DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the characters and makes the money. I right the wrongs of the Evil Writers who refused to get Buffy and Spike together where they belonged.

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Chapter 8 – Black Borders


William tapped his soft-boiled egg with his spoon over and over, watching cracks spread and crush the shell. The yellow yolk ran out and down the side of the cup. He rapped his spoon against the porcelain cup and cracked it, too. His mother had tied a black ribbon around the base of the egg cup. He made no move to remove the ribbon. His eyes were blank and red from lack of sleep.

“William, what are you doing?” his mother asked.

His eyes focused. “I beg your pardon, mother. I was thinking.” He pushed his newspaper away from his plate without unfolding it.

Betty came in with the mail and placed a thick envelope next to his plate. He made no move to open it. He knew what it was, the invitation to Cecily’s party. He would go. He would accept his fate. There was no reason not to go.

“You didn’t come home until very late last night.” His mother sipped her tea and watched his face.

“Choir ran late.” He lied to his mother now as easily as telling her the sun set. A week ago, he would have stammered and blushed and been caught. Now, it was as easy to lie as to tell the truth. Easier.

“Dr. Gull came by yesterday afternoon.”

Dr. Gull. He wished Dr. Gull to blazes. His mother had forgotten she’d already told him about Dr. Gull’s visit. He pretended the visit had not been mentioned. “What did Dr. Gull have to say?”

“William, I want to talk to you about a serious subject. You’ve always been such a good boy. I know you’ll accept my interference in your affairs in the kind way they are meant.”

William pushed away the egg without eating any of it and placed his hands, palms down, on either side of his plate. “Of course, mother.”

She made a sound of exasperation. “I won’t be with you much longer. I want to see you settled with a nice girl. The Underwood girl, Cecily, would make you a fine wife. I don’t hope I will live long enough to see your first son born, but I want to know you’ll not be alone after I’ve gone.”

A silly smile spread over William’s face. He felt his mind was not quite right this morning. “Oh, yes, mother. I have hopes one day Miss Underwood will agree to make me the happiest of men. I shall write a poem for her this very afternoon, if you could spare me for an hour or two. But, first, you have to tell me what you’d like for your Christmas present. Shall I get you some handkerchiefs, black edged?”

His mother smiled. “I can always use some handkerchiefs.”

He returned to his room after breakfast and sat down at his writing desk. He took out the Christmas card, dipped his steel pen in a glass jar of India ink and wrote on the back of it in his most careful cursive writing. He folded the card into a stiff piece of black-edged paper. He found some white tissue paper Betty used to line the drawers of his clothes chest and wrapped it around the crushed bird and tied the package with a black ribbon. He placed the card and the bird in the wooden box where he kept his cuff links and collar fasteners. He put the box away and sat back down at his desk to write a poem for Miss Underwood.

My heart expands
'Tis grown a bulge in it
Inspired by your beauty

His pen skittered across the page, leaving black splats. He put his head down on his desk and cried.

***

He took another gulp of the Underwood’s excellent blood red wine. He’d never drank so much in his life and the wine had gone to his head. Didn’t matter. Tonight was a night for kicking over the traces. He’d started with his clothes. He’d chucked his black suit into the back of his wardrobe and pulled out his tan suit. He’d splurged on a new collar, with points creased knife sharp. This was a costume for happier times. That’s what he was going to have from now on – happier times.

His mother sniffed when he came down wearing his suit with the pink cravat, but he’d ignored her. True, the suit didn’t fit as well as it once did. It looked acceptable, but it felt too small. It wasn’t black. That was the important point. He was through wrapping himself in black and sitting in the parlor and sipping tea and he might even be through with being a gentleman.

A waiter circled by with a tray of fresh glasses. William drank down his glass and switched it for a full one. He got out his pages of poems. Women like poems. He must finish this blasted poem for Cecily. He’d struggled for two days with the last line –radiant, gleaming, glistening, shining. All good words, but the last word must rhyme. Rhyme was essential. When the last couplet rhymed, the world was in order, all in its place and lovely. Not the kind of place where evil things could happen, where you fell in love with someone unsuitable, someone your mother would never approve of and then she was …

Cecily was a fine girl. He was going to marry her. He might even ask her tonight if he drank enough.

It was a fine party. Pretty girls, fine looking men, a quartet playing good music and good wine. Lots of good wine. Cecily hadn’t appeared yet. She liked to make an entrance after the male guests grew tired of talking with the other girls. Yes, when Bloxham yawned at the vulgar pronouncements of Miss Mary Butterville, Cecily would float down the stairs in her icy white gown and make all the men look at her. William would look at her.

“Luminous. Oh, no, no, no. Radiant’s better.” Lustrous? Scintillating? Shimmering?

The waiter approached again with a tray of food made of tiny scraps of meat and shrimp arranged on diamonds of toast, dabs of black caviar and deviled ham and lobster, and chestnuts wrapped in puff pastry wings like minute crisp angels.

“Care for an hors d’oeuvre, sir?”

William had no wish for food this evening. He would live as a chameleon on the spirited air, oh and the spirits. He laughed at his little joke and drank some more wine. He scratched out a word with a pencil and wrote another in its place. Sparkling. That wasn’t right either.

“Oh, quickly!” he said to the waiter. “I'm the very spirit of vexation. What's another word for ‘gleaming’? It's a perfectly perfect word as many words go but the bother is nothing rhymes, you see.”

The waiter made no answer and moved into the crowd to serve another guest. William wasn’t surprised. What would a waiter know about the glories of poetry, words that sounded sweet or soft or clear or hard in your head? Emma would have known. She would have felt the beauty and clarity a perfect word brought to a song. He blinked back his tears and drank some more wine. It was so hard not to think of her and the way her heart-shaped face glowed with light.

Effulgent.

Cecily would know. She was refined. She would understand.

Cecily drifted into the room. She made no effort to greet any of her guests. She walked slowly, turning with slow elegance so her train would drape with perfection around her ankles. She paused so her guests could admire her.

“Cecily ….”

She was lovely. Her dress glowed white, its neckline edged with a tiny pleated flounce and decorated with papier-mâché buds and berries. A gold pendant with a single opal hung around her neck. Her dark curls were waxed into stiff cylinders and pinned up in a cascade at the back of her head. She was lovely and she was appropriate. Appropriate was essential.

He returned his attention to his poem. He must get all the lines exactly perfect so he could present it to her tonight. He got up stand closer to her, to be near in case she spoke. The rude Miss Butterville was talking.

“I mean to point out,” Mary Butterville said, “That it's something of a mystery and the police should keep an open mind.”

Charles Bloxham turned his attention to William as he attempted to walk past without being noticed. “Ah, William! Favor us with your opinion.”

William meant to avoid Bloxham this evening, especially after their meeting at the church two nights before. Was it only two nights ago that he was holding her in his arms? He felt he’d been crying for years. Bloxham persisted. The fellow cared nothing for his opinion, he only wished to show himself to be superior before the women, before Cecily, at William’s expense.

“What do you make of this rash of disappearances sweeping through our town? Animals or thieves?”

William shivered. He wouldn’t think of these evil doings. Not anymore. “I prefer not to think of such dark, ugly business at all. That's what the police are for.” He looked at Cecily who was standing at the edge of the crowd, watching him, her eyes ink blots in the dim gas light. Tender blue veins traced her chalky face. “I prefer placing my energies into creating things of beauty.”

Frederick Marbury snatched the papers from William’s hands. “I see. Well, don't withhold, William.” He held the papers out of William’s reach, daring him to make a scene by snatching them back.

“Rescue us from a dreary topic,” Miss Butterville said.

“Careful,” William said. “Please, it's not finished.”

“Don't be shy,” Marbury said. "My heart expands/'tis grown a bulge in it/inspired by your beauty, effulgent." He laughed. “Effulgent?”

The others laughed with him. Everyone except Cecily. Cecily continued looking grave. She walked into the next room and sat on the sofa and looked out the window to the inky black street. William seized his papers and followed her.

She was sitting alone, ignoring her guests. She must be upset by the disappearances. This would be a good time to approach her, when she was in a serious mood and not looking with any pleasure on Bloxham and his crass friends.

“Cecily?” He sat down next to her. The feather-stuffed sofa sank under his weight. He felt foolish sitting with his knees nearly knocking into his chin.

She turned away and sighed. “Oh. Leave me alone.”

He must make her understand he was nothing like the others. “Oh, they're vulgarians. They're not like you and I.”

Cecily looked even more serious and upset by his words. Had he said the wrong thing already? “You and I? I'm going to ask you a very personal question and I demand an honest answer. Do you understand?”

He was surprised at Cecily, polished and trained in all the ladylike graces as she was, asking him a personal question. Did she mean to bring up the subject of their wedding herself? An offer of marriage was his prerogative. Perhaps she thought he was dithering about too much and wanted the subject settled as quickly as possible. Perhaps she worried if she left matters in his hands she might be an old maid by the time the orange blossoms were ordered from the greenhouses.

He nodded.

“Your poetry, it's... they're... not written about me, are they?”

William felt relieved. She only wanted him to deliver some acceptable token of his love and passion. She wasn’t making a bold advance like Miss Harlan. No! He wouldn’t think of her anymore. It hurt too much to think of her. If he thought of her his heart would pain him and if he didn’t think of her … and he wouldn’t think of her. He would think of Cecily. Proud, beautiful Cecily. “They're about how I feel.”

“Yes, but are they about me?”

“Every syllable.” There. It was only a small, necessary lie and it was practically a declaration, as if he needed one. Everyone – his mother, Mrs. Underwood, Lady Bloxham, even Mrs. Bolton -- had been pushing and arranging things between them for months. What man would write poetry to a woman he didn’t love? And, he loved Cecily. Certainly, he loved her. What man wouldn’t want to love her?

To Willliam’s surprise, Cecily did not appear a bit pleased. “Oh, God!” she said.

She must be playing the part of an elegant female. He hoped she didn’t go so far as to actually turn him down with the thought of enhancing his love. A refusal would be embarrassing. How would he explain to mother? It occurred to him she might be modest and shy of accepting such tributes of love as his lines of poetry, but he rejected that notion. She was too much in company, too much admired by himself and the other men of their acquaintance to be much put off by his poems. Still, it was a way to respond. “Oh, I know... it's sudden and... please, if they're no good, they're only words but... the feeling behind them... I love you, Cecily.”

“Please stop!”

Had he mistaken her? Was she modest and capable of delicate feeling? Certainly, she wasn’t bold and brave like ... “I know I'm a bad poet but I'm a good man and all I ask is that... that you try to see me—”

“I do see you. That's the problem. You're nothing to me, William. You're beneath me.” She stood up and looked down at him for a long moment. She walked out of the room without looking back.