A Fiery Dalliance

XXV

"Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone." Fred Rogers

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XXV.

Joe had made approximately fourteen million mistakes in his life and approaching Perrie in the private corridor that housed the Beresfords bedroom was mistake number fourteen million and one. He did not know what had possessed him to seek her out here instead of waiting for a private moment with her during supper that evening, or chancing upon her in the library.

Of course, the library was an unlikely location seeing as Perrie's pastimes often involved plotting his death rather than reading.

But his legs had taken him here while his mind had been in pieces elsewhere, and he had happened upon her staring up at a painting on the wall.

Joe recalled what had been going through his mind when Perrie had walked into the ballroom the night before, dressed up as she was. She had been beautiful, as beautiful as he had ever seen her ... but she hadn't been Perrie.

Perrie stood wearing a white cotton nightgown with a sturdy brown riding coat draped around her shoulders, an ensemble that would have looked utterly ridiculous on anyone else, but on Perrie, Joe seemed to understand it. Her hair was loose and curly, reaching her hips in glorious, untameable dark waves.

Joe called out her name without hesitation, his tongue taking control before his mind could think better of it. She hadn't been looking at him, and he'd needed to see her, to look into her eyes and see what she was thinking. What he had not counted on, however, was frightening her to death.

Perrie jumped so violently that she tripped over her own feet and fell down onto the rug, and it took a few moments for her head to turn around towards him.

Through a curtain of her dark hair, Joe saw her bright blue eyes as wide as they had ever been. Her lips parted as Joe anxiously searched her face for her every thought. He had been so desperately cruel to her, callously so, and Joe felt more terrified by the minute at the thought of Perrie truly hating him.

The fear that he felt at Perrie's thoughts of him began to cripple him. Joe felt it paralysing him limb by limb. He was waiting for her to curse him, to cast him out, to tell him that she wished that he had never been born. Perrie would know that he was exactly like his father and she would never want to see him again. She would never speak to him. She would never fight with him. She would never again let him look upon her.

Perrie had seen Joe's true self, and it had no doubt disgusted her.

With Joe frozen to the spot, it was Perrie who eventually climbed to her feet and approached him, taking very careful steps, as though she thought he was a frightened fawn in the forest.

And then she greeted him. She had called him Mr Parish. Not Joe. Joe's demons momentarily asked if she knew it was him, but Joe couldn't question it. Perrie knew. She was so close to him now that he could see every fleck of violet in her eyes. Just as he was seeing into her, she was seeing all of him. Joe struggled to contain the parts of himself that he didn't want Perrie to see.

Joe knew they he needed to apologise to her, and yet the words that bubbled to his lips were startlingly, "I'm deaf."

Perrie did not recoil from him. She did not admonish him. She did not demand to know the reason for his behaviour the night before. She did not insist upon an immediately apology despite deserving one. A look of tenderness filled Perrie's face, and it made Joe feel all the more wretched and wicked for what he was capable of.