VII) Ignatius and Carol: Ask Me Tomorrow

Ignatius planned their first date so carefully that Carol almost failed to recognize it.

There was an exhibition at the college. He had obtained the hours, checked the weather, reserved a table afterward, and discovered which gate would be least crowded when they returned. He presented the arrangement while they were walking through Greykeep’s garden, where Carol had stopped to examine a pear that something had bitten and abandoned.

“We could go on Thursday,” he concluded.

She turned the pear in her fingers.

“We?”

“You and me.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody else.”

She looked up.

Ignatius became very interested in the tree.

They had known each other almost all their lives. There were games she could remember beginning before he knew all the words required to argue about them. She knew the way he fell silent when considering a difficult question, the particular frown that meant he had found an error in something he had written himself, and how much he disliked being praised for an answer that had come too easily.

She had never seen him look at a pear tree quite like that.

“Ignatius.”

“Yes?”

“Are you asking me on a date?”

His gaze returned to hers.

“I had hoped to make it obvious without making it awkward.”

“How is that going?”

He considered.

“Poorly.”

Carol laughed. He smiled then, a little ruefully, and she felt the answering warmth that had been making ordinary afternoons complicated for several months.

They were adults now. Nobody needed to arrange their lessons or remind them to eat before leaving the castle. Yet here he stood, having faced council members twice his age with calm insistence, undone by a question she had very much wanted him to ask.

She set the pear on the garden wall.

“I would like to go on a date with you.”

“Thursday?”

“You have made a strong case for Thursday.”

The exhibition contained maps, clocks, and a mechanical bird that flapped its wings for half a minute before falling over.

Carol loved the bird.

Ignatius spent ten minutes listening to its maker explain the difficulty of balance. When he turned to share something with her, he found her watching his face instead.

“What?”

“You’re having a good time.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You look amused.”

“I like you when you forget to be careful about liking things.”

He looked startled, then pleased, then a little shy in a way that made her want to touch his cheek.

She did.

The inventor turned away with a tact neither of them expected from a man who had just spent ten minutes describing the disadvantages of a brass pelvis.

At supper, Ignatius admitted that he had nearly chosen a more fashionable place.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Their menu didn’t include anything I thought you’d want.”

“What did it include?”

He named several dishes with increasing uncertainty.

Carol leaned across the table.

“Were there potatoes?”

“In a cloud.”

She stared at him.

“We have enough magic in our family. I want potatoes on a plate.”

He laughed, and the final stiffness left the evening.

They talked until the server began moving empty tables around them. Ignatius told her about a committee that had managed to postpone a decision while agreeing unanimously that postponement was unacceptable. Carol told him about a book whose heroine had spent six chapters failing to recognize a man because he had changed his hat.

He walked her home after dark.

At the garden steps, neither moved toward the door.

“I enjoyed that,” she said.

“So did I.”

“Even the potatoes.”

“I chose them carefully.”

She caught his hand before he could hide it behind his back.

They stood that way for a moment, smiling like people who had discovered something small and wanted to give it time to become large.

Then Carol kissed him.

Ignatius drew a quick breath when she stepped back.

“Was that all right?” she asked.

“I may require further evidence before reaching a conclusion.”

She laughed against his mouth the second time.

Their next date was his idea again, but its failure belonged equally to both of them.

They hired a little boat, packed lunch, and took it onto the lake in a wind that seemed harmless from shore. Ignatius knew how to row. Carol knew how to tell him which direction would lead toward the island where they intended to eat.

Neither had considered that knowing those things separately might not be sufficient.

“Left,” Carol said.

“My left?”

“There are only two of us.”

“Facing different directions.”

“The island, Ignatius. Go toward the island.”

They went toward some reeds.

There followed a discussion about whether divine power ought to be used to rescue lunch from poor seamanship. Carol voted yes after the basket acquired water. Ignatius objected on the grounds that Loki would hear about it.

“Loki will invent something worse if we give him nothing.”

They reached the island damp and hungry, with the bread wrapped in his coat. Carol spread the coat on the grass and sat down while Ignatius secured the boat to a tree with a knot so elaborate she suspected he was punishing the rope.

“Come here.”

He sat beside her.

She took his hand.

For a long while they watched small waves touch the pebbles.

“I thought I would be better at this,” he said.

“Rowing?”

“Taking you somewhere.”

She turned toward him.

“You did take me somewhere.”

“Eventually.”

“And now I get to kiss you on an island. The delay may have improved the anticipation.”

His smile came slowly.

“You could have told me that before I fought the rope.”

“You looked busy.”

She leaned against him. His arm settled around her shoulders, warm and welcome. The afternoon opened ahead of them with no duties in it.

Carol had known power since childhood. She had known people looking at her hands before looking into her face. She treasured how little Ignatius seemed to need from hers just then beyond having one resting inside his.

They went home late.

Loki heard about the boat anyway.

After that came evenings at the theater, walks through markets, and suppers made from whatever remained in a kitchen willing to tolerate them. Carol introduced Ignatius to a bookseller who permitted customers to disagree aloud with the books. Ignatius showed her a little bridge where the water ran clear enough to see fish holding their place against the current.

One date consisted entirely of waiting for a rainstorm to end beneath a cooper’s awning. They bought hot chestnuts from a boy passing with a covered brazier, burned their fingers, and talked about places they wanted to visit.

“Without an official party,” Carol said.

“Agreed.”

“Or a program.”

He glanced at her.

“A small program?”

“A map.”

“With notes?”

She considered his hopeful face.

“Some notes.”

He kissed her knuckles as though she had made a magnificent concession.

They were happy.

That was why the first assumption hurt.

It happened during supper at Concordia. A visiting official, pleased with the conversation and perhaps with the wine, began explaining the advantages of adjoining properties near the palace. One would be suitable, he said, when Ignatius established his household.

He glanced at Carol and smiled.

“Naturally, there will need to be arrangements appropriate to her position.”

Carol set down her spoon.

Ignatius, who had been considering the buildings rather than the glance, said, “There would be enough space.”

He felt the change beside him a heartbeat later.

When he turned, she was reaching for her cup.

She remained pleasant for the rest of supper. That troubled him more than open displeasure would have done. She asked questions. She smiled when someone said something funny. She did not take his hand when they left the room.

In the passage, he stopped.

“Carol.”

She turned.

“Was it what he said?”

“Partly.”

“I wasn’t agreeing to anything.”

“I know you weren’t agreeing to a house.”

He heard the rest at last.

“I should have asked what he meant.”

She looked tired suddenly.

“He meant marriage.”

Ignatius said nothing.

That was answer enough to something she had been afraid to ask.

“And you’ve thought about it,” she said.

“Yes.”

The word was quiet. He would not lie to make the passage easier to stand in.

Carol nodded.

“We should talk.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow. I want to know how to say it.”

He wanted to ask whether there was something wrong between them. The question pressed hard against his teeth.

Then she reached for his hand herself.

“I love you,” she said.

It was the first time either had spoken it plainly.

Ignatius forgot the question.

“I love you too.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then kissed him gently.

“Please remember that when we talk.”

They met beside the lake.

On solid ground, Carol specified in her note.

Ignatius brought lunch, a blanket, and no prepared answer. The last had taken him most of the morning.

She was waiting beneath a tree. He sat beside her, near enough to be company, leaving her room to begin.

Carol watched a boat cross the far water.

“I am happy with you.”

“So am I.”

“And I don't want to marry.”

He had expected it. Expecting did not prevent the small, sharp ache when she said it.

She saw that too.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for telling me.”

“I know. I’m sorry it hurts.”

He looked down at his hands, then back at her.

“Tell me.”

She drew breath.

“Garrick and I were children when we began holding the gods. All that power. All those people others thought beyond anyone’s reach. I’ve held all the gods, Ignatius. Since we were little.”

He waited.

She had spoken of her abilities before. They had all grown up among powers that would have made ordinary people stop halfway through a sentence. But there was a difference between hearing what someone could do and hearing what it had taught them.

“When you can hold someone,” Carol continued, “it becomes very important to understand what you’re doing. Whether they can move. Whether they can refuse. Whether you’ve decided that because your hands are gentle, they needn’t mind being in them.”

Her fingers curled in the grass.

“I don’t ever want to be held. Not even by you.”

Ignatius’s face changed.

She turned fully toward him.

“You haven’t hurt me. You haven’t tried to make me smaller. I need you to hear that.”

“I hear it.”

“And I’m not afraid of your arms.”

She reached for his hand and drew it into her lap.

“I love your arms. I like falling asleep against you. I want to kiss you in places where it makes the attendants cough and look at the ceiling.”

Despite himself, he smiled.

Carol’s smile answered, then faded into seriousness again.

“But I don't want one answer I give today to become the answer everyone assumes for the rest of my life. I don’t want to become your wife and have people look at me as though a question has been settled. As though I have been placed somewhere.”

The wind moved over the water. Ignatius watched it darken the surface in patches.

“You think marriage would feel like that to you.”

“Yes. To me.”

She squeezed his hand.

“I love watching our parents together. I know what Garrick and Seraphina want. I want them to have every part of it. But when I imagine those words being said over me, something inside me draws back.”

He looked at her again.

“Even if I promised you could always leave?”

Carol took time before answering.

“I know I could. I have never needed a man’s permission to leave a room.”

There was no anger in it. The plainness made him listen harder.

“I don’t want the promise to begin with holding and then explain that I am allowed to get free. I want us to begin each day with a question.”

She swallowed.

“Ask me. Every day. Ask if I want to be with you. Let me answer because I’m here, because I love you, because I want this life with you that morning. Not because I said something once, in beautiful clothes, while everyone watched.”

Ignatius breathed out slowly.

Carol watched him with an openness that hurt to see. She had brought him something vulnerable, though she had dressed it in clear words and steady hands.

“I don’t mean make me prove my love,” she added. “I don’t want us keeping count, or waking frightened that the other will suddenly disappear. I want you to know I chose you yesterday. I want you to trust that. And I want the chance to choose you again.”

He turned her hand over in his.

For years, he had watched his parents reach for one another in the quiet spaces between duties. Marriage belonged to those memories as naturally as their names did. When he imagined a happy future, he had used the shape of the happy home he knew.

He had imagined Carol inside it.

He had not asked what shape she saw.

“I thought wanting to marry you would tell you how serious I was,” he said.

“I know.”

“It wasn’t about the title.”

“I know that too.”

“I wanted a life. Breakfast. Journeys. Learning what you look like when you’ve been reading too late and blame the sun for coming up.”

“The sun is very inconsiderate.”

He laughed softly, then went quiet.

“Those are still things you want?”

“Yes.”

“With me?”

Her eyes filled.

“Yes, Ignatius. With you.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth.

For a moment, he could not speak. The ache had not vanished entirely. Something he had pictured was changing, and he needed to let it change without making her responsible for persuading him that nothing had been lost.

She gave him that time.

At last he said, “I can ask you every day.”

Carol’s fingers tightened around his.

“Because you want to?”

“Because I want to know your answer. And because I don’t want a wedding badly enough to ask you to live inside something that feels wrong to you.”

He looked directly at her.

“I’m not agreeing while I wait for you to change your mind.”

Her breath caught.

“Thank you.”

“There is something I want in return.”

She waited.

“Ask me too.”

Carol smiled through the tears she had finally stopped trying to hide.

“Every day?”

“I would hate to discover you considered me settled.”

She laughed, leaned forward, and kissed him with both hands against his face.

When she drew back, he rested his forehead against hers.

“Would you like to be with me today?”

“Very much.”

“There’s lunch.”

“A compelling argument.”

“And no boat.”

She kissed him again.

They told their families separately, then together, because there were questions and they preferred to answer them before guesses became household knowledge.

Evelyn listened to Carol with her hands folded in her lap. When Carol finished, her mother asked whether Ignatius understood.

“He does.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn reached for her.

“Then I hope you are very happy.”

Uriah asked Ignatius whether the arrangement was what he wanted as well. Ignatius appreciated the question more than he knew how to say.

“It is,” he answered. “I needed to think about it. But it is.”

His father’s response in Concordia was even shorter. Lexander assured him that Carol needed no title to be welcome, then returned to his book with the expression of a man who considered his son’s happiness sufficient grounds for ending the discussion.

Not everyone found it so simple.

A council member described them as postponing the matter. Ignatius corrected him. An acquaintance told Carol she would feel differently when she was older. Carol asked whether he also expected to stop loving his wife with age, and the conversation moved on.

The first morning after their conversation by the lake, a note reached her room.

Carol,

Would you like to have today with me?

I can offer a walk, a tolerable lunch, and a bookshop whose proprietor has survived your previous visit.

Ignatius.

She wrote beneath it:

Yes.

And would you like to have today with me? I intend to disagree with at least two books and possibly their proprietor.

He arrived smiling.

Their asking became part of the life it had opened.

Some mornings it was spoken across a breakfast table. Some days it traveled through a gate in a folded note. When they were apart, they asked in letters about the days they could share and trusted the affection in the days they could not. They did not turn a delayed courier into an injury.

There were mornings when Carol answered, “Yes, but I need the afternoon to myself.”

There were evenings when Ignatius said, “I love you, and I have nothing left for conversation. May we be quiet?”

They learned those answers belonged inside choosing each other too.

Once, he asked whether she wanted to attend a formal dinner with him, and she said no. She had promised herself an evening reading and had already bought a ridiculous amount of fruit to accompany it.

He went alone.

When he returned, she was asleep with the book on her chest and a nearly untouched bowl beside her. He covered her feet and went to bed. In the morning, she asked how the dinner had been, listened to the answer, and stole the last piece of his toast.

Nobody had been abandoned.

They still went on dates.

Carol insisted upon that when shared routines began making every visit seem interchangeable with the last. They attended a play whose villain wore so many disguises that she whispered, “Another hat,” into Ignatius’s ear until he had to hide his face. They took a cooking lesson and discovered that his patience with figures did not extend to pastry. They visited the coast with a map and what Carol considered an excessive but tolerable number of notes.

At sunset on that journey, Ignatius asked whether she wanted to remain another day.

She was standing barefoot where the sea reached the sand.

“With you?”

“That was the proposal.”

“Then yes.”

He carried her shoes back to the inn. She carried his coat because he had lent it to her and she was not ready to surrender it.

When Garrick and Seraphina announced their wedding, Carol cried before her brother finished speaking.

He looked alarmed.

“Happy tears,” she told him impatiently. “You idiot. Come here.”

She embraced him, then Seraphina, then demanded to see the ring.

Later, Seraphina found her alone beside a window.

“I don’t want you to think—”

Carol turned.

“That your happiness is an argument against mine?”

Seraphina let out a breath.

“Something like that.”

Carol took her hand, turning the new ring toward the light.

“Sera, I know how you look at him.”

“He is occasionally very foolish.”

“I raised him under difficult circumstances.”

Seraphina laughed.

Carol hugged her.

“I want this for you because you want it. You can want the same kindness for me.”

“I do.”

“Then we’re well.”

On the wedding morning, Carol helped Garrick with his collar until he threatened to remove it entirely. She kissed his cheek, told him she loved him, and went downstairs to find Ignatius.

He stood near the courtyard with a flower caught crookedly at his shoulder.

“Who did that?”

“Thora. She said flowers need not be military.”

“An excellent point.”

Carol straightened it anyway.

He watched her hands.

“Would you like to spend today with me?”

She looked up.

Around them, guests were arriving. Somewhere someone called for a missing ribbon. The castle hummed with the effort of people trying to make joy punctual.

“Yes,” she said. “Would you like to spend it with me?”

“Even when you cry during the vows.”

“Presumptuous.”

She cried during the vows.

Ignatius gave her a handkerchief without looking pleased with himself, which she considered evidence of excellent judgment. They watched Garrick and Seraphina exchange rings. Carol felt her brother’s happiness reach her in the plain, familiar sight of his face, and pressed closer to the man beside her.

When someone passed between them afterward, their hands separated.

They found each other again.

During the dancing, Carol rested her cheek against Ignatius’s shoulder. He knew the steps better than he had on their first evening out, though she still occasionally had to persuade him that the music mattered more than the count.

“Are you happy?” she asked.

He drew back enough to see her.

“Yes.”

“Today?”

“Today. And about tomorrow.”

She smiled.

“You don’t have my answer for tomorrow yet.”

“No,” he said. “But I know I want to ask.”

Years later, she would remember that dance almost as clearly as their conversation beside the lake.

There would be more homes around them, more children, family names repeated until a simple invitation required explanation. Seraphina would place little Uriah in Carol’s arms, and Ignatius would lean close to admire a fist so small it could barely grasp one of his fingers. Garrick would look exhausted and impossibly happy. The gates would carry them between cities until their footfalls belonged to both.

Through those years, there would be disappointments, illnesses, quarrels, and apologies. There would be laughter while washing dishes and the quiet pleasure of recognizing a familiar step outside a door. Carol would remain capable of astonishing him. Ignatius would continue discovering how much there was to ask a person he had known since childhood.

They would choose journeys together. Sometimes they would choose separate work and come home with different stories. Neither would need a ring before tending the other through a fever, or a ceremony before sitting close through a difficult night.

On one unremarkable morning, long after the wedding flowers had become a family memory, Carol woke to rain against the windows.

Ignatius was beside her, awake, his hair flattened on one side. A book lay open on the table where he had abandoned it the night before.

She loved the sight of him with an ease she had once been afraid love might never allow.

“Good morning,” she said.

He turned toward her.

“Would you like another day with me?”

Carol reached out and touched his face.

“Yes.”

He smiled beneath her hand.

“And you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She moved into his arms because she wanted to be there.

The rain continued. Somewhere outside their room, the household began its morning. Soon there would be breakfast, decisions, a letter to answer, something misplaced. For now, she kissed him, slowly enough that neither could mistake it for habit.

Then she rested her forehead against his.

“Ask me tomorrow.”

“I will.”