Four-And-A-Half Engagements

Master Narciso Cilma and Miss Valeria Malfaraez have loved each other since the first time they met. The problem? They keep being engaged to the wrong people. A painfully earnest RomCom inspired by the Regency period.

It would be a long evening if he merely stood in the corner. Longingly, Narciso’s gaze swept over the string quartet at the other end of the dancefloor. Would that he were amongst them, viola in hand.

Still, dancing was a kind of music. He enjoyed it, genuinely. It was the need for a partner that filled him with dread, so soon after his humiliation. Not that any here knew of either him or his story. So there was nothing to fear. No laughs behind discrete hands as eyes followed him around the room. No, nothing to fear, Narciso reminded himself.

The music swelled and his heart with it. Yes, to dance really would be a pleasure. Yet, all the young misses made such a habit of congregating together, turning a dozen judging eyes on any hapless man who might deign to approach. Would it be better, he wondered, to tell them that he wished for no romance – that nothing was further from his mind after his humiliation – but only the pleasure of the body in movement, subsumed by rhythm and melody?

His eyes caught and held – against his own better judgement – on a rare solitary figure. She sat by the dancefloor, watching the music. Hair of burnished copper, reflecting the candles into a warm halo glow. Her face, he saw in profile: cotton soft, freckled, something feline in the features. A kindred spirit, surely. One who, like he, yearned to feel the music. He picked his way towards her.

‘Miss?’ he said, upon arrival.

She started. ‘Sir?’

‘Master Narciso Cilma, madam, if you shall excuse me for introducing myself. I wished to ask for the pleasure of a dance.’ The words hung between them. ‘With you,’ he clarified after a moment.

‘Well, it would be rude to refuse,’ she replied, making no effort to rise from her seat and leaving him hanging awkwardly over her.

‘Quite.’ Another moment. ‘Do you? Refuse, that is? I apologise for any impertinence.’

Her eyes met his. The shared expression was something like bafflement on both accounts.

‘No, I… of course not. I’m not much of a dancer, however.’

‘Prefer to listen? Or do you play yourself?’

‘Music, you mean?’ She stood to take the proffered hand and gave an encouraging smile – to him or to herself, he wasn’t entirely sure. ‘No, I’ve never much cared for it. A menace on the pianoforte: my father banned me from learning further, as I was in danger of driving the whole family mad.’

‘Then he deprived you of a great gift,’ said Narciso. ‘There is nothing that touches the spirit quite like it.’

She smirked at that. Almost snorted, perhaps, but caught herself.

‘I thought, perhaps, you were sitting to listen to the quartet,’ he continued. ‘It’s clear I misunderstood.’

At that, she shrugged and consented to being led to the dancefloor nonetheless.

‘You have me at a disadvantage, now, I fear,’ he said as they took their places, ready for the music to begin anew.

‘How so?’

‘You have yet to furnish me with your name.’

She blushed. ‘An oversight for which I must apologise, then, good sir.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Miss Valeria Malfaraez.’

‘A pleasure, miss.’

It was miss, then. Not that it mattered, of course. The idea of courting anyone at all made Narciso shiver and, besides, he feared he had thus far given rather a poor accounting of himself.

A lively country tune began and, with it, the jig itself. And then there was nothing but the music and the movement and the glance at her charming features and – he was pleased to see – the smile that slowly spread across them as they spun and hopped and exchanged partners and found one another again. Narciso lost himself and found himself and the world was nothing but the dancefloor and the quartet and the girl.

After too short an eternity, the world ended in a small apocalypse consisting entirely of the music coming to an end, and Narciso awoke back into the cold and quiet realm beyond the music. The southerners at the very extremity of the continent believed that all of existence was a song held by the goddess Purtharva and that people had been crafted to continue that song, with voices for singing and hands for playing, and that one day the song would end and existence with it. A wise group of heathens, Narciso thought them.

‘Thank you,’ he said to Miss Malfaraez. ‘I shall leave you to your solitude, intruding no longer.’

‘No, wait,’ she said. He squinted in honest confusion and saw – for the second time – something of the same expression in her too.

‘Miss?’

‘I would prefer the company, sir, if it pleases you.’

‘Nothing would please me more.’

They took a turn around the room, arm in arm, on the vaguely stated goal of finding something to drink.

‘Music, sir. You seem to enjoy it.’

‘Of course!’ Narciso replied. ‘How could anyone not?’

‘Well it’s just noise, is it not?’

‘Miss Malfaraez, I am shocked at you. No, it is not mere noise.’

‘Do you play?’

‘I do,’ he said proudly. ‘Violin and pianoforte and – my great love – guitar.’

‘Guitar? Is that not a rather provincial little instrument?’

‘It has that reputation, yes. Unfairly. But you should hear it in the hands of a master.’

‘Are you a master?’

‘Endeavour to be,’ said Narcisco, defensively. ‘I write, too,’ he added.

‘Music?’

‘What else?’

‘Poetry, perhaps,’ she replied. ‘Now there’s romance.’

‘Nonsense. Words cannot capture the soul. Only music can do that.’

‘I hope you never have the displeasure of reading mine, then.’

‘You’re a poet?’

It was her turn to look defensive. ‘Endeavour to be.’

He laughed at that and she joined him.

‘I’d like to read it,’ he said.

‘You’d have to play for me first.’

‘I’d like that too.’

They found wine and lemonade and opted for the stronger of the two. They sipped, looking at each other over the rims of their glasses, and Narcisco’s head emptied of anything to say. Fearing that she would hate the silence, he grasped at something.

‘I thought, miss, that you might be Fenyloddi. Yet your name is as Savarian as my own.’

‘Because of the hair?’ She shook it and he shivered in sweet pleasure. ‘No, but we hail from that direction. Some place you’d have never heard of in eastern Toseldo.’

‘Yet here you are in Cartanda. For the whole social season?’

‘Only a week or two, almost at an end now already.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it. I’ll see you again, though? At the Duke of Roleros’ ball the day after next, perhaps?’

‘Alas,’ she said, glancing down, ‘I’m not possessed of an invite.’

‘Oh. At the theatre, then? Tomorrow? Let me take you. They’re putting on a Theman comedy in the Count’s Theatre. Islander style: all music and singing.’

‘I… sir, I’m not sure if that would be possible.’

‘Whyever not?’

‘It might be inappropriate.’

He blushed. He’d gone too far. What was he doing? Trying to court her? He began to stammer out an apology, until she cut him off.

‘In truth, Master Cilma, I must tell you that I am currently engaged to be married.’

His heart dropped. ‘I’m sorry. I should have—’

‘Nonsense. You could not have known. I was not sure when to mention it – it felt presumptuous to do so – but now I fear I have in some way deceived you.’

‘The nonsense is all yours, ma’am. Any fault is mine.’

They resumed walking. How could such a thing make him feel so wretched, when a few minutes earlier he had been so set on never courting again? It reminded him of his humiliation. Forever, he would make a fool of himself in matters of romance.

‘I was engaged, a few months ago,’ Narciso admitted. He cringed. What had possessed him to admit such a thing?

‘You’re not married, are you?’ Miss Malfaraez asked, heat in her voice. ‘Because I wouldn’t take kindly to—’

‘No. No, you misunderstand. I say I was engaged, but really it doesn’t deserve the name. I thought I loved her. I asked, she said yes. All was bliss.’

‘Sounds like an engagement to me.’

He locked his melancholy eyes with her bright ones.

‘It wasn’t,’ he said. ‘She had a secret understanding with another man. Only said yes to me so no-one would suspect, and to – through jealousy – force her beau to admit their attachment to the world. It worked for her. She begged off and they married. So, you see, it was a sham. Not a real engagement.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stopping and squeezing his hand. Then she cracked a smile. ‘Nonetheless, you were definitely engaged.’

‘Was not!’

‘You asked, she said yes, there really isn’t much more to it than that.’

‘There is! Intent, perhaps. Or love – complete and mutual love.’

‘Eynas Reito above, if that’s required then no-one would ever be engaged.’

‘Yourself included, miss?’

He feared he’d gone too far. Yet, she narrowed her eyes playfully at him.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I believe in it.’

‘Love?’

‘Indeed. Sincere attachment exists, of course. To family and friends and – I’m assured – spouses. We could label that love. But a transcendent connection with a single other soul? To entirely lose yourself in another person? Exist as merely an extension of them? I don’t know, I suspect my favourite poets – Brenna and Tamerot and the like – made the whole thing up merely for how good it sounds in verse.’

‘Maybe they did, if all poets are as cynical as you. Musicians can never be cynics. They can’t hide their truths behind sickly-sweet lies.’

‘And so you believe in it?’ she asked. ‘Love, that is.’

‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘I’d like to, at least.’

‘He’s a local boy, my betrothed. There aren’t many eligible bachelors in the area of the right age and means and, well, he’s one of them. Both families expected it. I didn’t see a reason to say no.’

‘Did you consider that you might find a reason?’

She paused. ‘I didn’t,’ she admitted softly. A beat, and the seriousness left her. ‘Anyway, yours was at least half an engagement.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ he laughed.

‘And yet you’ve had one. An engagement-and-a-half, between the two of us. Average that out and neither of us was ever fully engaged at all.’

‘I fear it doesn’t quite work like that, as much as I might wish it.’

‘Might you?’

‘I might.’

Her smile was the sun. Its rays attacked the morning fog that shrouded his heart with an all-encompassing warmth. Dispersed that fog, forced it into retreat, and left only its glorious, shining self.

They danced as many times as propriety allowed – and then once more, and once more again – and talked of whatever came to their wild young minds. In later years, when he surveyed the landscape of his life, that night stood as a mountain reaching into the clouds, surrounded by naught but flatlands. As the ball drew to a close, of course, they parted, in body if not in soul.

***

Winter thawed and spring sprung and summer burned and autumn fell and, in Cartanda, capital of the Savarian Crown, the social season followed all the rest. For Miss Valeria Malfaraez, it had been a year tortuously slow. Finally, she had returned to the capital on a fool’s quest, yet what were lovers if not – first and foremost – fools? Happy, willing, wonderful fools.

The problem, of course, was that it would be ridiculous to send a note to a man she had met once, a year ago. She had to meet him again, it seemed to her, by happenstance. If Master Cilma was in Cartanda – and he’d better be! – he would be at one of the four high society events of the evening. If she couldn’t happen upon him at the first, then perhaps the second, and so on until a chance meeting was an assured one.

Entering the first had been easy – she’d had an invitation to that one. No luck, however. At the second, she’d had the fortune to come across a rare family acquaintances, who had ushered her inside. Nonetheless, no Cilma. The third, she had entered only by the expedient of barefaced lies directed at two footmen. She didn’t want to consider what she would have to do to breach the fourth.

She had gone through all the rooms. No sign of him. Another failure. Cursing to herself, she prepared to leave. At the other end of the hall, half a dozen stringed instruments sang a tune she knew he would appreciate more than she ever could. They are very good, was all she could come up with.

‘They are very good, don’t you think?’ he said, breath caressing her neck. No need for clarification. In that moment, there was only one he in all the world.

‘That cannot be the best you can manage,’ she retorted, turning. His face was bright and she could do nothing but reflect it back at him.

‘Poets,’ he said in mock distain. ‘Always thinking the more complicated the words, the more powerful the emotion. Truth, power, are the domain of simplicity.’

‘You really don’t read much poetry, do you?’

‘No,’ he admitted, cracking a crooked smile that completed his pretty face. Dashing face – men hated when you called them pretty. As quick as it came, the smile vanished and his eyes grew dark.

‘Apologies,’ he continued, ‘I fear I no longer know how to address you, ma’am. Madam…?’

‘Miss,’ Valeria said, her turn to grin madly. ‘Still Miss Malfaraez, Master Cilma.’

‘You are not… You remain unwed?’

‘That is traditionally what the title denotes,’ she teased, reaching for his arm and leading him in an aimless wander. ‘I admitted to the boy that I had my misgivings and, well, so did he. Preferred a Sophostraton, in fact: a Fenyloddi boy. Respectable family and there’s talk of them entering the army together. None of which is the important thing because the important thing is that we broke it all off and I am entirely free. To court, to love, to marry, any man I wish.’

She looked up as a storm of emotions played out across his face – too many and too confused to separate into their constituent parts. It struck Valeria how very forward she was being.

‘Not, of course, that I came here in any expectation—’

‘I’m betrothed,’ he said, his voice flint: brittle, cold, jagged.

‘Oh. I see.’ She had no right to the jealousy bubbling in her stomach, but asked the question anyway: ‘Who is she?’

‘Someone I met a few months ago. Miss Malfaraez, I though you were already married! Why did you not write me?’

‘Compose that letter for me, please,’ she replied sardonically. ‘And perhaps you’ll see what a ridiculous idea it is. We met once! A year ago! I had no reason to think that you—’

‘You had every reason!’

‘Evidently not, given you found someone else. I had thought – given the nature of your thoughts on the matter – that you would wait for true strength of feeling before proposal. Either you have found that, in which case you have my congratulations, or you have not, in which case I am sorry to see you a cynic. Either way, our night a year ago clearly made less of an impression than you now appear to suggest.’

‘Miss Malfaraez, that night is exactly what led to my current… situation. Knowing that I would never find another, I decided to at least do some good with my family’s moderate fortune. She’s a desperate girl, you see. Little means, no other suitors. I thought I could at least make another creature happy – or comfortable, at any rate – to make up for how wretched I was prepared to live, separated from the only woman I had ever felt such a strong and immediate affection for.’

‘Oh,’ was the only possible response. ‘I see,’ the useless addendum.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘No, I understand. It would be awful of you to abandon that poor girl.’

‘In honour, I could not.’ His gaze held hers. Valeria’s breath caught, her spine tingled, her heart thundered. ‘I could dance, however. Honour could stretch that far.’

Valeria accepted his hand and he led her to the floor and they danced and they danced and they danced.

***

Winter thawed and spring sprung and— no. Who has the time for all that? He wasn’t going to repeat their last mistake.

Eastern Toseldo, she had called it. It had been no lie, except by understatement: more eastern than mere east. It fit, Narciso decided, that she would be amongst the first of their venerable nation to see the sunrise each morn. None were more deserving of its blessing.

He had failed to hire a carriage, so settled for a horse. Arriving, he dismounted and a footman came to take the reins. A grand house – the largest in the area, he had been told at his coaching inn the previous night – but an old one, showing signs of hard weathering and the need for repairs.

Entering, he was met by the unmistakable air of a country ball. The fashions were those of the previous social season, and the perfumes too, the wines of lesser vintage, the music played less expertly. For all that, Narciso found that such events had a conviviality that the grand fetes of Cartanda lacked.

He moved dreamlike into the main hall, still not entirely believing that he was mere moments from eternal bliss. And there, just as in all those dreams soon to be realised, was she. As though Fate itself had tapped her shoulder, she turned and her eyes found him immediately.

Gazes locked, they prowled the edges of the hall, wading through the throng. They came together and Narcisco took Miss Malfaraez’s graceful hand.

‘Why—’ she began.

‘I’m free, Miss Malfaraez. Free thanks to love; free to pursue love.’

‘Your betrothed?’

‘Love, as I said. A young farmer, nothing to his name but his tenancy, except that she loved him and he loved her: a wealth few ever know, even great princes. That wealth, she chose over the cold silver I could provide. This she told me, and I wished her joy, blessed her, and made the pair a handsome gift. Little did she know she gave a chance of happiness not merely to herself but to us, too. I left without delay, here to proffer you my hand, now and forevermore, through blessed matrimony.’

Her head dropped. ‘Not again.’

‘Miss Malfarez?’

‘Cannot you guess?’

‘You’re not. You can’t be.’

‘I had no choice!’

‘It has been but a few months since last we spoke! I thought you might wait a little longer—’

‘Quiter,’ she said, leading him away from questing eyes, into a secluded side room where but a few others held private conferences. ‘It was my father, not me. I all but promised him that, having repudiated the only decent match around, I would return from Cartanda with a proposal. And then I didn’t.’

‘So your father found you a match.’

‘He did. A friend of his. A childless widower who, from affection for my family, was willing to overlook my “wilful ways”.’

‘And you agreed.’

‘What else was I to do?’

Narciso’s tortured heart threatened to tear. ‘Three engagements between us, and none of them to the right people.’

‘Three-and-a-half, as I recall,’ she said with a smirk.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ he replied, laughing nonetheless.

‘I am sorry. To beg off again… my betrothed would take it unkindly. My family too. I’ve never wanted scandal attached to my name.’

‘I understand. I esteem you too highly to ask such a thing.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Regardless, it’ll happen.’

‘Excuse me?’ A confused chuckle escaped her red lips.

‘I’ve decided. Some entity – I suspect one of the Islanders’ gods; it’s the kind of thing they would do – has both the desire to see us together and a rather tedious sense of humour. So, you see, you shan’t marry him. The how and the why matters not. You shan’t marry him.’

‘I fear you have left the world of the rational, Master Cilma.’

‘Join me in this other world, Miss Malfaraez. It’s nicer here.’

‘I cannot. That world sounds comforting. But it is a fantasy.’

‘It is time to break this cycle. An oath: I shall propose to none other than you, for as long as I may live. I shall love none other and shall marry none other.’

‘Don’t swear to that which you cannot uphold.’

‘I do not.’

‘Life is a long time. Soon, I shall be gone from yours.’

‘I take back not a word.’

She said nothing, but merely shook her head. He remained taciturn.

‘Now, how about a dance?’ he asked.

‘He’s here. The man I am promised to. I don’t think… it would create trouble for me.’

‘No, of course, I understand,’ he said, crestfallen. ‘Next time, we shall dance.’

‘I would like that,’ she replied.

***

Summer and winter, social and unsocial, and all the other seasons, around and around and around. In the course of their passing, a Miss Malfaraez emerged Mistress Lasado. And the house of Mistress and Master Lasado was blessed first by the twins and then their little brother. And it was a happy house, at times. And a melancholy one, at others.

And from the house Lasado, they heard of a composer newly come to popular attention. He had written for a play, where he found his fame, and then increased it when the royal company played his symphonies. He remained a bachelor, it was told, though Queen Apoleana herself had taken an interest in finding him a match.

To celebrate a decade of their union, Valeria persuaded her husband into a rare visit to the capital. He complained of the long journey and his painful joints, but she knew his two greatest joys were airing his minor ills and indulging her. He had come to love her, she believed, and Valeria had long felt guilty that she could not return that devotion.

Their first night, he took her to a concert. It was that composer. The one she liked; the one whose pieces she was always playing so prettily on the pianoforte. They sat in the stalls and the music was beautiful but not so beautiful as the man who had written it. He stood at the front, face away, violin in hand, and occasionally Valeria caught a glimpse of his profile beneath shaggy dark hair and every glance felt an infidelity to the good and kind man who had fathered her three children and lightly held her trembling hand.

After the last notes died, and then the applause that followed it, her husband spoke into her ear. ‘There are a few routs tonight, I’m told.’

‘You’re not too tired?’

‘Too old, you mean,’ he said with a smile.

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘And I thank you for it, but now I shall have to prove you wrong.’

And so he did, though the rout-party was uncomfortably crowded – which was, after all, the whole stupid point of the thing. They wagered money on Tarot and on Seven or Sacedante and on another game, new to them and which they never caught the name of, but which appeared to consist mostly of them handing over their savars and other monies under the authority of increasingly impenetrable rules. Leaving the gambling tables, they drank and conversed and listened to a guitar playing in some other room.

‘A guitar is an odd choice for company so high in pedigree,’ said Valeria’s husband.

‘I knew a man once,’ she replied, ‘who claimed that reputation unfair. I think it sounds lovely. A truly Savarian instrument, but why should that count against it?’

They wandered in its direction, out one room and down a corridor and into another, conversing lightly, until Valeria stopped and beheld him, all of him, almost close enough to touch.

‘I say, it’s the composer!’ said Master Lasado. ‘If only we had someone to introduce us.’

But already he had found her – not the he who lived in her house, but the he who lived in her heart. His eyes glinted and his soft lips turned and, finishing his music, he walked up to them and bowed.

‘In truth,’ said Valeria, flittering between the two men, ‘Master Cilma and I made acquaintance many years ago – before our marriage, even – though we have not seen one another since.’

‘So long ago,’ said Cilma, ‘that I know not even by what name I should call either one of you, sir, madam.’

‘Lasado,’ said her husband. ‘Lasado, these ten years.’

‘So long indeed?’ said Master Cilma. ‘You have my congratulations.’

‘And children,’ Valeria said. ‘Three of them, we have.’

‘Children, truly?’ His face was mask. His fidgeting fingers, long and strong and sure, he thrust into the pockets of his rich scarlet coat. ‘Though that is only to be expected,’ he continued in a lower voice.

‘My wife is an admirer of yours.’

‘Of your music,’ she clarified.

‘She’s always playing it.’

Cilma chuckled, dimpling his cheeks. ‘When I knew her, Miss Malf— Mistress Lasado claimed to have neither ear nor talent for the musical arts.’

‘I practiced.’ She blushed.

‘And quite some practice it took, I tell you, Master Cilma.’ Her husband flashed her that youthful smile that stole decades from his face, and then it was gone and hard lines creased his forehead and his brows were bunched. ‘For a year, I wanted to take an axe to that pianoforte. But she kept at it, proving once and for all that tenacity trumps talent ten times in ten.’

‘And your poetry? Did you keep at that, too?’

‘Poetry?’ asked Master Lasado. ‘This is the first I’m hearing of it.’

‘Some pursuits, I had to put aside for the duties of wife and mother and mistress of a house,’ said Valeria, caught between embarrassment and defiance. Did he think he still knew her, a decade since the end of their silly fantasies?

‘Still, I would’ve liked to have read it. Or heard it: they say poetry should always be read aloud, making it a kind of music,’ said Cilma.

‘Do you enjoy poetry?’

‘Master Cilma never had any time for it,’ Valeria said.

‘These days I do. Like I said, there is a musicality to it that I never appreciated before. Brenna and Tamerot are particular favourites.’

Valeria’s breath caught in her throat.

‘We were at your concert this evening,’ said her husband. ‘I admit, I should count myself also amongst your admirers. Your second symphony, I particularly enjoy. Tell me, is it true what I’ve heard? About the dedication, I mean?’

‘What have you heard?’

‘That the queen-consort herself wished to be its beneficiary, but you refused.’

‘It is quite true. Though it upset Her Most Faithful Eminence, I had already penned a dedication. I would not change it.’

‘To whom?’

‘“A worthy woman of character and beauty”.’

‘And for that, you refused the queen? My dear man, you didn’t even name the woman!’

‘In honour, I couldn’t.’

‘Your mistress, is she?’

‘No, sir. Never that.’

Valeria put her hand against her husband’s back.

‘Might we retire?’ she asked. ‘I fear that, once again, your vigour has overawed my own.’

‘Of course. Tally a moment with Master Cilma while I find us a coach.’

He left them alone and Valeria knew not what to say as nervous sweat ran down the inside of her arms and her breathing deepened.

‘I’ve been waiting ten years for that dance,’ Master Cilma said, finally. ‘I suppose I can wait a little longer. Die waiting, if I must.’

With those words alone, he bowed to her and, distrusting herself to do anything else, she turned and hasted to her husband.

***

Snow and shine, the world went on and Narciso with it, though some part of him remained trapped in a moment already so many years gone. He travelled to Prolais, to play his music, and Xhodesi besides. A Xhodesii violinist had confessed, over wine, to finding Narciso’s compositions lacking.

‘There’s a yearning to them,’ he had said. ‘Yet always they seem to stop at the precipice. Your climaxes, when they come, fail to convince.’

Narciso had agreed, and reflected, and confessed that – when it came to those parts of a composition – he could merely emulate. The conversation had stayed with him as he travelled back to Cartanda.

Upon his return to the capital, Queen Apoleana – queen-regent now, on behalf of the toddling king – declared a ball in his honour, to follow the first performance of his seventh symphony. In a moment of madness, he wrote an invitation in his own hand, addressed to Master and Mistress Lasado, then teetered for hours between handing it to the footman or the fire. Into the footman’s hand it went, and then there was nothing more he could do.

The concert was a success – though Narciso himself could not but agree with the Xhodesii violinist – and then to the ball, where he drank and chatted and counted down the minutes. Putting aside his glass, he glanced at his watch again, then around the room, and then— and then there she was.

Two images warred in his eyes. One, as he had first seen her. Vibrant copper locks pulled back from a soft, girlish face. Bright, curious eyes daring the world to defy her. The other, as she had become. More certain, more proud, more visceral. Harder in her features, and yet those lines couldn’t all be the work of the modiste. He forced his eyes to settle back on hers and the two images resolved into one. He approached.

‘Mistress Lasado,’ he said, ‘thank you for accepting my invitation. Might your husband be around?’

Mist crossed her face and she failed to meet his gaze. Moments ticked by.

‘You find me a widow,’ she said coldly.

Narciso’s heart rose and he cursed himself as a beast for it.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I might not have loved him, but I still grieve him.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ And, after another moment, ‘Why did you come?’

‘You invited me.’

‘I did. You didn’t have to—’

‘You thought we were inevitable. Do you still?’

‘I do.’

‘You’ve waited for me?’

‘Evidently.’

‘Chaste?’

‘Not entirely,’ he smirked.

‘It’s not a game.’ At her words, Narciso’s smile faded. ‘You think it’s just about you and about me. That all these years were some distraction from our true happiness. My husband. My children. My life. It wasn’t. It was real. Not perfect, but what is? It was real. It was mine.’

‘I know,’ he said, humbled. ‘Or, no. No, I don’t. But I believe you.’

A tear escaped her. ‘You wish to propose?’

‘You know I do. But not like this.’

‘Like what, then?’

‘I don’t know. But not like this.’

She said nothing.

‘Ma’am, might I ask something else? Might I ask for a dance?’

She swallowed and looked at him and the look filled him with excitement and with fear and with guilt for his own feelings. And she nodded and took his hand and he led her to the dancefloor and, for the first time in too many years, they danced. For the moment, it was enough.

**

Just one more slow groaning of the seasons. Surely this frivolity is almost up, they seemed to say. Soon, soon, came a far-off answer. Tread careful. Don’t rush.

‘Come here, Juan,’ Valeria called. Her two girls, she had wrapped in each of her arms. ‘You can knock on the door, if you like.’

Her youngest mounted the steps and, on tiptoes, struck the knocker. A footman answered.

‘Mistress Lasado and her spawn,’ she said. ‘No, he’s not expecting us. But you’ll want to tell him anyway.’

Nonetheless, the footmen didn’t invite them inside, but merely pushed the door to as he went to find his master. Slow steps going upwards, then running back down. The door reopened.

‘Master Cilma begs you let me escort you to the receiving room.’

They did indeed let him. Valeria tried to settle her children on the sofa, rub at some dirt that had somehow appeared on Juan’s nose, and stop Cristina and little Val from wandering away in search of more immediate amusements. It was pointless, of course, and the three of them were off in three separate corners when the door finally opened and closed.

‘Children, come. You’re guests,’ she said. She was facing away. She wasn’t sure she could ever turn to face him.

‘Well, hello there. And who might you all be?’ The voice forced her hand to her chest.

‘Miss Lasado, sir. And this is my sister, Miss Cristina.’

‘No, I’m Miss Lasado, sir. This is Miss Valeria.’

‘No, I’m older. I’m taller, so I have to be.’

‘No I’m taller!’

‘Stand back-to-back,’ he said and she could hear the smile. ‘I don’t know, it looks like you’re precisely of a height to me. Perhaps you can both be Miss Lasado.’

‘But then how do we tell each other apart?’

‘I don’t know, how do you? My word are you two alike.’

‘I’m Master Juan! Master Lasado, I mean, since papa is… Who are you, sir?’

‘Master Cilma, Master Lasado. I know your mama, since long before you were born.’

Finally, she forced herself to face him. Ridiculous though it seemed, she had never seen him without a coat before. His shirtsleeves were folded back, revealing lithe forearms. Forearms that could wrap her and hold her and love her. She had to stop herself from reaching out to clutch them.

‘Hello, Miss Malfaraez. Mistress Lasado, I mean.’

‘Valeria,’ she said.

‘Valeria,’ he confirmed.

‘You wouldn’t just be taking me, you understand? You’d be taking them too. Loving them. A father.’

‘I could do that. I would like to.’

She called her children back to her and, finally, they came. She held them and his gaze both.

‘Go on then. Properly,’ she said.

He grinned and fell to one knee and took her hand. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is everything that came after.

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Thank you for reading. This one ended up a little delayed, only because it got quite out of hand. If you enjoyed it and would like more, feel more than welcome to subscribe. In two weeks, on 22nd January, I’ll be posting my next non-fiction, a long-form discussion of how Britain was governed in the early modern period. (More specifically, from 1660-1832, or from Restoration to Reform.)

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Two weeks after that, you can probably expect a return to naval fiction and my ‘Gulf Sea War’ stories. Fortune’s Favour, is a cat-and-mouse chase on the high seas, full of grit and deception. Otherwise, if it’s ready first, I might post Honour’s Forge, about a duel and inspired by the life of General Alex Dumas, the black nobleman’s son who rose to high command during the French Revolution. Either way, see you then.

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