The ensuing silence was deafening. Save for the muted cadence of Finvarra's heartbeats, the world fell quiet around Leanna, as if having gasped, stunned by her illicit embrace. The world wasn't the only one frozen at her boldness, however. Though Finvarra's pulse beat evenly beneath his damp linen shirt, his chest failed to rise and fall with the regular rhythm of life.

Leanna lifted her head from his chest a touch, uncertainty rusting her movements. Aware of having held Finvarra for longer than what was proper or right, she braved raising her eyes and looked at him. Bound by some mirroring force of concern and hesitation, Finvarra's face turned down in equal measure. Blond strands tumbled over his shoulders, veiling their stares behind curtains of golden hair at either side. He said nothing. He didn't even breathe. Finvarra only stood rigid, cold and darkness enveloping them in the privacy of that space.

There was no anger in his stare. But the look in those soft blue eyes, that hinted more toward the quiet sadness of periwinkle, was equally troubling. It was a cold look. Grave. Cautionary.

Intending to dissect this apprehension, Leanna allowed herself to stare openly at Finvarra. Yet, as if her slow and warm breaths had somehow melted the iciness of Finvarra's face, his sculpted features were not so threatening from up close. On the contrary, in this intimate shadow, the soft planes were dangerously inviting, a porcelain lure that could not be ignored.

Leanna did not disregard it. She slid her gaze along him, studying him, learning him, memorizing the golden rays that shot out from his tiny black irises, like bolts of lightning scratching the wave-roughened surface of stormy blue oceans. She noticed that though his skin had yet to be touched by time, stands of gray kissed his hair. It was here Leanna grew alarmingly aware that the man she held was just that, a man.

She shivered. Being close to a man was a foreign language, but holding a man? That was unchartered land. The mere thought set ablaze a bonfire within Leanna, awakening a strange sensation that twisted the darkest depths of her stomach.

Spellbound by this curious flame, Leanna raised a trembling hand from Finvarra's chest, wishing to discover the secrets of this place. What did this icy man feel like? Would he melt under her human touch? Would her hand travel through him like a dream? Her mother had said he was magical. Would he vanish under her fingers like an illusion?

Leanna exhaled. Her fingers drew closer. Closer still—

A glacial hand clutched her wrist. Leanna sucked in a harsh breath. The spell shattered, and Leanna plummeted to her senses. Realizing where she stood and what she meant to do, shame scalded her.

Finvarra shook his head slowly, lowering her trembling hand in like spaces. Holding it between them, he gazed down to Leanna's other hand enfolded against the top slope of his vest.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he murmured, darkly and cold, conflicting to the look of sorrow clouding his eyes—eyes that he did not lift to Leanna.

The frigidness of Finvarra's words brushed against Leanna's lips and stole its way into her body, extinguishing this foreign flame within her. Only a nauseating pit remained where she heard the reprimands of her mind in the lingering smoke. Fool, it hissed. You're nothing but a fool...

The aching reality stole Leanna's breath. She had indeed made a complete and utter fool of herself.

Still unable to will her body to move away, Leanna shifted all her weight—and that of her shame—onto the heels of her feet. Tipping the scales toward humiliation rather than want, she stumbled back and away from Finvarra.

"Yes, of course," she breathed, and from deep in her embarrassment found a few more words. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I never should have..." Her voice faltered. Her steps did not. Leanna shifted back, and a little more until knocking against her vanity table.

Finvarra slid his troubled gaze toward the window and trailed the outline of the landscape searchingly. "It's been done and cannot be undone. We can only hope that age has long blinded the trees."

Leanna gathered only one thing from his cryptic words: Machina. Fear rattled within her. She followed his gaze to the trees, but could hardly see through the reprehensible tears in her eyes. Ashamed, Leanna whirled, resting trembling hands on the table top. What one earth had she been thinking? What consequences did her foolishness just bring? She waited in indignity for a moment, scolding her folly before lifting her eyes to the mirror.

"I apologize. You're right. I never should have done that," Leanna spoke to Finvarra's somber reflection turned to the horizon. "I fear I've put you in an uncomfortable position and cannot imagine how lowly you think of me—lower than before, and rightfully so. Heaven knows I've been raised better than that. I just—I was wrong, and...." Leanna trailed off, pained when Finvarra did not even look at her. He must have thought her a wanton, a loose woman with little morals, she thought dreadfully. She lowered her eyes to the reflection of her hands wringing at her core and exhaled, defeated. "It's been a very trying morning..."

"Trying for us both," Finvarra revealed quietly after an eternal silence. "But it must never happen again, for both of our sakes."

Leanna looked up. Finvarra met her stare finally and inclined his head, an understanding gesture that told Leanna they would speak of her embrace no more. Leanna drew a shaking breath and nodded.

The matter now closed, Finvarra severed their stare and moved away, his billowing black cape the last to vanish from the mirror. Footfalls tapped lightly as he walked along the room. Somber and quiet, his expressionless face failed to lead onto what he thought. Leanna crossed her arms over her chest feeling exposed as he discovered her room, her private space with bare hands. His long fingers ran lightly along the tables and the vases with his normal coolness, but a strange familiarity tainted how he felt the room.

Finvarra stopped short where just beyond the reach of sunlight was Leanna's dollhouse in the corner of her room. Unmoving, Finvarra slid his narrowed gaze along every inch of the two story Victorian. Drawn in by this wooden piece of Leanna's past, he stepped into the belonging shadows.

Finvarra tilted his head and smoothed his hand along the cupola and down onto the wooden roof from fingertip to palm; as if it were the materialization of something he'd dreamt of a million times over. Only this wasn't a dream.

"I... I got it as a present when I was eleven," Leanna revealed, in attempts to plow through her earlier embarrassment. "My illness took a turn for the worse, and it was decided that most of my days would be spent here." Leanna lifted her arms weakly at her sides, gesturing to the room. She let her hands fall at her sides with a soft pat. Twining her fingers into the folds of her skirt, she dared a few steps closer, joining a distant Finvarra in the shades. Hesitantly, Leanna raised a hand to the roof. She trailed the groves of the slates with a sad smile. "I'm much too old for it now, but my mother had it made especially for me. We would play for hours at a time. I haven't had the heart to get rid of it."

That was partly true. The dollhouse had been a thing of little girls with dreams of a husband and children. When younger, Leanna too had such ignorant dreams of a happy future. She grew older and reality diluted those dreams to mere delusions that trickled into the ever-growing fissures of her broken heart. Leanna still felt those dreams haunting through the windows. She lowered her head and her hand away from the tomb of dead wishes.

Finvarra opened one of the second floor windows. His brows came together slowly as if trying to recall some distant direction, only too much time had passed for him to properly remember. With a light shake of his head, he closed the window and stepped aside to open the other. Finvarra slid his hand inside. A smile touched the corner of his mouth.

Leanna's brow came together, and suspicion stiffened her bones. Surely it couldn't be that...

A click resounded and beneath the window on the right side of the house, a small compartment opened. Leanna's breathing hitched. It was where she kept her journal! Oh, but it wasn't the diary that was alarming. She hadn't written in it for years, no longer having fantasies of which to write about.

"How...how did you know it was there?" Leanna gasped, wide-eyed. "N-no one would have ever known that button was there. How on earth did you—"

"Magic," Finvarra said ambiguously. But then as if having pieced together a puzzle in his mind, his grin fell. He straightened up slowly, all curiosity replaced with palpable dread.

Leanna pressed on. "B-but how—

"Have you gathered everything you need? We leave at once," Finvarra snipped, his usual coldness returning. He closed the window and stepped away from the dollhouse, never answering Leanna's question. With a lingering last look at the house, he turned to Leanna. When he cocked an eyebrow, Leanna realized she hadn't yet answered his question either.

Hastily, Leanna rushed to her wardrobe where she'd hidden her carpetbag. Snapping it open, she thanked the heavens she'd at least been wise enough to find the oriental travelling purse before heading down to breakfast. Leanna set it on her bed and walked quickly to her dresser. She cast a fleeting glance over her shoulder at Finvarra who aimlessly strolled around her room. His fascination was never-ending, as was Leanna's confusion.

At her vanity, Leanna grabbed her hairbrush, her curling papers--

Lydia's pearls.

Seeing the stringed stones there burned Leanna's eyes, but it was the note beside them, held down by a strange crab brooch that gave her pause.

Edith said she found this in Mama's room this morning, right on her dresser. Maybe it is a sign that Mama would like you to wear it. She must know how special this day is for all of us.

You will look lovely.

Lydia

Leanna crumbled the note slowly, fighting against the warring emotions threatening to spill from her eyes. She set down the crumpled parchment beside the pearls and picked up the brooch. The jet grey crab with black rhinestone eyes was a peculiar thing, and rather large too. Made of metal, it was cold as if having been outside all night. Stranger still, it ticked rhythmically inside like a clock. Leanna turned it around looking for any crevice where she might be able to open it, but there was none. She might have investigated further had a squeak not robbed her attention.

With a finger, Finvarra opened the doors to Leanna's wardrobe. Various dresses, mostly blacks, maroons and grays, hung from end to end. Finvarra wrinkled his nose. He ran a finger slowly along a gray dress. "You will have to see Minerva right away. She is our seamstress, and she'd spear me right through if I let you wear any of these on the fairgrounds." He lowered his hand and shook his head. "I think you'll depress us all with these colors. New gowns must be made."

"I can't let you do that," Leanna said, stuffing the brooch and hairbrush into the carpetbag. She stalked to the wardrobe and stood before the open doors, guarding the poor dresses against Finvarra's critical eye. "These dresses are mine and they're in perfect condition. Save your pity. I don't need it, and I don't need new dresses either."

Finvarra stared at her levelly for a moment. He chuckled dryly then, a rumbling sort of thunder. "Out of all of my intentions, Miss Weston, pity is not one of them. Surely you can't expect me to allow you to walk around my circus looking like Death. Trust me, it isn't empathy. On the contrary, think of it more as a favor."

Leanna scowled. He truly was insufferable! In the face of her glare, Finvarra abandoned Leanna by the wardrobe with an echoing laugh that trailed behind him. Finvarra took two steps and stopped, all laughter dead. As if having heard some distant song riding in on the breeze, he turned his ear to the air. He said over his shoulder, "What have you told your family about why you are leaving?"

Leanna's anger extinguished with a defeated sigh. She turned back to her dresses and plucked a few from their hangers irritably. "Nothing as of yet. I told them I was leaving, but never said where. It matters none. They don't believe me anyway. Why should they? Since you forbid me to tell them the truth, I said nothing at all."

Finvarra hummed and turned his attention back to the door. "Then how exactly will you explain there being a man in your bedroom?"

Leanna set the dresses down on her bed. She held one up before her to fold, only to lower it, confused. "Explain a man in my bedroom?"

In their quiet, approaching footsteps resounded in the hall. The deep creaking could only be the strain of Mr. Weston's weight on the floor. Leanna gasped. "It's Papa! And there's a man in my room!"

Leanna tossed aside the black dress and bolted to the door, intent on locking it. As if angry with her for having moved away from Finvarra, Leanna's skirts tangled in her boots and she fell forward. She caught herself on the mantle of her reading table, but the lace fabric offered her no support. She dragged it down with her and the glass vase atop it as well.

A crash sparkled through the silence like a chime in a spring breeze. Shards of broken glass glistened in front of Leanna, casting spectrums of color against the dark wood floor. Leanna groaned, but lithely pushed up to standing. She had to lock that door! It would be the end if she didn't. Finvarra would take her heart and her father's as well. Heavens, he'd probably take Lydia's and Sarah's for good measure, and Edith's too, just because he looked like the spiteful type.

However, much too slow, Leanna could only watch her door burst open just as a gust of wind behind her scattered the splinters of glass about her floor.

"Leanna!" a flushed Mr. Weston started, concern striking his voice first. He rushed forward, crunching glass underfoot and reached for Leanna to ascertain her safety. Fearful blue eyes flitted to the glass on the ground, to the carpet bag on the bed, to the emptied vanity table, to the opened window...

Piecing together the shattered vase of clues, Mr. Weston's eyes widened. "You were leaving!"

Relieved that Finvarra had somehow gone and emboldened by her fury, Leanna tipped her chin higher. "What does it matter to you?" she said strained, her chest still hurting from the fall. "You were getting rid of me anyway. I was just doing you the favor of not having to pay a dowry."

Her father sputtered the beginning fragments of words—many phrases not meant to be spoken in the presence of a lady. "Don't get cross with me, child. Dr. Luther is a good man with a great profession. He agreed to marry you and I am glad of it!"

Leanna winced as one word cut her deep. "Agreed, Papa?" Leanna's voice broke, so did her soul. The shame was too much to bear. Not even Dr. Luther would have her willingly. "So not even my dowry was enough to unload this sickly burden? And how much more did you offer him exactly?"

Mr. Weston's eyes widened a slight, realizing his careless choice of words. He sighed, deflated. "Poppet, please. I did it for you. You yourself said no man paid mind to you, yet now a man—a good man—does, and you refuse him! Who better to look after you than a doctor, Leanna? All we want is to help. Look beyond your pride. Do not punish us all with guilt until you've thought this through."

"Pride? Punished?" Leanna cried archly. She trembled now, her face an inferno.

Mr. Weston stepped closer, his brows gathered in sincere worry. "Leanna, please calm down. Your heart--"

"No! I won't stop!" Leanna jerked back. "How dare you speak to me of pride and punishment? What pride could I possibly have when my own family is encumbered by my existence? Who is the one being punished by being married off to a man she doesn't love and hardly likes? Who is the one being punished, being made to live with this heart?"

Mr. Weston gripped her shoulders faster than Leanna could move away, almost as if he feared she was dying and meant to keep her soul within her body. "I am only trying to do what's best for all of you—"

Leanna snatched herself away. "Then let me go! If I am to die a lonely spinster, then so be it. But I will be free—as free of this life as you will be free of me. Don't tear me from one prison, only to damn me to another," Leanna cried in a weak whisper, tempted to approach him, to hold on to those wide lapels and beg. "Let me go far from here, where I won't be a burden to you or my sisters anymore."

Mr. Weston was quiet. It was a glum, contemplative silence that Leanna did not like. The calm before a storm was never favorable.

Mr. Weston turned away from Leanna. His footfalls against the floor mounted the tension of the approaching storm, the way distant thunder thickens the air. Just as Finvarra had done before, Mr. Weston stopped before the white dollhouse. He reached to touch it, but wavered and his hand fell away.

"You damned Dr. Luther," he said, erroneously. "But it is me you should be damning. This is my fault—all of it." He shook his head solemnly, deep shame darkening his stare. "I gave her the perfect house and played the part of the perfect husband. But the truth was that I left her here with two small girls while I paraded London like a bachelor. She cried so much when she found out the truth of all I'd done."

He looked back to the dollhouse, growing as pale as its four outer walls. "The perfect marriage she thought we had, our perfect home ruined because of my indiscretions, because of my selfishness. I broke her heart, Leanna. It was her undoing and having been pregnant with you..." He paused, but did not look at Leanna, rather at the house. It was in fact a crypt of broken dreams, Leanna thought sadly. Her mother's dreams of a perfect home—a perfect marriage were buried there, along with Leanna's own.

Leanna shifted back against the door, speechless against his confession. She'd been right about the quiet before the storm, and this tempest rocked the foundations of her soul. She could only hold on the fading shores of her strength as he said, "She already suffered from low spirits all her life, and what I did only broke her heart. I ruined your mother's heart, and her sorrow somehow bled into you, breaking yours all the same." He shook his head solemnly. "Dr. Luther says it's isn't possible, but I feel it in my soul. It took some time to manifest within you, but your bouts of depression are just like hers, your sadness, your nightmares... I am the one to blame for all of this." He lifted his hand to the house again—

"Don't you dare touch it," Leanna hissed passionately, moving hastily before it. He would not desecrate it.

Pain touched Mr. Weston's eyes. His fingers curled to a loose fist that fell to his side, helpless. "I accept what I've done and I am trying to do right by you—to repair this as best I can. My past has ruined your life. Will you not let me fix what remains of it? I may not have been the best father, but you are my daughter and I..." he faltered, straining through the obvious barriers of manly pride that glinted in his eyes as unshed tears. Leanna's bit her quavering lip, pained at the sight of her father's rosy nose and damp lashes. Oh how much easier it would have been to go on thinking she burdened him.

"I only want what is best for you, Leanna," he said, crestfallen. "You may not forgive my ways as a man, but understand my ways as your father. How could I claim to be your father and let you go, knowing of your fate? If you leave, you will perish. You know this."

Leanna shook her head vehemently, but Mr. Weston would have none of it. "You are sick, Leanna! We cannot keep pretending that you will get better. If there are any chances at you improving, it will be by Dr. Luther's side! You may not forgive me for forcing you into this marriage, but one day you will thank me for keeping you from such folly—"

"Leave..."Leanna hissed in barely a whisper, destroying all conversation. She turned away from him, knowing that above all the guilt, it was love that had blinded her father. It was this love that would dissuade all understanding.

Mr. Weston sucked in a breath with which to speak. He said nothing.

An aching silence laced their pause.

Wordless, he walked to the door. The door groaned and he stopped, but never turned. "We will be having tea shortly, and Dr. Luther will be joining us where you will accept his proposal. I'm sorry," was all he said.

The door closed gently behind him.

A breeze caressed Leanna's back, but this time she did not face it. Unable to withstand any more rejection, she abandoned the dollhouse and walked to the closed bedroom door as if meaning to walk right through it. Lifting a trembling palm to the cool wood, she leaned her forehead against it.

"Goodbye, Papa," she whispered, shedding secret tears in as much privacy as she could get between a closed door and the man behind her.

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Thank you for reading! I do appreciate every comment and vote, so please feel free to share your thoughts. Your support is always appreciated (Finvarra appreciates it as well lol)