Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal Page A

put an arm around her shoulder and drew her away from the furnace. “What is the matter? Are you tired?”
    She shook her head. “No … I only—it is—” She did not want to say it aloud and remind him of what she had done. The choices that she had made. Jane pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. He was her husband. He deserved her honesty. “I am reminded—I am reminded of our time in the Netherlands.”
    “Oh, Muse…” Vincent pulled her into his arms and held her there, with his chin resting atop her head. Jane leaned against him, feeling his heart beat through her body. “Let us go home, hm?”
    “No. I do not want to. I should—this should not upset me so.” It was only a memory.
    “You have stopped me from working at times that I resented it, but had to acknowledge that you were correct.”
    She counted his heartbeats, with her eyes squeezed tightly shut until she could trust her voice. “And you think I should stop?”
    “I think we both should. Let us walk, and then come back after we catch our breath. Or tomorrow. Please? In exchange, I promise to stop without grumbling the next time you ask me to. Or, at least, without much grumbling.”
    Jane laughed, because she knew that he would want to hear it. “With that offer, how can I decline?”
    Vincent released her and called across the room. “We shall take an early evening.”
    “You’re still paying for a full day.”
    Vincent held very still. “Then I expect you to wait.”
    “Vincent…”
    “If it were me, Muse, what would you do?”
    She lowered her head. He was right. She was in no fit condition to work. Vincent took her hand and led her gently outside, away from the furnaces and the heat, but the memories followed her. Without speaking, Vincent shifted to pull her arm through his and hold her closer as they walked. A cricket chirped from behind a wall. The water of the canal splashed as an oar settled into the water. Someone laughed inside a nearby house, and in the distance, a woman practised an aria, her voice haunting around the corners of Murano.
    Jane leaned into her husband, feeling his warmth against her side. “I am sorry we had to stop.”
    “You should not be.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of her fingers. “I had expected it to be me that would need to be pulled away.”
    “Yes, well … you seem quite fit.”
    He shrugged. “I am not. I tell you that I am, and it is little enough of an affliction that I can ignore it, but after working glamour, my head aches. The room still pitches sometimes when I stand too quickly. But I spent so long being told that I was not allowed to work glamour that when I cannot—or even should not—I grow resentful.”
    “At least you have reason. You were injured.”
    They turned on to a bridge over the canal. Vincent tightened his grip on her hand. “So were you.”
    Jane’s breath caught. There was no doubt about the “injury” that he referred to. The miscarriage. Jane held her jaw clenched against tears. She cast her gaze down to the water and followed the path of a gondola. Its dark shape made a void in the water, rippling the stars in its wake. “Two years ago.”
    “I … I do not think you allowed yourself time to … We came back to England, and as soon as your body allowed, you threw yourself back into your work. Our work. I should own that I did the same.” Vincent stopped her at the summit of the bridge. “I do not think we allowed ourselves time to grieve.”
    “Do I have the right?”
    “You lost a child, Jane.”
    “One that I did not want.” She still watched the gondola, but she could hear Vincent suck his breath in.
    “I wish you would stop blaming yourself.”
    “Who else should I blame? Napoleon? Lieutenant Segal? The horse that ran off the road? My mother, for the weakness of my womb?”
    “Me?”
    Jane’s head snapped back around of its own accord. In the reflected glow of the city, Vincent’s face was soft, his