she decided. She smiled and listened to the room, the soft laughter, the daring debates. She sipped her wine, and tried to forget who she was before this summer, who she had become during it, and who she was left to be now.
Then she went upstairs, sat at the desk beneath the window, and began to write.
The heart, though seeming foolish, is the wisest of organs in the human body. From the first, it knows what it wants. And try as it might, when the flint is struck the fire is destined to burn, on and on.
Even when the coals have cooled, a single stray spark may begin the blaze again. Lest we forget, remember this: even the smallest of embers can become a wildfire.
All inferno requires is someone to stoke the flame.