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On this, one of the last days of winter or the earliest days of spring, Alexandra sent for her carriage, as she was expected to pay visit to the Lord Manor. Maxwell, heir to the Lord fortune, had visited her several times over the preceding weeks, and Alex’s father had grown expectant that he would soon ask for her hand in marriage.
“You must visit him, Alexandra,” her mother said. “You must show him his interest is reciprocated. Make him feel confident in his request.”
His interest was not reciprocated, Alexandra thought. But she was well into marriageable age and had no other viable prospects. And Maxwell was fine, she supposed. He was handsome enough, and wealthy, and lived in a manor large enough that she could probably avoid him outside of her conjugal responsibilities.
He had a great stable of horses, too. Alex loved horses, and her favourite of the household staff was a young stable hand and groomsman. Perhaps, she thought, with so many horses, Maxwell would be amenable to hiring him, and he could come with Alex to her new home.
It was that favoured groomsman who drove the carriage to the front of the Danvers manor and leapt down to hold the door for her, offering a hand as she stepped up into her seat. The sun was out, but the weather was not yet warm, and she saw that he had put blankets on the bench for her. He, himself, wore a warm overcoat with a thick woolen scarf and heavy driving gloves. He was a small man, as slight as a boy, and Alex imagined he must take cold easily.
“You’re driving today?” Alex asked.
He tipped his head. “If it pleases you, Miss,” he said. “Stephen’s taken ill, so the stablemaster’s sent him to bed.”
“It always pleases me to spend time with you, Tom,” Alex said, smiling. “To the Lord Manor, if you will.” Tom smiled back, offering her a polite bow, and closed the door behind her.
The carriage wobbled a bit as he climbed up into the driver’s seat and Alex could just barely hear his voice as he urged the horses out onto the roadway.
Tom was an unusual man. Queer, her father called him, and suggested the family might be better off for firing him and hiring someone larger and stronger who could handle the horses with a firmer hand.
But Alex had seen the way Tom handled her father’s prized horses: the breeding stud, the hunting geldings, the old draught horses that worked the land. Even the wildest among them gentled near him, dropping their noses to be scratched like dogs asking to be petted. When he drove the carriage, the ride was so smooth Alex could have fallen asleep on her bench. He asked the horses to go forward, and asked them to stop, rather than commanding it of them, and they always did what he asked so that the carriage didn’t jerk forward and back.
Tom was, though, a little queer indeed. His cheeks looked soft and had no traces of stubble, but his eyes weren’t those of a boy. There was something tired in them, something world-weary. They were marked with the wrinkles of someone who had spent a lot of time squinting into the sun. His hair was black, with no streaks of grey, and he kept it cropped short and slicked back according to the fashion of the day.
They arrived at the Lord manor, and he offered her his hand to step down from the carriage.
“Will you be returning in one of the Lord estate carriages, my lady, or shall I go to the stables to wait for you?”
“Wait!” Alex said, perhaps a little too quickly. But she knew that letting Maxwell arrange her ride home would only make it that much more difficult for her to escape at the end of their luncheon. “Please, wait for me,” she said, in a more staid tone. “I’ll send for you to take me home.”
Tom’s eyes twinkled as he nodded at her. “Send me a message with a servant when you’re ready, and I’ll come for you.”
Lunch with Maxwell Lord was insufferable, as usual. He bragged about his manor, about his inheritance, about his profits and how he’d strong-armed several of the household servants into agreeing to a half-day off every second week instead of every week.
“What do they do with their time off, anyway?” he said with a laugh. “They haven’t got anything in their lives besides the work!”
Alex smiled, and sipped her tea as politely as she could, and resisted the urge to tell him that his servants had families, and children, and a God-given right to weekly rest. She could change this, she thought, when she was lady of the house. The staff would be her staff, then, too.
When the time came for her to go home, Maxwell escorted her to the front door.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said. Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially: “I need to arrange a meeting with your father. I have a… request … to pass along to him.”
Alex smiled and tried swallow against the rock in her gut. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear you.”
When Tom brought the carriage around, it was warm inside from sitting in the sun. He had folded the extra blankets and set them aside for her. She chose the forward bench this time, so that she sat with her back to Tom. Once they were on the road, the horses trodding along steadily, she tapped on the window above her, just behind him.
He opened it. “Yes, Miss?”
His voice was soft and low and careful, somehow. Like he’d practiced it. From this angle, she could see his hands resting on his knees, his fingers giving on the reins. He’d left the whip in its holder by his boot.
“How are you today, Tom?” Alex asked.
There was a long pause. It wasn’t expected, Alex supposed, that she would bother the driver with such a banale question on a drive home after an outing.
“Well, it’s a beautiful day,” Tom answered, eventually. “The spring always makes for extra work, with the mud sucking off the horses shoes all the time, but it’s so much nicer to be outside when the weather changes like this. How are you today, Miss?”
She found herself wanting to tell him everything. About how Maxwell Lord was horrible but she’d probably have to marry him. About how the new spring meant that was likely to happen soon, so that the house could plan for a midsummer wedding. About how she felt like a brood mare, sometimes, with the way Maxwell and her father talked about her, as though her place in the world was to be a high-value source of heirs.
“Do you ever wish the world were different, Tom?”
“I suppose everyone wishes for one or two things to be different, Miss.”
“No, but really different,” Alex said. “Not just that you had a larger house, or higher status, but rather that all the world should just be different, somehow, than it is.”
Tom was quiet again. Alex listened to the sounds of the horses’ hooves and the carriage wheels rumbling over the gravel.
“Yes,” Tom said eventually. “Yes, I do.”
—
The following week, Maxwell Lord met with the Lord Danvers to request Alex’s hand in marriage. The Lord Danvers agreed. They negotiated a dowry. And so it was arranged that Maxwell Lord and Miss Alexandra Danvers would be married by midsummer.
Alex learned of her engagement when her father announced it to the family over supper.
She felt nauseous, and dizzy, and couldn’t eat another bite.
That evening, she fled out to the stables with a few apple cores and carrot butts she’d gotten from the cook. She wasn’t sure why, but she knew horses had always calmed her, and she desperately needed to be calmed. Her favourite was a tall bay gelding named Jonas, and Alex thought that, perhaps, feeding him bits of carrot and scratching his nose might make her feel a bit less frantic.
She hadn’t expected that Tom would still be there. It didn’t occur to her to look for him until she narrowly avoided having a hay bale land on her head. She yelped in surprise and jumped back, out of the way, and then looked up: she hadn’t even noticed she was walking past the trap door into the hayloft.
“Hello?” came that familiar voice, and then his face appeared at the opening. “Miss Alexandra!” he exclaimed, clearly mortified. He jumped down from the loft, skipping the ladder, and bowed. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were here!”
“It’s not your fault, Tom I didn’t announce myself.”
“Are you all right? It didn’t hit you, did it?” His eyes scanned over her in a way that might be brazen, were it not so clearly driven by worry and not prurience.
“It didn’t hit me,” she said. “I’m fine. Please, don’t let me keep you from your work.”
He straightened, to some approximation of attention, and Alex realized she’d never seen him like this. His hair was beginning to come loose from its styling, and strands of it fell down over his eyes. His collar was unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up, and he sweated, a little, from the work of hauling the hay.
“Do you need a horse, Miss, or a carriage? What can I do for you?”
“No, no,” Alex said. “Don’t let me disrupt you.” She held up her handful of carrot and apple bits. “I came to feed Jonas some treats.”
“Jonas has overnight turnout tonight, so he’s in the pasture. But I can fetch him for you.”
“Oh.” Alex bit her lip. “No, that’s all right. I’ll just give them to Ginger.” She gestured toward the chestnut mare just beyond them, another favourite of hers.
“Of course,” he said, and stepped out of the way.
Ginger was happy to lip up the treats from her palm, one at a time, while Alex petted her broad forehead. Alex listened to the quiet sounds of Tom stacking the hay bales in the bay opposite them, his boots light and quick on the ladder as he climbed up, dropped the bales down, and climbed down again.
Alex stayed long beyond the end of the treats, scratching the mare’s head while the mare was happy to be scratched. She let the time pass in the rhythm of the horses’ breathing and the sounds of Tom’s work.
“Excuse me, Miss,” Tom said, eventually.
Alex turned to him. “Hmm?”
“I’m done with the hay,” he said. “So if you’ll not be needing anything, I’ll be heading to my room for the night.”
“No, thank you, Tom,” she said. “I should be going back up to the house anyway. Please, rest well.”
“Thank you, Miss.”
Alex had been leaning on the frame of the stall door. She gave Ginger a few final pats and then stood up, straightening herself and brushing the bits of dirt and hay from her clothes.
“Miss,” Tom said, his voice nervous. “Miss Alexandra.”
She looked up at him.
He took a deep breath, but his eyes were sharp and kind, and always the eyes of someone who looked like he’d seen too much for his age. He looked even younger, like this, with his hair soft around his face, dusting the edges of his eyes. “At the risk of overstepping,” he said, “How are you today?”
Alex remembered a few days earlier, when she’d asked him that same question, and wondered if anyone else had ever asked her that without their own agenda for her answer. The realization made her breath leave her in shudders.
“I’m engaged,” she said, hoping that would be answer enough.
“Oh.” His voice was unsurprised and empathetic. His eyes glinted, and Alex wished she understood how he, of all people, seemed to see her so clearly.
“Yes,” she said.
“Marriage is…” he looked down and scuffed his feet a little on the dirt floor. “It’s a strange responsibility we place on women.”
Alex had never heard it said like that.
“We tell stories of true love’s kiss, of princesses and princes and happily-ever-after’s. We don’t speak of responsibilities, and strategies, and family legacies and heirs.”
“No,” Alex said, “we don’t.” And now she was crying. She wasn't sobbing, she wasn't an ugly mess, but she couldn't keep her eyes from streaming, and that made her nose stream, too.
“Hush,” Tom soothed. He hesitated for just a moment before touching her elbow and guiding her to the room at the back of the stable where he lived. The other stablehands lived in the servants quarters in the house, but Tom lived out here, closer to the horses he loved. She followed him, and he settled her on his one wooden chair and fetched her a handkerchief. “Here.”
“Thank you,” she said, and took it. She dabbed at her nose, at the corners of her eyes, and tried to steady her breathing. “I’ve come here, I’ve interrupted your work and now I’m intruding on your hospitality.”
“You’re not intruding,” he said gently. “I don’t mind. Can I make you a cup of tea?”
A cup of tea would be wonderful, she thought, but he didn't have a fire lit in his stove. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll be fine in a moment.”
It took more than a moment for her to be fine. Tom crouched quietly before her, not touching or speaking, just waiting. Being present for her.
When, at last, she felt composed, she looked down at the soiled handkerchief. “I’ll have this laundered and returned to you,” she said.
“All right,” he replied.
When she rose to walk to the door, he stopped her one more time. “Miss Alexandra,” he said.
She looked at him. “Yes?”
“I’ll be beginning the horses’ spring training rides tomorrow,” he said, “so they’re in full form for hunting season. Would you like to come with me? It would be a great help to take two horses instead of just one.”
His eyes weren’t expectant, but they were hopeful, and Alex realized he wasn't pitying her. He seemed to genuinely desire her company.
“That would be lovely, Tom. I’ll come down after breakfast?”
“I’ll have Jonas saddled for you.”
She smiled.
As she made her way back to the house, she thought of the next day’s ride and it made the smile stay.
—
They rode the next day. And the day after that.
Their rides together became normal. They weren't daily, but they were regular, and they became Alex’s favourite part of her week.
Tom was quiet, and the calm he brought to the horses was a calm he brought with him everywhere. When they chatted, they spoke easily. He told stories of his childhood in the south, and she told stories of the mischief that she and her cousin had pulled as children—scrapes her cousin Kara would get into, and the ways Alex would patch her up—and they worked the horses through their paces.
At home, her mother was ushering her into wedding preparations. She had meetings with a seamstress, and she approved the invitations, and gave a cursory glance at the guest list because she knew her mother would never approve of any changes she might suggest.
Maxwell visited rarely. It seemed that now that the engagement was arranged, he was less concerned with actually spending time with her.
“Would you come with me?” Alex asked Tom, during one ride. “To the Lord manor, when I move there.”
Tom kept his eyes on the horizon. “If their estate will hire me to the stables, I would be happy to come with you.”
Something in Alex’s chest loosened. Somehow, at some point, her fear of leaving Tom, of his quiet presence, had grown to exceed her fear of marrying Maxwell.
“I would need my own room,” Tom said. “That would be my only requirement.”
That might be hard. The Lord Estate had a great many servants, and not a very large servant’s quarters. But still: if she was to be the lady of the house, surely she could have some influence on these things.
“I’ll see to it,” she said.
—
They grew closer still. They told jokes. Tom gave her some insight into the servants’ gossip about the masters, though he was tight-lipped about the servants themselves. “We must have the parts of ourselves to which our masters are not entitled,” he said, and Alex could not challenge that.
On an evening ride, they crested a hill to see the fiery purples and oranges of a beautiful spring sunset.
Alex looked over at him, at his strangely old eyes in his strangely young face, his skin glowing in the golden light. He was small, and slight, and queer as her father had said, but she was overtaken by a wave of desire nonetheless. She’d never felt the like of it before: she wanted to lay her hands on those soft cheeks, she wanted to feel his hands on her. She imagined laying with him in the grass and feeling his fingers untying her corset, brushing through her hair.
“It’s strange,” Alex said, “that we’re born into one class, or another, and that dictates how we’re supposed to be to one another. As though we weren’t all conceived the same way. As though we aren’t all the same creatures.”
“It’s very strange,” Tom agreed, and looked down. Beneath him, Ginger stamped her feet and tossed her head. “Well,” he went on, “we’d better head back before we lose the daylight.”
--
For their next ride, Alex had the cook pack a small picnic as a surprise for Tom. The cook cocked an eyebrow at her, judgment evident in her gaze, but Alex stood straight, her shoulders back, and dared her to speak out of turn.
Tom, for his part, was delighted when she showed him the fresh bread and cheese and the half-bottle of wine. He tucked everything into a saddle bag and said, “I know just the place.”
Together they rode east, enjoying the quiet sounds of the forest, until they came to a clearing near a small, bubbling brook. They tied the horses where they could drink from the stream and then took a seat on a blanket with their lunch.
“She makes the most delicious bread,” Tom said. “I’ve never had the like of it.”
“She really does,” Alex agreed.
The blanket was small, and their shoulders brushed as they ate, and each time it sent a thrill up the length of Alex’s spine. Was this what the poets talked about, she wondered? Was this what she was supposed to feel when she danced with Maxwell Lord? Because the idea of his thick hands on her, his too-large body, made bile rise in her throat. But Tom’s long, gentle fingers, his slightness, his softness. It wasn’t what she was supposed to want, as a woman. She was supposed to want someone who was large and strong and hearty, someone who could wrap his arms around her to shelter her from the world.
But something about Tom captivated her.
“Please say you’ll come with me when I move,” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. She was leaning toward him. She didn’t care.
He looked at her, his eyes searching hers. “I want to come with you. You can’t know how much I want to come with you.”
“I think I can,” Alex said. She leaned forward further still. “I think… I think I do.”
“Do you?” he breathed. His eyes skipped from hers down to her lips and back again.
She nodded. “I do.”
And then she kissed him.
The kiss was slow, and soft, and it made every nerve in Alex’s body come to life. Her heart yearned for his, it pulled for him. He lifted that one hand and curved it over her jaw, his fingertips gentle below her ear, and she reached up to touch his cheek. It was soft, as smooth as a boy’s.
When they parted, his eyes were as gentle as his touch had been.
“You feel this too,” Alex said.
He nodded. “I do. I have for a very long time.”
Alex swallowed and glanced at his lips again. “I wish it could be like this.”
His fingers trailed down her face again. “I do too. But it can’t.”
“No,” Alex agreed, even as everything in her longed for him, to touch him, to be kissing him; now that she’s felt that, she thought, she couldn’t imagine ever not feeling it. “But for now.”
“For now.” He breathed, and in his eyes, she saw her own feelings reflected.
He kissed her again.
—
The days marched toward the wedding.
In the afternoons, Alex coordinated menus, and place settings, and table arrangements.
In the mornings, she rode horses with Tom, and kissed him under the rising sun.
It never went further than that, no matter how much Alex craved it. He kept his hands to her face and shoulders, and never let hers stray from his shoulder and waist. He kept space between them, and Alex imagined he was protecting his modesty and hers. She did, after all, know something of how men’s bodies worked.
But every time she kissed him, she longed for more, even as she knew the days were marching past that would take them to the end of this tryst.
—
Alex wondered why she felt things for Tom that she’d never been able to feel for anybody else.
She found out in a way she never wanted to learn.
—
The warmth of early summer was around them. The flowers bloomed, the air smelled like sweetgrass. The leaves were full and gave them shade as they trotted their horses up a trail to the clearing they’d come to think of as “theirs.” Tom rode Jonas, and Alex followed behind on Ginger.
It wasn’t until later that she’d be able process what happened next.
Tom, leading at a trot, rode straight over a nest of ground hornets. The hornets surged up just in time to catch Alex and Ginger with their rage, and Ginger, swarmed and being stung, lost her mind. Alex was a good rider, a confident one, but Ginger’s terrified bucking and rearing tested the limits of her skill. She cried out for help. Tom and Jonas wheeled around like they were on a pivot and came racing back; Tom stopped Jonas a safe distance away and vaulted to the ground. He ran up and reached for Ginger’s head, his voice calm and soothing, It worked for a moment and the mare seemed to settle—if she would be still, the wasps would calm down and leave. But then one must have stung her, because she lashed out with a front hoof and caught Tom square in the chest. He grunted and flew backward, landing in a heap on the grass.
“Tom!” Alex cried. Her fear for him outweighed her fear of the bucking horse beneath her. She kicked her feet free of the stirrups and managed to dismount from the still-panicking mare. As soon as she was on the ground, Ginger bolted, fortunately in the opposite direction from Jonas, and the swarm of wasps chased her.
Alex fell to her knees beside Tom, who clutched at his chest and whose lips were rapidly going blue.
“Breathe,” she coaxed, “just breathe.” She touched his face, his shoulders, but when she lay a hand on his chest he flinched, so she drew it away immediately.
Finally, after interminable seconds, he sucked in a breath, and then another.
“Oh, you’re all right,” Alex said, gasping in relief. She bent down, pressed her forehead to his. “You’re all right.”
He nodded. “Had the wind knocked from me. Are you all right, Alexandra? I’m so sorry I didn’t see the nest.”
Alex’s heart swelled. That was, despite everything, the first time he’d used her given name like that, without a “Miss” before it. “I’m fine,” she said. “A few stings, but I’ll be fine.”
He tried to stand up, but cried out in pain as he tried to push himself up from the ground. Alex slipped an arm under his arms and, though he had to grit his teeth against the pain, he managed to get to his feet.
“Where are you hurt?” She asked.
“My ribs,” he said. Then he sighed, looking up the path in the direction Ginger had run off. “She was frightened. She didn’t mean to do it.”
“Where do you think she went?”
“She’ll go home, eventually. If she finds water, she might roll in it to get rid of the wasps. I’m not worried about her so much as I’m worried about your father’s saddle.”
“Oh, let me worry about him,” Alex said. “You saved me.”
“Tried to.” Tom laughed and then winced. “You saved yourself, really.”
They couldn’t get Tom up onto Jonas’s back in his state, so Alex fetched the gelding and they began to walk home on foot. It wasn’t far, perhaps a mile, but their pace was slow.
When they arrived, Alex handed Jonas to another stablehand and saw Tom into his room.
“Just rest,” she said, “I’ll send for a physician.”
“No!” Tom yelled, and then looked abashed, as though he knew he’d overreacted.
“Tom,” Alex chastized. “You need to be examined.”
He shook his head. “It’s just my ribs. There’s nothing to be done for them but give them time to heal.”
“Tom—”
“I don’t want the fee taken from my wages,” he said.
Alex looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. Surely he knew she would never let the cost of a physician come from his pay, especially for something like this, when he’d been hurt trying to help her. But he was adamant, and respecting his wishes seemed like the least she could do.
With some reluctance, she nodded.
—
That evening, she found a vial of white willow tincture in one of her vanity drawers and decided to bring it to him. It seemed the least she could do, to bring him something that might ease his pain a little.
In the stables, a stable boy was bathing a mud-encrusted Ginger who had, as Tom had promised, found her way home. Her face and skin were puffy with stings, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“How’s the saddle, Toby?” she asked the boy working.
“It was fairly roughed up, Miss,” he said. “They’ve sent it to the saddler. The tree’s not broken, so they think it can be fixed.”
“Has my father given anyone any trouble? You or Tom?”
“No, Miss. He said these things happen, and it would be taken care of, and he hopes Tom feels better soon.”
Alex exhaled, her body softening in relief. Her father was not an unreasonable or unkind man when it came to his staff, but still, she’d been worried. “Thank you, Toby. Where is Tom now?”
“He’s resting in his room.” Toby pointed back to Tom’s door. “He was hurting, back before.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you. I’ll go check on him.”
Toby nodded and tipped his head before returning to scrubbing the mud from Ginger’s hocks.
Alex knocked once, quietly, but there was no answer from within Tom’s room. She knocked again, a little louder, and still no answer.
“Tom?” she called quietly. But still, there was nothing.
He must be sleeping, Alex thought. She’d just slip in and leave the tincture on his table. Surely, after today, he wouldn’t mind.
As quietly as possible, she lifted the latch and let herself into the room.
Tom was, indeed, asleep in his bed, and the empty whisky glass on the nightstand suggested that he’d medicated himself by more informal means. She found a scrap of paper and a pen on the table and wrote a little note to go with the tincture, and then went to set them on the nightstand beside the empty class. Standing there by his bed, she couldn’t help herself: she bent down, just for a moment, to watch him sleep. She’d never seen him sleep before. He looked younger, his face relaxed, his mouth hanging a little bit open. She wanted to touch him: to kiss his forehead, his lips, to touch the soft skin of his cheek.
She let herself look at him for long enough that she began to see him differently.
It was a strange moment, like switching your eyes from seeing a flower vase to seeing two faces looking at each other. Suddenly his face looked different, somehow, the way the lines of his features were both soft and sharp, the way his throat was smooth. His short hair fell over his eyes, but she imagined it away, imagined it tucked back toward his ear…
Dear God.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
But now that she’d seen it, it seemed so very obvious. She couldn’t imagine how she hadn’t seen it before: that Tom had the face of a woman.
Part of her wanted to wake him (her?) to find out. But he slept so peacefully, and he’d been in so much pain, earlier. So she fought the urge and instead backed quietly out of the room, latching the door behind her.
That night, in her room, she thought back on all the kisses that she and Tom had shared; how he’d kept his body away from hers for reasons of modesty that might have been altogether different from the ones Alex had assumed. She imagined the feel of his lips on hers, the feel of his gentle hands on her skin. Then she imagined those same feelings, but with the knowledge that Tom was a woman: one who had cut her hair short to labour in a man’s field, one who was so gentle with the horses, one who looked at Alex like Alex was beautiful and special.
She imagined herself tomorrow, seeing Tom and knowing she was a woman, and kissing her anyway, just as she’d been kissing her for weeks.
A thrill ran through her, from her knees to the top of her head. At first she thought it was revulsion, but she let herself live with it a little longer. She imagined it again, and again, and again, and she realized that what she felt was relief. It was relief, and desire, and the wish to take Tom’s small, slight body and pull it to her own and kiss her (her!) with all the fire and longing that she’d been feeling, unbottled.
She wondered if, on some deep level, she had always known this truth. She wondered if her blindness had been selective when the feel of Tom’s kisses had been so much nicer than any others she could have imagined.
The next morning, Alex woke up early: earlier than most of the house staff, earlier than most of the land workers. She dressed without the help of a servant and walked down the stables when the sky was still dark grey and the air smelled of dew.
She let herself into the stable, where the stablehands weren’t even up and working yet.
She walked down the corridor to the door at the end.
She knocked, and then without waiting for a reply, let herself into the room, closing the door quickly behind her.
She’d been prepared for this. Or at least, she thought she had. But still, nothing could prepare her fully for the sight of Tom standing in front of the mirror, wincing and hissing in pain as she tried to wrap a length of cloth around her breasts, over her undershirt.
She wheeled around, her jaw dropping when she locked eyes with Alex.
“Miss Alexandra,” Tom sputtered. Alex could see her breathing quicken, a flush creeping up her neck from the deep bruise on her chest. She covered herself with her arm. “Miss Alexandra, I can explain, I—”
“Hush,” Alex said. She stepped forward and reached for the roll of bandaging that Tom was holding at an awkward angle. “Let me help. Lift your arms.”
Tom blinked at Alex with a frightened, disbelieving expression, but let her take the bandages. Tom lifted her arms as high as she could with her injuries, and Alex wrapped her breasts as carefully as she could, trying to be firm enough to compress without being so firm that she’d aggravate Tom’s ribs.
When it was done, Alex picked up Tom’s button-down shirt from the bed and handed it to her. Tom eyed her warily as she pulled the shirt on, buttoning it slowly.
“Can you ride today?” Alex asked.
Tom nodded, clearly nervous. “Yes. One of the older, calmer horses, and just at a walk. But I can ride.”
“Then we’ll ride,” Alex said. “And then we’ll talk. The usual time?”
Tom nodded again, dumbfounded. Alex felt Tom’s eyes on her back as she let herself out of the room.
—
They rode in silence over the hill and down into the valley, side by side along the wide path that followed the river. Tom’s hair was slicked back away from his face, as usual, so he looked, again, the well-kept stable-hand and groomsman, but he rode with his chin tucked low, as though he were afraid of being seen.
“I can be gone by the day’s end,” he said, finally, “if you’ll just give me time to pack my things.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex said, waving a hand in dismissal. “If you leave, who’ll care for the horses? But tell me: I assume your name isn’t Thomas Finch.”
Tom’s eyes widened in surprise. “No, Miss.”
“Will you tell me what it is?”
“It’s Maggie Sawyer. Miss.”
Maggie Sawyer. Maggie. Alex looked carefully at Tom’s—Maggie’s—profile, and imagined calling her by that name. Maggie.
“Stop calling me ‘Miss,’” Alex said. “I thought we were past that.”
Tom looked her up and down, nervous and chastened. “All right.”
“How did you come to have the name Tom Finch?”
“I stole it,” Tom said. “Well, I stole a letter of reference with the name on it. I came upon a boy in an inn, when I was looking for work. He was a brute, cruel to the innkeeper’s wife and daughter, and then he got drunk and fell asleep at his table. The letter was sticking out of his jacket, and I had no prospects for work, so I took it and was gone before he awoke. And then your father hired me.”
“But why pretend to be a boy?” Alex asked. “Why not seek work in a kitchen, or as a lady’s maid?”
“I’m not like other women, Miss,” Tom said.
Alex leveled a glare at her.
Tom dropped her head, understanding. “I’m not like other women, Alexandra,” she said. “I thought it best not to be around women much, because I’m… I’m not….” She exhaled sharply and then sat up straight, pulling her shoulders back. The old mare stopped, and Alex turned to face Maggie head on, their horses head-to-tail. “What we did together,” Maggie said. “I meant it. It wasn’t a lie.”
“It was a lie,” Alex said, but gently, without reproach. “You lied to me. You lied powerfully to me.”
“I lied about who I was, but not about how I felt. I cared for you. I wanted to you.” She swallowed, her eyes fixed down on his horse’s mane. “I still do. I know it’s wrong, I know it’s strange. I can’t help it. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“It didn’t feel wrong to me,” Alex said. She reached across and laid her gloved hand over Tom’s bare one.
Tom’s eyes looked up at her, surprised and nervous but, perhaps, a little bit hopeful. “No?”
“No,” Alex said. She smiled, and Maggie’s whole body seemed to soften a little under her gaze. “Tell me, Maggie Sawyer, how you came to be sleeping in inns, stealing reference letters from drunken rabble-rousers, and spending years passing yourself off as a man.”
“My father was a horseman,” Maggie said. “For an estate further north. I worked in the kitchen, but he taught me everything of horses that he knew, and I was happiest outside with the animals.
“There was a girl who worked in the kitchen with me, Eliza. She was beautiful, and we were the best of friends. I loved her more than anything, and I didn’t think that was strange. But the summer festival came, and everyone was saying that we had to find a girl or a boy to go with. And I just… I wanted to go with her. So I bought her a card on my half-day off, and I gave it to her the next day. And she… she showed the cook. Who showed my father. Who called me a pervert and a disgrace and cast me out the very same day.”
Alex was struck by the complete dispassion with which Tom told the story, as though she were recounting a day at the market. She had taken it out of herself and made an object of it.
“Oh, Tom. Oh, Maggie.”
“Well, he wasn’t wrong. I am, aren’t I? And now I’ve drawn you into it. And I’m sorry for that — truly, I am.”
“Don’t pretend I’m some kind of innocent. I’m an engaged woman, and I’ve been fooling around with someone other than my fiancé. I did that of my own free will.”
“You didn’t know what I was.”
“Didn’t I?” Alex squeezed her hand, and as if it were an instinct, Tom squeezed back. “I’ve wondered, since last night, if perhaps I’ve known for some time. If perhaps I’ve known since the first time we kissed.”
“Still,” Tom said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Alex replied.
Tom tilted her head, as though Alex were a puzzle too hard to piece together.
“I have one question,” Alex continued. “And depending on the answer you give, I might have another one.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “Ask away.”
“What am I to you?”
Tom’s body stiffened and recoiled like it had been hit. Alex could see Tom’s breath coming harder, her eyes searching for an escape before settling on Alex’s.
And then Tom’s body softened, leaning gently toward her, and suddenly, in that moment, Maggie, a girl of perhaps Alex’s own age, with tired eyes and a kind smile and a body compressed into boys’ clothing, was all that Alex could see.
“You’re…” Maggie said. She swallowed and tried again. “You’re the most wonderful person I know. Your happiness is the thing I desire most.”
Alex smiled. “You love me,” she offered.
Maggie’s mouth opened, and closed, and opened and closed again, and then she settled for a helpless shrug and a nod.
Alex urged her horse closer. She pulled off her glove and laid her palm on Maggie’s cheek. “And if I said the same thing about you?” Alex asked.
“Alex,” Maggie said, her voice shaking like it might shatter.
Alex smiled. She’d told Tom before, on one of their rides, that “Alex” was her favourite nickname used by her favourite cousin. Maggie had remembered, and the knowledge warmed her from the inside. “I like when you call me that,” she said. “You treat me like a person, not like chattel or a prize. I’ve loved you for so long, Maggie.”
Maggie looked like the whole world had been swept out from under her. Her jaw went slack, her eyes wide, and the sounds of bird calls and rustling trees filled the silence between them.
And then Maggie shook herself free and, with blushing shyness, smiled back at Alex. “I like when you call me that,” she said.
“Do you? I can do it more often, in private, if that’s the name you like.” Alex leaned closer, and coaxed Maggie to lean closer to her. “Maggie.”
“Oh, I’d like that,” Maggie said. “I’d like it so much, to be ‘Maggie’ to you.”
And, on a deep breath, Maggie leaned in. And they kissed, awkwardly leaning across the space between their horses, and the feelings in Alex’s heart erupted, shimmering into the tips of her toes and the crown of her head and the palms of her hands.
And Maggie smiled and smiled as she kissed Alex back.
—
Their affair was a clandestine thing, but now that Maggie’s secret was out, it escalated.
Their rides were dailly events, now. But they would stop in beautiful valleys, or hidden beneath century oak trees, and lay in the grass and kiss until their lips were swollen. Maggie no longer enforced a space between them, and their bodies fit into each other like they had been designed that way. Their hands wandered boldly over their clothes. There wasn’t much Alex could touch beneath Maggie’s layers of wrapping, but Maggie’s hands were like a musician’s, tuning Alex to her liking.
God, Alex had never known what such desire could feel like.
And still, her wedding day marched nearer and nearer.
She went to her father and asked if Tom could come with her to the Lord Estate after the wedding. He eyed her strangely, one eyebrow cocked, and said, “That strange little horseman? Whatever for? Lord will have better men to escort you on your rides.”
“I trust Tom,” Alex said. “Ever since that accident, I’ve known he’d put his life on the line for me if I were in danger. How long would it take for me to learn to trust one of Lord’s men like that?”
Her father hummed. “I’ll consider it, and talk to Lord about it.”
Every morning, Alex rushed out to the stables to meet Maggie. By lunchtime, she returned to the house, her skin burning with the shadows of Maggie’s kisses, her body longing for more.
Two weeks passed, and she couldn’t take it any longer.
She waited for nighttime. Waited for the staff to have gone to sleep, waited by her window to see the lights go out at the stable. Then she slipped into her boots and an overcoat and let herself out into the night.
The stable was dark, the horses dozing, and she walked through as quietly as she could until she reached Maggie’s room at the back.
There was nobody else here. She knew that.
She let herself into Maggie’s room without knocking.
Maggie bolted upright at the disruption, one arm wrapped tightly around her chest, hiding herself even under the loose-fitting nightshirt.
“Who’s there?” she called.
Alex crept closer. “It’s only me.”
Maggie relaxed, her hand falling down to her side. “Alex. You scared me.”
The bed shifted a little under Alex’s weight as she sat down. “I’m to be married in a week.”
Maggie inhaled deeply, and her lip wobbled, a little, as she exhaled. “I know, my love.”
“I don’t want him,” Alex said.
Maggie smiled sadly and cupped her hand over Alex’s jaw. She said, again: “I know, my love.”
“No, I don’t think you understand,” Alex pressed. She shrugged out of her overcoat, slipped her feet out of her boots, and climbed up into the bed with Maggie. Her hand found its way to the back of Maggie’s neck, to play with the short hair at her nape. “I don’t want him.”
Maggie’s body shuddered in realization. “Oh.” She lay back, and drew Alex down with her.
They kissed, and with clumsy, gentle hands, rid each other of their clothes. Alex had never done anything like this, and Maggie hadn’t either, but they let their bodies touch, exploring each other with their fingers and their lips. Maggie’s body had healed, her ribs having been bruised but not broken, but Alex scattered kisses across Maggie’s chest in recollection of the injury. And when ecstasy overtook Alex, when it rippled through her body as Maggie held her warm and close and whispered words of adoration into her ear, Alex wondered how many women might live their entire lives and never feel this, never know how it felt to be so fully, perfectly, and completely loved.
—
Alex crept back to her room before the break of dawn, and slipped her coat and her boots away and herself back into her bed. She closed her eyes and tried to get a little sleep before the house woke up, imagining what it would feel like to have a small, warm body pressed to her back.
--
She was awoken, sometime later, by one of the housemaids.
“Miss Alexandra,” she said, her voice quiet, but urgent. “Miss Alexandra, you need to wake up.”
So Alex did.
“Miss Alexandra, the Master wishes to speak to you as soon as you’re dressed for the day.”
The light was streaming through the eastern window, so she knew the hour was still early. What could possibly be so urgent that he couldn’t wait until breakfast?
She stretched, her body remembering all the places where Maggie had kissed her the night before, and smiled at the girl. “Very well,” she said, “we’d best not keep him waiting.”
But when she arrived down in the drawing room a few minutes later, she was surprised to see Maxwell Lord sitting in the chair alongside her father’s.
Neither of them rose to greet her.
“Maxwell,” she said. He tipped his head at her in acknowledgment, but did not make a sound.
“Alexandra,” her father said. “Sit down.”
HIs voice was hard, and sharp as acid. She went to the nearest divan and sat down.
“Where were you last night?” he asked.
Alex’s heart seized in her chest.
He must know. He had to know, or he wouldn’t be asking her like this, with Maxwell there.
“I… I couldn’t sleep,” Alex lied, “so I went down to the stables.”
“Why on God’s green earth would you go to the stables in your nightdress because you couldn’t sleep? Try again.”
“I went to see the horses,” Alex said. “They calm me.”
“The horses calm you!” Her father leapt to his feet. “The horses calm you, in the middle of the night?”
Alex’s heart threatened to tear itself out of her chest. It raced and pounded so hard it hurt to breathe.
“The groundsman saw you coming back to the house at first light, Alexandra!” her father roared. “The groundsman ! He caught you sneaking back from a tryst with your damned stable-boy.”
Alex’s breathing sped up. She clenched her hands against their trembling, and felt like she could choke on this hot summer air. “I have not been having a tryst with a stable-boy,” she said.
“Oh, give up, Alex!” her father cried. “I’ve watched you. I’ve seen how close you two have become, disappearing for hours almost every day. God only knows what you see in that strange little fellow, but you won’t be seeing it, or him, any more. I’ve given him the sack already.”
“No!” the word leapt from Alex’s chest, from her heart, from her mouth. She leaned forward. “You can’t—”
“He’ll have all wages due him, but no letter of reference,” he father finished.
“Father, he worked for you for years! He cared for your horses like no stableman you’ve ever had—you said so yourself!”
A new voice piped up. “You know, for a woman who swears she wasn’t having a tryst with the stable boy, you’re awfully defensive of him.”
Alex turned and looked at Maxwell, who had just insinuated himself into the conversation. He sat quietly in his chair, relaxed, but his eyes on her were like daggers.
“I’ve never had a tryst with the stable boy,” Alex repeated, her voice faltering. “I swear it.” Because it was true: she’d never had a tryst with a boy.
“Stop treating us like fools, Alexandra,” her father said, his voice growing tired. He sagged back into his chair. “Here’s the good news. I invited Maxwell here today, and I told him what had happened, because I’m an honourable man, and an honourable man does not send his dishonourable daughter to marry an unknowing, honourable man.”
“Father—”
“It’s all right, Alexandra,” Maxwell said. “Our engagement, and our marriage, will move forward as scheduled. We’ve renegotiated the dowry, of course, and I was pleased to hear the rodent had been sent packing. And once you’re with me in my house, well.” He smiled. “My staff are my eyes and my ears. There’ll be no further indiscretions then.”
Alex felt like her stomach would fall out of her. She felt like her heart would beat out of her chest. In her ears she heard rushing water, the endless crashing of waves.
“You should thank your fiancé for his kindness,” her father said.
Alex’s eyes drifted from her father to Maxwell, whose smile did not reach his eyes.
She felt defeated. She had no idea what to do.
“Thank you,” she said.
“We all make mistakes,” he said, standing up. He straightened his cuffs and began to walk toward the front door. He paused by her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I know you won’t do it again.”
Moments later, she was left alone in the drawing room.
Her breathing still came in harsh pants, her heart threatening to surge through her throat. She got up and made her way outside, running as fast as she could down to the stables. Maybe she could catch her, she thought. Maybe she hadn’t left yet.
But Maggie’s room was bare, the drawers empty of her clothes, the shelves empty of her few possessions.
She was gone.
Alex found Toby mucking out an empty stall and she asked him: “Do you know where Tom went?”
Toby nodded. “Sacked, he said. I don’t know why.”
“Yes, I know, but where did he go?”
Toby shrugged. “To the inn in town, I expect, for now at least. The Three Crowns?”
Alex nodded. “Thank you, Toby. Would you saddle Jonas for me?”
Toby stopped shoveling and looked up at her apologetically. “No, Miss.”
“‘No’? What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“Master’s orders,” he said. “Nobody’s to saddle you a horse to ride, and nobody’s to drive you anywhere in a carriage ‘cept the Lord Estate.”
God, Alex thought, her father had thought of everything. And he’d done it all before she was even out of bed.
“Thank you, Toby,” Alex said, and began the slow walk back up to the house.
—
Alex’s mind raced through avenues into the future. She plotted escape plans, but had no way to travel the long route into town. She wrote a note, carefully addressed to Tom and not Maggie, but she had no way to have it sent.
Angry and frustrated, she sat with her uneaten lunch and wracked her brain for a way to reach Maggie, a way to, if nothing else, send her a final note, or a reference letter, or some other quiet token of her love.
In the afternoon, Alex heard the sound of a carriage pulling up to the front of the house. A few moments later the doorman came to her: “Miss Kara Zorel here to visit you, Miss Alexandra.”
Alex looked up. Her cousin Kara had spent the last month with her family in the city to the south, so Alex hadn’t seen her in some time.
“Alex!” Kara said, zipping into the room with her customary smiles an energy. “Alex, it’s been so long, and I’ve missed you—”
Some of Alex’s sadness must have shown in her face, because Kara’s smile fell instantly. “Alex,” she said. “Alex, what’s wrong?”
The knot in Alex’s chest swelled, and swelled, and for the first time all day, she felt her eyes well up with tears.
The doorman sensed the rising tension and was kind enough to step out of the room, closing the door behind him. Kara dropped to the divan beside Alex and reached for both her hands.
“Alex,” she said, “Tell me everything.”
—
Alex told her everything.
Well, she didn’t tell her that Tom was in fact a woman named Maggie. But she told her everything else.
By the end, she was a blubbering mess, and Kara had one arm around her shoulders, and was using her other hand to dab at Alex’s face with her handkerchief.
“Do you love him?” Kara asked.
It was all Alex could do not to start crying again. “I do,” she whispered. “I do.”
“Oh, thank God,” Kara said, and the relief in her voice caught Alex by surprise.
“What?” Alex asked.
“I couldn’t believe you’d actually fall for a prat like Maxwell Lord. Honestly, that man cares for nothing but his fortune and no-one but himself.”
“I still have to marry him, Kara,” Alex said
But Kara eyed her with one eyebrow cocked. “Oh, surely we can find a way to get you out of that, don’t you think?”
—
Kara agreed to go to the inn that evening to see if a Tom Finch was staying there, and to deliver a note from Alex if he was.
If he was already gone, there may not be much left for them to do, she said. But if he was there, she’d ask him to stay a few more days, just to give them some time to work something out. Alex gave Kara most of her pin money to give to Tom for the cost of the extra nights, and Kara said she’d give some of her own as well.
“Kara,” Alex said, “you don’t have to.”
But Kara grinned at her. “It’s true love, Alex! Of course I do!”
The next day, Kara came to visit Alex again. “He’s still there,” she said. “He’s agreed to stay through the end of the week.”
The end of the week. Alex’s wedding day.
“I have to say, Alex,” Kara said, glancing sidelong at her, “I support you if you love him, but… what a funny choice you’ve made.”
Alex shrugged. “If you knew him like I do, you’d understand.”
“And just how well do you know… him... Alex?” Kara asked carefully.
Somehow, it didn’t surprise Alex that Kara had seen through Maggie’s disguise at merely a glance. Kara was like that: she saw people for who they were, as though their secrets were written on their skin, and yet managed never to judge them for it.
Alex swallowed. “I’d say… as well as one person can know another.”
Kara arched an eyebrow, impressed but not surprised. “And you’d run away from all of this? From your comforts, from your heredity, from your privilege, to be with... him?”
Nothing, Alex thought, could possibly make her feel more free than to walk away from all of this. “In a heartbeat.”
Kara smiled and laid a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “All right, then. I think I’ve got a plan.”
—
The plan played out like this.
Three days before the wedding, Kara paid a visit to Alex again. And when she left the Danvers Estate with a bag that hadn’t arrived with her, nobody noticed or thought to ask anything. Nobody knew that the bag was packed full of Alex’s more functional clothing.
Two nights before the wedding, when the family and staff were frantic in final preparations for the arrival of the guests the following day, Kara sent for Tom’s possessions and hid them, along with the bag of Alex’s clothing, in an outbuilding on her family’s property. And then Maggie, as surreptitiously as possible, made her way on foot back to the Danvers Estate.
When darkness settled, and calm finally settled over the house with it, Maggie slipped into the stables. She knew the horses and the stables so well that she could move through them without a light, and Jonas and Ginger knew her and her gentle hands so well that they made no fuss at all when she saddled them.
Night fallen, the horses saddled, Maggie crept across the darkness to the house, where she found a pebble and threw it up against Alex’s window.
Alex, awake and dressed in her riding clothes, carrying a satchel full of all her valuables—enough to sell for a few hundred pounds at least, which should help them get started somewhere new—opened the window and smiled down at her. And then, in a moment of reckless bravery the likes of which she never thought she’d have to take, Alex threw both legs across the window frame and scaled down the thick vines that climbed up the side of the building.
In the darkness, Alex and Maggie greeted each other with a few quiet, thrilled kisses, Alex running her hands down Maggie’s body as though to confirm it were all there, intact in front of her.
“The horses are waiting,” Maggie whispered. Clutching each other’s hands, they made their way back to the stables.
Nobody had moved into Maggie’s empty room, so finally, there, they had privacy and a degree of safety.
“My love,” Alex said, as she tipped her lips to Maggie’s again and again. “Oh, my darling.”
Maggie kissed her back, her fingers digging desperately into Alex’s back, pulling their bodies together.
“Listen, Alex,” Maggie said. Alex dove in for another kiss, but Maggie pulled back. “Listen to me,” she repeated.
Alex stopped and listened.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Maggie asked. “I want—I want the greatest happiness for you, and I could never give you the life to which you’re accustomed. We will always live in a degree of secrecy.”
Alex smiled and ran the tips of her fingers through Maggie’s close-cropped hair, over her ears, along her scalp. “You are my greatest happiness, Maggie,” she said, with all the vigour she could muster. Her heart swelled, her body felt warm, and her hands felt like they always wished to be touching Maggie. “I want none of this if I can’t have you.”
Maggie grinned so brightly, Alex worried it might light up the darkness and give them away.
“Well then,” Maggie said, “let’s go.”
In the soft grass behind the stable, Ginger nuzzled a little at Maggie’s shoulder as if to apologize for having injured her all those weeks ago.
“Oh, that’s all right, girl,” Maggie said, scratching the mare’s pink nose. “You’ll make it all up to me tonight.” And then Maggie climbed up into Ginger’s saddle, and Alex climbed up into Jonas’s, and in the quiet of night they slipped away into the woods, down the hidden paths that took them toward the Zorel family estate.
Kara waited for them there, at the outbuilding where she’d hidden their things. Alex all but flew off of Jonas’s back and into her cousin’s arms.
“Did anyone see you?” Kara asked, clutching her tightly.
“I don’t think so,” Alex answered.
“Good.”
Maggie dismounted more calmly and waited, holding back until the cousins had let each other go.
Alex let Kara go first. She stepped back and squeezed her cousin’s shoulders. “You’re brilliant,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Consider it thanks for all the scrapes you patched up for me when we were children,” Kara said, smiling.
Kara showed her where their possessions were carefully packed up in satchels they could attach to their horses’ saddles. There was an extra bag, too.
“Some bread rolls, and salt meat, and some preserves,” she said. “Enough to last you a day, maybe two, until you can get well on your way.”
Alex felt her eyes well up again. God, Kara had thought of everything.
“Thank you,” Maggie said, beside her. “We’ll be forever grateful to you.”
Together, Alex and Maggie tied their packs to their saddles, and then faced Kara to say goodbye.
“You must write me,” she said to Alex. “Often. And tell me where you end up, so I can come to visit you.”
“I promise,” Alex said, hugging her cousin tightly.
Kara stepped over to Maggie, next. “And you, Tom” she said. “You, who have taken my beloved cousin’s heart. I hope you’ll love her enough, and work hard enough, to deserve her.”
“Every moment of every day,” Maggie said. “I swear it.”
Kara cocked her head, and then she smiled. “I can tell you’re speaking the truth. And speaking of truths…” She reached forward and traced a finger along Maggie’s smooth, soft jawline. “Will you tell me the truth of your name? For I know it isn’t really Tom.”
Maggie blinked and licked her lips. “Maggie,” she said. “My name is Maggie.”
Alex’s eyes leapt from Kara to Maggie and back again, but she saw no malice in her cousin’s face, and no fear in her lover’s.
“All right, Maggie,” Kara said, “take care of my cousin. And you,” she turned to Alex, “take care of Maggie. You’ve both risked so much to love each other.”
With a final exchange of embraces, Alex and Maggie mounted their horses and rode off into the darkness.
—
There are those in the world who do not believe in great, long-lasting, and sacrificial love.
But several counties north of the Danvers Estate, a young couple purchased a dilapidated horse farm.
They were an odd couple, to the eye. The husband was shorter and smaller than the wife, and there was a youthfulness to him, a softness to his eyes, that stayed even as he aged.
Together, over months and years, they cleaned up the farm, mending broken fences, patching soggy roofs, rebuilding collapsing stalls. The horses, known in the area for their wildness and poor training, calmed over months of work with the young horseman. And when the couple began to breed and raise and train their own horses, they became known in their county as the purveyors of the finest, gentlest, and best-trained horses money could buy.
The couple were not wealthy, but they had money enough to hire a cook, and the cottage where they lived was warm and well-kept. From time to time, they were visited by a noblewoman from a county to the south — tall, blonde, and very clearly exceeding the couple in social status, but they greeted each other with the warmth and affection of family, every time.
The young man and woman made friends of some neighbouring farmers, and any who visited them couldn’t help but notice the quiet, calm intimacy of their lives, the trust they placed in each other, the deep love in their eyes that only grew deeper as their faces grew less young, their hair streaked with grey.
It was a great misfortune, surely, that they were never able to have children, but this reality seemed to upset them not at all.
There are those in the world who do not believe in great, long-lasting, and sacrificial love, but anyone to spend time with this couple—during the passionate fire of their youth, the calm companionship of their aged years, or the workaday years in between—could never count themselves among them.
Word of this couple’s excellent horses made its way south, over time, until it reached the Master of the Danvers Estate. He, curious and suspicious and in need or a new horse or two, took his carriage up to inquire into the couple and their stock.
The couple met him in front of their stables, recognition in their eyes, but no fear. They held each other tightly by the hand.
“Are you here to buy horses?” the woman asked, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Ours are the best-trained in six counties.”
“So I’ve heard,” the Lord Danvers said, looking back at her, just as intent.
Then his eyes softened. “My dear Alexandra,” he said. “Are you happy?”
Her hand tightened around her husband’s hand. She looked at him beside her, and his smile spoke of the lifetimes of love he’d lay down at her feet. She hoped that he could see the same in her, that he could feel all that the love she felt for him.
They say that in a family it is a man’s duty to provide and a woman’s duty to love, but in this marriage, there was love as if from two women, and somehow they were both provided for anyway.
The woman looked back at the Lord Danvers. “I couldn’t imagine being happier.”
He smiled at her, relief and quiet happiness in his face. “I’m happy to hear it,” he said.
He bought two horses and went on his way home.
The couple went back to their work. And that night, to their home, to its warm firelight, its evenings spent with books or stories or quiet lovemaking.
There are those in the world who do not believe in great, long-lasting, and sacrificial love, but this young couple lived it every day.