Ceasebury: Chapter Twenty-Nine

The party finished and everyone went home. The flutter of lace and the stabbing step of heeled shoes finally ceased, and Valentine and I ran off through the grounds, under the tall trees, through the flower beds until we came to the little slope that led down to the white Georgian Summer House. We flung the doors open, and the whispers of summer lurked in corners and between the curtains and stopped at our feet. Truly, the world was mine when I was with Valentine.

We kissed deeply in the Summer House. It felt so wonderful to be loved by someone who I loved in return. It was such a deep understanding I felt for him when we touched. I suppose, this was what was mean by being in love; a feeling for someone so deep that nothing in the world would destroy it and – by some unchallengeable enchantment – grows with each passing day until you are sure that if that person died, your soul would part from this world with theirs. I wondered if Gabriella felt the same for Charles as I did for Valentine. And I prayed that Valentine had given his soul to me the way I had given my soul to him. He took me in his arms and lifted me by my waist up towards the crested ceiling of the Summer House. He held his face against the pale folds of my gown, and I leaned forward so that my chestnut curls cascaded themselves over him like the supple branches of a weeping willow tree. When he gently let my feet find the ground, he clutched me still. I felt such belonging in his arms. He was so gentle and yet so strong at the same time.

“I hate those people.” He said firmly.

“Well, we’re supposed to be part of those people.” I laughed.

“But were not, we’re anything but part of those people. We’re more like the enslaved than them.” I contemplated his words for a few long seconds. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was simply a superficial look at our world to say that I was more like Virginian Society when the enslaved people because I dressed like them, talk like them, look like them. Perhaps there’s more to being a person than that. “You’re beautiful, Theodosia.” He whispered.

“And you’re handsome.” I smiled, giggling to myself lightly. “I hope I’ll make you a happy man.”

“I know you will.” He smiled. “I know it.”

“Valentine,” I paused “what will we do if the revolution is successful?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if they win like you say they might and they run us out of Virginia?”

“They won’t do that.” He looked away “And even if they do, I’ll find a safe place for us. I’d send us to The Highlands, but they’ve been having quite a bit of bother there themselves with the Jacobites.” He scanned the Summer House, as if gazing for some vague inspiration. Part of me wondered if I should present him with a map of the world and ask him to stick a dagger in whichever place he felt befitted our future together. “Yes,” he said, as if some incendiary brilliance had struck him like a lightening bolt “we can go to a tiny island just off the coast of Spain. Have you ever been to Spain?” he asked.

“No.” I said “Is it that place that’s near France?” he nodded.

“Well, there’s lots of little islands near it I think. Maybe we could go to one of those.” He said, a kind of magical awe twinkling in his blue eyes.

“I know where we could go.” I gasped. “I read about it.”

“Where?” his voice seemed to echo with enchantment.

“It’s called Messina. It’s in a Shakespearean play I love called Much Ado About Nothing – “ he cut me off.

“Yes!” he performed a sharp intake of breath “I’ve read Much Ado About Nothing. You remind me of Beatrice.” He smiled shyly.

“And I could be persuaded that you are Benedick.”

“When I die, it’ll say on my gravestone Here lies Valentine, The Married Man.” He laughed heavily.

“Yes, and when I die, I won’t go to Hell, but to the gate and there will the devil meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to heaven, Theodosia, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you maids.” So, deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter. For the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.”

“So, you think you’ll die a virgin?” he asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think I will.”

“Neither do I.” he sighed.

“Valentine.” I swallowed. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about.” I was the dream I had had. It’d been weighing heavily on me all day and I had to ask him for now I knew who that young man I had been shown kissing the dark girl in the maid’s uniform. It was a very young Valentine.

“Yes?” he asked, prompting me to begin.

“If I tell you some things I dreamt of last night, will you tell me if they make any sense to you?”

“Okay.” He said, somewhat perplexed.

“Well, I saw a boy who looked very like you kissing a dark servant girl. And I saw that same boy fighting a slightly older boy out on a vast green field. And I saw other things, but they were even more confusing.”

“That was me.” He said bluntly. “When I was at boarding school after my mother died, there was a maid who used to clean our rooms – mine and Dorian’s – she was the daughter of a slave woman and her gentleman master who I taught to read.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yes, her name was Mae. She was almost eighteen when I met her and she had been cleaning the school since she was thirteen and she never really knew anything else. I found her one day piecing through my philosophy books and she thought I was going to hit her and she told me that she couldn’t read the books anyway. So I agreed to teach her how to read. She came to my rooms every night at nine. We read for hours by candlelight in the summer of 1776. And we started to fall in love in the way that children do.” He stared up with wistful nostalgia “We kissed, and few times and it was all very lovely, but then I found out that all of that time, she had just been playing a trick on me to see if I’d fall for it. And I did. I fell for it hard. So I duelled him out on the school field. and I would have shot him, but at that time they were trying to get all the young men who were good with a gun to join up to the army to fight against the revolutionaries and the scouter - Captain LeBolt – well, actually, I think he might have been a Private then – was around and saw us and stopped me. He said we couldn’t have the two most eligible bachelors of the colony killing each other before their balls had dropped.” He laughed slightly as he finished.

“Did you love her, Valentine?” I asked tentatively.

“No.” he shook her head. “And now I could never forgive her for what she had done. And I didn’t love her, I just felt a kind of tender curiosity to be in love, it was the act of being in love itself which filled me with joy, not the girl.” He smiled. I felt a certain truth in his words and placed my head on his shoulder. “I can’t wait to marry you, Theodosia.” He whispered. I shut my eyes in a state of pure hopefulness.

I asked Valentine about the other things in the dream too, but they perplexed him as much as they did me.

“I truly hope we can live in Messina one day.” I smiled.

“We can if that’s what you desire, my love. I can make the world just as we want it.”

“But the world is just as I want it, Valentine.” I smiled “At this moment, all is as it should be. I am here and you are here in this beautiful Georgian Summer House. The sun is setting outside. Gabriella is in bed behind a bookshelf with her lover and soon we will be wed. All is as I want it this night in our world.”

“You are the single most hopeful person I have ever met.” Valentine sighed “You see the world not as it is, but as it almost is. As it would be if all poetry were true. You choose joy. And in this world, choosing joy is a matter of immeasurable hope.”

“I suppose you’re right.” I said “Although, I never thought of it like that. I always thought I was the most cynical person around.” I laughed.

“Well, you’re not.” He said bluntly.

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