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Sometimes it was wiser for a man to let things go. That, Lord Cutler Beckett knew. What people who lived by that philosophy failed to understand, however, was how irrevocably a man's hope could be anchored to the very things reason urged one to abandon. If anything, it was a weakness he had spent years attempting to snuff out with a palette of habits ranging from unhealthy to frankly self-destructive: late hours, earlier brandy, and, not to forget, the ever-growing list of tasks that never mattered as much as he pretended they did.
What mattered, though, was that she was gone. Had been for years. And given her tendency to do just that — vanish in the shroud of the night — he shouldn't have been struck so cleanly in the gut when it had happened four years ago.
Looking back, Cutler could not settle on a single catalyst. Perhaps it had been Viscount Brompton's crude insinuation about the "arrangement" between them; that afternoon when she'd been mistaken for a courtesan over tea, his calculated decision to let the assumption stand — because he was a fool in ways he refused to name, he'd hoped she would finally see reason, that this time, the discomfort might finally bind her closer in the only way that mattered. But perhaps it had been something else entirely, something unavoidable and beyond his influence. He had had quite some time to give it thought. In the end, none of it mattered.
Florence's bed was cold. The house was cold. And although she had been gone before — days, a fortnight, once even a couple of months — she had never stayed away like this.
Life went on, as it tended to do when a man least wanted it to. There were dinner parties he endured alone, moments at court, and he even received a job proposal that would have taken him to the other side of the world. For a delirious moment, Cutler had considered accepting. But then he imagined her returning to his townhouse and finding it empty, without lights in the windows and the hearth cold. He'd rejected the offer within the hour. A heart was, in the end, nothing but a glorified abscess.
And in the brittle hours like this one, the hours society attributed to company and warmth, he could not stop himself from wondering where she was now — or if she was anywhere at all. The thought chilled him more than any December draft ever could. He'd come so far. Done so much. And yet, he was still haunted by a single pair of eyes. The mind grew inventive when torment was required.
Cutler had declined Lord Ashcombe's gracious invitation for the evening's festivities. Ashcombe was one of his more tolerable peers and had extended it with a tone that might have passed for warmth if one ignored the fact that he knew perfectly well Cutler would most likely spend the night alone. As though he, of all people, required charitable distractions simply because he lacked a wife, a family, or any other socially acceptable buffer against the season.
And he was in no mood to play at merriment. Nor to feign interest in the birth of some fictional, moralising desert prophet whose admirers insisted upon celebrating him with insipid puddings and hymns. The very thought of being wished a merry anything made his teeth clench.
Outside, London groaned under winter. Snow crusted on the railings. Inside his townhouse, the fire sulked in the grate, issuing more smoke than heat, and warming nothing that mattered. A single branch of holly sat above the mantle. It was nothing but a servant's optimistic touch he hadn't bothered to remove. A carriage passed outside, then silence.
The servants had already been dismissed for the night. Cutler sat alone at the dining table, nursing some Madeira after a forgettable supper. The table had been laid for two. Not because he had expected company. It was a habit he had picked up on in the aftermath, just in case. Because it seemed he wasn't free from superstition after all, as though a second place setting might tempt the universe into returning what it had taken from him.
He took another sip. Cutler liked the quiet. This was certainly preferable to company, and hollow performances of cheeriness he had no intention of providing. Silent night, indeed. Holy? Please, anything but that.
A log cracked in the grate, and for one absurd moment, he imagined it was the door. He hated himself for turning his head anyway. He hated himself even more for the way his heart lurched when there was nothing there. Hope had truly turned him into something undignified. Now he had taken to imagining ghosts. He breathed out slowly, forced his eyes back to the Madeira, raised the glass—
Another noise, and this time it was unmistakably the creak of floorboards.
Then, there she was, standing in the doorway like an apparition conjured by longing, coat dusted with snow, boots muddy, wearing men's trousers, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes… impossibly alive beneath the shadow of her hood.
"Hello, Cutler."
The glass in his hand went slack, and he barely managed not to drop it. For a long moment, he said nothing. Speech required breath, and he had none. He merely stared, as though blinking might banish her again. Cutler did not believe in Christmas miracles or divine signs or any of the nonsense people comforted themselves with. And yet, there she was, the living proof that the universe occasionally indulged in mockery.
"You're staring," she said softly, and pushed the hood off her head.
"I am attempting to determine whether you are real," he managed. "Do forgive me if I am out of practice." The accusation slipped in despite himself. The glass clicked against the wood of the table as he set it down.
"You sound relieved."
"I sound—" He cut himself off, jaw flexing. No sentence seemed safe. "It's been four years, Florence. Four."
"I am aware." She said it as though she’d been gone an evening, not half a decade. Florence's eyes drifted over the table, to the second plate still waiting. "And yet here you are."
He felt her scrutiny land on him. Of course she'd grasped it instantly. Cutler swallowed the irritation that threatened to rise.
"Do not ascribe meaning where there is none."
"Mm." It wasn't agreement so much as acknowledgement. Florence stepped closer. When he still didn't move, she leaned down and opened her arms. After a beat far too long to be dignified, he leaned forward and let himself fall into her. His forehead pressed against the snow-dusted fabric of her coat, and he closed his eyes. The cold wetness against his cheek didn't matter. The fact that his wig would probably need an hour of coiffing afterward didn't matter.
By all that was sensible, he had missed her.
Cutler would never tell her he'd thought her dead. Never confess the countless ways he had imagined it: drowning, fever, blade, or bullet. Never admit how he'd latched onto every rumour of a sharp-tongued woman abroad, how he'd bribed informants to follow the faintest shadows of her. Instead, he breathed her in, letting the weight of four empty years ease, just enough for him to speak without breaking.
"If you wished to test the limits of my sanity," he murmured against her chest, "there were kinder methods."
Florence drew back slightly, hands still resting on his shoulders. "Don't make this about you." Her voice was softer than her words. She stepped away and peeled off her coat, shaking it out with the careless entitlement of someone who had never once asked permission to exist in his home. It sent droplets of melting snow onto the carpet he had imported from Persia at great expense, yet he said nothing. Then the gloves came off, tossed onto a chair she'd once claimed as her own. She shook out her hair; it was shorter than before, and a little uneven. The new lines at the corners of her eyes didn't detract; they suited her. He despised how relief curled hot and tight in his throat at the sight of her so vividly, irritatingly alive.
"If I'd simply wanted to test your sanity or teach you a lesson, there are far easier methods."
"Charming," he muttered.
She wandered a few steps, fingertips trailing over the table edge, grazing the second plate with an unreadable expression. Then her gaze lifted to the mantel. "You've decorated."
He suppressed a snort. "Decidedly not."
"Mm." Her gaze flicked from the branch of holly back to him. "That sentiment begs to differ. Though I suppose it is quite modest for a man as keen on appearances as you."
Cutler blinked. Tsk. "Not my doing. I left it because removing it felt—" He stopped.
"Lonely?"
"Petty," he corrected.
She smiled. "Same difference."
Florence moved to the hearth, where the fire was doing its best but failing. She toed off her boots next, leaving them to drip melting snow onto the stone. She did not ask permission. She never had. Humming in mild annoyance at the damp stockings clinging to her calves, she peeled them off too, setting bare feet onto his carpet, warming them near the useless fire with a sigh so soft he almost missed it.
He tore his gaze away. After a moment, he made himself move, and poured another glass of Madeira. Then, he held it out to her, careful not to brush her fingers.
She took it without comment, raised it in a silent toast, and downed half of it.
"Where have you been all this time?"
Florence hesitated. "Thought a grand tour would be fun, got stuck in Venice for longer than planned—have you ever been, it's truly mesmerising—decided to visit an…old friend—"
"In Singapore?"
"Saint-Domingue."
"Ah." His tone dropped a degree colder. He could think of only one man she might mean. He decided, forcefully, not to think about it, nor to interrogate, lest it send her running again.
Cutler moved a few steps toward the window, hands clasped behind his back. Outside, the snow kept falling, smoothing the world into something untouched, as though the past could be softened by simply being covered over.
Behind him, he heard her shift and approach him, voice softer this time. "Cutler… if I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be."
His breath fogged the glass. He watched it fade. "How comforting. Why return now?"
"Because you are the only place I could think to come back to."
That didn't answer his question. It evaded it entirely. And yet, it warmed the small part of him that craved closeness, that had spent four years wondering and worrying. The same part urged him to turn and face her, to take the scrap she offered as though it were enough when he knew perfectly well it wasn't. He exhaled, tasted the warmth rising in him, and stayed facing the window out of sheer spite toward his own longing.
"How can I ensure this won't happen again?"
A pause. "You can't."
Cutler had figured as much. He had long since abandoned the fantasy of her staying for good, and he knew better than to try to anchor a woman made for vanishing. Hearing it aloud was still an exquisite sort of punishment.
"You'll simply have to trust me that I will come back. Eventually," she added.
Trust. The word sounded flimsy in her mouth. Florence knew perfectly well how he felt about trust, how rarely he relied on anything so intangible when control usually yielded more efficient results.
"At least write me next time?" The plea was buried under layers of dryness. Well, or it should have been. Even he could hear the crack in it.
"Perhaps I will."
There was movement behind him. Then she stepped into place, directly in front of him, blocking the window and the world beyond it. Florence studied him with a perceptiveness he despised.
"Come now, don't sulk," she said, lifting both hands to cradle his face. Her thumbs brushed the tension clinging to the corners of his mouth. "You look positively wretched."
"I'm not—"
She smothered his retort with a kiss. Her mouth was warm, familiar and fleeting; just like everything she'd ever given him.