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Cassandra sighed back against the pillow, lowering the pages slowly, almost overcome.
"I am quite giddy. I am full up with her love," she declared, grinning across at Jane, who was propped on an elbow beside her. "As if I loved him myself."
"Do you not love him yourself?" asked Jane, some spark of mischief in those eyes, little mouth impish as it quirked. "Surely none can resist him, having met him. He is a hero. And you have met him."
Cassandra shifted closer, gaze sharpening. "Who is he, then?"
Jane sat up, a frown crinkling her forehead, tugging the pages free and flipping through them. "Is his character not clear enough?"
"On the page, yes, but in the world..." Cassandra breathed deep, chest still sweetly shivering with the ghost of that fantasy – now also tempted by this whisper of a secret. "Who did you model him on, if I have met him?"
"No one, dear sister," chuckled Jane, tapping at her own lines of ink across the paper. "You have met him upon the page, that was my meaning. He lives only in these scratchings of ink and the sparks in my mind."
"But sister, you write as if you were love's oldest friend," Cassie insisted, hefting herself upright, dress rustling. "You must have had some secret passion."
"Yes, between your sharp eyes and Mother's ceaseless fussing, I have carried out a covert romance without the slightest clue," teased Jane, eyes sharp with her own jest. "I have twelve children hidden down in Dorset."
"You always hide the truth best with some witty tease," laughed Cassandra, shaking her head fondly. "Truly, sister, tell me. I will not pry his name from you, but surely you may whisper that he once existed."
"I may not," Jane said, calmly dropping the papers between them, "for he does not."
"No one, Jane?" Cassandra leaned closer. "Never?"
Jane half shrugged. "Never."
"But you write of love so beautifully!" cried Cassandra, hand waving above those pages. "How could you so capture a thing you have never felt?"
"Observation, dear Cassie," noted Jane, the corner of her mouth tugging upwards, playful again. "And pilfering the details from you, and Eliza, and..."
"Oh! So that's your secret!" huffed Cassandra, all harshness feigned, finding her own tease. "I should ask for a share of the monies when this volume is flying off the shelves."
"It is no secret," Jane said, expression calm. "Surely you recognise many of our acquaintance among my dramatis personae. I have been quite open with it."
"Ah, yes, poor Mary..." sighed Cassandra, and Jane's mouth twitched to a curve. "But to sketch a person is one thing. Feelings are quite another. Anyone could imitate the obvious traits of a dull sister or obsequious vicar. But love is some raw and fragile thing, like a bird you must clutch gently else your hands crush its tiny thumping heart, or... or like a morning's mist that may burn away as the day's sun rises. It is overwhelming and fleeting all at once. How can one observe such a thing?"
"It seems I'm not the only one in this family with a gift for words," urged Jane, dark eyes sparking, tone low and playful. "I shall expect the first pages of your novel next week."
"Hush, Jane, one metaphor is an easy accident," muttered Cassandra, half a smile rising as she flicked her hand. "I could not spin such a thread for fifty thousand words without the strands quickly fraying. But that is my point: there is no accident in this masterpiece."
"Similes, dear Cassie, and two of them," said Jane, wearing another impish pout as she leaned in. "And yes, I will agree that every word from my pen is deliberate. But that does not require it be drawn from my own experience. Indeed, it gives me greater subtlety to select slight hints from the expanse of dramas that have played out before me, and blend them into one."
"Surely to take a shallow hint here and there must create an expanse that's wide but never deep?" asked Cassandra, glancing at those scattered pages. "A hollow love, and your romances are never hollow. They are so rich I could breathe them. You must have some other strategy, sister, even subconscious."
"You truly think one cannot know a thing unless one has lived it?" Jane arched one brow, one finger tapping at her papers. "Yet you say my hero lives in you, and you know him nowhere but the page."
"But to write a love one has only seen would be..." Cassandra sighed as she gestured, thoughts tumbling, seeking to match her earlier success with words. "Would be difficult as matching each stitch of a pattern once glimpsed through a fractured prism."
"Ah, now that is a metaphor, Cassie," declared Jane, grin flaring then fading as she ebbed more pensive. "But I must disagree. As one always on the margins, I have honed my skills in observation to some slight excellence. I hold not a prism, but a magnifying glass."
"But still, would it not be easier to observe a truth in one's own heart?" asked Cassandra, half hushed.
"It is always, I think, easier to capture a thing from without than from within," said Jane, earnest now. "The artist always sketches the model before her. She cannot see her face from her own eyes."
"Unless she looks upon a mirror," teased Cassandra, leaning close to her sister's little face.
"And then sees all her features turned about. No, that is no path to truth," sighed Jane, shaking her head. "Besides, my face is not suited to the canvas. I am no peach." Her teasing gaze flicked over Cassandra.
"Jane! Don't speak of yourself so," decried Cassandra, heart clenching, offended on her sweet sister's behalf. "I'm sure someone will find you quite delicious."
"Then I must refuse him on principle," Jane said, airy as a spring cloud. "For if he finds me a worthy wife, he cannot be a worthy suitor."
An ache sank within Cassandra's chest. "Do you not think yourself deserving of love?"
"Oh, deserving, deserving," chuckled Jane, waving her hand at nothing. "The more I see of love, the more I believe that deserving takes no part. It is some chance madness that arrives like lightning and leaves one thunderstruck." She rocked back, idly, clutching her knees. "Or else some quiet conspiracy, spun into a heart by little hints and engineered meetings."
"Then perhaps I shall engineer some love for you," teased Cassandra, though she was half sincere. "And you shall be as happy as I, and your heroines."
"I shall resent you if you try," grunted Jane.
Cassandra tilted her head. "You do not want love?"
"I have love," insisted Jane, slipping one hand across to clasp hers, fingers warm as her soft smile.
"Of course you do," agreed Cassandra, patting that hand, fondly nonchalant. "But that is different."
"Yes, for I rate this far higher," said Jane, dark eyes steady as she squeezed her sister tighter.
Cassandra smiled, but that ache still lingered. "But should you not like a love that makes you giddy?" she asked, free hand stroking at one corner of a page. "That fills all your spirit to the brim?"
"Oh, but I have that kind of love also," chuckled Jane, shoulders easy as she stretched back, releasing her sister's hand.
"Hah, you confess!" cackled Cassandra, grin surging.
"Do not crow, Cassandra, it's quite inelegant," Jane said, with her smoothest, most mannered tone. "Especially since you are mistaken again."
"How so?" Cassandra pouted. "You just said..."
"My love is in the words," said Jane, pressing her palm to that spray of pages. "My love is the words."
Cassandra slipped a short and hollow chuckle. "You would rather marry a book than a man?"
"Yes, I should," said Jane, another mask of mischief descending upon her face. "That is the only way you shall ever tempt me up the aisle, dear sister: if the suitor waiting at the altar is but a stack of pages, stamped with ink and sewn tight together, his wedding suit a leather wrap embossed with my own name."
"Jane," huffed Cassandra, half a sigh. "I know how you enjoy your writing. I turn for two minutes, and you have curled up in some nook with your quill. But romance is... not some sweet pastime, but a steady blaze. A heat that sustains one's very soul, even when far from the hearth. A book cannot keep you warm."
"Indeed, it does. All my words fuel a great warmth in me. And once fixed upon the page, my deep satisfaction in them can never burn out. I have no hunger for a romance, for my true purpose is already sated." Jane's sincerity flashed impish again. "And for the rest, I have a shawl."
Cassandra frowned, sinking to the pillows. "You imagine it as a hunger, then?"
"You do not?" asked Jane, dark eyes truly curious, slumping sideways to match her. "In some lovedrunk gazes I have seen a flash of hunger, all the stronger for feeding upon their love's close presence."
"I do not think it is a hunger," Cassandra murmured, gaze drifting to the ceiling. "It is... like the sigh as one slips into a warm bed. A soft refuge, familiar and thrilling in its relaxation."
"Giddiness, then," confirmed Jane, halfway between earnest and playful.
"Yes, I suppose. But not so fleeting." Cassandra swallowed, eyes seeking her sister's face again. "That is my worry, Jane. That all your warmth shall flee, and you shall find yourself in cold regret and wishing for some shelter."
"I shall never wish for shelter, for my writing will sustain me," declared Jane, simple and certain. "It is my very foundation, and I have built a cosy cottage there, where I shall live out all my days."
Cassandra swallowed. "All your days indeed," she said softly, prying up a smile. "For you would write all day long if we did not pull you away."
"It is true, it entertains me endlessly," agreed Jane, unabashed, then patted Cassandra's arm. "Not that you do not. You bring me great joy too, sister. But I could write and write for a thousand years and never tire of it. And with each word set in ink, be ever more satisfied in having written."
"I am glad to hear it," murmured Cassandra, reaching to tangle their fingers together. "I do not like the thought of my sweet Jane withering alone, looking back and judging her own life hollow."
"My life is not hollow, Cassie, it is so full," Jane insisted, sincere as Cassandra had ever seen, those fingers squeezing hers again. "I shall regret none of it. For I have all the people and the work that I need."
"You truly do not wish for romance?" asked Cassandra, brows raised, more in hope than disbelief. "Your deepest hunger is to sweep ink across the page?"
"It is all I need," assured Jane, voice soft, smile steady. "It is all I have ever needed."
After a moment, Cassandra nodded, yet staring into that gaze. The spark she saw there would sustain her ever after, whenever she doubted her sister's happiness – or her own capacity for the same.