“Oh, Grace. Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“You don’t want to hear anything save that the shadow is a weakness of the Troy Game, Jack.”
“Ouch. I suppose I deserved that. But, Grace, I wish you’d told me…”
He sighed then. “I’m sorry. I wish you could trust me more, and that’s not your fault, but mine.”
I was starting to feel very uncomfortable, and wished I’d never opened my mouth. “Why did you want to see me tonight?”
He gave a funny little smile. “I can see I am going to have to work hard to retrieve the situation. I want to talk to you about something, but not here, not on this bridge. Will you stroll with me a little way?”
He gave me no chance to answer, but slid an arm through mine and guided me down the steps which led to the pedestrian subway under the bridge and onto Lambeth Embankment.
We walked in silence for some time, my mind churning. I always felt guilty when someone said they wanted to “talk to me”, and at the same time hated that I did feel guilty. I wished I could be more confident, more like my mother, or Matilda, or even Ecub. Jack must find me so tiresome. I wished that I had told him earlier about my sense of the shadow rushing in towards me.
We were walking along that part of the Embankment directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, when the wind suddenly gusted. I had to pull my arm away from his to get my hair out of my eyes, and he stopped, turned to me, and slid both his hands about my face, holding my hair back for me.
I started to pull back, but his hands tightened.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Please…”
His face went very still, and his dark eyes became far keener than usual. I trembled, for I felt the marks over his shoulders start to move, sliding down his arms.
I shivered as they flowed over his fingers onto my face.
“There has been something troubling me about you ever since I first met you,” he said.
I tensed, and knew he could feel it under his hands.
“I’ve never been able to read you,” he said. “I’ve never been able to understand you.”
I tried to pull away, and again his hands tightened.
“Please don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered, and the touch of his hands became infinitely gentle.
“It took me a while to realise that this didn’t have anything to do with you, but with me,” he continued. “I thought you were the shuttered one, but I had been.” His voice became teasing. “I hate it when I realise I’ve been an idiot.”
He was being too kind, and I was sure it was because he was about to tell me that he and my mother had decided to abandon all caution and renew their love affair. “Jack—”
“Do you remember,” he said, “what I said to you atop Ambersbury Banks?”
“You said many things.”
“The night you watched me being marked. I said you were either the most shuttered person I’d ever met, or the most transparent. I’d almost got it with the transparent, but not quite. Grace, you’re the most extraordinary person. You have no artifice about you. Absolutely none. I’ve never met anyone, no one, in all my time on this earth like you. You have nothing to hide. You don’t even try.”
The marks were moving slowly about my face now, so soft, so caressing, and I think that I could not have moved had Hitler personally leaped up from behind the Embankment wall and thrown a hand grenade or two in our direction.
“I didn’t trust that at first,” Jack continued. “I couldn’t believe it. Surely everyone has something to hide. Some artifice needed to promote their own agenda. But you don’t.” His thumbs were stroking very slowly against my cheeks. “You don’t. You’re…” he paused, seemingly trying to find the right words. “You’re as clear and as pure as the peal of a temple bell through a snowy night.”
He stopped, giving a half-embarrassed laugh. “Now I’m getting as lyrical as my father.”
I didn’t understand that last (and, in truth, I was having some difficulty with the rest of it, as well) and he laughed again, more confidently this time.
“See?” he said. “Your confusion is written all over your face. Everything is written all over your face. You let it shine forth.”
“I thought you were angry at me,” I said.
“I’m not angry,” Jack said. “I know why you didn’t tell me about the shadow.”
He smiled a little then, his fingers moving very gently against my face. I didn’t know what he wanted, or where this was going, and, oh gods, if what he was saying was true, then surely he could read this all over my face.
His smile broadened, just very slightly, then I felt the touch of the marks withdraw, and a moment later that of Jack’s hands. He slid his arm back through mine, and we resumed walking along Lambeth Embankment towards Lambeth Palace, the ancient stronghold of the Archbishops of Canterbury.
My thoughts were so confused I felt numbed. For the past months Jack had been friendly, but somehow distant. Now all that distance had gone. In fact, Jack seemed hell bent on closing it as fast as he could.
“On the night of the parish dance,” he said, “I said that Noah was not my life. I meant it, Grace.”
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Surely he really meant that—
“I’m tired of loving her, Grace. I can’t be bothered any more.”
I blinked. I had heard the words, but wasn’t sure I had actually understood them.
“That sounds pretty damned selfish and selfcentred, doesn’t it?” Jack went on. “During the night of the Great Marriage, Grace, I discovered that I’d been yearning for a dream…and it wasn’t your mother.” He paused again, while I concentrated very hard on my breathing. For some reason it didn’t seem to be coming and going as easily as it should.
“Can I tell you a home truth?” he continued. “It was a relief to leave Noah the morning after the Great Marriage. That night was an ending for us, Grace. It wasn’t a beginning or a promise or anything else. It was an ending. A completion.”
“I don’t think it was ‘an ending’ for my mother.”
“Ah.” We walked in silence a while. I wished I knew where Jack was going with this conversation.
“That sense of ending was underscored last night, Grace,” Jack said, neatly evading the implications of my statement. “Noah and I matched powers beautifully…but it was as nothing to what I felt with you.”
“But…but…Jack. Stop. Please. I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”
“Because you need, and deserve, to know how I feel about Noah. You also need to know how I feel about you.”
I stopped, staring at him.
“I am both fascinated and terrified by you, Grace.” He gave a small, lopsided grin. “Much as, I suspect, you feel about me.”
I couldn’t breathe. Not at all.
“Recently my father gave me a bit of advice.”
Finally, I managed to take a breath, but was somewhat dismayed to find I couldn’t look at Jack. I was instead sliding my eyes up and down the Thames as if I expected to see the first wave of German invaders at any moment.
Gods only knew what he must have thought.
“He said I should get to know you better,” Jack continued.
“Why should he say that?” My voice squeaked at the end of the sentence. I couldn’t believe it.
Jack reached out a hand and took one of mine, pulling it close to his chest.
“Because we dance together so well. Because we’re the only ones who can work out this shadow. And because you are…so…damn…beautiful.”
At that my breathing gave out completely.
Jack gave a funny little smile, and squeezed my hand very slightly. “And because you have something I want, badly. And of all these things, Grace, even I don’t know which is the most important to me. I suspect it might be the third thing I mentioned, but I need to be sure. All right?”
“All right.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to agree to, but I seemed to say what he wanted.
“Good.” He gave my hand one more squeeze, then let it go. He slid his arm through mine, and again we resumed walking along Lambeth Embankment.
Everything was taking on a slightly surreal quality. I was aware that it was misting rain, and that it was very cold. I was aware of the occasional barge that puttered up the river, and of the birds that lifted off the Embankment walls as we passed.
But none of it seemed real.
I wanted to believe that Jack had just said those words to me, but I couldn’t quite manage it.