The hansom cab clattered to a stop on the cobbles at the foot of my four-story brownstone. I had been sitting by the fire staring contemplatively into the ebbing flames, but I knew immediately who it was who had come a-calling. No one but Stephen would toss away the good coin necessary to convince a cabbie to come to this part of town. And yet the knock at the door jolted me all the same. It would be Mrs. Hudson, of course, the spinsterly yet caring matriarch of my boarding house.
“Enter,” I called in what I hoped was a full, calm voice. Yet I knew that any sense of bravery was belied by the quavering throatiness hiding just beneath my assumed dulcet tone. And there, framed in the doorway, silhouetted by an oil lamp flickering in the hallway, was Stephen himself. He had expended yet another palm’s full of coin to convince Mrs. Hudson to allow him up the stairs and into my chambers.
“Hello, Nat,” he said. His voice carried a cocky surety that both comforted and disgusted me. I couldn’t speak, torn between a desire to slam the door in his face and the nearly primal need to be in his arms again.
“I know I’ve done wrong to you in the past,” Stephen continued before I could form a single word in my throat. “And I’ve come to make it up to you. I’ve come to take you away from all this, Nat, away from the noise and stench, away from the ruffians and rakes, the ne’er-do-wells and knaves.”
“Stephen—”
“Do not speak, my beautiful, save to say that you will take my hand and leave here for a better life.”
I was silent for a long moment. The fire had died in its grate, and I now began to notice a chill creeping through the room. When I looked up from the smoldering ashes, I found that Stephen was standing above me, one large, well-manicured hand stretched out to me imploringly. Tears wetting my face, I took his hand.
What followed was the most intense night of love I have ever, or likely will ever, experience. What transpired I dare not say, for fear that the mere mention of our passion would set these meager pages aflame. Yet when I awoke the next day, stretching and sighing in the hotel’s sheets of Egyptian cotton, Stephen was gone. It was the last I ever saw of him, and, truth be told, the last I ever hope to see.
You took the heart of me, sir! If ever I had thought to know true love, to know contentment with a man, all such hope was dashed to the ground by you. The ruffians who populate the alleys are more honest than you, sir. I should rather trust my life to a common cut-purse than to you! Lord and merchant you may be, Stephen, but at heart you are truly nothing more than the most low and notorious sort of cad.
I hope only that you read this and, in some deep, dark place of your most icy of hearts, feel a sense that perhaps, in playing your hither-and-yon games with my youthful heart, you have done some wrong. No, Stephen, I shall never forgive you. But all the same I shall always love you.
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