Clockwork Princess

had you, Tessa, if I had not had these yearly meetings as my anchor and my guide, I do not know if I could have come back.”
    There was light in his dark eyes now, and her heart soared in her chest. She had only ever loved two men in her life, and she had never thought to see either of their faces again. “But you have,” she whispered. “And it is a miracle. And you remember what I once told you about miracles.”
    He smiled again at that. “‘One does not question miracles, or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one’s liking.’ I suppose that is true. I wish that I could have come back to you earlier. I wish I were the same boy I was when you loved me, once. I fear that the years have changed me into someone else.”
    Tessa searched his face with her eyes. In the distance she could hear the sound of traffic passing, but here, by the river’s edge, she could almost imagine that she was a girl again, and the air full of fog and smoke, the rattling sound of the railway in the distance … “The years have changed me, too,” she said. “I have been a mother and a grandmother, and I have seen those I love die, and seen others be born. You speak of the currents of the world. I have seen them too. If I were still the same girl I was when you knew me first, I would not have been able to speak my heart as freely to you as I just have. I would not be able to ask you what I am about to ask you now.”
    He brought his hand up and cupped her cheek. She could see the hope in his expression, slowly dawning. “And what is that?”
    “Come with me,” she said. “Stay with me. Be with me. See everything with me. I have traveled the world and seen so much, but there is so much more, and no one I would rather see it with than you. I would go everywhere and anywhere with you, Jem Carstairs.”
    His thumb slid along the arch of her cheekbone. She shivered. It had been so long since someone had looked at her like that, as if she were the world’s great marvel, and she knew she was looking at him like that too. “It seems unreal,” he said huskily. “I have loved you for so long. How can this be true?”
    “It is one of the great truths of my life,” Tessa said. “Will you come with me? For I cannot wait to share the world with you, Jem. There is so much to see.”
    She was not sure who reached for who first, only that a moment later she was in his arms and he was whispering “Yes, of course, yes,” against her hair. He sought her mouth tentatively—she could feel his gentle tension, the weight of so many years between their last kiss and this. She reached up, curling her hand around the back of his neck, drawing him down, whispering
“Bie zhao ji.” Don’t worry, don’t worry
. She kissed his cheek, the edge of his mouth, and finally his mouth, the pressure of his lips on hers intense and glorious, and
Oh, the beat of his heart, the taste of his mouth, the rhythm of his breath
. Her senses blurred with memory: how thin he had been once, the feeling of his shoulder blades as sharp as knives beneath the fine linen of the shirts he had once worn. Now she could feel strong, solid muscle when she held him, the thrum of life through his body where it pressed against hers, the soft cotton of his jumper gripped between her fingers.
    Tessa was aware that above their small embankment people were still walking along Blackfriars Bridge, that the traffic was still passing, and that passersby were probably staring, but she didn’t care; after enough years you learned what was important and what wasn’t. And this was important: Jem, the speed and stutter of his heart, the grace of his gentle hands sliding to cup her face, his lips soft against hers as he traced the shape of her mouth with his. The warm solid definitive realness of him. For the first time in many long years she felt her heart open, and knew love as more than a memory.
    No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, its cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves:
At last, the wheel comes full circle
, they kept their silence.

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