A Million Reasons [ S. SALVATORE ]

CHAPTER FIVE

The few letters she's received from her husband rests at the bottom of a drawer. It's cheap parchment, dirtied by war and travel, but still intact, still arriving at her door. It's more than most can hope to find. Adelaide should be grateful.

They all start the same. My dear. An endearment he rarely spoke in person. The following words are usually updates on his regiment's location or his health, sometimes promises of his swift return. The war is supposed to end every month. Yet every month it continues to drag on.

          The letters came quite regularly in the beginning. But the time between them grew longer and longer until they finally stopped. The oldest one is four months old now, and is as uneventful as the ones before it.

A letter by her own hand is tucked away in her small purse, addressed to another man entirely. The words were scrawled by a trembling hand, folded and unfolded as she read it over and over again, looking for flaws in her confession. She's brought it with her to the ball, but she still hasn't decided if she will slip it into his hand. It may never leave her purse, and her feelings may rot away with it in time.

She finds Stefan mingling in the library, right down the hall from the ballroom. Privileged gentlemen sip their whiskey by the hundreds of carefully stacked novels and encyclopedias. The scent of tobacco smoke hangs in the air, drifting through the dim lighting. Stefan has never taken up the habit, but he holds a drink in one hand, still barely touched.

Her fingers brush his arm in greeting as she moves to stand beside him. His eyes are on the collections of poetry before him on the shelves, before he turns to her. Curiously, she looks over and immediately sees the collected poems of John Keats, the spine of the book a deep green and the pressed title shining in the candle light.

          "Are you familiar with the work of Keats, Mr. Salvatore?" she asks him, delighted with the find.

          "Not very, no," he admits, a little regrettably. He watches as her fingers brush the leather cover before plucking it off the shelf.

          "He's a romantic poet," she tells him, flipping through the fragile pages. "One of the best." She holds the book carefully, as if afraid her hands might stain the pearly white paper, as if the words are too delicate to handle. She used to poor over the verses as a child, when she still dreamed of knights, princesses, and ancient gods.

          "Forgive me, I've never deciphered verses very well," Stefan tells her. As if to make up for it, he peers over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the writing. It's fanciful stuff, the kind of literature that bored him as a child, but she likes it. Perhaps there's something in it that he previously missed, some wonderful world designed by the romantics previously lost on him.

          "Well, poetry is meant to be experienced, not understood," she tells him, smiling as she holds a page up for him to see, presumably her favorite poem. He reaches for it but freezes at the sound of his name being called.

          Katherine appears by his arm, as if out of thin air. She looks beautiful, dark curls swept up, revealing pale neck and shoulders, her face flushed pink, possibly from the flute of champagne in her hand.

          "Don't mind if I steal him?" she asks Adelaide, as if Stefan hadn't asked Katherine to be his date for the night. "Our dance is next. I'm afraid we might miss it if we don't hurry." Katherine, quite the actress, actually looks apologetic. Her eyes shine though, as they drift from Adelaide back towards Stefan.