too frantic to remember such simple joys,’ he answered. He rested his foot on the bench beside her and braced his forearm on his knee—so, so close, but not yet touching.
‘Your life is terribly busy, yes?’ she asked. She held tighter to the cold, solid stone beneath her, to keep away the temptation to lean against him. ‘Writing, acting, dodging demanding theatre owners, assignations with admiring ladies—fights with their husbands …’
Rob laughed. ‘Such a great opinion you have of me, Anna. I would have you know I work hard for my coin every day. And if I choose to enjoy myself when the work is done—well, life is too short not to seek out pleasure.’
Anna smiled up at him. He was so good at seeking out pleasure, it seemed, at drawing out every hidden morsel of joy in their striving, heaving existence. What was that like? What would it feel like to let go of control and duty for one mere moment and just—be?
She feared the cost of that one moment would be too high. But it was tempting, nonetheless, especially when he looked at her like that under the shimmering moonglow.
‘Perhaps we do need to stop and glance at the stars once in a while,’ she said. ‘Lest we forget they are even there at all.’
‘It’s difficult to see them in the city,’ Rob said. He sat down beside her, his shoulder pressed very lightly against hers. He did only that—sat beside her—and yet she was so very aware of the hard, lean line of his body, the heat of his skin on hers through the layers of their clothes, the raw strength of him.
‘I’ve never lived anywhere but London. Not for long anyway,’ Anna said. ‘This is the only sky I know.’
‘When I was a lad I lived in the countryside,’ he said. His voice was quiet in the darkness, as if suddenly he was far away from the garden. Somewhere she couldn’t quite see or follow.
‘Did you?’
‘Aye, and often on summer nights I would slip out of my bed and go running down to the river, where there was only the water and the sky, perfect silence. I would lie down in the tall grass at the riverbank and stare up at the stars, making up tales for myself of other worlds we could not see. Wondrous places beyond the stars.’
Anna was fascinated by this small glimpse of Rob’s past, his hidden self. She had never thought of him as a boy before; he seemed to have just sprung up fully formed onstage, sword in his hand, poetry on his lips.
‘You must have been the despair of your mother, running away like that,’ she said.
He smiled at her, a flash of his usual careless grin, but it swiftly faded. ‘Not at all. My mother died when I was very young. Our aunt then stayed with us for a time, but she cared not what we did as long as we didn’t dirty her nicely scrubbed floors.’
‘Oh,’ Anna said sadly. ‘I am sorry.’
‘For what, fair Anna?’
‘For your losing your mother so young. My own mother died when I was three.’
Rob studied her so carefully she felt a warm blush creeping stealthily into her cheeks. She was very glad of the cover of darkness—the moon was behind the clouds. ‘Do you remember her?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not very much at all. She would sing to me as I fell asleep at night, and sometimes I think I remember the way her touch felt on my cheek, or the smell of her perfume. My father says she was very beautiful and very gentle, that there could be no lady to compare to her and that is why he never married again.’ Anna laughed. ‘So it seems I inherited little from her, having neither beauty nor gentleness!’
‘I would disagree—about the beauty part, anyway,’ Rob said, his old light flirtatiousness coming back, encroaching on their fleeting moment of intimacy.
‘I am not gentle?’
‘Gentleness is quite overrated. Spirit—that is what a man should always look for in a female.’
Anna thought of the weeping whore in her tattered yellow dress. She had not seemed especially spirited, but then Anna hadn’t seen what had come before the morning quarrel. Maybe the night had been spirited, indeed.
Had it all only been that morning? It seemed like days ago, so very distant from this quiet moment.
And she felt a most unwanted twinge of pleasure that he might think she was spirited—and beautiful. Even though she knew very well it was only a mere flirtatious comment—a toss-away he no doubt said often to many women. But she had long ago lost her youthful spirit. It was buried in the real world.
‘Surely spirit can cause more trouble than it is worth?’ she said sternly. ‘For instance—how is your shoulder tonight?’
He flexed his shoulders as if to test them before answering her. His muscles rippled against the fine fabric of his doublet.
‘Better, I thank you,’ he said. ‘I had a very fine nurse.’
Anna waited to see if he would say more, tell her how he had come to be wounded in the first place, but he did not. A silence fell around them, heavy and soft as the night itself. She let herself lean closer against him, and didn’t even move away when his arm came lightly around her shoulders.
‘Tell me about those worlds you saw beyond the stars,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it felt like to escape there.’
‘Escape?’ he said. She could feel the way he watched her in the night, so steady, so intense, as if he wanted to see all her secrets. ‘What do you want to escape from, Anna?’
Everything, she wanted to say. At least for that one moment she wanted not to be herself, here in her workaday life, her workaday self. She wanted him to be not himself, either. If only they were two strangers, who knew nothing of each other or of what the world held beyond this garden.
‘It’s more what I want to escape to, I think,’ she said. ‘Something beautiful, clean and good. Something peaceful.’
‘Something beautiful?’ he said. ‘Yes. I think I’ve been looking for that all my life.’
Anna felt the sudden gentle brush of his hand against her cheek. His touch was light, and yet it seemed to leave shimmering sparks in its wake across her skin. She reared back, startled, but he didn’t leave her. His palm cupped her cheek, holding her as if she was made of the most fragile porcelain, and she swayed towards him.
Slowly, enticingly, his hand slid down her throat to the ribbon trim of her neckline. He toyed with it lightly between his fingers, his dark gaze following his touch. He didn’t even brush the bare, soft swell of her breast above the unfashionably modest bodice, yet she trembled as if he did. She felt unbearably tense and brittle, as if she would snap if he did not touch her.
‘Why do you always wear grey?’ he asked, twining the bit of ribbon between his fingers.
‘I—I like grey,’ she whispered. ‘‘Tis easy to keep clean.’ And easy to fade into the background. It was a suitable colour for a woman who spent her time hovering behind the scenes.
‘In my star kingdom you would wear white satin and blue velvet, sewn with pearls and embroidered with shining silver thread.’
