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Journaling has always been Anne’s most treasured pastime. She considers her diary to be her dearest friend, its pages inked with all of her deepest thoughts, her hopes and dreams; it’s the one friend who has never once judged her or sniggered at her and derided her for being who she is. A life without scribbling down every tiny detail of the day is simply not something she can begin to comprehend.
So though she is surprised to discover that Ann has started keeping a journal, she is not surprised by the catharsis it brings, for what can match it?
Ann blushes a little when she stumbles across her. Her wife is abed with her knees drawn up to her chest beneath the sheets, her blonde hair spilling in soft waves down her back. The brand-new journal rests upon her lap, and a few droplets of ink have spattered across the sheets.
“What are you doing?” Anne asks her as she ventures further into the room, affording a quick glance at her pocket watch. She can probably spare ten minutes here before she has to leave. If she walks even more briskly than usual, she won’t even be a minute late. Easily accomplished. Satisfied, she snaps the watch closed and turns her attention back to her wife.
She finds Ann chewing at her lower lip, fingers dancing nervously upon the bedspread. “You’ll think me foolish.”
“I could never find you foolish,” she reassures her.
That brings a smile and a relaxation of the shoulders.
“Well,” Ann ventures, “I suppose I just wanted to see what it was like.”
“What what was like?”
Her cheeks colour delicately. “Writing in a journal. I know you would never be without it, so I thought…perhaps it would help to organise my thoughts if I wrote them down too.”
“And has it helped?”
“A little, I think.”
Ann’s bouts of melancholy have not miraculously dissipated with their sacred promise to each other, and Anne would have been foolish to think otherwise. Sometimes they can be frustrating in their irrationality, but she takes the for better, for worse part of their promise as seriously as any man should getting married in the sight of God. If writing her thoughts down can help her put them into some kind of order to be better examined, that can only be a positive step.
“Can I look?” she asks.
A conflict of emotions scurries across Ann’s face.
“Not to read,” Anne hastens to add. “I wouldn’t intrude on your privacy that way.”
“You wouldn’t be able to anyway,” Ann concedes, her blush deepening. “I thought I’d fashion my journal after yours. Make a secret code of my own.”
Anne smirks at that. “Clever girl.” Though a part of her aches at the admission too. This is what their lives must forever be like, lived in secret, in fear of being exposed and dragged in front of the whole of the world as unnatural deviants in need of punishment. The memory of the sharp crack of a cane across her face will never leave her, made more painful by its unexpectedness. And if something so heinous should ever happen to Ann…
She shakes those thoughts away. They are unhelpful and morbid. She distracts herself instead by settling on the edge of the mattress, ignoring her wife’s quiet tut at her muddy boots on the bedspread.
“May I?” she says, and after a moment’s more hesitation Ann slides the journal across into her lap.
Everything her wife does is exquisitely elegant; her drawings and paintings are sublime, and her handwriting is no different, spindly and delicate, flowering across the pages in neat curls. It’s a direct contrast to her own, which is cramped and focused, scurrying away in a desperate bid to keep up with her thoughts.
Ann’s markings are neatly deliberate, made with more surety than Anne is used to seeing from her wife. Carefully, aware of the still-wet ink, she runs a light fingertip over the symbols.
She’d resolved not to ask, but her curiosity is piqued by this new discovery; for the sake of fairness, she’ll let Ann choose a passage to read from her own journal. At random, she picks out a coded phrase.
“What does it mean?” she asks, her tone low and husky. She won’t be offended if Ann chooses not to answer, but she needn’t have worried.
Ann takes a moment to consider her, her blue eyes evaluating, head tilted just slightly to the side. Eventually she leans in, her breath tickling her ear as she whispers into it. “‘I love her.’”
Anne starts at those words, blinking rapidly as she pulls away. “Sorry?”
Ann tuts. The pink in her cheeks has deepened to a healthy rose glow, but she doesn’t shy away. “You heard me.”
She had, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling dumbfounded. Even if the words are hidden in a tangled cryptogram, she’d never expected her wife to put something so frank to the page for fear of anyone else deciphering its meaning.
Unbidden, her heart swells in her chest, a warmth infusing her from her fingertips to her toes. Unable to stop herself, she lifts her wife’s knuckles to her mouth, trying to convey all of the gratitude she has inadequate words for.
“You wrote that about…me?” she says.
“No,” Ann deadpans. “Marian.”
Anne blinks, momentarily speechless. But then she throws her head back and lets out a bark of laughter, that warmth spreading further. This is the Ann she loves the most, the woman filled with confidence and zest, who can give as good as she gets when it comes to feisty comebacks.
“Well,” she says, “I shall have to rethink our arrangement if that is the case. Marian. Your taste has changed for the worse.”
Ann pokes her in the side. “Don’t you have a high opinion of yourself?”
“Mmm, I have been accused of it at times,” she says. “But I’d say it’s justified here. Poor Marian is a hopeless case.”
“You won’t hear me say a bad word against your sister, not when she’s welcomed me so warmly into Shibden.”
“Well, Shibden is mine, she hardly has a say in the matter.” But, Anne concedes, her sister could have sulked and kicked up a fuss at having another woman move in, and she didn’t. She’s never been anything less than earnest and hospitable, and of course she’s glad that Ann feels comfortable around her family because their situation is hardly easy without there being more obstacles in their way.
Ann’s eyes sparkle with mirth; she knows the battle going on inside her mind. Anne clears her throat and turns her attention back to the journal.
“I must say, I’m rather flattered that you wrote those things about me,” she says.
Ann looks back to the bedspread now, tracing the stitching with her fingernail, suddenly shy. When she speaks, her voice is low and embarrassed. “It’s the truth. I do love you.”
Ann has always been freer with expressing her feelings than Anne ever has; she’s felt the keen sting of heartache so many times, the grief bleeding out from her chest. Instead she protects herself with pithy remarks, quick wit, charming compliments that aren’t always sincere. Mariana had been the epicentre of her world, the love of her life. She had not thought that she would ever feel the same way about another woman as she had about her. But there is something about Ann Walker that gets into her very bloodstream, that lives and breathes inside her. It’s a part of herself that she doesn’t think she could ever cut out now; without it she would surely die.
“Well, I love you too,” she says, a rare admission, closing the journal gently and putting it aside, pleased with the way that Ann lights up at the words. Anne leans across to cup her wife’s cheek in her hand, smoothing her thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone, bringing her in for a long kiss filled with promise for later.
Ann pulls her back in for another long, languorous kiss when she attempts to pull away, and she finds herself unable to resist. Despite Ann’s whole tribe of idiotic relations constantly muttering about the evil spell that she has cast upon their poor, useless kin, Anne knows that the spell is very much mutual—especially when she makes that low, breathy sound in the back of her throat and curls her fingers with gentle insistence around the nape of her neck.
She is ten minutes late to the meeting and can’t bring herself to care.
The weeks pass in a happy haze. The honeymoon flush is effectively upon them, and Anne takes great delight and satisfaction at having her wife here at Shibden. On the whole Ann seems much happier at being free of the gilded cage of Crow Nest, blossoming now that she has the space to stretch her clipped wings and fly.
Anne’s days are often full and chaotic. She tries to be mindful that she has to accommodate for her wife now, but thankfully Ann is easily occupied, content to spend time with the rest of Anne’s family when she can’t be available to be with her, or to lose herself in the arts. She has also oft come across her wife with her journal, her hand scurrying across the page in her pretty handwriting. She wears the most adorable look of concentration on her face that Anne wants nothing more than to swoop in and kiss from her.
So she does, often.
One afternoon, Ann finds her in her study where she is busy poring over the latest rent figures. She’s wearing a very pretty bonnet, pinned with flowers, looking the very picture of spring. Anne sets her pen down and leans back in her chair to admire the ensemble.
“Well, well, well,” she says. “A very pretty scene indeed.”
Ann blushes under her admiring gaze, her fingers fidgeting with the ends of the delicate lace shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Which, Anne is pleased to see, is pinned together with the little gondola brooch.
“Marian is just heading into Halifax,” she says, trying to give the impression that she is cool and composed. Which she’s never been very good at, poor thing. “I thought I might go with her, unless you’re almost done?”
Anne heaves a regretful sigh. She’d like nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and leave the account books for later. With Marian out of the way, they could sneak upstairs to their wing and have the security of knowing that her stupid, busybodying sister wouldn’t come interfering in whatever they were doing; Aunt Anne and her father would be too busy dozing by the fire to care about their whereabouts. But she has to be sensible. Shibden cannot grow from strength to strength if she is too distracted to run it properly.
Though she’s sure she could be forgiven for that when the distraction comes in the form of her lovely wife.
“No,” she says. “I’ll be a while yet. You should go into Halifax with Marian. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“All right,” Ann says softly, then checks quickly over her shoulder. Anne knows that her father and aunt are in the drawing room, where they always are; she can hear the distant sound of the servants in the kitchen, and, nearer but still at a safe distance, Marian stomping inelegantly around her room, no doubt searching for her bonnet. Evidently satisfied with her own findings, Ann crosses the room, dipping her head to drop a kiss onto her cheekbone. After a brief moment’s hesitation, she nudges closer, her lips just barely brushing hers. Anne keeps her arms resolutely flat against the desk, resisting the urge to wind them around her wife’s body and bring her closer. Her blood simmers for the want of it, of her. But they can make the time later, when the house is dark and silent.
Marian’s voice, like a bourdon, ruins the tranquillity of the moment. “Miss Walker! I’m ready!”
Anne heaves a sigh of annoyance, pushing Ann gently away. “You’d better get going. Her Majesty will come stomping in here any moment looking for you. I see enough of her dour face at the dinner table. I’d rather not have to see it more often than necessary.”
“Anne,” Ann scolds, but the admonishment is rather tainted by the way that she can’t resist running her fingers over the cravat knotted at her throat. “Don’t be cruel. Marian is very dear to me.”
“Not as dear to you as me, I hope,” Anne drawls.
Ann tuts. “As if that could ever be in question.”
No. It couldn’t be. For the first time in her life, she is completely certain of a woman’s feelings towards her. She’d loved Mariana so much for so long, but she sees now just how much of a toll that love had taken on her; being loved in spite of, not because of, her eccentricities. Even thinking that that was the only thing she would ever deserve.
Her sister’s voice blares closer. “Miss Walker! Where are you?”
Ann glances behind her, then leans in for one more kiss that’s over before Anne has even had the chance to realise it. Then, with a final brush of her fingers, she moves towards the door, calling out: “I’m here, Marian!”
Anne hears her sister’s ungainly approach before she appears in the doorway, hands on her hips like a matron. “I must say, Miss Walker, I’m surprised Anne lets you in here! She hardly ever lets me over the threshold, and when she does I can see her immediately trying to think of ways to get rid of me!”
Ann giggles bashfully, clearly very pleased by the implication. Anne stands, rounding her desk, opening her arm to gently usher her wife over the threshold—the sooner she can get rid of Marian, the better.
“That’s because I like Adney,” she says. “I enjoy her conversation and her company. She’s a delight to have around and I treasure her presence. Now, I ask that you leave me in peace.” She addresses her wife much more softly. “I’ll see you later, my dear.”
Ignoring her sister’s sputtering, delighted by the way that Ann is trying to suppress a grin, she shuts the door in Marian’s face.
Left in peace and quiet, Anne returns to her work. Alas, this newfound tranquillity means that she finishes her accounting far sooner than she had thought she would, leaving her inexplicably missing her wife.
She huffs, unsure of how she should fill her time now.
Not everyone can walk anywhere in twenty-five minutes, though Anne thinks they ought to be able to. Marian likes to meander along at a snail’s pace, which is beyond infuriating because she chatters on about absolutely nonsense things. If her legs worked at the same pace as her mouth, they’d all be better off.
Ann, on the other hand, enjoys a slow amble for the simple pleasure of it all. She enjoys the scent of the flowers and the warm sun on her back and the wind caressing her face.
For her and her alone Anne will slow her pace and take things more sedately. Ann serves as a reminder that sometimes, in the whirlwind of her life, she needs to slow down and appreciate the small moments that are so easily lost to the passage of time.
But that doesn’t help when she is alone and missing her wife’s presence.
Stretching, grunting at the satisfactory popping of her joints, she decides to pop her head in on her aunt—even if that means having to be in her father’s presence.
However, when she creaks open the door to the drawing room, she finds them both still asleep, their chins dropped down onto their chests, her aunt’s book abandoned in her lap. Neither of them have roused at the sound, and Anne withdraws, loath to disturb her aunt in particular. She’s still very frail, which troubles Anne a great deal, for the thought of her aunt passing one day soon does not bear thinking about. The doctor has prescribed plenty of rest alongside her other treatments, and Anne is determined that she should have it.
But now she’s at a loose end again. What else is there to do? Resigned, she heads for her own bedroom instead. Surely she can find something to keep herself entertained for an hour.
Unfortunately, there is little. Scowling, Anne throws herself onto the bed, cross that she should be on the cusp of being defeated by such a trivial thing as boredom.
Something sharp digs into her spine.
Cursing, she rolls over to rub at the spot, digging beneath the covers to find the offender.
Her heart jolts at the recognition. It’s Ann’s own journal. She must have been writing in it this morning, perhaps hid it in haste when Eugenie came in to dress her. Anne knows that Ann doesn’t mind her knowing about it, but she is intensely private in some ways, and would likely be mortified if anyone else knew she kept such a thing.
It’s different with art, she supposes. Art is subjective, shifting; Ann can draw whatever she wants and hide her meaning between layers of paint, in delicately crafted landscapes. Not that writing isn’t subjective—but Anne knows better than most just how intense the process can be, the baring of one’s soul on the blank pages, those thoughts of the moment forever scribed to the page. The intimacy of knowing one’s self through the words selected, either spewed forth in a gush of barely controlled emotion, else carefully constructed to make a tower of unbreachable walls. And she herself has been doing it since her teenaged years, learning herself in the process of that writing. It’s all relatively new to Ann. She’ll be discovering things about herself that she hadn’t even known before, and likely isn’t ready to share that with the rest of the world.
Which is why she really shouldn’t look. Should respect Ann’s right to privacy.
The journal weighs heavy between her palms.
She wouldn’t want Ann to read some of her diary entries. She’s said a great many things that she didn’t really mean: that she didn’t really care about Ann Walker, that she’d never been anything but a game to her, that she found her infuriating, bordering on the unmanageable. It had felt good for the frustration to surge down her arm and into the ink that flowed across the blank page, but they were fleeting feelings of the moment, not a true reflection on how she had felt once she’d taken the time to pause and assess properly, another brick added to the defensive wall. And yet, if Ann ever saw such things, she would likely not understand: she is emotional, prone to bouts of low mood and anxieties, and would take every word to heart and bleed anew, like a slash of broken glass against a wrist.
She shouldn’t.
Cautiously, she cracks open the spine. Taking a moment to compose herself, she glances down at the first page.
She sees a few snatches of words before looking away, determined not to absorb them.
But her eye is drawn back to the page.
To the wall of symbols.
Ah, that changes things a little. It seems like Ann has also decided that it’s safest to write most passages in code, taking a leaf from her own book.
So it’s not really snooping is it, she reasons, if she can’t even decipher the code. Ann’s innermost thoughts and feelings are hidden from the prying eye. She just wants to look, that’s all. Not read. A paragraph or two about spending an afternoon drawing is hardly the same as prying into her intimate thoughts about her wife—though she’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t a little bit curious about what Ann might write about her.
Satisfied with her rationality, she drops her gaze back to Ann’s delicate, flowery handwriting. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to read, but she’s always been fascinated with the way that one’s handwriting reveals personality—in Ann’s, she sees her artistic nature, her sweet innocence, the blooming confidence in her newfound autonomy.
And then her heart stutters as she comes across the one symbol that she does recognise. The one Ann had revealed to her with shy but unwavering conviction.
I love her.
Seeing those words printed there in a confident hand makes the lump rise in her throat. With trembling fingers, she turns the page, her heart leaping every time she sees it at frequent intervals.
I love her.
I love her.
I love her.
Over and over and over, like a mantra, like a holy prayer. Each time she sees it, the lump grows bigger, the swell of emotion inside her—love and affection and unfathomable gratitude—threatens to overwhelm her. Sniffing, she wipes away a tear from the corner of her eye, shaking her head in wry embarrassment. Lord, she’s not the sort of person to get so emotional over simple words on a page.
But it’s not just simple words. This is more than she’s ever dared to hope for.
She traces her fingertips over those pretty symbols, as if touching them will imprint the ink to her skin, so that she can carry it with her wherever she goes, a secret tattoo to give her strength.
She’s spent her entire life yearning for a wife, for someone to accept her for who she is and love her anyway, despite all of her faults and flaws. She’d hoped that she’d found it with Mariana, the woman who had turned her life upside down. She’d lived so many years on the promise that there would be a one day, that they could have their happy ending despite all of the hurt and heartache they had inflicted upon each other.
She knows now that that was the foolish hope of a girl, carried forward through womanhood in a bid to keep some semblance of her impossible dream from childhood. A part of her will always love Mariana—she is woven into the very fabric of her soul, has lived inside her bloodstream for too many years to be expelled completely—but she deserves better than being someone’s embarrassing secret, chasing the dangling carrot of an empty promise that will never be fulfilled.
When she’d first re-inveigled herself back into Ann’s life, she never would have believed that the pretty, timid, mouse of a woman would have a lion’s courage to follow her heart. Anne had done the thing that she so despised others doing: she had judged her on face value, dismissing her kindness as weakness, her softness as insipidity. Had believed that there was no substance there to challenge her, that it was a game for the short-term at worst, at best a way to improve Shibden’s fortunes and gain a companion she could like well enough. She had never expected to lose her heart along the way.
But little Miss Walker has proven herself to be made of sterner stuff than anyone has given her credit for. She might have struggled at first to come to terms with her feelings, and her bouts of anxieties can be draining at times, but Anne is grateful for her, delighted to have her living here at Shibden like she had always dreamed of. A wife to come home to at the end of a long day, who takes enjoyment out of listening to her stories and can soothe away her aches and pains with a gentle kiss. Who can tolerate her shabby little family and won’t sneer at Shibden’s dilapidation. Who can integrate herself into the family, without making things difficult or awkward.
A wife she loves in return.
She sends a quick prayer of thanks up to God for bringing her home to find her wife right on her doorstep. The road she’s travelled hasn’t always been easy, but it has led her to the place that she was meant to find.
Below, she hears the distant scuffle of feet on the flagstones, and hurries to check her pocket watch; it’s teatime already and Marian and Ann have returned. Quickly stuffing the journal back where she found it, she bounds off the bed and hurries back to her office.
That’s where she is, sitting studiously behind her desk, when Ann slips into the room, her cheeks flushed from the fresh air, a bright smile upon her face.
“Still not done?” she asks, untying her bonnet.
“Just finished.” Anne closes her ledger with a thud and stands. “How was Halifax? I see Marian didn’t bore you enough to throw her into the river.”
Ann gives her a reproving look, though the effect is rather damaged by the twitching of her lips. “We had a lovely time.”
“Did you buy anything?”
“There was nothing I needed.” She gives her a shy look from beneath her lashes. “Everything I need was already right here at Shibden.”
Anne’s breath stutters in her chest at those soft words, loaded with so much meaning. She rounds her desk at once, unable to resist taking that beautiful, delicate face between her hands, running her thumb across the plump lower lip.
“You, my darling,” she breathes, “are absolutely perfect.”
Her wife pinks, and she can tell that she’s pleased despite her refutation. “No one is perfect.”
“Well, you are!” she declares. “And I’m never wrong.”
Ann’s bright laughter fills the room, and Anne closes the gap between them, lifting her face to her lips. The sound is smothered between them, and Ann twines her arms around Anne’s waist, holding her tight. They don’t break apart until they hear a thumping on the stairs—Marian’s ungainly tread.
“Miss Walker!” she shouts. “Tea will be ready soon! Aunt and Father are joining us as well.”
“All right,” Ann calls back sweetly. “Anne and I will be down in a minute.”
Anne sighs in exasperation. “I’d much rather it was just the two of us.”
Ann reaches up to smooth down her collar, scrutinising her handiwork as she retracts back to her heels. “We’ve got all evening for that, my love. We can sit by the fire in our little sitting room and enjoy each other’s company.”
Anne raises her eyebrows. “Just the sitting room? I had visions of the bedroom, Adney.”
“Anne!”
“All right, all right, I’ll behave.”
“Good! I want your family to like me.”
“I think they like you more than they like me,” she jokes. “Marian certainly does. Just the other day she shouted that she wished you were her sister.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say!” Ann’s surprised outrage on her behalf is endearing, and Anne feels the warm affection infuse her like tobacco all over again.
“Well, I had just called her a simpleton,” she grins.
“Oh, Anne,” Ann sighs reproachfully, but goes no further than that, yet another endearing trait that she won’t criticise her for something she knows she ought to be.
She thinks back to the diary, to those three words hidden in plain sight, and can’t fight against that tide of fondness any longer. Cocking her head to make sure that there are no approaching footsteps, she wraps her arms around her wife once more, smothering her squeak of surprise with her mouth as she kisses her with all the soft tenderness currently flowing through her veins.
Ann melts into her touch, her own hands coming up to grasp eagerly at her elbows. Anne presses her back against the wall, moving her thumb and index finger to her wife’s chin so she can tilt it up to give her better access. Ann’s eyelashes flutter against her cheek, and Anne feels the smile curve over her lips as she presses her tongue between her teeth, coaxing her deeper, hoping that she can understand the depth of the feelings that she feels within her very soul.
When Ann brings her own hand up to keep hers pressed against her cheek, her thumb drawing tiny circles on her little finger, she knows that she does.
“What was that for?” Ann asks when they break apart, a blush high on her cheeks, those pretty blue eyes sparkling with undisguised elation, delighted with the blatant show of spontaneous affection. Anne scuffs her thumb over a dusting of her freckles, pressing a final soft kiss to her forehead before opening her study door to let the outside world in once more.
“Nothing,” she murmurs, and moves to trace that symbol onto Ann’s pale forearm with her index finger, the summation of all that’s between them. I love her. “Nothing at all.”