“Sad for a kind of femininity that I’ve lost or never had. I don’t regret it, but the feeling is sadness, sadness for something perhaps I dreamed about when I was young. I don’t know.”
And then, looking at him again, she said, “I can have no more children. And my children were monsters to me. And my children are buried together beneath a tree.”
He nodded. His face was very eloquent of sympathy, so he said not a word.
There were other things she wanted to say—that she had not guessed there was such craft or beauty in the realm of dolls, that she had not guessed they could be so interesting to look at, or that they were so different, one from the other, that they had such a frank and simple charm.
But beneath these thoughts, running deep in the coldest place in her heart, she was thinking, Their beauty is sad beauty, and I don’t know why, and so is yours.
She felt suddenly that if he were to kiss her now, if he were so inclined, she would yield very easily, that her love for Michael wouldn’t stop her from yielding, and she hoped and prayed that there was no such thought in his mind.
Indeed, she wasn’t going to allow time for it. She folded her arms and walked past him into a new and unexplored area, where the German dolls ruled. Here were laughing and pouting children, homely little girls in cotton frocks. But she didn’t see the exhibits now. She couldn’t stop thinking that he was just behind her, watching her. She could feel his observation, hear the faint sound of his breath.
Finally, she looked back. His eyes surprised her. They were too charged with emotion, too full of obvious conflict, and very little if any struggle to hide it from her.
If you do this, Rowan, she thought, you will lose Michael forever. And slowly she lowered her gaze and walked softly, slowly away.
“It’s a magical place,” she said over her shoulder. “But I’m so eager to talk to you, to hear your story, I could savor it more truly at another time.”
“Yes, of course, and Michael’s awake now, and Michael should be almost finished with breakfast. Why don’t we go up? I am ready for the agony. I am ready for the strange pleasure of recounting it all.”
She watched as he set the big French doll back in her glass cabinet. And once again his thin fingers made quick, busy gestures to groom her hair and her skirts. Then he pressed a kiss to his fingers and gave this to the doll. And he shut the glass and turned the small golden key, which he then put away.
“You are my friends,” he said, turning to face Rowan. He reached past her and pressed the button for the tower. “I think I am coming to love you. A dangerous thing.”
“I don’t want it to be dangerous,” she said. “I’m too deep under your spell to want our knowledge of each other to wound or disappoint. But tell me, as to the present state of things, do you love us both?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “or I would beg you on bended knee to let me make love to you.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”
She turned away, stepping into the elevator, her face hot and her mind swimming for the moment. She saw one grand flash of the dolls in their finery before the doors slid shut.
“I’m sorry that I told you this,” he whispered timidly. “It was a dishonest thing to do, to tell you and to deny it, it was wrong.”
She nodded. “I forgive you,” she whispered. “I’m too … too flattered. Isn’t that the right word?”
“No, ‘intrigued’ is the word you want,” he said. “Or ‘tantalized,’ but you’re not really flattered. And you love him so wholeheartedly that I feel the fire of it when I’m with you. I want it. I want your light to shine on me. I should never have said those words.”
She didn’t answer. If she’d thought of an answer, she might have said it, but nothing really came to her mind. Except that she couldn’t imagine being severed from Ash right now, and she didn’t think that Michael could, either. In a way, it seemed that Michael needed Ash more than she did, though Michael and she had not had a moment, really, to talk of these things.