Chapter Text
In Boone, Mellie Logan was always the first to hear any gossip. Clyde could have sworn she’d trained the damn pigeons to spy and report back to her, such was her prowess. Every week, she would return from the village shop with a basketful of goods and her mouth full of scandal.
But yesterday, she was unusually taciturn.
Clyde ought to have known something was wrong.
It was Sadie who had burst through the door, her pigtails bouncing as she announced, “Miss Ophelia Grace is getting married,” before Mellie could shush her.
The words lodged like shrapnel in his chest.
“To some Duke,” Mellie told him later. “Didn’t want you to find out like this.”
For the best, he thought, watching the trees shed their leaves in the dying days of autumn. She always deserved better than the likes of me.
He’d been a lad of seven, she a lass of six. She’d reminded him of a doll - the sort that Mellie that cooed over in the toy shop window, the sort Da could never afford even if he spent all day and all night down the pit—with her porcelain skin and rosy cheeks, and her red-hair coaxed into tight ringlets. She was all petticoats and lace and fine things. Clyde—with his too small shoes and fraying trousers that had once been Jimmy’s—felt grubby even looking at her.
She was a good girl—a lady. And even if she made his heart do a funny sorta flutter, she’d never deign to look in his direction.
‘Course, that was afore Jimmy was sick with scarlet fever, and the Bang brothers had gotten hold of Clyde, and tried to mug him for the fish he’d spent the morning trying to catch. Little Miss Ophelia had seen it all unfold and barrelled herself at his tormentors with the fury of an avenging angel. She’d bitten Davey Bang so hard on the hand, she’d drawn blood.
(Davey apparently told his Ma that it was a fish what bit him, and now the name had stuck).
They’d spent the long days of that summer together. Clyde showed her where to find the best wild raspberries, and she’d eaten so many her mouth was stained the colour of a rose; and Phee (“Don’t call me Ophelia! That’s my Sunday name!”) had smuggled books from her grandma’s great library and had read them aloud to him. By August, her pale cheeks were golden and kissed with freckles, a crown of daisies in her hair most every day, and Clyde was half in love.
Every summer, like clockwork, she and her brother and their father came to stay with her grandmother in the big house. And every summer, she’d find ways of sneaking away from her Nanny and spending time with Clyde.
She blossomed with every year—her wit sharper, her person prettier than a dream.
“You gonna ask her Daddy if you can court her?” Jimmy asked, the winter Clyde turned fourteen. He’d be leaving school, and now Da was sick, they’d need his wage to keep the wolves from the door. Clyde had shaken his head. Ophelia’s Da was an important man, and he’d never allow his precious little princess to be courted by a lowly labourer.
Course, then her grandmother had died that spring—at a good age, in her bed—and suddenly there was no reason for her to return.
He never got the chance to say goodbye, and that regret always stung, like the thorns of Old Mrs Grace’s rose bushes wrapped around his heart.
Clyde thought about Ophelia often. She was in his thoughts through the clammy days of summer in the quarry, and the blistering cold of winter when they could scarcely afford the extra coal to heat the house.
When the war came, he thought about her in the darkness of the trenches — a beacon of light against the wet and damp and rats and rotten, rotten humanity — and swore he’d live, and fight, for her.
He thought about her in the blur of bloodied pain, and the glaze of morphine, and agonising slowness of his convalescence.
He thought about her when he came back from the war—a man as broken in spirit as in body—and resigned himself that he would never be hers, nor she his. Though it stung his very soul to do so, he tucked his cherished memories of her away in a box, and buried it deep within his mind. There would be no sense in tormenting himself with dreams of what couldn't be.
The war ended; and Clyde tried to move on. There had been morphine to soothe the pain of his injury; but there was no balm for a broken heart. Even one that ought to have known better.
Course, Mellie was never one to permit wallowing. She’d walloped him on the shoulder with a newspaper and thrust a pile of cash into his hand. “Here,” she said, “You take that money, and you get yourself on a train down to this Elsinore place.”
“To do what?”
“I dunno, some grand love confession!”
If Clyde Logan knew but one thing, it was not to argue with his sister when she was in a mood. (Mind, Bobby-Jo called him a fool, and Jimmy had warned him “not to get your hopes up,” but Sadie had eagerly neatened his tie, and given him a handkerchief she’d embroidered with daisies upon it - “For Miss Ophelia!”)
And thus, he found himself, squeezed into the third-class compartment of a train headed to England—with no plan, and no real hope of anything save a polite decline and maybe some catharsis. He watched the frost-kissed countryside speed by; watched as the first flakes of snow began to fall, soon turning into a flurry and then a storm.
The train grew slow, and once it had pulled into a small station, the conductor declared it could go no further.
Clyde sighed. Logan luck indeed—to strand him in Gretna Green of all bloody places. He grimaced at the irony. The small station house was packed with people, all various shades of annoyed, and the poor station attendant looked beleaguered. Though it was cold outside, at least it was quiet—the streets of the town covered in snow, picturesque and bitingly cold. He stuffed his hand into the pocket of his winter coat—the best he had, but still too thin against the chill weather, and thought himself a colossal fool.
Overhead, a thin slither of moon poked through the clouds; combined with the pristine snow, the town square was painted in a silvery glow. He was alone, and stranded, and cold… but there was a beauty in the scene, one that offered the merest balm to his aching heart.
However, the reverie of the scene was soon shattered as he heard a barrage of curses—the sort to make even a soldier blush—uttered in a feminine voice.
And his heart near burst forth from his chest as he laid eyes on the source of the expletives.
He’d remembered a girl, just on the cusp of womanhood—oh, and what a woman into whom she had blossomed. Her cheeks were rosy red from the cold; her flame red hair curled into a neat style and crowned with a little black hat embroidered with daisies.
“Ophelia,” he breathed, her name forming visible breath in the frigid air.
Her brow furrowed, and for one heart-stopping moment, he feared she wouldn’t recognise him—that he was too much changed by time and trauma, that the damn war had stripped away every facet of the man he once was and left naught but a broken, mutilated husk—but then her eyes grew wide and glazed. “As I live and breathe… And you, Mr Logan, ought to know better than to call a girl by her Sunday name.”
A laugh burst forth from his chest, a roar of pure delight and joy. “Phee,” he said, the only syllable his tongue could form.
She dropped her bag, and her hands reached for his—only to frown when her suede-gloved fingers met the cold metal of his prosthesis. Confusion, realisation, horror, sadness… each flickered across her lovely face. Of course… The momentary delight of serendipity was gone, and Clyde remembered what he was, and how the world would always see him. “Oh, Clyde…”
“Where’s your fiancé?” Clyde asks, softly, hoping she’ll mistake any tears for melting snow on his cheeks. He looks around the square, half-expecting some bright young thing in a non-threadbare suit, someone handsome, wealthy, and whole, to emerge from the shadows and wrap his arms around her.
But there was no-one. Just them.
Phee shook her head, her hand still holding his—both of his.
“Halfway to drunk, and licking his wounds, most likely,” she said, as the air filled again with a flurry of snow. “Come,” she said, holding out her arm. Wordlessly, he took it. “Some conversations aren’t for the town square.”
The station cafe was packed, but the kindly proprietor was able to point them to a table in the back corner. For a few moments they sat in silence, a pot of tea and years of longing between them.
“I never wanted to marry Hamlet,” Phee said, idly tracing the rim of her china cup. “That was Papa’s wish.” She sighed a lovely breath, one heavy with regret. “But every time the seamstress came to measure me for my wedding dress, I felt like the damnable thing was smothering me.” Tears glinted in her eyes. “Everyone around me - Papa, Rosie and Gilda, Hamlet - they were so happy, so excited… And I….” Her hand trembled as she raised the cup to her lips and sipped at her tea. “I was drowning in a pool of misery.”
Clyde nodded sadly. He knew that feeling well.
“It sounds so silly, of course,” she said, with a sudden hardness to her mouth, “To feel so miserable when so many others have suffered so much,” and he watched as her little hand started to reach for him, before withdrawing as if she thought better of the gesture.
“One man’s pain shouldn’t lessen his neighbour’s.”
A small smile formed at the corners of her lips, even as her eyes remained glassy. “Thank you.”
Silence fell between them, louder than the bustle of the cafe, the whistling kettle in the kitchen, the chatter of other patrons.
Clyde chewed his lip. Truthfully, he’d had no plan of what he would say to Phee when he saw her again. Mellie’s whole cockamamie plan had been short on detail; and he knew down to his very marrow that relying on luck would never work out for a Logan man. Even if Da, if Jimmy, and even Mellie herself didn't believe him, he knew their family was cursed.
But fate had thrust Phee and him together already today; and perhaps fate was feeling like he'd earned a reprieve.
“Can I take it from what you were insinuating earlier, that you broke the engagement?” He eventually asked, when the teapot was drained and the scones with lashings of raspberry jam had been consumed, and there was nothing else to distract from the inevitable questions.
Phee nodded. “Papa died last week—it was sudden, but he didn’t suffer. Laertes and I were able to be there with him, at the end. Papa made him promise to look out for me, and then…” Her eyes squeezed closed, and a single tear fell.
“Oh Phee, I’m so sorry.” He knew her pain well—Da had been gone for several years now, and Mam even before that. Their loss still stung, even though time had dulled its blade a measure.
“Thank you, Clyde,” she said, exhaling a shuddering breath. “You know what Laertes told me, at the funeral?” Clyde shook his head. “He told me that he’d thought long and hard about his promise to Papa, and that he could not in good conscience support my marrying a man when he could see how much it was diminishing me.” This time, when she smiled, it was genuine - and Clyde’s heart fluttered desperately within his breast. “So, I ended the engagement, and here I am.”
“Why are you here?” Clyde asked, the words leaving his mouth before sense could bar the gate. “Sorry for being so forthright, but…”
“Not at all,” Phee said, and a lovely flush spread over her cheeks. “I wanted to go back to Boone—to get away from the furore and the scandal, and to go back to the one place I was happiest.” This time, when she reached for his hand, there was no hesitation. Even in the sticky heat of the cafe, her fingers were cool, and her touch burned. “And perhaps, to see an old friend.”
Now Clyde was the one blushing, sure that even the tips of his ears were tinged scarlet. “Phee, I—” Though he’d just consumed half a pot of tea, his mouth felt dry and cloying, words refusing to form.
“Have I shocked you, Mr Logan?” she said, her pearl-white teeth glinting as she grinned.
He nodded mutely, tugging at the knot in his tie as the room felt uncomfortably warm. A dozen thoughts warred in his mind.
I can't give you pearls or fine things.
I've loved you since the day I met you.
You deserve better.
But in the end, it was the feel of her hand in his, her smile soft as the finest silk, the look of joy and contentment glowing in her eyes, that convinced him to stop fighting. To stop questioning. To dare to hope.
So he tugged her hand to his lips, and laid a soft kiss on her milk-white skin.
Her laugh burst forth like liquid sunlight, and filled every shadow and crevice in his broken soul.