The palace quieted. The staff resolved the incident with professional efficiency.
And then there were two of us in the room, and the quality of it changed the moment the last council member departed — the sudden presence of a silence that had been deferred for rather a long time.
Damian was standing at the window. In the manner of a man who has been doing what was required all evening and has arrived, at last, at the end of the requirement.
"The council was efficient," he said, without turning.
"They generally are when the alternative is sleeping."
A pause.
"You handled it rather well," he said.
"I have been handling things rather well for some time," I said. "I have been waiting for someone to notice."
He turned from the window.
There was a quality to this particular moment — the empty room, the low fire, the palace entirely quiet around us — that was different from the usual quality of the rooms we occupied together. Those rooms had purpose. This one had merely been vacated, and what remained in it was simply us, without the architecture of professional occasion to organise our proximity.
"There are things I have not said," he said. "That I gave myself a considerable variety of reasons not to say."
"I am aware of the things," I said. "I have been aware of them for some time. I have been waiting to see what you intended to do about them."
"That is a very patient approach."
"I am a very patient person," I said, "when the situation warrants it. And I find I have been warranting it rather extensively of late."
He crossed the room — not all the way, simply to a shorter distance, the distance of a man who is no longer managing the geography of an office.
"I think," he said, "that I owe you rather a considerable apology."
"For which of the several available items?"
"All of them," he said. "Sequentially, if you prefer, or in aggregate if that is more convenient."
"I find," I said, "that I am less interested in the apology than in what follows it."
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
I am fairly practised, by this point in my life, at the art of not showing things in rooms. I had spent twenty-two years developing the capacity. I applied it now with the thoroughness of long habit, and found — for the first time in twenty-two years — that it was not quite equal to the occasion.
He was close enough that I could see the fire reflected in his eyes — dark and steady, the way he was always steady, except that behind the steadiness there was something that had, it appeared, been there for considerably longer than I had known and was no longer engaged in concealing itself. It looked at me directly, which was rather a great deal to have directed at one at close range.
His jaw was set in the manner of a man conducting a very significant internal negotiation.
He raised a hand — slowly, with the quality of a man who has been waiting for the appropriate moment and has concluded, with the finality of someone who is done waiting, that this is it — and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
His fingers remained at my jaw.
My pulse was conducting itself in a manner entirely unbefitting a woman of my station and entirely consistent with the present circumstances.
"I cannot dishonour my queen," he said.
Very quietly. The voice he used when the room had contracted to precisely two people. With the particular quality of a man invoking a principle he has held his entire professional life at the exact moment he has discovered that the principle and the situation have arrived at an impasse, and that the principle is losing.
His lips were approximately an inch from mine.
The inch was doing considerable work.
"You're allowed," I said.
Something broke loose in him — not gradually, not with the preliminary architecture of a man deliberating. Simply: the deliberation was already finished, and had been finished for rather longer than this particular evening, and the only remaining question had just been answered.
He kissed me.
Not tentatively. Not with any of the careful half-measures of a man uncertain of his welcome. With the complete conviction of someone who has been considering this for long enough to arrive very specifically at what he intended, and who is no longer engaged in the activity of not doing it.
My hand found the lapel of his coat before I had consciously authorised it to do so, which was its own variety of information about the state of my own deliberations. I had been, apparently, rather more decided than I had given myself credit for.
He kissed me again — not as the first time, which had been the collapse of a very long-standing arrangement, but with a different quality entirely now. Deliberate. Unhurried. The manner of a man who has considerably more intention than urgency and intends to take his time about all of it.
I had, I will confess, no objection whatsoever to this approach.
I had imagined, on various occasions I had not formally acknowledged as such, what this would be like. In the way one imagines things one has decided not to want — with studied inattention, in moments when the usual vigilance had lapsed.
The imagination, as it transpired, had been somewhat conservative in its projections.
He was thorough, which surprised me not at all, because thoroughness was simply how he approached everything. The security assessments. The correspondence. The particular quality of attention he gave to whatever was in front of him. He had given me that quality of attention at various junctures over the preceding year, in the professional capacity, and I had found it rather difficult to sustain.
This configuration was considerably less sustainable.
"You have no idea," he said, at some point, his voice low and considerably less composed than its usual operating register, "how long I have wanted this."
"Show me," I said.
He did.
He showed me with the hands of a man who has been keeping careful distance from something for rather a long time and has, at last, stopped. His coat fell away. The fire threw shadows without comment, which I found I rather appreciated.
I had been, as a general rule, rather too composed for rather too long.
His mouth was at my jaw. Then my throat. With the thoroughness I had catalogued as characteristic — the quality of attention that left no ambiguity about what was receiving it. In professional contexts I had found this quality rather difficult to manage. In the present context it was rather more than difficult.
"You are," he said, against my skin, "considerably more composed than the occasion warrants."
"I am composing myself," I said. "It requires effort."
"Allow me," he said, "to assist."
He was, it transpired, effective at this.
The effort of composure ceased at some point during the subsequent proceedings, at which point I stopped cataloguing anything in particular and simply allowed the occasion to be what it was — which was considerably more than I had, across all the occasions on which I had cautiously projected it, projected.
"You are trembling," he said, at one point.
"I am doing no such thing," I said, which was a demonstrable falsehood, and he knew it was a demonstrable falsehood, and he appeared to find this entirely satisfying.
He did not rush — he had been waiting for considerably longer than this particular evening, and appeared to be of the view that the occasion merited a proportionate investment of time.
I had no objection to this view whatsoever.
At some point, the fire burned considerably lower. The city maintained its midnight business. The palace, with characteristic institutional indifference, continued to exist around us without particular reference to what was occurring within it.
The fire burned low. The city outside maintained its profound indifference. The palace conducted its midnight business entirely without reference to what was occurring in a working room off the east corridor.
Much later, he looked at me in the low firelight with an expression I had not previously seen on his face.
"You are very quiet," he said.
"I am thinking," I said.
"About what?"
"About the fact that I have spent the better part of a year arriving, by a rather circuitous route, at this particular hour, and find that the destination is considerably better than the alternative outcomes I had contemplated during the journey."
A pause. Then, with the quality of amusement that was, without question, my favourite of all his expressions: "That is a very thorough compliment."
"I am," I said, "a thorough person."
"I have noticed," he said, and kissed me again.