This takes place in Chapter Nine of Clockwork Prince,
entitled “Fierce Midnight. The scene in which Tessa and Jem first kiss from his
perspective.
I
wish to offer you moonlight in a handful
—Zhang Jiu Ling
—Zhang Jiu Ling
The
first thing Jem did the moment he entered his room was stride to the yin fen
box on his nightstand.
He
usually took the drug in a solution of water, letting it dissolve and drinking
it, but he was too impatient now; he took a pinch between his thumb and
forefinger, and sucked it from his fingers. It tasted of burned sugar and left
the inside of his mouth feeling numb. He slammed the box shut with a feeling of
dark satisfaction.
The
second thing he did was to retrieve his violin.
The
fog was thick against the windows, as if they had been painted over with lead.
If it had not been for the witchlight torches burning low, there would not have
been enough illumination for him to see what he was doing as he wrenched open
the box that held his Guarneri and took the instrument from it. A snatch of one
of Bridget’s songs played in his head: It was mirk, mirk night, there was no
starlight, and they waded through blood to the knees.
Mirk,
mirk night indeed. The sky had had been black as pitch down in Whitechapel. Jem
thought of Will, standing on the pavement, dizzy-eyed and grinning. Until Jem
had hit him. He had never hit Will before, no matter how maddening his parabatai
had been. No matter how destructive to other people, no matter his casual
cruelty, no matter his wit that was like the edge of a knife, Jem had never hit
him. Until now.
The
bow was already rosined; he flexed his fingers before he took hold of it, and
drew in several deep breaths. He could feel the yin fen surging through
his veins already, lighting his blood like fire lighting gunpowder. He thought
of Will again, asleep on the bed in the opium den. He had been flushed, his
face smooth and innocent in sleep, like a child with his cheek pillowed on his
hand. Jem remembered when Will had been young like that, though never a time
when he had been innocent.
He
set the bow to the strings and played. He played softly at first. He played
Will lost in dreams, finding solace in a drugged haze that muffled his pain.
Jem could only envy him that. The yin fen was no balm: he did not find
in it whatever opium addicts found in their pipes, or alcoholics in the dregs
of a gin bottle. There was only exhaustion and lassitude without it, and with
it, energy and fever. But there was no surcease from pain.
Jem’s
knees gave out, and he sank to the trunk at the foot of his bed, still playing.
He played Will breathing the name Cecily, and he played himself watching
the glint of his own ring on Tessa’s hand on the train from York, knowing it
was all a charade, knowing, too, that he wished that it wasn’t. He played the
sorrow in Tessa’s eyes when she had come into the music room after Will had
told her she would never have children. Unforgivable, that, what a thing to do,
and yet Jem had forgiven him. Love was forgiveness, he had always believed
that, and the things that Will did, he did out of some bottomless well of pain.
Jem did not know the source of that pain, but he knew it existed and was real,
knew it as he knew of the inevitability of his own death, knew it as he knew
that he had fallen in love with Tessa Gray and that there was nothing he or
anyone else could do about it.
He
played that, now, played all their broken hearts, and the sound of the violin
wrapped him and lifted him and he closed his eyes—
His
door opened. He heard the sound through the music, but for a moment did not
credit it, for it was Tessa’s voice he heard, saying his name. “Jem?”
Surely
she was a dream, conjured up by the music and the drug and his own fevered
mind. He played on, played his own rage and anger at Will, for however he had
always forgiven Will for his cruelty to others, he could not forgive him for
endangering himself.
“Jem!” came Tessa’s voice again,
and suddenly there were hands on his, wrenching the bow out of his grasp. He
let go in shock, staring up at her. “Jem, stop! Your violin—your lovely
violin—you’ll ruin it.”
She
stood over him, a dressing-gown thrown over her white nightgown. He remembered
that nightgown: she had been wearing it the first time he had seen her, when
she had come into his room and he had thought for one mad moment that she was
an angel. She was breathing hard now, her face flushed, his violin gripped in
one hand and the bow in another.
“What
does it matter?” he demanded. “What does any of it matter? I’m dying—I won’t
outlast the decade, what does it matter if the violin goes before I do?” She
stared at him, her lips parting in astonishment. He stood up and turned away
from her. He could no longer bear to look her in the face, to see her
disappointment with him, his weakness. “You know it is true.”
“Nothing
is decided.” Her voice trembled. “Nothing is inevitable. A cure—”
“There’s
no cure. I will die and you know it, Tess. Probably within the next year.I am
dying, and I have no family in the world, and the one person I trusted more
than any other makes sport of what is killing me.”
“But
Jem, I don’t think that’s what Will meant to do at all.” She had set down his
violin and bow, and was moving toward him. “He was just trying to escape—he is
running from something, something dark and awful, you know he is, Jem. You saw
how he was after—after Cecily.”
“He
knows what it means to me,” he said. She was just behind him: he could smell
the faint perfume of her skin: violet-water and soap. The urge to turn about
and touch her was overwhelming, but he held himself still. “To see him even toy
with what has destroyed my life—”
“But
he wasn’t thinking of you—”
“I
know that.” How could he say it? How could he explain? How could he tell
her that Will was what he had devoted his life to: Will’s rehabilitation,
Will’s innate goodness. Will was the cracked mirror of his own soul that he had
spent years trying to repair. He could forgive Will harming anyone but his own
self. “I tell myself he’s better than he makes himself out to be, but Tessa,
what if he isn’t? I have always thought, if I had nothing else, I had Will—if I
have done nothing else that made my life matter, I have always stood by him—but
perhaps I shouldn’t.”
“Oh,
Jem.” Her voice was so soft that he turned. Her dark hair was unbound: it
tumbled around her face and he had the most absurd urge to bury his hands in
it, to draw her close, his hands cupping the back of her neck. She reached out
a soft hand for him and for a moment, wild hope rose up in him, unstoppable as
the tide—but she only laid her hand against his forehead, careful as a nurse.
“You’re burning up. You should be resting—”
He
jerked away from her before he could stop himself. Her gray eyes widened. “Jem,
what it is it? You don’t want me to touch you?”
“Not
like that.” The words burst out before he could stop them. The night, Will, the
music, the yin fen, all had unlocked something in him—he barely knew his
own self, this stranger who spoke the truth and spoke it harshly.
“Like
what?” Her confusion was plain on her face. Her pulse beat at the side of her
throat; where her nightgown was open he could see the soft curve of her
collarbone. He dug his fingers into the palms of his hands. He could not hold
back the words any more. It was swim or drown.
“As
if you were a nurse and I were your patient,” he told her. “Do you think I do
not know that when you take my hand, it is only so that you can feel my pulse?
Do you think I do not know that when you look into my eyes it is only to see
how much of the drug I have taken? If I were another man, a normal man, I might
have hopes, presumptions even; I might—” I might want you. He broke off
before he said it. It could not be said. Words of love were one thing: words of
desire were dangerous as a rocky shore where a ship could founder. It was
hopeless, he knew it was hopeless, and yet—
She
shook her head. “This is the fever speaking, not you.”
Hopeless. The despair cut at him like a dull knife, and he said the
next words without thinking: “You can’t even believe I could want you. That I
am alive enough, healthy enough—”
“No—”
She caught at his arm, and it was like having five brands of fire laid across
his skin. Desire lanced through him like pain. “James, that isn’t at all what I
meant—”
He
laid his hand over hers, where she held his arm. He heard her indrawn
breath—sharp, surprised. But not horrified. She did not pull away. She did not
remove his hand. She let him hold her, and turn her, so that they stood face to
face, close enough to breathe each other in.
“Tessa,”
he said. She looked up at him. The fever pounded in him like blood, and he no
longer knew what was the desire and what was the drug, or if the one simply
enhanced the other, and it did not matter, it did not matter because he wanted
her, he had wanted her for so long. Her eyes were huge and gray, her pupils
dilated, and her lips were parted on a breath as if she were about to speak,
but before she could speak he kissed her.
The
kiss exploded in his head like fireworks on Guy Fawkes’ Day. He closed his eyes
on a whirl of colors and sensations almost to intense to bear: her lips were
soft and hot under his and he found himself running his fingers over her face,
the curves at her cheekbones, the hammering pulse in her throat, the tender
skin at the back of her neck. It took every ounce of control he had to touch
her gently, not to crush her against him, and when she raised her arms and
twined them around his neck, sighing into his mouth, he had to stifle a gasp
and for a moment hold himself very still or they would have been on the floor.
Her
own hands on him were gentle, but there was no mistaking their encouragement.
Her lips murmured against his, whispering his name, her body soft and strong in
his arms. He followed the arch of her back with his hands, feeling the curve of
it under her nightgown, and he could not stop himself then: he pulled her so
tightly against him that they both stumbled, and collapsed backward onto the
bed.
Tessa
sank into the cushions and he propped himself over her. Her hair had come out
of its plaits and tumbled dark and unbound over the pillows. A flush of blood
spread over her face and down to the neckline of her gown, staining her pale
skin. The hot press of body to body was dizzying, like nothing he had imagined,
more fierce and delicious than the most delirious music. He kissed her again
and again, each time harder, savoring the texture of her lips under his, the
taste of her mouth, until the intensity of it threatened to tip over from
pleasure into pain.
He
should stop, he knew. This had gone beyond honor, beyond any bounds of
propriety. He had imagined, sometimes, kissing her, carefully cupping her face
between his hands, but had never imagined this: that they would be wrapped so
tightly around each other that he could hardly tell where he left off and she
began. That she would kiss him and stroke him and run her fingers through his
hair. That when he hesitated with his fingers on the tie of her dresssing-gown,
the reasonable part of his brain commanding his rebellious and unwilling body
to stop, that she would neatly solve the dilemma by undoing the fastening
herself and lying back as the material fell away around her and she looked up
at him in only her thin nightgown.
Her
chin was raised, determination and candor in her eyes, and her lifted arms
welcomed him back to her, enfolding him, drawing him in. “Jem, my Jem,” she was
whispering, and he whispered back, losing his words against her mouth,
whispering what was true but what he hoped she wouldn’t understand. He
whispered in Chinese, worried that if he spoke in English, he would say
something profoundly stupid. Wo ai ni. Ni hen piao liang, Tessa. Zhe shi jie
shang, wo shi zui ai ni de.
But
he saw her eyes darken; he knew she recalled what he had said to her in the
carriage. “What does it mean?” she whispered.
He
stilled against her body. “It means that you are beautiful. I did not want to
tell you before. I did not want you to think I was taking liberties.”
She
reached up and touched his cheek. He could feel his heart beating against hers.
It felt as if it might beat out of his chest entirely.
“Take
them,” she whispered.
His
heart soared, and he gathered her up against him, something he had never done
before, but she did not seem to mind his clumsiness. Her hands were traveling
gently over him, learning his body. Her fingers stroked the bone of his hip,
the cup of his collar. They tangled in his shirt and it was up and over his
head, and he was leaning into her, shaking silvery hair out of his face. He saw
her eyes go wide and felt his insides tighten.
“I
know,” he said, looking down at himself—skin like papier-mache, ribs like
violin strings. “I am not—I mean, I look—”
“Beautiful,”
she said, and the word was a pronouncement. “You are beautiful, James
Carstairs.”
Breath
eased back into his lungs and they were kissing again, her hands warm and
smooth against his bare skin. She touched him with hesitant, curious strokes,
mapping a body that seemed to flower under her ministrations into something
perfect, healthy: no longer a fragile device of swiftly diminishing flesh
lashed to a framework of breakable bones. It was only now, that this was
happening, that he realized how sincerely he had believed it never would.
He
could feel the soft, nervous puffs of her breath against the sensitive skin of
his throat as he drew his hands up and over her body. He touched her as he
would touch his violin: it was how he knew to touch something that was precious
and loved. He had carried the violin in his arms from Shanghai to London and he
had carried Tessa, too, in his heart, for longer than he thought he remembered.
When had it happened? His hands touched her through the nightgown, the curve
and dip of her waist and hips like the curve of the Guarneri, but the violin
did not give gratifying gasps when he touched it, did not seek his mouth out
for kisses or have fascinating eyelids that fluttered shut just so when he
stroked the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees.
Maybe
it had been the day he’d run up the stairs to her and kissed her hand. Mizpah.
May the Lord watch between me and thee when we are parted. It was the first
time he had thought that there was something more to his regard than the
ordinary regard for a pretty girl he could not have; that it had the aspect to
it of something holy.
The
pearl buttons of her nightdress were smooth under his fingertips. Her body
bowed backward, her throat arched, as the material slipped aside, leaving her
shoulder bare. Her breath was quick in her throat, the curls of her brown hair
stuck to her flushed cheeks and forehead, the material of her dress crushed
between them. He was shaking himself as he bent to kiss her bare skin, skin
that most likely no one but herself and perhaps Sophie had ever seen, and her
hand came up to cup his head, threading through the hair at the back of his
neck . . .
There
was the sound of a crash. And a choking fog of yin fen filled the room.
It
was as if Jem had swallowed fire; he jerked back and away from Tessa with such
force that he nearly overbalanced them both. Tessa sat up as well, pulling the
front of her night-dress together, her expression suddenly self-conscious. All
Jem’s heat was gone; his skin was suddenly freezing—with shame, and with fear
for Tessa—he had never dreamed of her being this close to the poisonous stuff
that had destroyed his life. But the laquer box was broken: a thick layer of
shining powder lay across the floor; and even as Jem drew in a breath to tell
her she must go, that she must leave him if she were to be safe, he did not
think of the loss of the precious drug, or of the danger to him if it could not
be retrieved. He thought only:
No
more.
The
yin fen has taken so much from me: my family, the years of my life, the
strength in my body, the breath in my lungs. It will not take from me this too:
the most precious thing we are given by the Angel. The ability to love. I love
Tessa Gray.
And
I will make sure that she knows it.
