Steeped in Blood | TO BE REWRITTEN

XII. WILLIAM FAIRFAX

SURELY, HIS FUTURE WIFE COULD NOT BE SO hurtful, so foolish, so blunt, as to fling her arms around another man and then come back to him behaving as if nothing had transpired? Jealousy surged in William's throat, bitter and unwanted, and he swallowed it down with a swig of tea that was just as pungent, untempered by cream or sugar as it was. By Jove—how did anyone drink this stuff? He grimaced. Coffee, some would argue, was far more unpleasant when undiluted, but he, unpatriotic as it may have been, preferred it.

"Is the repast not to your liking?" Elizabeth asked.

She was hovering over him, had insisted all morning on serving his food and pouring his drink herself, after having done so for her parents. Was it truly so, that she did not believe she had done anything wrong? Or was she simply compensating for having upset him, for having struck envy into his heart?

"It is fine." He stared down at the teakwood table: at the foreign meal, the unfamiliar beverage, the indecipherable newspaper, and William thought that perhaps exotic lands were not as thrilling as the adventure novels made them out to be. There was only isolation, separation, vast swathes of distance between himself and everyone else that he seemed utterly incapable of crossing. "There is no problem with any of it."

"Then why do you look as if you have swallowed a fly?" she demanded, setting down a teapot and crossing her arms over her chest.

William wanted to give her the cold shoulder as he had been doing so all morning. But she had been so... so very attentive, so pliant, so willing to please. "Who was the man whom you embraced last night?"

"What?" Elizabeth sat down now, finally, her mouth agape. "I... My cousin?"

"For whom you hold nothing more than familial affection, I am certain," he said stiffly. Was she simply going to play these games of deceit with him? William had been burned by many a woman who thought she could string him along merely because of his status as the second son, while they went off and pursued better opportunities but still wanted him there to stroke their egos. "Please, do you not think that I saw the way you embraced him?"

"I haven't seen Henry in months!" She gripped the edge of the table, knuckles turning white. "I do hold him in great esteem, but I would never marry the man. For starters, sir... He is my cousin. I know not of how the British conduct their family relations, but we do not marry our cousins here."

That prim, proper voice was still as composed as it had been all the other times she had spoken to him, but now there was more fire behind it. More indignation, more disgust, more scorn. Then it softened. "Are you... were you jealous, William? Really?"

"Is it so very unimaginable that I might find it upsetting to view my fiancee quite enthusiastically throwing herself into the arms of another man?" William asked coolly. Some part of him knew it was unfair to punish her for his own paranoia, his own unreasonable sense of rage and jealousy. Another part of him, some primal, instinctive part, wanted to mark her as his territory, as his possession. Yet another part told him to exhibit level-headedness and rationality.

Elizabeth released the edge of the table and stood once more, beginning to fiddle with the tassels of the silken sash at her waist. "I would think that you, being an Englishman, for all the pride you place in your own sense of logic and reason, would think to ask before assuming. The amount of opium you must have smoked for you to believe such a thing, I shudder to think about."

His eyes followed the movements of her fingers as she yanked the cord more tightly before letting it slacken again, over and over. He hates the way she said Englishman, as though twisting his nationality into some unforgivable act that he could have foreseen, could have avoided. But it was not. They were more than the circumstances of their births. "Forgive me, Liza."

"Now I have another fault to add to your list of crimes, which is calling me Liza," she responded.

"Should I go to Mass and repent?" he retorted, standing up and walking over to her. "How would you like me to make it up to you?"

She had to tilt her head back to look up at him, being an entire foot shorter, and he stared down at her. Her beauty was soft, natural—her lips pink, pale cheeks slightly flushed with anger, her hair long and lustrous and falling in an inky black tumble down her spine—but somehow arresting. Fury and indignation gleamed in those brown eyes.

"How could you?" she asked. "How would you?"

He did not speak for a moment, a heartbeat, yet it felt the longest pause of his life as he let his fingers skim over her hair, fisting it in his hand. Elizabeth gasped, tilted her head back with the movement—but did not stop him, did not resist.

"Just like that," he murmured, rubbing the silky strands between his fingers. "And a word of advice to you, Elizabeth... Do not presume to call me an Englishman as though I chose my nationality at birth. As though I made decisions to be what I am—as if being English were all that defined me. Because I do not think being Chinese is all that defines you."

And with that, he turned around and left.