wanted him to make them squirm with pleasure before sighing with contentment. Oh yes: Jonathan came to understand their desire better than they did themselves, those girls who trailed in his wake like moths love-drunk on the flame.
Some people despised Jonathan for seducing women who ached to be seduced, angry because he did so on his terms, and to this I say: What of it? The women were happy—oh, there might have been a few tears when a girl realized that she would not be able to change his mind, and for God’s sake, no one knew that better than I. But he never tricked any girl to get her into his bed. He was always up front with his intentions. His partners knew not to expect fidelity from him: How could they when there was an endless stream of women who begged and schemed for his attention? I learned the hard way that the clamoring and come-ons would never stop and that fighting human nature was futile. You might as well try to hold back the tide.
But of all those doe-eyed maidens and bored wives in St. Andrew, in the end I was the only one to be seriously hurt because I was the only one foolish enough to try to make him stay with me. Then Adair came into my life. His potion seemed tailor-made for my conundrum: it promised not only to bind Jonathan to me, but that we would be together forever . Leave it to Jonathan, slippery as an eel, to wriggle out of ties as ironclad as these. He left me after only ten years, left me to figure out how to survive in a world that was not kind to a woman on her own.
That had been my comeuppance for trying to trap him: a few unhappy years together and an eternity in which to miss him, and the presence in my head to remind me that he was alive but choosing that we live apart. It was a hellish punishment, though some might argue I deserved it for what I’d done to him. And for those who despised Jonathan for being a cad who seemed to flit through his life unscathed, they can take comfort from knowing the elixir kept him from outgrowing his beauty, as he would’ve in the natural course of things. If I hadn’t given him the elixir, Jonathan would’ve gotten jowly and wrinkled, and would’ve found peace in his later years. As it was, he was trapped with all the attention he didn’t want, with no way to make it stop.
Did either of us deserve our punishment? I’d turned this question over in my mind for nearly two hundred years, and the longer I lived, the more I’d begun to believe that I was not being punished, that this curse was not a judgment. If there was a God, it seemed ludicrous that he would single me out for such an extravagant punishment when there were people who’d done far worse. It used to be that when I met someone who was greedy or predatory, I’d wonder if someone like Adair might be keeping him in secret torment. I wondered if there were more people with my exact dilemma than I thought. Maybe the bad were cursed to suffer until they paid for their sins. For a while, I wished I could peel back the veneer of other peoples’ lives to see if they, too, had a devil riding on their back. Until one day, I decided to stop thinking about it. To stop looking for evidence. It was driving me mad.
After Adair brought Jonathan back from the underworld, I could ignore it no longer. I tried to tease apart the few details Ihad to make sense of this unknown world. The fact that there was a queen seemed to indicate that there was an order to our existence, a grand plan. I began to wonder again if there was a reason for everything I’d been through—and if so, where I stood now. Did we carry our sins with us, like the chains of money boxes shackled to Jacob Marley’s ghost, and if so, had I done enough good to atone for any of my sins, or had I only added more to the invisible chain I dragged behind me? I could imagine, too, how Adair felt at news of this queen, how it must’ve frightened him. And why he didn’t want to send me into this shadowy netherworld, not wanting to
Some people despised Jonathan for seducing women who ached to be seduced, angry because he did so on his terms, and to this I say: What of it? The women were happy—oh, there might have been a few tears when a girl realized that she would not be able to change his mind, and for God’s sake, no one knew that better than I. But he never tricked any girl to get her into his bed. He was always up front with his intentions. His partners knew not to expect fidelity from him: How could they when there was an endless stream of women who begged and schemed for his attention? I learned the hard way that the clamoring and come-ons would never stop and that fighting human nature was futile. You might as well try to hold back the tide.
But of all those doe-eyed maidens and bored wives in St. Andrew, in the end I was the only one to be seriously hurt because I was the only one foolish enough to try to make him stay with me. Then Adair came into my life. His potion seemed tailor-made for my conundrum: it promised not only to bind Jonathan to me, but that we would be together forever . Leave it to Jonathan, slippery as an eel, to wriggle out of ties as ironclad as these. He left me after only ten years, left me to figure out how to survive in a world that was not kind to a woman on her own.
That had been my comeuppance for trying to trap him: a few unhappy years together and an eternity in which to miss him, and the presence in my head to remind me that he was alive but choosing that we live apart. It was a hellish punishment, though some might argue I deserved it for what I’d done to him. And for those who despised Jonathan for being a cad who seemed to flit through his life unscathed, they can take comfort from knowing the elixir kept him from outgrowing his beauty, as he would’ve in the natural course of things. If I hadn’t given him the elixir, Jonathan would’ve gotten jowly and wrinkled, and would’ve found peace in his later years. As it was, he was trapped with all the attention he didn’t want, with no way to make it stop.
Did either of us deserve our punishment? I’d turned this question over in my mind for nearly two hundred years, and the longer I lived, the more I’d begun to believe that I was not being punished, that this curse was not a judgment. If there was a God, it seemed ludicrous that he would single me out for such an extravagant punishment when there were people who’d done far worse. It used to be that when I met someone who was greedy or predatory, I’d wonder if someone like Adair might be keeping him in secret torment. I wondered if there were more people with my exact dilemma than I thought. Maybe the bad were cursed to suffer until they paid for their sins. For a while, I wished I could peel back the veneer of other peoples’ lives to see if they, too, had a devil riding on their back. Until one day, I decided to stop thinking about it. To stop looking for evidence. It was driving me mad.
After Adair brought Jonathan back from the underworld, I could ignore it no longer. I tried to tease apart the few details Ihad to make sense of this unknown world. The fact that there was a queen seemed to indicate that there was an order to our existence, a grand plan. I began to wonder again if there was a reason for everything I’d been through—and if so, where I stood now. Did we carry our sins with us, like the chains of money boxes shackled to Jacob Marley’s ghost, and if so, had I done enough good to atone for any of my sins, or had I only added more to the invisible chain I dragged behind me? I could imagine, too, how Adair felt at news of this queen, how it must’ve frightened him. And why he didn’t want to send me into this shadowy netherworld, not wanting to
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