Out with Lanterns by Hillary Bowen

Author:Hillary Bowen [Bowen, Hillary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rabbit Heart Books
Published: 2025-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Silas still felt punch-drunk from their kiss, the taste of Ophelia heady and cool on his tongue, but he forced himself to think about what she had asked. Was marriage the only way to live as a couple? Of course, it wasn’t literally the only way. He knew that, knew there were men and women who lived outside the bounds of what society gave its assent to, knew there were spinster friends who cared for each other their whole lives, bachelors who shared rooms with their lifelong friends. But he didn’t “know” any of those couples, wasn’t sure they would be welcomed at respectable tables or in the circles of people he had encountered. Don’t be an arse. Your circle of experience is laughably small, and just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Still, the thought was a barb in his chest; he feared an arrangement without marriage would push Ophelia to the very margins of society, and he couldn’t imagine her there. She belonged in the very centre of things, not society per se, neither of them had any use for that, but amongst friends, able to move freely, without worrying about judgement. He wanted her to have everything she wanted, but he wasn’t sure he could give her this.

“I don’t know, Fee,” he said at last, slipping unthinkingly into the nickname. “Suppose you’ve come across a great deal of new thinking since you left Wood Grange, but I’m not sure I’m such a modern man, as it were.”

“I think at heart you are, Silas. Perhaps your habits of mind need time to catch up with your instincts.” She gathered her gaiters, stockings, and boots into her arms and straightened once more. “I’m sorry I sprang all this on you. It’s a lot, I know . . . I think I’m more than a little wrung out from last night. Everything feels a little intense at the moment.”

Silas nodded, thinking that that wasn’t all that had inspired the conversation, the brand of her lips on his still as present as the conflict between them. It cut him to the core to say it, but he wanted her to know that he held her under no obligation or assumption. She was free to kiss him and have nothing come of it, reputation or relationship be damned. He didn’t want that, of course. He realized as the words hung between them that he wanted to kiss her again and again, to run his hands over her body, to have hers hot on his own skin. To explore what was so tenuously growing between them, to hold on to this new thing with both hands. Instead, he schooled his face into neutrality and tried his best to believe the words he said aloud. “If this conversation has made you feel uncomfortable about our kiss, you need think no more of it, Ophelia. It will stay between us and need change nothing. You have my word.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said, hugging her corset to her chest, a streak of colour rising up her neck.

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