Read Chapter 32: The Aftershock of Love

The train smelled of coffee and damp wool, and Elodie had been staring at the same paragraph in Marguerite's diary for forty minutes without reading a single word. Across from her, James had his Cambridge notes spread over the table, but his pen hadn't moved in half an hour. His gaze kept drifting to the window, to the gray English countryside sliding past, to her, then back out again.

"You're not reading either," she said.

He looked up, startled. "I'm rehearsing."

"Liar."

A smile tugged at his mouth. "Fine. I'm thinking about the chapel. The light coming through that broken window. The way you looked when you opened the diary."

She felt heat creep up her neck and looked back down at the page. "That's not productive."

"No," he agreed, and the quiet pleasure in his voice made her chest ache. "It isn't."

They arrived in Oxford in the late afternoon. The city looked the same—wet stones, bicycles, the pale winter light—but everything felt different. She kept catching James's eye as they walked through the covered market, as he bought them stale pasties and she pretended to be scandalized by his choice of filling. Normal things. Ordinary things. And underneath all of it, the ticking clock of the interview tomorrow, the defense deadline, the sheer impossibility of what they'd promised each other in that chapel.

"Elodie." He stopped on Broad Street, outside the Sheldonian. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Frowning at the future."

"I don't frown at the future."

"You have a very specific frown. I've catalogued four of them now. This one is number three—the one where you're mentally writing an email you don't want to send."

She laughed despite herself. "I was thinking about the defense. The diary changes everything. But we haven't formally documented it, and the committee—"

"Will still be there tomorrow." He stepped closer, voice dropping. "And the day after, and the day after that. The diary isn't going anywhere. Neither am I."

She looked at him, at the earnest set of his jaw, and wanted to believe him. She'd wanted to believe a lot of things about him, and most of them had turned out true. That was the terrifying part.

"Your interview," she said. "Cambridge. You need to prepare."

"I've been preparing for that interview for eight years. One night won't make a difference."

"James—"

"Walk with me." He offered his arm, formal and absurd, and she took it. "We'll get dinner somewhere terrible. You'll tell me what you're really worried about. I'll pretend to listen while I'm worrying about the same thing. Then we'll go back to our respective rooms and I'll rehearse and you'll draft the formal documentation for the diary, and in the morning I'll go to Cambridge and you'll go to the Bodleian and we'll be terribly professional about all of it."

"That's a very optimistic plan."

"I'm an optimist now. The chapel changed me."

She snorted. "You're impossible."

"Entirely possible. I'm right here."

The dinner was terrible in the best way—a curry house off St. Giles that served lamb vindaloo so aggressive it made her eyes water. James ate his with the calm of a man who had built his career on medieval punishments. They talked about nothing important: his Cambridge interviewers and their known idiosyncrasies, her plan to photograph the diary's pages for the committee, the weather forecast for France next week. And then, over the last of the lager, she told him about the email.

"Grenoble," she said, pushing her glass in small circles on the stained tablecloth. "Apparently they've been tracking my publications. The medieval studies department wants to hire me. Permanent position. Course development, doctoral supervision, my own research line."

James set down his fork. "That's—Elodie, that's extraordinary."

"It's in France."

"Yes." He paused. "So's Chartres."

"James. Be serious."

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I am being serious. Grenoble is a good department. Strong manuscript holdings. You'd have resources you don't have here. And you speak the language. You'd flourish there."

"You're supposed to argue with me."

"Why would I argue? It's a good offer. You should take it seriously."

The problem was that he meant it. She could see it in his face—that open, honest look that had been chipping away at her defenses since October. He wasn't playing a game. He wasn't trying to trap her into staying. He was genuinely pleased for her, and it was worse than any manipulation because it made her want to stay even more.

"I haven't decided," she said. "I haven't even replied."

"The defense is in nine days. Your career doesn't have to be decided in nine days."

"Mine might." She looked down at her glass. "If I lose the fellowship, Grenoble is the only door that's open."

"And if you win?"

"Then it's Oxford." She met his eyes. "And what are you, if Oxford?"

He was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know," he admitted. "I used to know. The fellowship was going to prove something. But I don't know what it proves anymore."

They walked back through the quiet streets, hands brushing between them but never quite joining. At the entrance to her college, he stopped. Her room was in the next quad. His lodgings were across town. The night air was cold and sharp, and she could see her breath.

"I'll come back tomorrow night," he said. "After the interview. I'll tell you how it went."

"And if it goes well?"

"Then we'll have a problem to think about." He smiled, and it was the smile she'd seen him give a manuscript he loved—that slow, wondering curve. "But I'll still come back."

He raised his hand, hesitated, and touched her cheek. His hand was cold from the walk, but his palm against her skin was warm. She leaned into it without deciding to.

"Go," she said. "Prepare. Impress them."

"I'll try."

"James."

"Yes?"

"I mean it. Whatever happens tomorrow, I don't regret any of it. The chapel. The diary. You. None of it."

He looked at her for a long moment, something fierce and fragile moving behind his eyes. Then he kissed her forehead, quick and gentle, and turned to walk away. She watched him go until the darkness swallowed him, and then she went inside and did not sleep well.

The next morning, she went to the Bodleian and did not think about Cambridge. She did not think about James in a suit in an old room somewhere, making his case elegantly, convincing people who had never met her that he deserved to win. She did not think about the temporary position his father had secured for him at a London firm, or the health scare that had made his mother call him three times in the past month. She photographed the diary pages, catalogued the binding, noted the watermark. She drafted the formal documentation that would eventually join their defense.

Watching her was impossible.

She bought the ball tickets on impulse. A charity event, Valentine's week, hosted by St. John's in a venerable hall that was already decorated with dusty velvet and fairy lights by the time she walked through the doors. James was already there, waiting near the cloakroom. He was wearing a black suit she'd never seen, and he looked, she thought, like a man who had stepped out of a foyer in a novel—elegant, composed, carrying the weight of interviews and fathers and futures in the set of his shoulders, until he saw her and the weight dropped away entirely.

"You came," he said.

"You invited me."

"I wasn't sure you would."

She took off her coat and felt his eyes travel from her dress—deep green, borrowed from her former roommate's mother, absurdly 1980s—up to her face. He didn't laugh. He just looked at her like she was a manuscript he'd been hunting for years.

"You look beautiful," he said, and it was so simple, so unadorned, that she felt something crack open in her chest.

They danced. The music was terrible—a string quartet gamely attempting pop songs that didn't suit them—but James's hand was steady on her waist and his other hand gripped hers with an intensity that belied his casual posture. They moved slowly, not quite in time, talking about nothing and everything. The Cambridge interview had gone well. The fellowship defense was in eight days. The Grenoble offer sat in her inbox, waiting.

"Eight days," she said, her cheek near his shoulder.

"Eight days." He squeezed her hand. "And then?"

"Then we decide."

"Or not."

"James."

"I'm serious." He pulled back slightly, searching her face. "What if we don't decide? What if we keep not deciding, for a very long time?"

"That's not—"

"That's very practical. It's also very cowardly." He smiled. "I've become an expert on both."

She laughed, and the sound surprised her. The quartet launched into something slow and mournful, and they swayed to it anyway.

"The library steps," she said later, as the evening wound down and guests began drifting toward the coatroom. "The ones by the north entrance."

He raised an eyebrow. "What about them?"

"Walk me there."

The air was cold enough to sting. The library steps were empty and dark, lit only by the distant glow of the streetlights. She turned to face him at the bottom of the steps, the stone arch of the library rising above them like a monument to everything they'd spent their lives chasing.

"I want you to remember something," she said quietly. "Whatever happens with the fellowship. Whatever happens with Grenoble, or Cambridge, or any of it. I want you to remember that this was real." She touched her chest over her heart, then reached for his hand and pressed it there. "I was real."

He kissed her.

It was not like the kiss in the chapel—that had been discovered, urgent, driven by the weight of centuries and secrets newly revealed. This kiss was different. This was beginning and end, question and answer. His hands came up to cradle her face, thumbs brushing the corners of her eyes, and she felt something release in him, some tension she hadn't even known he was carrying. She kissed him back with everything she had, because she didn't know how to kiss him any other way.

When they finally broke apart, the cold rushed back in around them. He rested his forehead against hers.

"I'm not going to let distance decide this," he said, voice rough. "Not distance, not committees, not job offers. We decide."

"And if we're in different countries?"

"Then we'll be in different countries and I'll call you every night." He smiled. "I'll write you letters. I believe I have some experience with correspondence."

She laughed wetly. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm serious." He held her gaze. "Whatever happens—whatever we choose—I'm not losing this. Not this."

Above them, the library loomed silent and indifferent. In eight days, she would stand before the committee. In eight days, James would reach his own breaking point. But tonight there was only this: his hands in hers, the cold stone at her back, the quiet promise passing between them in the dark.

"Eight days," she said.

"Eight days," he agreed.

They stayed on the steps a while longer, holding each other in the cold, and neither of them let go until the first thread of gray began to lighten the sky.