"Lucian."
"Yes?"
"Ask."
He took a breath. His hands, she saw, were shaking.
"Cecilia Hartley," he said, "do you love me? Even a little? Even after this?"
She stepped forward. She took the broken flower from his palm, very gently, and laid it on the nearest bench. Then she took both his hands in hers and held them, and they were cold, and she warmed them between her own, as she had once warmed a pot of seedlings in a frost.
"I have loved you," she said, "since the day you stood at the altar and did not look at me. I thought you could not bear the sight of me. I have been in love with a man who would not speak to me for eighteen months, and I have been very, very lonely."
"Cecilia—"
"I did all this because I did not know how else to reach you. It is the only thing I could think of. A room. A door. A place where, if you came in, you would not have to say anything, and neither would I, and we might simply be happy."
His face crumpled. He drew her into his arms, and she went into them as though she had been falling for a long time and had at last been caught. He held her so tightly she could feel his heart, and it was running as hard as a boy's.
"I have been so stupid," he said into her hair. "So stupid."
"Yes," she said, and she was laughing, wetly, helplessly. "You have."
"You will have to teach me."
"I will."
"I will be very bad at it."
"I know."
"I shall say the wrong things. I shall talk about the weather."
"Then I shall tell you to stop." She drew back a little, her hands against his chest, and smiled up at him with the tears still bright on her cheeks. It was the face he had seen through the glass, the face he had thought would never be turned on him. "I shall tell you every day, if I must."