Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal Page B

brows upturned with vulnerability. “How can you—no. You cannot blame yourself for being captured.”
    “I can blame myself for not leaving when you urged me to, when all reason told us that war was coming. That is not what I meant, though it would be reason enough.” He shook his head, biting his lip. With something like a laugh mixed with a sob, Vincent tilted his head back and addressed his words to the sky. “But before that … because you resented me for wanting a child.”
    He had been so happy when he learned she had conceived, but they had never spoken of their plans or even raised the question of children before then. Jane lifted her hand and brushed it across his cheek. “I do not blame you for wanting a child. Or for getting me with one. I participate in that willingly enough.”
    Vincent smiled and lowered his gaze to her. “You do.”
    In silent accord, Jane and Vincent turned to begin their stroll again. Even in the dark, even speaking in English with no one to overhear them, it was difficult to talk of this subject, but Jane pressed on. If she waited, the words would close up inside her again. “When I was little, I always played at having a family with my dolls. I used to beg for a baby sister. Then Melody arrived, and Mama became so ill. I did not understand at the time, or more probably was not told, that the birth had nearly killed her. She has … she has been truly ill, and I think she was not always so nervous. I was her third confinement.”
    “I did not know.”
    “It is why, I think, that she frets so over us. I … I suspect there were times that I was unintentionally cruel in begging for a sister.”
    Jane felt more than heard Vincent’s sigh through the places where they were touching.
    “We had a nurse, but I had played at babies so long, and was so in love with the idea of having one of my own, that I treated Melody as though she were mine. I carried her everywhere my parents would let me, and Mama was inclined to be indulgent. In many ways, as much as Melody was my sister, she was also a daughter to me.”
    “That would, I imagine, be enough to cure any desire to be a mother again.”
    “I never resented it—or rarely.” Jane shook her head and leaned it against him for a moment. “The resentment grew as Melody got prettier and I did not. By the time you met me, I had resigned myself to the life of a spinster.”
    “Which still confounds me.”
    “You are very sweet. But … but even you were first drawn to Melody, were you not?”
    Vincent’s voice was low. “That is not fair, Muse.”
    “I am sorry.” She tilted her head up to kiss his cheek. “The point being, I had given up. I had shut away thoughts of being a mother, and then, when I met you—when I married you—those thoughts did not return, because we had the work. And I thought…” She had told him this before, during the months that they had been in recovery in Brussels before returning to England, but it was still hard to admit. “I thought you loved me because of what talent with glamour I have.”
    “But you know that is not it. I love you because of your passion, your curiosity and wit, and because you inspire me every day, every moment I am with you. And I do think you are beautiful. Not fashionable, not handsome, not insipidly pretty, but full of beauty. You find the beauty around you and reflect it for me to see. You are yourself and”—his voice broke—“you are my Muse.”
    They had stopped walking at some point in his declaration, and Jane rose onto her toes to meet him. Standing by the bank of the canal, they kissed. The space where one began and the other ended folded together like two strands of glamour weaving a single image. Jane felt nothing but the warmth of her husband, his fingers in her hair, and the tender shape of his lips against hers.
    A gasp sounded in the canal behind them. “Are those men kissing?”
    Jane and Vincent released their hold on each other. For a moment, Jane