#abernathywrites

It was because he wanted to avoid looking at her while he answered. He didn't mind his own feelings, but he didn't like the way Mo saw him when she noticed them. As though he were a specimen to be examined, and a distasteful one at that. Her eyes, while not terribly expressive, were a little to sharp for his most vulnerable moments yet. "Naturally," he said after what he hoped was an appropriate amount of length.

"Of what?" she asked, incredulous, as though she hadn't thought of the word herself. "These things are boring. Demeaning." Jasper couldn't help the little swell of protectiveness that surged up in him. He turned back, and Mo must have immediately read his thoughts there, because she continued on in a rush. "Not like they make me do something demeaning. It just is. Having to beg them for money when I know my research is--"

He interrupted, grateful as always to find any scrap of commonality with her. "Oh, I know all about that." Despite himself, he cracked a small smile. "Lest you forgot, I was on an expedition when you interrupted it. And though my family is more than comfortable, I couldn't fund a trip cross the ocean on my allowance alone. I've gone to investors and brought little samples and done the little dance to ensure more funding as well. That, it seems, hasn't changed."

Mo blinked, apparently silenced by the thought, and cocked her head. He knew this expression from her. She was trying to understand. Trying to piece together something about him. Something apparently opaque. Jasper turned back to the window. He had no desire to watch the moment she worked it out. "Are you jealous because you miss it?" Once again, she seemed full of disbelief.

Full of disbelief and utterly wrong. So wrong, it brought a bark of laughter out of him. "Yes," he said. He might cry; she'd offered him a very convenient out. "Well, yes and no." The best lies contained a kernel of truth, after all. "I don't miss the meetings with the investors but--the part after. When the money is assured and another trip can begin and I can set my sights and…yes, of course I miss it." He turned back at her as he said it, surprised by his own sincerity. For a moment he thought, maybe she wasn't so wrong after all.

But then his eye caught hers again. She'd put some kind of kohl around it, and it brought out the warm brown of her eyes. Jasper had paid little attention before to the ways ladies applied tints and powders to their faces, but Mo never did, and the difference was so startling to him. She'd gone through some lengths, it seemed. Her hair was coiffed and she wore some sort of habit, with a coat and skirt that seemed to match--the skirt, as always, indecently short, and so Jasper had not looked for more details--and generally seemed as though she'd taken out all her best. For a meeting with her investors. Which made perfect sense and wasn't at all personal, but Jasper's stomach turned at the thought nonetheless.

He wasn't so ignorant of his own mind to think his jealousy was because her research could continue and his was frozen. No, his feeling could be summed up by the questions that had been nagging him since she'd first emerged from her washroom, looking as she did. What would it be like for her to turn herself out like this for me?

"Well," she said after a moment, interrupting his self-pitying thoughts. "If it would make you feel better, I'll let you try to convince me to give you something. Buy you a plant or something."

She turned away from him this time, and so he kept his eyes on her profile. It was nice, not to have to turn away. "That's very kind but--" But he didn't think he could beg her for a plant in good faith. Not just because she had made it clear she cared little for his research. More because he didn't trust himself to beg of her without letting slip how he'd been feeling, how he'd been wanting of late. "No, I do recall the process being…what was your word? Demeaning?"

She chuckled, and he could tell right away it was at his expense. "Let me guess. Asking a woman for funding would be the height of impropriety, or some other bullshit?"

Dear Mo, I have followed your direction to use the number sequence you left me, upon which a mysterious voice commanded me to leave a message. I know not what method will be used to convey this message to you, nor its manner of conveyance. Hopefully, my words will be clear enough to reach you by whatever means is standard. It is 8:43 in the evening now, on the day you left for the conference at your university. Today, as instructed, I have remained inside with one exception. I have watered the plants in the yard behind your home twice. Once after tea this morning, and once after supper. They looked rather dry and were wilting, so I sought to remedy this.

Other than my plant watering, I have spent the day in quiet reflection, though I have limited myself to reading only books whose titles I already recognize. Your home library contains few of these. Mainly, it is just plays by William Shakespeare, a playwright whose work I myself have seen performed. Your texts appear strange, with the play on one side and seemingly a list of words with their meanings on the other. Are these frequently read by foreigners?

When you return, and before your next voyage, I shall have to beg of you to leave me more reading material than this [message ends here due to length]

message received 8:49pm

[fifteen seconds of silence, followed by the words, loudly, slowly, with almost painfully crisp enunciation]

Dear Mo, I fear whatever service you use to record the messages is a poor one, for I was only part-way done with my letter when it informed me that the message was too long already. I apologize for this oversight. I only wished to send you my wishes, and to assure you that I am following your directives in your absence. Have a good evening. Graciously yours, Jasper Eames.

message received at 11:22pm

[five seconds of silence, followed by the words, loudly and slowly, but more slurred than crisp this time]

Mo. Mo. Dear, er, dear Mo. It is quite dark and quiet in your house when you are gone. This is the first night I have spent alone in such an unfamiliar place, so I opened a bottle of wine. You never add water, and so I assumed your wine would be weak. It was weak enough to drink in its [incoherent], but not so weak, for I have become quite-quite-quite drunk.

I am not sure when this message is to reach you, or if I can delay it on the morrow, for I am not sure if it is wise to send but I [incoherent]. That is to say that I am quite alone tonight, and it is lonely in your house without you, and so I send you this message only to say that.

It occured to him that it would take her time to translate the numbers--that she may need to count up. He held up a hand, all fingers out, and ticked them off as he listed. “The girl in Yelan, a girl at boarding school, a girl I met in the summer on the Skehel Islands, two girls at university. And now you, of course.” He pressed his lips together, wondering if that sounded woefully inexperienced to her. His readings on the Golden Isles had been enlightening to say the least. She had been expecting a different sort of marriage than he had prepared for. The two of them would need to find a way to blend their ideas about their relationship. But that worrying was exactly the sort he was trying to prevent himself from engaging in. She’d asked a question. He answered. “Some of them, I kissed many times. Some, only once.”