The light, disconnected prattle which filled their washing room, laid ownership onto Elena alone; Wyatt’s eyes were trained on the mirror before his face, utilizing its reflection to admire her figure, under the guise of watching his own. His humor left him disinclined to converse; rather he wished to observe Elena’s countenance, which had been withdraw to him as of late. She did not yield to effervescent glee or tepid moods of solitude, peppered with bouts of anger - whether to spite him (or feed her own fancies, the pair often coexisted merrily) Elena fell into her own dalliances; she danced without he by her side, cheered from the stands for whomever she pleased - it was until now, that they were sequestered in their normal fashion. Love-making had become a routine pleasure - forever how much he relished the sensation of her warmth flush against him, or the sweetness of her kisses; he found a stranger in her sleeping form, once their carnal needs have been satisfied. Instantly Wyatt gave way to paranoia - his ambivalence as a lover, and wayward mind of late, would earn him her ire. But he could not withstand the overarching power of her silence, nor the anxiety inducing pleasantries she bestowed upon him; rubbing his neck in an absentminded fashion, his neck curled to the left, allowing his intrusive, steely gaze, better access to the crown of brown hair which moved as its mistress wished. There was no sanctioned silence to break, yet his heart still raced with trepidation as he offered simple words of conversation. “We’ve both been rather preoccupied with endeavors as of late - part of me believes you now harbor an inner world unknown to me. Convince me otherwise darling, or I shall pluck each hair from my head as I fret over the state of our intimacy.”
She sprawled across their carpeted seats as if she were a tableau vivant, inhabiting the knowledge of that fact like a second skin, a layer of awareness and delight in a pose she never relinquished. There was no herself to Elena - no inner core which brought all her dainty ploys together, all the acts she hoisted and dismantled like an architect of womanhood. She was everything she pretended to be, just smaller slivers of it, light dulling the more you reflect it. She could be careless, disheveled, propped in her bead and eating Turkish sweets with no regard for the linens - but she could also startle awake, in the midst of a fever, and fix the intricate braid of her hair. These were all true at the same time, none with more verity than the other. And it never caught her inadvertent, or inopportune, when men looked. The reality of having a body and easing that body into being seen were no different for her. Even now, as Thomas talked, as her fingers toyed with the torque of a cup, as she sluiced lemongrass tea in her mouth to smother the words huddling there, she knew her lover saw her pose. And she knew he knew, too. And it was this matter of intimacy that weighed above all the others. At last, Elena drawled out a sigh, barb-edged irritation sending her eyes rolling skyward. “That would really thwart your peace, would it not? Make a plaything of it. Me having an inner world whatsoever. You best leave your tirelessly coveted hair alone: it is half your charm, after all.” What did incense her? She was prodigal with her emotions, squandering them like a banker’s son, rage and yearning and apprehension blending with oil’s fluidity, and its resilience too. So it was a treacherous matter for her to measure up, this distance that had wedged itself between them as though acting on its own volition. Oh, she was up to date with his dalliances: a re-lit fuse with the Boleyn woman, smoldering as only old coals can do, and some intellectual sparring with another one, a duchess or a widow or both those at once. Was that what she feared? That a woman might shroud herself before him as not only a novelty, or a challenge, or a view that reaps your breath from the pit of your lungs, spilling lust where air had once been - but as a companion? As someone who could help him in his work not as inspiration, but as partner? Read the old Greeks with him, and the sodden easterners too, sharped her quill with the same dexterity she waived her ribbons? Elena had dwelt a long time before answering it, even silently. She was not altogether sure she answered it at all, but rather confessed the nameless, gave it a shape like a child’s night terrors. Or was it something far more petty - the fact that Tommy had so much to keep him occupied, and ever since the death of that awful, riveting, raw-carved man, and the affair they had kept at intemperate intervals, she had had so little? How were the months spent? Being locked in with a frenchman at the siege, when her heart was so far up in her throat she felt its veins grinding, and she all but shook with unexpected, uncharacteristic anxiety - so fretful for Tomas that she hadn’t even seen the man properly. And he might’ve been a good score, too. Following that were the jousts, when she clapped and pirouetted and even strayed from the Boleyn woman’s path, so as not to cause what she so dearly depicted in her head, but after which she had to retire early, uncourted in the least. And now, the days of Saint Valentine, where all lovers flared up, with the violence and predictability of the tide. And on which Thomas had scarcely said a word. “You look half on your way out, Thomas, and lateness is not favored upon in this new court of ours.”
