Page 137 of A Thousand Painted Hours

“No,” I countered. “Because you’ve taught me. And because I’ve been observing for years. The old ways are crumbling.”

“So they are.”

I leaned on the wall, hands behind me. “And it reminds you that I am a daughter of the empire,” I said with some despair.

He sighed. “Yes.” He shook his head, but suddenly seemed overcome with strong emotion.

I waited.

He moved toward me, drew my hands out from behind me. “And no. It does seem there should be room for the intimate and the personal as well as the political.”

“It does,” I whispered.

He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed my fingers. Pent-up emotion swelled through my chest, up through my throat, and I could not hold back a wash of tears. I bowed my head, trying to hide them. “I am ever weeping with you.”

“I do not mind it.” He kissed my wrists, my inner arm. The lantern glistened over his beard and glittered on the jewels of his turban, his rings. “If I were not so manly, I would weep myself.”

I laughed, something easing as I flowed closer to him. “Would you?”

He moved my hands to his chest, and covered them with his hands. Our eyes met, and I did not feel I had to look away for fear of revealing the truth of my emotions. “It seems a miracle that you’re standing here, with me, tonight. There is color in the world again.”

I moved closer and pressed my cheek against his coat. He held me close, his hands on my back, touching bare skin, and then away. And then back, his palm flat against my spine, gliding up and down.

“Sugar in my tea,” I said. Against my cheek, his coat was rough and smelled of clove. I rubbed my face against it. Beneath my hands his waist moved infinitesimally. Our thighs brushed.

“I have tried so hard not to think of touching you,” he whispered, and brushed his chin over the top of my head. “But tonight, I couldthink of nothing else.” His hand slid down the back of my dress, smoothing over my hips. “This dress is decadent.”

I smiled. “It is meant to be.”

“Did you wear it on purpose, then?” His hand moved again up the bare flesh of my back, upward to my neck, into my hair, back down.

“To distract the colonel,” I said. “From politics.”

“Only the colonel?” Hands spreading sparks of light over my back, my hips.

“Not really him at all.”

Light moved up through us, leaping from one to the other, setting every cell ablaze. “I’m going to kiss you now, Elsie.”

It had been so long. So very, very long, and yet I knew just how our mouths fit together, how precisely we knew to press and tilt, to open and sigh. We moved into his chamber and shut out the rain, and shed all the things keeping our flesh apart. For one blazing second, as we pressed skin to skin, at last, I lifted my head. I touched his face, his beard, his chest, living in this moment, this very one, and then we tumbled into each other, remembering what we had forgotten. And then we were prone and tangled and made love as if we had invented it. When he was buried in me, over me, he lifted his head. “Elsie,” he said. “Look at me.”

I met his eyes, held him close, and he breathed.

“We are one soul. One heart.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “One.”

And as one being we moved into the place only we could ever occupy, our own land.

The rains stopped abruptly toward midnight, and the moon rose, spilling into the room to creep across our bodies, sweaty and naked. “All this hair,” I said, teasing, touching his chest with my palm, his shin with my foot, raising my hand to his thick beard. “It is quite thrilling.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. When I saw you on the balcony, I very nearly swooned.”

“I wanted you to. I saw you out there, reading a letter.”

“How wicked!”