"Oh, Chloe, not tonight," her mother says, alarm in her voice. "These gentlemen have to be up early to go to work, and it's getting late. You must also be tired."
"Me, I am never tired." She tosses her head and pouts. "Oh, mummy, don't be such a wet blanket!"
She runs across to a far corner where the record player lies, in an open cabinet, and Alistair lumbers after her, anxious to please, his eyes filled with adoration.
"Mummy, aren't there any newer records? These are so OLD."
"Those are all we have, dear," Mrs. Lee says, looking rather agitated. "Nobody listens to records anymore." Chloe turns her back on her, and starts to sift through the stack of records, Alistair at her elbow, talking in low voices.
Mrs. Lee says to me, a little apologetically, "We've had that record player for years, it's very old, my husband bought it when we were first married - it must have been oh, 32, 33 years ago...how time flies..."
"I'm tired," I say. "I think I will say good night."
Mrs. Lee rises from her chair. "I'm tired too, I'll go to my room. Good night."
It is Caspian who opens the door for us. Mrs. Lee climbs up the stairs, and disappears around the bend.
He is standing very still, blocking my path.
"Well, good night," I say, avoiding his eyes, a little tremor running down my spine as I squeeze past him. I have forgotten how tall he is, how magnetic.
"Wait."
He catches my hand in his.
"It has been a long time...nereid..."
And the world stops.
Everything stops.
Dimly, I am aware of snatches of voices coming to me from across a huge divide; familiar yet strange, distant, disembodied.
- he's taking so long -
- what say we dance first? -
- well, I don't know -
- oh, please, Miss Chloe -
- well -
- oh, please, just one dance -
- oh, very well, if you insist -
I can't breathe.
His hand is holding mine, his palm warm, strong, rough against mine.
I lift my eyes to his, and meet the quizzical glance that has disturbed me so; I look at his face, the face that has troubled my nights, and my waking hours, and plagued me with strange, restless dreams. I look at his lips, and I feel weak suddenly, as I remember the wild tumult those lips had stirred in me, and I draw in my breath shakily, the treacherous colour suffusing my cheeks, my heart hammering, pounding in my chest, my ears, so loudly - surely, surely, he can hear it?
"I was wondering if you'd recognise me," I say, hoping to sound calm and cool, like a very poised, a very sophisticated eighteen-year-old, an adult, a grown woman.
But what I hear instead is a breathless kind of whisper, and I wish, oh God, I wish my words unsaid the moment they left my lips, because they had come out all wrong; they sounded wistful, filled with an underlying thread of longing, as if I had been waiting in an agony of anxiety all night for some gesture, some sign of recognition from him...
He presses the hand that he still holds.
How can a man's palm be so hard, and yet so gentle?
"Once seen, impossible to forget."
YOU ARE READING
Prince Caspian -Jung Yoonoh NCT
FanfictionHIGHEST RANKING #1 IN KOREANROMANCE Could she marry just to save her home? Yiseul loves her home, Ravenscrag, more than anything else in the world. Under the terms of her grandfather's will, the only way she can keep it is to marry his heir -- h...
