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The world had felt wrong for him. Everything in it insensible. He’d had little control over his moods. He’d found solace in his obsession with botany, then in growing flowers himself. Cultivating something with his hands that was both delicate and difficult.
When he’d got older he’d begun to fantasise about women. Controlling their pleasure in the way he controlled the bloom of an orchid.
He had never considered that Beatrice might be the one who understood, but there she was, explaining the piece of pain she experienced in a way not even he had ever heard.
And he was held transfixed.
Of the strange expression on her face, and of the deep, yawning hunger that he could feel it open up inside him.
‘And your breathing now?’ he asked, doing his best to move past this moment. ‘How is it?’
‘Mostly manageable. I rarely have incidents now. I have not been sick for many years. The doctor does fear that my lungs are weak. Because of that he feels...carrying a child, giving birth...is something I likely cannot survive. That is why. My lungs.’
‘And your susceptibility to other illnesses, I imagine.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice sounding distant. ‘I imagine.’
‘And that is why you’ve never seen hedgehogs rut,’ he said.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Rut. That does not sound pleasant.’
‘It is not. To watch hedgehogs do it.’
He was walking a thin line. And he knew it.
Like when he’d held her to him last night.
‘It is oversimplified,’ he said. ‘To reduce it all to the creation of the child.’
‘But they are connected,’ she said, pressing. ‘That does make me feel better as it makes me sense that there are perhaps less things that I do not know about.’
She had no idea.
‘Or so much more,’ he said.
‘That is not cheering.’
‘You may find none of this cheering in the end. Have you ever kissed a man?’ He sensed that she had not.
‘No,’ she said, her cheeks turning pink.
‘Not your friend James?’
She looked away. ‘I told him I was not in love with him.’
‘Love does not always matter when it comes to issues of attraction, I’m afraid.’
‘All of this is confusing.’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘Sometimes deliciously so. There are times when you want a person you may despise. When you might want someone who is utterly forbidden to you.’ Treading on the line now, Briggs. ‘Does he make you feel warm?’
Her eyes went round. ‘Warm?’
He cursed himself even as he moved to the seat beside her in the carriage. ‘When he is close to you,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Do you feel warm? Flushed?’
She drew back, her eyes getting wide. ‘No.’
He was meanly satisfied by that. ‘He is your friend, then.’
