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Learning what to do had been fairly easy. While Thomas’ experience caring for an invalid was limited, he’d had- in his own opinion –the best example to copy from. Making tea and toast proved well within his culinary grasp; changing sheets and blankets was fairly intuitive. Soothing and sponge-bathing and giving comfort… he found himself wanting to do little else. Time spent away from the old nursery was rare, and he grudged every second he wasn’t beside that little bed. Or better still, in it, under the covers, being nestled against with his arms around the bony form that was slowly (far too slowly) gaining back its softness.
Learning what not to do was harder.
Traps, in the way of such things, never sprung until you put a foot wrong. A word, a gesture- an aching bruise on his cheek and an hour’s worth of quiet weeping from the other side of the room taught him not to come near her smelling of carbolic soap. Other lessons were similarly painful, to both body and heart.
So when he touched Lucille’s hair without thinking, running a hand over the soft, dark cap that had finally covered her scalp like a blanket of moss, the hiss of tightly-drawn breath sent a familiar pang through his stomach.
“I-” he began, pulling back.
She cut him off, shaking her head. “Just don’t. Please.”
It should have been a relief: no blows or shouting this time. A boundary marked far more gently than most. To his dismay, it almost hurt as though she’d struck him.
Thomas couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t touched each other as easily as breathing. Obviously, when things- he swallowed hard, pushing away dark and warm thoughts –when things changed, but even before that. Kisses and embraces had been a fact of life, something they could only get in one place. Most nights, as she read to him or told stories, he’d curl up against her side, feeling the weight of her arm around him. Sometimes he’d tinker with a clock one-handed as she idly traced circles on his palm with her fingers. It meant everything and nothing. It was a cornerstone of their lives.
None of the servants had time to care for Lucille’s long, heavy hair, as she got older. So Thomas had learned to help.
As an adult he realized she could have managed on her own. She’d been humoring him. But the sparkle in her eyes when he raced into the room clutching bright silk ribbons that had been buried in an old trunk, or the softness in her voice when he finished weaving her bedtime braid- it was all part and parcel of Lucille-Is-Here, in his memory. The loss of that rich mantle he’d stroked or toyed with or cried into so many times had shaken him at first, shaken him badly. But he’d hoped, as so many other things came back-
She rolled to the other side of the bed, still barely a hand’s-width away on the narrow mattress, and pulled her knees to her chest. Though her back was turned, he could feel her staring into the gloom.
Another bit of happiness had died, then, fluttering feebly against the dark. Add it to the list.
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The first time she kissed him awake, straddled him, shuddered against him and cried out his name in a way he’d dreamed of for so long, she drifted off against his bare chest afterwards.
Brown strands fell over her eyes to graze the tip of her nose as she moved in her sleep. He didn’t smooth them back as he might once have, carelessly.
Careful. Care-full. Care like worry, he thought as he closed his eyes, but also like love.
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A year passed, then three months more. Lucille’s body ceased swelling, seeming to reach the endpoint nature had set for it. Thomas privately worried she was still far too thin.
(The smooth curves of her breasts beneath her shift as his hands roved and made her gasp. Perhaps he worried for nothing.)
She slipped back into his life as quietly as her exit had been explosive. One day, “Lucille” had meant a dream of a girl in a short blue dress, and the next, a tall young woman was here and real. She seemed to be everywhere at once- stirring a pot in the kitchen, smiling at him from the piano bench. Reality slowly came to replace the vision.
She looked up from her book across the dinner table. If a heart could burst, Thomas thought his might be in real danger.
From some forgotten corner of the attic, she’d produced a paisley wool scarf, badly faded. It was knotted firmly about her head every morning, a dozen pins along the edges to confine the growing chaos of her hair. Every night she removed it and ran a brush through the locks beneath with more vigor than real interest. Thomas didn’t watch, knowing she would pause and stiffen if he did, remembering his own childish hands wielding the brush slowly and clumsily as her voice washed over him.
He didn’t offer to help. She didn’t ask.
Until the night he stumbled into the nursery, half-asleep on his feet after a day fighting with stubborn gears. She was like a statue at the makeshift dressing-table he’d made of his old school-desk. Not moving. Watching him in the small tabletop mirror.
“Lucille…?” First one step forward, then another. Slowly. Hands raised, like a man approaching a wild horse.
“Thomas,” she said tightly. “Come here. Please.” The please was an afterthought, and came out oddly strangled.
In a few strides, he drew level with her small, cracked stool. Her face looked chalk-white, he noticed, even compared to its usual pallor.
She reached up, pulled out the pins and untied the scarf. Her hair, shaken out, didn’t have far to fall- the longest of several ragged layers just touched her collarbone. It was still not Right, not the natural order of things. But it was miles better, leagues better. Things were healing. Things were approaching normal.
A deep breath in and out. Her eyes never left his in the glass.
Then- she slowly held out her brush.
Thomas blinked. What on earth-
“Take it,” she said, in a voice like stretched rubber. ”It’s not a snake. I know what I said, but I-” her shoulders heaved, just once. “I want to trust you.”
Kneeling down beside her, he grasped the battered, black wooden handle. “You always can.”
It wasn’t like before. The silence rested heavy about them, unbroken by songs or a thread of story. Just quick shallow breaths and the quiet sound of stroking boar-bristles.
If he had her voice, he thought, with its silvery power, what would he say?
Once upon a time, a princess was rescued from an evil spell…
Thomas worked slowly, methodically, one section of hair at a time. He imagined the glints of red and gold in the deep brown were magic flowing from his fingertips.
You’re safe. You’re loved. No-one will hurt you again. He willed her to feel it, tried to make his touch as gentle and soothing as possible.
Tried to ignore the tension like a taut wire between her shoulders. Tried not to see the tears glistening in her eyes as she watched him.
Her hair was still thick and soft, smelling faintly of rosemary- had she washed it recently? As the brush smoothed it, it seemed to shine even brighter in the candlelight. That, at least, hadn’t changed.
And any fragment of what they’d had was worth fighting for.
There was a slight tremor in her breathing as he reached the halfway point, directly behind her, no longer entirely visible. He thought he heard sniffling, very quiet, as if she were trying to stifle it before he could notice. This was going to fall apart if something didn’t change, and soon.
His mind raced. What did she fear? What memories was he fighting? Strangers’ hands on her, rough, thoughtless, taking.
Strangers.
“I missed this,” he said in a half-whisper. “I missed you.”
It’s me. It’s just me. Focus on my voice.
A louder sniff than the ones before. “Did you?”
“Every day.” The brush didn’t stop moving, but he glanced over her head for a moment. Their eyes locked in the mirror. Hers were wide as saucers, unblinking, almost seeming not to see him. He didn’t look away.
“Every moment of every day,” he amended. “I thought I’d go mad, not being able to even write to you. I tried, but they wouldn’t tell me where exactly you were.”
“A convent in Switzerland, wasn’t it?” A wry note entered her voice. Good. Anything but panic was good.
He hit a tangle and carefully worked at it with his fingers. “You must let me know if I hurt you. Yes, that’s what they said. Until the French teacher gave the game away.”
“You would never hurt me.” He almost didn’t hear, she spoke so quietly. More to herself than aloud. But her eyes closed for a brief moment, and triumph surged in him like a wave. He thought the high, rounded arc of her shoulders dropped slightly.
“No,” he said, resuming his steady brushing. The short brown waves turned to silk beneath his hand, and he vowed he’d see them trail on the floor one day, if that was her wish. Blotting out the past and moving forward together into something new. Something better.
“Tell me about him.” She sounded stronger now, and steadier. “The French teacher. Was he always so loose-lipped?”
Tales of Monsieur LaLonde and his unfortunate fondness for cognac carried them through the next ten minutes or so. Thomas found himself working far slower than necessary, just to hear those tiny hints of amusement in her voice and watch her relax by degrees. At last, he pulled over a badly abused rattan chair and set the brush aside.
“All finished,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m rather out of practice, so I hope I didn’t…” He trailed off as the glimmering in her eyes finally welled up and spilled down her cheeks.
“No!” he cried. “No, no! Listen, whatever I’ve done wrong, I’m sorry.” Clasping her hand in his, he leaned closer and kissed her cheek. “You don’t have to do this. If it’s too soon, or even if you’re never ready, you don’t have to force yourself on my account.”
She drew back. It was only then that he noticed her smile.
“Hush,” she said, her voice only a little bit shaky. “I knew what I was doing. It’s wrong not to trust you, silly and stupid. And-” Here she paused, resting her free hand on his cheek. “I missed you, too. More than you could know.”
Catching her hand up, he turned his head to kiss it- only to find four bloody crescents cut into her palm.
“Lucille!” He flipped her other hand in his lap. Four more fresh marks, deep and red.
Her mouth moved soundlessly as her eyes darted about the room. Whatever escape she sought failed to present itself, but before she could say anything, he raised both her hands to his lips. Gently, as if touching the most delicate glass bauble, he pressed his lips to the nail-marks.
When he looked up, his eyes were dark.
“I’d like to kill those blackguards.”
Her gaze was a thousand miles away. “Someday. Not right now.”
They sat like that for a moment, not speaking, not looking at each other. It still felt like comfort. Thomas thought the warmth radiating from her shone faintly in the air, shimmering as it left her body. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel it on his skin.
When he opened them again, her attention had shifted back to the mirror. Pushing her hair back from her forehead scar, examining the raised white line, letting the dark strands slip through her fingers absent-mindedly. At last, she let out a faint, humorless chuckle.
“Well, I look a fright,” she said tonelessly. “But that’s hardly news of late, is it?”
Thomas rested a hand on her shoulder. “You look beautiful.”
There it was- that Look he’d gotten a hundred times as a child. The “do-be-serious” look, turning her eyes to green polar ice. He found that he had missed even her scorn.
“I’m not blind, Thomas, and neither are you. You can’t lie to me. Anyway, I don’t care. It’s not as if it matters- there’s no-one here to impress.”
Her lips twitched, just once, just the tiniest bit. Something ached deep n his chest.
Oh, sister. You can’t lie to me, either.
“I’m not lying,” he replied. One arm slipped around her waist, and he rested his chin on her shoulder to watch her in the silvery glass. “You’re always you, inside. And since you are the loveliest woman in the world, no matter what, then it follows that if you’re still you…” Wait. Did that make any sense at all? His eyelids felt like stones, and the words collided and jostled in his brain.
“Besides,” he heard himself babbling on, “you’ve gotten all soft since you came back. Except in the face, but that suits you. Like a cameo. And your hair will grow- hasn’t it already? You just have to be patient, and rest, and let-” A yawn made his jaw crack alarmingly. “-me take care of you.”
A low chuckle, gentle rather than sardonic this time. She turned, twisting slowly out of his grasp and standing up.
“If we don’t get you to bed, you’ll catch cold, and then all your heroic plans will be for naught.” Pulling him to his feet, she stretched up slightly to brush her lips against his forehead. When she drew back, her eyes were brighter than he’d seen them in a long time.
“Thank you, Thomas,” she said quietly.
The next night, when he entered the nursery, Lucille had already positioned herself in front of the mirror. He didn’t hesitate when she held out the brush. Though her eyes never left him, she didn’t flinch when his fingers gently rested against her hair.
It wasn’t perfect.
It was enough.