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Forward to Time Past by Unbridled_Brunette
 
Chapter Fourteen
 
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Chapter Fourteen



As concerned as she was for his state of mind, Buffy knew William would not have left the Underwood home altogether. He was too much of a gentleman to leave her to go home at night, unescorted, even if he was in the middle of an emotional breakdown. He would find some quiet corner to hide away and lick his wounds, but he would not leave her; she was sure of it. In fact, she was right. After a bit of a search, she found him in the large walled-in garden at the back of the Underwood house. There was a narrow path that wound through snow-covered flowerbeds and leafless fruit trees, and at the end of this path was a small pond, its water icy and dark: a black ink-spot on the white canvas of snowy lawn. At the near edge of the pond sat a little white stone bench, half-hidden by a copse of leafless rose trees; William was sitting on this bench with his head bowed. His back was to her, so he did not take note of her arrival until she touched his shoulder.

“Hello there,” she said softly.

He looked up briefly, and she saw that his eyelashes were wet as if he had been crying, and that his expression—the sweet, soft expression to which she had become so accustomed—was twisted with anger.

“Excuse me,” he said coldly. “I wish to be alone.”

He started to rise, and would probably have walked away had Buffy not been so quick to react. She slipped around in front of him and pressed the palm of her hand flat against his chest, pushing him back down on the bench. He seemed a bit thrown by this at first, as he always was when she touched him. Then, his expression hardened with resolve.

“Let me up.”

“No,” she said softly. “You’re upset; you shouldn’t be alone. Anyway, it’s late and cold. Anything might happen to you, if you go out on the streets now.” Or anyone, she added silently.

“You needn’t concern yourself with my safety; I am well capable of looking after myself. Pray go back inside and—and—and finish your dancing. I fear that your absence leaves Mr. Archer lacking a partner.”

Buffy winced at his hostile tone.

“Do you honestly think that is what I want?” she asked softly. “To spend time with a man like Charles Archer? He’s probably the first human being I’ve ever met that has absolutely no redeeming qualities. He’s a complete bas—uh, idiot.”

“Why were you dancing with him, then?”

“Not out of choice, I can promise you that! He asked me, and he was drunk; I didn’t want there to be a scene if I refused. I didn’t know he would behave like that. He was perfectly civil earlier, so I thought—”

“You knew!” His voice was ragged with pain. “I told you—”

“You told me you didn’t like him and that he was a—a gutter wiper, or whatever. You never said why. And I would never have allowed him near me, if I had known. William…” She knelt down and gripped the lapel of his jacket, forcing him to look at her when he would have turned away. “I would never intentionally hurt you. Don’t you know that?”

He pushed her hand away, unable or unwilling to let go of his anger.

“This is why I did not want to come tonight! I—I didn’t want you to see how they view me. All of them. They are not my friends, as you assumed. I’m nothing more than a—a fool they use for sport. I told you that I did not wish to come and you—you wanted—”

“You’re my friend. I wanted to spend time with you.”

“You wanted to make new acquaintances,” he bit out. “You said as much. The simple society of our household wearies you. I understand! You yearned to meet more exciting persons than myself—younger, more appealing—more—more in keeping with yourself.”

She stared at him, transfixed by the intensity not only of his words but his appearance as well. He turned his head to the side, so she couldn’t see his expression, but his chest was heaving with his heavy breaths, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. The posture of his entire body was one of restraint: holding himself back, reining himself in. The anger was leaking out, but she realized that the cause for it—that hunger, that terrible longing he had expressed since the beginning—was once again being shunted aside, smothered and hidden from view.

Repressed.

How she wished she were better at this! She wanted to put her arms around him; she wanted to tell him that she knew how he felt and that it was okay. But she was afraid that he would not allow it, that it would only upset him more for her to try. Instead, she knelt down in the snow at his feet, cupping her hands over his own fisted ones, so that he looked over in surprise.

“I wanted to spend time with you,” she repeated quietly. “Even though we live in the same house, it seems like we never have time to talk or…or anything. I thought this might give us the chance to…you know…do something fun together. I had no idea things would turn out this way, or I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

His anger seemed to depart at this, leaving him sad and strangely listless. Depressed. His head dropped down, and when he spoke again, his voice was weary.

“Then I suppose I should ask your forgiveness for ruining your evening.”

“Don’t say that. You didn’t ruin anything. Just because they don’t like your poetry doesn’t mean that I—”

His head shot up so abruptly that Buffy had to leap back to avoid a collision.

Poetry!” He spat the word as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth, and for the first time, Buffy noticed the bit of crumpled paper he held in his left hand. He brandished it at her like a weapon, exclaiming, “This isn’t poetry, it is scribble! Stupid, senseless scribble! Do you realize that they call me ‘William the Bloody’ because of my bloody awful poetry?”

William the Bloody, a name that would someday strike fear into the hearts of men, until he replaced it with the equally dreaded but perhaps more modern epithet of “Spike.” Yet that name—a name destined to be the subject of cold sweats and frightened whispers—had been born out of no greater crime than the unrealistic literary ambitions of its gentle human owner. Later on, the irony of this would send Buffy into gales of helpless laughter, but not now. Now her thoughts were too taken with the idea of the poetry itself. She had heard so much about it. She moved closer, curious. However, his desire to speak on the subject seemed to wilt, and he sighed heavily without saying anything more about it.

“I am an embarrassment to you,” he said instead, “as well as being a shame to Mother. I am…an outcast.”

“Hey…” She took his chin and lifted his head so that she could look at his face. “You didn’t embarrass me. Those snobs were embarrassments to themselves, that’s all. As for the party…well, it isn’t really my kind of shindig anyway. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it even if the people weren’t all shallow and rude. For one thing, the music sucked.”

“I am sorry, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Don’t be. You’re the person I most want to spend time with, so, hey, it looks like I’m still a winner. Right?”

His lips twitched in what might have been the shadow of a smile, and even in the dim light of the moon, she could see a blush staining his pale cheeks. He did not seem to know just how to reply, and the silence that followed was lingering, but oddly comfortable. Buffy took advantage of the lapse in conversation to sit down on the bench beside him. She sat rather closer than was proper, because it was quite cold and she had forgotten her cloak, but he didn’t seem to mind. She was trying to decide whether she could slip her icy hands into his coat pocket, when suddenly he turned to her with a startled expression.

“Miss Elizabeth! You should not have followed me out here. There will be talk…”

“Does it really matter if there’s talk?” asked Buffy. “I mean…those people in there are complete morons. Do you really care what they think?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“I—I care about your reputation,” he said finally. “And Mother’s. I should not wish to disgrace either of you. If we stay here, people might accuse you of being—” He hesitated.

“A woman of loose morals?” she suggested.

William shifted uneasily. He seemed to be struggling to find a polite way to answer, but before he could come up with something, Buffy spoke again.

“If that’s what you’re worried about, then I think you’re a little late. My, uh, lack of virtue was one of the hot topics with the women in there. Your own Miss Underwood and her friends were having a heck of a time speculating about the two of us. Not to mention Charles Archer, and the sweet nothings he whispered on the topic.” She moved a little closer to him, leaning across his shoulder so that she could whisper her next words directly into his ear. “Apparently, they all think you’re paying me for my company.”

His eyes were fixed on that little pond, but Buffy saw his lips tighten, two thin lines scoring the space between his eyebrows.

“They said as much?”

“Basically.” She looked at him closely. “They also said that you were once in love with her. Cecily. Were you?”

He turned his face away, feigning a great interest in the snowy shrubbery to his right, but Buffy knew he was still listening by the way he flinched when she said, “They told me the poetry you were writing…was for her.”

“Yes. I heard them.” His voice, like his answer, was tight and controlled.

“So, do you still do it?”

“Do I…?”

“Write poetry?”

“Occasionally.” The word came out almost pained; Buffy could actually see him wincing as he spoke.

“Just about Cecily Underwood? Or do you write about other things as well?”

“No—I—I didn’t—she—she wasn’t—” He stopped for a moment and rubbed the back of his neck: a single, frustrated gesture. Buffy realized he knew exactly what it was he wanted to say, he just couldn’t figure out how to say it.

“There were only a few poems to Cecily,” he finished finally. “A very few that I wrote before you came to us. She has always been so polite and well received that I could not help but feel some admiration. Charles, as you might have noticed, is a man who likes to take it upon himself to learn the business of others. I never mentioned anything about my feelings…but I suppose he must have guessed. They all must have guessed.”

“Are you in love with her?” She almost hated to ask, but part of her had to hear him say otherwise. Her stomach clenched painfully as she waited for his answer.

“No! I thought at one time…but the feelings I had for her…they were not…real. Not—not like—” He stopped, but the unspoken words hung between them: Not like my feelings for you.

The knot in Buffy’s stomach relaxed considerably at that, and she managed a smile.

“You don’t write about her now, I guess. So what do you write about? Have you moved on to other women? Another woman…?”

“I—I’m sorry. But might we change the subject? I don’t really wish to discuss this now.” He really did look desperate for a new topic.

Buffy shrugged.

“Okay.”

“Thank you.”

She reached out, touching the side of his face very lightly so that he looked up.

“It’s just that if you ever do feel like discussing it—and if you have some poetry that you wrote about me—I would really like to hear it.”

“You would?” William looked dazed. Clearly, her words were just as unexpected as the soft caress that preceded them.

“Yes, I would.”

Her hand stroked softly down his jaw, coming to rest at the side of his neck right above his collar. Even in the cold winter air, his skin was hot to the touch, his pulse beating in rapid staccato against her fingertips. When he did not attempt to break the contact, she grew bolder, tracing the pad of her thumb across his full bottom lip. There were streaks of drying tears just underneath his eyes, and she reached up with her free hand, gently stroking the moisture away. He seemed almost hypnotized by her touch, his eyes slightly unfocused and his mouth falling open just a little bit.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“Tell you…?”

“Your poems—are some of them about me?”

William looked down at his feet, so that the fringe of his lashes covered his eyes. He struggled through several false starts before finally managing to answer her. “They are about how I feel.”

“Yes. But are they about me?”

Buffy half expected him not to answer the question at all, but suddenly he raised his head, staring directly into her eyes with a kind of feverish intensity.

“Only you!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Since you came to us…every poem…every thought…every syllable has been…”

He seemed so agitated, now. As if he thought that she would laugh at him like the others, and he had to say what he felt before she did. Buffy’s heart went out to him; he looked so vulnerable. Her hand dropped from his neck to his shoulder, which was twitching convulsively.

“William…don’t…”

“Please, I—I—I know it’s sudden. And I won’t bother you about it, if it makes you uneasy. But…if there is a chance you might come to feel the same way about myself…I love you, Miss Elizabeth.”

For just a moment after hearing that, her heart stopped beating.

“I—I know I’m nothing special that you should care for me,” he continued swiftly, before she could respond. “But I am a good man. And all I ask is that—is that you t—try to see me—”

He looked almost painfully red-faced and flustered, his words an agonized stutter that came to an abrupt end when Buffy gently squeezed his shoulder.

“I do see you, William,” she whispered. “I—I like what I see.”

He looked shocked by her answer, almost afraid to believe it. “You…like…?”

The expression in his eyes made her heart ache. How could he be so surprised to hear this, after all the moments they had shared? Did he really think himself so unworthy of her affection? She wanted to find some way of telling him, some way to make him understand just how happy he made her. But as usual, when it came to matters of the heart, words eluded her. Instead, she reached out to him physically, tracing the edge his crisply starched shirt collar with her fingertip, following it to the buttons at the middle of his throat. She undid that tightly fastened top button and then gently pulled his collar aside to expose the tender, untouched line of his throat. She leaned down just a little, found the throbbing vein that lay just underneath the surface of the skin—that place Drusilla would have ravaged and bled—and she pressed her lips to him and kissed him there.

“I like everything about you,” she said.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Afterward, the walk to the Underwood carriage block had a strange, dreamlike quality to it.

Barring all concerns for propriety, William still could not ride home in the carriage with her; he had to take the horse back. But he waited by the block with her until Matthew arrived, and he gave her his overcoat when he realized she was shivering—this despite the fact that the temperature was well below freezing, and he had nothing but his thin suit jacket for the cold horseback ride home. Buffy tried to argue with him about the foolishness of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He draped the heavy wool garment over her shoulders and guided her arms into the sleeves, and then helped her to button it. When he finished, he grasped the lapels and leaned his forehead against hers, his warm breath coming out in white puffs as he whispered huskily, “My love…”

There might have been more, but she didn’t hear past those two words. His love. She was his love. She was—

Was she in love with him?

You’ve done just what you said you wouldn’t, a little voice in the back of her head whispered. You’ve changed this time; you made him love you. You changed everything, and you’ll never get home now.

The realization should have terrified her. Instead, she felt an odd sort of peacefulness, the corresponding thought: I don’t care. I don’t want to go home.

And she didn’t.

When he helped her into the carriage, William slipped a piece of paper into her hand, the same bit of crumpled stationary he had held in the garden a half hour before. Then, he had called it scribble and had clutched it as if he might tear it in two. Now he pressed it into Buffy’s grasp with a soft kiss to her knuckles and a small, bashful smile. He walked away before she could ask what it was, but she didn’t need to ask. She knew.

She waited until the carriage was on the street and William’s horse out of sight before she unfolded it, read it in the dim light of the street lamps shining through the glass.

My soul has awakened from a lonely dream
By an angel’s flutter of feathered wing
Too lovely!
This apparition of golden gleam
Whose presence is like a summer sunbeam
Ungentlemanly is this desire,
Yet still I feel I must indulge in it!
And take a moment to admire
My love’s true beauty, effulgent


~*~ ~*~ ~*~


 
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