Because he’d forgotten how the minutest detail about a loved one became a treasure to gather.
She’d wanted to hear him breathe.
On the hotel ceiling was a stain shaped like Italy, and he lay on his back on the (lumpy) bed and stared up at it for a time as if it was an oracle.
What he wouldn’t give right now to hear her breathing next to him.
Finally he closed his eyes, and lost himself to the memory of the unguarded tenderness with which Catherine’s fingers had landed against his face. She had from the first looked at him, and spoken to him, and touched him, with the courage born of an innocence that hadn’t yet been hobbled by heartbreak. He’d been almost unable to bear it. He’d not wanted to accept how desperately he’d needed it.
What if you didn’t fighteverything?she’d asked, the night she’d worn a goldenrod dress.
Had she seen what he could not? That he’d been fighting against the tide of his feelings for her?
Had she seen his fear? His pride recoiled from this notion.
And yet. She was the one person in the world he would trust with his fear.
Had she been trying to tell him then that he was free to love her, because she could love him, too?
He breathed as the impossible beauty of this possibility flowed through him like a sweet drug.
And yet. He wasn’t certain she would even speak to him again.
It remained more than possible he’d botched things utterly.
But he saw very clearly now that the only chance he had of salvation was to lay himself bare. And inso doing, even if he never saw her again... he knew, somehow, he would at last be free.
His pillow at this hotel wasn’t soft. It was no hardship to leave it, light a lamp, and settle in at the desk, which suffered from the absence of blossoms in a vase.
And he settled in to write a speech like no other he’d ever written.
It was time to let himself be known.
St. Stephens Chapel at the Palace of Westminster, where the House of Commons met, was stuffed cheek by jowl with members of Parliament from both the Lords and the Commons that day.
Word had spread that after weeks of silence, Lord Dominic Kirke was finally going to speak.
The speaker in question paced, as he always did before speeches, taking long deep draughts of the air breathed by centuries of MPs before him. His palms were damp. There was always a moment—and it was brief—where he felt almost lifted out of his body with unreality as he took in the hundreds of eyes fixed upon him. A euphoric sort of terror. The first words were always the hardest, but he gathered strength from each one he said, until speaking was as innate as breathing.
He knew his audience was expecting to be stirred. And usually he complied, with fire and passion.
Today, little did they know, they would be offered something completely new.
A love letter.
“When I was a boy, in Wales...” he began, conversationally, “I grew up in a tiny house of nine people. Yes, I had six brothers and sisters. I know what you’reall thinking: thank God there are more Kirkes, because we cannot get enough of the one we have.” He paused for scattered laughter, good-natured theatrical moans. “My childhood was chaos. Crying, screaming, arguments, laughter, wrestling, chasing, nothing but noise all day long. There was seldom enough to eat, and never a moment’s peace, not even at night, when the whole of my family, parents and children, were all stuffed into two beds. Thesnoring. You could not hear your own thoughts, gentlemen. And I had a lot of them, as you can imagine.”
Many faces were smiling; many remained impassive, or merely alert. But he had fully captured their attention now. He had never begun a speech quite like this.
“How did I survive? I had a secret.” He paused, knowing the power of this word, and the power of silence, like a rest in a composition. “And my secret was this: I had a refuge. Whenever I wanted a moment alone, when the noise and bickering and babies became more than even a saint could tolerate—I am no saint”—he paused for a heartbeat to allow the chuckles to subside—“I would sneak out to a scrubby little hill near my house. It was as unprepossessing as a place could be. It had as its crowning feature: a large gray boulder, which obscured me from anyone who might be hunting for me.
“And this hillside was covered in the most heavenly carpet of clover.”
He let the word linger in the air, like a caress.
“Like an embrace, that clover was. I never wanted to leave it. It was there, on that hillside, that I felt like my truest, freest, safest self. When I shuffle off this mortal coil, if I through some miracle make it past the gates, I’m certain heaven will look like thatclover-covered hillside, scented with little purple blossoms. And instead of harps, I’ll hear the hum of bees and the wind moving the long grass.
“So what does ‘clover’ mean to me? Refuge. Paradise. Peace. And I sometimes think that if anyone could peer at the contents of my heart—well, frankly, you’d find clover. And I will confess something, gentlemen. To this day, when I’m having difficulty falling asleep, I imagine I’m back on that hillside. It’s my heart’s true home.”