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He was staring at my portrait. I’d put it up after he left, as if to remind myself that I belonged here too. There was a painting of him in my rooms, a painting that he’d probably forgotten I’d even commissioned, but it hung there as a small, lonely reminder of what I’d had and then lost.
“Shay?” My voice sounded strange, like I was speaking underwater.
I watched him watch my portrait, emotions flickering across his face. He’d begun to grey at the temples, his hair still queued back and tied with a ribbon.
He’d been strong when I’d first met him, there was no doubt. But now he seemed more solid, like he was more sure of his place and his presence.
“Shay?” I said again, setting my papers aside.
This time he looked at me, expression freezing for one long, agonizing moment before a grin broke across his face, “Haytham!”
I smiled back, striding down the stairs to meet him.
“It’s been a long time.” He said to me, the fingers of his left hand coming up to brush my elbow as we shook hands.
The ring on his finger shone in the light and his deep brown eyes sparkled.
I could lose myself in their depths, but I had more pressing questions, “Why are you here?”
A brief flash of something like guilt flickered across his handsome face, but it was gone just as quickly, “I was passing by.”
We both knew there was something else lurking under his words, but I let him have his secrets, “You must be famished, can I offer you something to eat?”
He glanced at me, and I could see the new wrinkles around his eyes, “Aye, sir, I think you could.”
-
He’d polished off two bowls of stew and nearly an entire loaf of bread.
“Dear god, Shay, when was the last time you ate?”
He shrugged with one shoulder, “Biscuits and salted meat only do so much for a man.”
I nodded, watching him wipe the last of the stew from the bowl with a chunk of bread. He drained his whiskey and set the glass back on the table, eyes snapping up to look at me, “I’m surprised you’re here.”
“Why is that?” I asked, genuinely taken aback by the question. I had spent most of my time here even before he’d run off in search of that damned box.
He looked at me, eyes boring into me as his brow wrinkled slightly, “What about the Virginia Estate?”
“I have people.”
“Ah,” Shay grunted, “Aye.”
He knew I didn’t keep slaves but something about the look his eyes made me wonder how much he thought I might have changed. He didn’t know that I spent most nights lying in the cold bed that we’d once shared, cursing myself for letting him slip through my fingers. He didn’t know about the portrait that sat on my night table, or the fact that I still had one of his shirts in the back of my wardrobe.
Gist would laugh if he knew I could be so soft. Most would.
So I kept my grief to myself.
But the way Shay looked at me now, I wondered if he could see it.
“I’ll be having myself off to bed now, sir.”
I nodded and he rose from the table, pausing slightly as if he expected me to say something and the turning away when I didn’t.
I watched him go and cursed my own stagnation.
-
I was surprised, more than surprised, when I found him waiting outside my door the next morning.
“Will you take a walk with me, sir?”
I looked at him, wearing a simpler coat; a plain brown thing with quiet embroidery around the cuffs.
“I’d be honored,” I told him, and meant it.
He smiled, bright and true, and I grabbed my coat from the rack.
Outside the morning was still dewy and young, the sun just breaking over the horizon.
“I’ve had little luck with that damned box,” He told me, an edge in his voice.
“Perhaps it’s better not found.” I told him.
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, “You know as well as I that someone will find it eventually, sir. And that it’d be better if it was someone who knew what to do with it.”
I had no argument except that I didn’t want him to leave again, so I just nodded. A weight had lifted from my heart since he’d arrived last night.
I’d had my chance with him years ago and I’d mucked it up, but a tiny glimmer of hope still shone that he would give me another one.
“People are reckless,” He muttered, “They’d destroy the whole world.”
I looked at him, surprised, “That’s a dark sentiment, coming from you.”
He snorted, “I can be as grim as you can, sir.”
“So it does seem.”
v
Silence fell again as we continued to walk, the birds coming to life and the waves lapping against the shore. Shouts and laughter began to echo through the buildings and he steered us out towards the beach, into relative privacy.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Nothing I could say would stop you.”
He glared at me, “In all seriousness, sir.”
I stopped walking and frowned at him, “What is it?”
“Did you miss me when I left, sir?”
I blinked.
Did I ever. He couldn’t begin to fathom the ache in my chest, the hole that he’d left in my life when he’d disappeared into the ocean and not returned.
“Yes.” I said instead, “How could I not?”
A soft breath left his lips and he looked at me with silver in his dark eyes.
Suddenly his hand was in the lapel of my coat as he pulled me close, burying his nose in the crook of my neck. I slid my hands across his back as I realized that he was crying, pulling him tighter against me, something in my chest singing an emotion that might have been joy.
We stood like that for a long time until he turned his head and murmured, “I thought perhaps you were disappointed in me, sir.”
“What?” I asked, “Why did you think that?”
“I’ve been searching some five years and I’m still comin’ up empty.”
The accent in his voice was stronger now, lilting as he talked into the collar of my coat, “Every time I think I come close I lose it again.”
I turned my head so I could rest my cheek against his hair, “Shay, I could never be disappointed in you. You’re the best of all of us. It’s been five years and you have not stopped looking, you have not stopped searching, and if that is not dedication to a cause then we are all doomed to live forever searching for it.”
He smiled wetly against my shoulder, “Thank you, sir.”
“Haytham.” I told him.
“Haytham,” He repeated softly. The curve of his lashes caught in the light as he peered up at me, soft and innocent in the breath between moments, held in stasis by the prism of sunlight and sand and feelings unspoken.
An entire future stretched between us, barely glimpsed and still unwritten.
Then he shifted, pulling out of my embrace so that he could dab his eyes with the cuffs of his shirt and as I watched him a chasm loomed open inside me, filled with hope and light and so deep I could fall endlessly, swathed in his love.
Instead I carefully closed away that idea, leaving just the tiniest crack, the barest glimmer of possibility as I handed him my handkerchief.
“Please, Shay,” I murmured into the fading sunrise, “Never do yourself the indignity of giving up.”
He looked up at me like wounded dog, though it was a mistake to think of him as such, and replied, “I’ll find the box, sir.”
“No, that is not what I meant. Do not give up on yourself, Shay. You’re remarkable.”
He looked at me, a sort of fragile hope in his eyes as he leaned in. Time slowed, every breath a lifetime, every flutter of an eyelash like a bird’s wing as his lips met mine, one of his hands coming to rest against the side of my neck.
I may have made the sounds of a less dignified man twenty years my junior, the touch of his lips like an elixir to a dying man. My hands came up to his face, cupping his jaw as I held him close and reveled in the heat of his mouth.
It had been many years since he had first kissed me, and far too long since he had last kissed me and the full weight of that realization, of love and desperation in all my being, came crashing down upon me as he pulled back, his gaze drifting past my head as he smiled crookedly, “We’ve just caused a poor lass to feint dead over.”
I turned my head to follow where he looked and found a young girl, no more than ten perhaps, collapsed face down in the sand. I chuckled, “Women have feinted for less.”
He jabbed me in the ribs and padded across the sand to wake her. I stood, in the shadows of the elms that lined the beach, and watched as he coaxed her back to consciousness, smiling as he helped her up and led her off in the direction of the village.
Not long later he returned, appearing silently by my side.
“We should be off.”
“Aye. I gave Gist a talking to about not being late and here I am, past sunup and still not to work.”
I snorted, “I’d wager a shilling Gist is still asleep on some girl’s lap and he'll be none the wiser.”
Shay chuckled, his face lit beautifully in gold and orange, “Either way, sir. I’d best be getting back.”
I turned to him, my finger curling around his wrist, “How long until you sail again?”
He turned his head, pivoting his neck like a hawk as he smiled, “How long do you want me to stay?”
Forever, I thought, and the ferocity of the feeling took my by surprise. I would hand over my ring and order without hesitation if it meant we could stay together and yet I knew too well that both of us were far too entrenched in our ways and responsibilities.
Instead I replied, “I’d be much obliged if you could spare me even an hour.”
He turned all the way around now, hand coming up so that our fingers were interlaced, “I would spare you all the rest of my life if I could.”
I said nothing, just stared at him. It was one of the very few times in my life that I had ever been at a loss for words.
Shay squeezed my hand, touched it to his lips, and the took off down the beach, heading for the docks.
His footprints in the sand were the only proof that he had just stood before, but the words he had said were meant only for me. I breathed in the smell of salt, the faint trace of parchment and gunpowder still lingering, and smiled.