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Intimacy and a relationship was something that seemed unattainable--too slippery, something that would thrash around if it could be caught and would struggle to get away, like the silvery fish that he could go catch as an excuse to get away from the bustle of camp.
It wasn’t necessarily that Kieran thought he didn’t deserve it. But the brief, insincere flirtations he’d had while working as a stable boy with girls who used how many boys they could woo as a mark of status hadn’t left him with much experience.
There wasn’t much time for any of that in the army, or when he was the member of a short-lived gang whose members had been murdered by Colm O’Driscoll, or when he was in the O’Driscoll game itself.
Was there time now? He wasn’t sure. But there was someone, for the first time in a long while, for who he wished he had a well of knowledge to pull from when it came to flirting.
Despite what he thought were poor romantic advances, he’d somehow landed reading lessons with the kind hearted Mary-Beth, and was now sitting almost elbow-to-elbow with her while she read aloud. Although, maybe it didn’t have anything to do with romance.
Maybe Ms. Mary-Beth just felt pity for the former O’Driscoll, trying to teach him to read to make him feel like he had a place, the same way she’d given him new clothes, ones that didn’t so blatantly mark him as an enemy. Same way she’d given him bits and pieces of food while he was tied to that damn tree; there was no way she had had any romantic attraction to him back then, so this was probably just something along that line of thought, one which wished to preserve what was left of his confidence.
He shook his head slightly, the limp hair that had been straying into his eyes being warded off, but the stray thoughts not being so easy to tame.
Kieran sighed quietly and chanced a glance at the woman sitting next to him, her features softer than normal under the twilight sun, though her many freckles were still visible against her sun-kissed skin. There was one hand absently fiddling with the curl of soft brown hair at her shoulder, the other holding the book flat on the table between them, only lifting to flip to the next worn and yellowed page.
She must have assumed he was “reading” along with her, but it was impossible to decipher the small text no matter how many times Mary-Beth pointed at a word and pronounced the different parts of it. Obviously she’d never taught anyone how to read, because after their weeks of work, Kieran felt like he’d barely gotten anywhere.
Though he wasn’t sure if it was completely Mary-Beth’s fault or if he was just too distracted--from being tired from his chores or from her--to truly learn.
Right now, she was reading aloud A Tale of Two Cities , something Kieran found rather dry but that Mary-Beth made sound beautiful and exciting. She seemed to enjoy the parts about the French Revolution, but it was obvious that her affection of the book was because of Sydney Carton’s tragic love of Lucie Manette and the love that Lucie and Charles Darnay shared despite it.
“In my degredation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you--” Mary-Beth read, her voice full of sympathy for poor Carton proclaiming his love and thanks to Lucie “--has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you...”
Sydney, a drunk, a fallen man, who had been brought back from the brink of nothingness to life again because his love of first sight, falling for the sympathy that Lucie held for all people.
That had struck Kieran. He wasn’t a drunk, but he certainly was fallen from grace, and he certainly had found strength in a woman, one who he’d had instant attraction towards.
He just hoped that there wasn’t a Charles Darnay in camp with whom Mary-Beth’s heart was already reserved for.
Kieran snapped out of his thoughts, finally, when the soft voice of the woman became silent. Stupidly, he realized, he’d been staring at her the whole time, something that had happened a few times in their reading sessions and that he’d been reprimanded for, instructed to keep looking at the printed nonsense on the page.
“Kieran? Are you trying to read along?” Mary-Beth asked softly, meeting his eyes with her pale blue ones, slight disappointment dancing across her features in the fading light. “I keep telling you, you can’t learn to read if you don’t read,”
Embarrassed, he scratched the back of his neck, unable to meet her gaze any longer.
“I just-- I’m sorry, Miss, I’m just tired from doing chores all day,” he quickly explained, and it was mostly true, but of course he wasn’t going to say what else was on his mind. The disappointment across her face broke and gave way to a warm, sympathetic smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes and made Kieran’s heart jerk against his ribcage.
“Oh! I understand. If you’re too tired to focus now, we can try again tomorrow. Even if we are at a good part,” she nodded, gently creasing over the corner of the worn page in preparation to put the book away until their next lesson.
In a panic of losing the rest of their time together today, Kieran reached up to grab her wrist, the one hovering over the book after marking the page, and gently set it back to rest on the wooden table beside the book. He snatched his hand back and looked at her surprised features, flustered, but he’d have been more regretful not to act than to make a fool of himself now.
“No! That’s alright, Miss, we can at least finish the chapter,” he reasoned, trying to give her a smile to show that he really was enjoying it.
She hummed in thought, then sighed, and it sounded like she was about to give in to him.
“Well, alright then, but if you drift off again..” it was a threat, but of course, not a real one, and a playful smirk tugged at the corners of her soft lips. “It doesn’t do any good to study when there isn’t anywhere for the studying to go,” Kieran let out a choppy chuckle, resolving to stare at the pages even if he couldn’t see anything there for the rest of the session.
“A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it,” Mary-Beth continued the dramatic reading of Carton’s speech to Lucie, something the character seemed to do a lot.
If only Kieran had the education, smarts, and words that Carton had to be able to tell this woman something, anything, that would let her know how much he adored her. He thought he’d made it pretty obvious, but it probably wasn’t as charming as when any of the characters in the book did it.
It wasn’t long, at least not before the end of the chapter, until Kieran’s eyes began to drift again, fatigue putting a veil over his common sense while his eyes travelled up the slender, pretty fingers holding the page down, up the pink sleeve of her dress and across her shoulders to where her other hand was fiddling with her hair curls once again. He smiled a bit, always enjoying whenever he noticed a new small habit or behavior about her.
The veil of fatigue was ripped off when Mary-Beth’s voice fell silent again, and his heart stuttered in the realization of what he’d done for the second time tonight.
“I’m sorry, Mary-Beth! I’m really enjoying the story, i-it’s just easier to see what the words are saying when I’m, uh, lookin’ around!” he rambled, having to say something to stop Mary-Beth from voicing that their lesson for this evening was over. Kieran looked up at her face hopefully, cursing his flushed face, but was a bit surprised to see that she looked a bit nervous.
“Actually, Kieran, I had an idea, since you keep getting distracted..” she started, but paused and turned her eyes down to the yellowed pages, tapping her fingers anxiously against them. His confusion kept him quiet. It seemed like she spent a small moment steadying herself.
Mary-Beth bit her bottom lip nervously, then turned her eyes back up, evaluating Kieran before lifting her hand and gently cupping his cheek to turn his face completely towards her, his scraggly beard rough under her fingertips. He tensed in shock, staying completely still, as if scared she would bolt off like a spooked horse when he moved.
Kieran felt like his heart was going to shatter like glass if she continued to touch him so gently, and that’s why he felt it explode when she slowly moved her face in to press her soft lips against his chapped ones, brushing her thumb against his cheekbone.
It was a quick, innocent kiss, and when Mary-Beth pulled away with reddened cheeks he realized his hand had moved to hold her upper arm. He couldn’t say anything, or move away, or wonder if she was out of her mind kissing him or if he was actually dreaming.
So he had been obvious enough in his interest. More surprisingly, she was being obvious in her interest, too, even if perhaps she’d tried to be more subtle before and he’d missed it.
“That’s--That’s a reward,” she explained finally, embarrassment making her smile. “To keep you focused on your reading. If you keep trying to read, or if you can read a word or two to me, then, well, you know,” Kieran joined her in her breathy laughter.
“I have to say, that seems like a good deal,” he tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice crackled with post-excitement and leftover shock.
They both laughed again, and she read until she finished the chapter in her sweet voice, giving Kieran a couple of opportunities to read simple words, half of which he actually got because she usually asked him to read the same words until he finally could recognize it.
It became too dark to read then, without the light of a lamp, but they’d been content to finish the chapter with Sydney Carton leaving the Manette’s house.
Yet it wasn’t too dark for anyone who was around to see them kiss again, Kieran becoming confident enough to pull her closer with a hand on her upper back and a rough hand on her cheek, mimicking what she’d done to him earlier.
It was another innocent one, but their hearts both raced in their chests and later, Kieran touched the spot where Mary-Beth had pecked his cheek while she got up to go to the girls around the fire, whisking the book and a part of the man’s heart away with her.
Their affections towards each other probably wouldn’t look very significant to anyone watching. If Kieran hadn’t been so inexperienced, and Mary-Beth such a romantic, then the quick kisses likely wouldn’t have meant much.
But they were, and they did.