walk with me 'neath the rising sky, we will make a choice for love and joy
pairing: bernie/serena rating: pg-13/light m summary: written for Jess Appreciation Day, this is for @ktlsyrtis because she deserves all the good things, and because there’s literally only one person i would have written this for, and it’s her.
s(he) was a stableboy, she was a girl, can i make it anymore obvious?
noble/commoner au (what time period is it in? how old are they? these are questions you don’t need to ask)
read the fic below the cut or via google doc
Horses are the thing Berenice loves most, in all the world. She makes any excuse to take her mother’s old mare out to the pasture, to the town center. She sits in the blacksmith shop while he shoes the horses that come in, keeps the horses calm, holds their faces with her hands, nuzzles against them.
“A shame yer a lass,” the blacksmith says one day, when she’s helping with a beautiful black yearling a calming hand against his neck, dark eyes staring into dark eyes. “Them up there at the manor are looking for a stableboy.”
“I’m not trained,” she says, her heart speeding up at just the mention of the position, at just the idea that she could work with horses.
“Not much trainin’ needed to shovel shit,” he says, holding the horse’s foot in one hand, hammer in the other. “All right, just hold ‘im.” Berenice presses her face to the horse’s cheek, breathing deeply the smell of hair and hay, lets herself live in the world where that’s all she has to think of.
She feels restless after the conversation, not ready to go home, feels like everything is jangling inside her, a plan half-forming in her mind as she walks. Without realizing, she finds her way to the edge of the manor property, right to the edge of their fields. She can see three horses grazing, one shaking its mane, a soft whinny carrying across the grass. Then a colt runs in front of the older horses, all gangly legs, whickering and circling, then stopping next to its mother.
Berenice could stare at them for hours. But the sun is setting, getting low in the sky, and her mother will be expecting her. Bread and stew for dinner, no doubt, Meager portions from her father’s salary, a few coins sent every month for guarding the borders. But it’s enough, and her work with the blacksmith, the occasional odd job around town, pay enough to supplement, to occasionally get sugar for cooking, or a new book to read aloud by the fire late at night. Her mother makes sweet rolls on Sundays, almost the same as the bread, in the end, but made all the sweeter by their rareness.
She fidgets in her chair at the table, an idea taken shape. There’s a bit of sadness tugging at her, the idea that this might be her last meal with her mother for some time, But there’s also a potential for her mother to live better, for Berenice to help, to do more. So she eats slowly, carefully, takes in her mother’s face, the wrinkles at her eyes, and she puts the bowls in the bucket, takes them out to the pump with her for rinsing, a scrub brush to get the flecks of stew off the sanded wood.
She also takes her mother’s shears from where they sit in the kitchen, used to cut vegetables, to do any number of household tasks that Berenice has never bothered to learn. She fills a pail with water, cold and crisp, and bends over to see her reflection, a long plait of hair spilling over her shoulder. Before she can change her mind, before she can think it all through, she takes the scissors to the nape of her neck, the braid falling to the ground, wisps of hair around her chin.
Her head feels lighter at once, almost bobbing up as the weight of her hair is lost. She doesn’t know if she looks like a boy anymore than she did before. With the scissors, heavy and indelicate, she tries to chop away at it, short enough there’s no way to tie it back. Good enough that someone not paying very much attention could think she was a member of the opposite sex.
-
It turns out to be surprisingly easy to get the position, once she turns up to the estate stables. The fact that she’s able to calm a horse with a quick pet to the nose, a soft whickering sound from her lips, that’s enough to impress the stablemaster.
“You look awful puny, but you’ve got a way about you, I’ll admit,” he grunts, and Berenice bites back a smile. She tells him her name is Bernard, and he just huffs. “Bernie’s good enough for the stables. You’re not a lord up there in the manor.”
Her first nickname, really.
The routine is simple. She wakes early and opens the stable doors, lets the horses out to the pasture. She mucks the stables for what feels like hours, her back sore, her arms getting stronger. New hay to lay out, bales to roll down from the loft. The same loft where she sleeps, a blanket and a pillow handed to her on her first evening. It’s warmer than she thought, the sounds of horses breathing telling her it’s safe, they’re all safe.
The stablemaster watches her push a bale out to the fields, sun high in the sky, and she knows she’s sweating through her thin shirt, that her breeches must smell foul. But he doesn’t say anything except, “There's more muscle to you than I thought.”
It’s as much of a commendation for her work as she can expect.
Occasionally members of the manor family come down for horses, and then Bernie is shooed away, told to bring the horses in from the pasture and then hide in the loft, or go back out to the field. She only sees the lord and lady from afar, their daughter joining them on a rare occasion. Sometimes she’s called in to help prepare horses for visiting guests, brushes them until their coats shine, saddles them up and then disappears.
The first time she meets one of the family is when the daughter comes to the stables unexpectedly, in the middle of the morning, when Bernie is still working with the rake, pulling mud and feces out of the stalls. She hears a delicate cough, straightens up, very aware of the streaks of mud on her face, of the odor that must be emanating from her.
When she meets the daughter’s eyes, she sees the slight wrinkle of the nose, the only sign that she’s not entirely comfortable in her current environment. Her skirts drag against the ground, and Bernie can see the hay stuck to the fabric, the mud encroaching on her clean shoes.
She almost curtsies, but catches herself in time to turn it into a low, awkward sort of bow. “Milady,” she says, gruffly, pitching her voice low. She almost hits her head on the wall of the stall, uses it to push herself back up, to hold onto as she feels nerves course through her body. She hasn’t had to talk to anyone, really, beyond another stableboy and the stablemaster. It feels like a test.
And the daughter is so pretty.
“No need for that, when it’s just you and me,” she says warmly, with a smile. “Serena is my name and it’s hardly ever used.” Her eyes are bright, dancing around. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you before.”
“Bernard. Ah, Bernie, ‘round here.” She props the rake against the stall door, stuffs her hands in her pockets, scuffs her foot against the floor. “Can I get your horse for you?” She feels like her whole face is on fire, like the scrutiny of this beautiful noble might make her explode. Serena nods, her lips still tipped up in an impish sort of grin, and Bernie runs a hand through her hair, aware of the ragged ends, the disarray. She never would have made a good impression, not even when she was dressed as a girl, well-washed and hair flowing over her shoulders.
At a half-trot, she makes her way out to the field, Serena’s horse in the far distance. She puts her fingers to her mouth, whistles, and every horse looks up, ambles towards her. Serena’s horse is beautiful, a pinto mare with a long brown mane and dark eyes that look human in their understanding. “There’s a girl,” Bernie says, when she’s close enough to touch. “Come on then, Elinor.” She wraps a few strands of mane around her fingers and leads her towards the stables.
Most of the stalls are clean, and that’s where she puts Elinor, brushing her out while Serena watches quietly from the other side of the door. Her head is tilted, her long brown hair touched by the occasional breeze, and Bernie steals glances whenever she can, notices new things every time. The cleft in her chin, the silver necklace at her throat, the sparkle in her eyes, the deft fingers plucking at a splinter in the wood next to her. Every little thing makes her heart clench, and Bernie doesn’t know what to do with it, has never felt it before.
When the blanket and saddle are on, everything buckled into place, Bernie hands Serena the reins, their hands grazing.
“Would you help me up?” Serena asks delicately, but Bernie can’t help but feel as if she’s being teased. She kneels down, makes a cradle from her hands and allows Serena to step on them, lifting her until she’s comfortably seated sidesaddle.
Bernie doesn’t miss that, enjoys the freedom the breeches give her, straddling a horse. She can go faster, longer, feels closer to the horse beneath her. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever go back. If she’ll ever want to. She doesn’t even know what’s next, after this. Will she stay in these stables forever? Will she be discovered? Punished in some unseemly way? There’s so much she doesn’t know, she just tries to think of the horses, of the present, of the life she has now.
Serena’s looking at her a little oddly, and maybe she’s been away with the fairies for too long. Bernie forces a smile to her thin lips, knows from her mother that she’s far from beautiful, and feels even less so in the presence of Serena, but her smile gets one in return, and that’s not nothing, as far as she’s concerned.
“Have a good ride, mil-Serena,” Bernie says, correcting herself at the mock-glare on the other woman’s face. With a gentle pat to Elinor’s rump, she helps guide Serena and her horse toward the open stable doors.
She hides when she sees Serena coming back, doesn’t know if she can take another encounter with the beautiful daughter of the lord of the estate. There are so many differences between them, a vast chasm that divides them. And it feels dangerous to let someone in, to be close.
She can hear Serena moving about in the stables below the loft, but doesn’t come down. Then she hears Serena’s soft sigh and a few moments later, sees her walking back up towards the manor, brown hair practically glowing in the sun, a halo shining against her tresses.
It becomes a bit of a pattern. Somehow Serena seems to know when Bernie is alone in the stables, always appears when the stablemaster is otherwise occupied, when Bernie’s alone with her work. There’s always a little edge to their conversations, like Serena has a joke she’s not telling Bernie, a laugh behind her eyes, a sparkle.
It makes a jolt run along under Bernie’s skin, like a bolt of lightning crackling down her spine. She looks forward to and fears the interactions in equal measure, feeling like she’s teetering on a knife’s edge and doesn’t know which way she’ll fall.
Serena tricks her, in a way, and they become friends without Bernie even realizing. Serena leaves books at the base of the loft ladder, when she learns Bernie can read. She asks how Bernie is doing, how she’s feeling, and seems to really care about the answer. Her fingers trail along Bernie’s arm when she’s moving past her in the stable. They are friends and they are something else, and Serena doesn’t know who Bernie really is.
That’s what worries her, underneath it all, that she’s lying to Serena, in a way. What Serena will think if she learns. And the only way Bernie knows to solve this problem is to shut off communication, to put distance between them. She spends an evening saying goodbye to all the things about Serena that she appreciates.
She says goodbye to Serena’s cleft chin, to those shimmering eyes, to the gently curling tresses. She says goodbye to the fluttering eyelashes. She says goodbye to her soft chuckle, to the way her lips quirk when she speaks with a double meaning. She bids farewell to Serena and hopes her thoughts may carry up to the manor, because she could never say goodbye to Serena’s face.
When Serena appears one afternoon, Bernie anxiously wipes her sweaty palms against her stained breeches. Serena makes a joke, and Bernie forces herself not to laugh.
“Mud in your ears?” Serena asks, craning around Elinor’s neck to see Bernie’s face but she just sucks her head away, gets the tack ready in silence. “Is everything all right?” she asks, moving closer to Bernie, and Bernie takes a step back, drapes the reins across Elinor’s saddle.
“Just fine, milady,” she says, and doesn’t meet Serena’s eyes. But she doesn’t miss the hurt look on the woman’s face, the way she hooks the stool with her foot rather than asking Bernie for help with mounting the mare. And then she rides off in silence, doesn’t even look back once.
It hurts, but it’s what’s right, and that’s what makes her heart ache all the more.
-
Serena doesn’t come back to the stables. Bernie doesn’t see her, even from afar. Weeks go by, and her life goes back to what it was when she came to the manor, a mundane routine of rote tasks, the same for one day as the next, little conversation to pass the time, no surprises at all.
On a warm day in the spring, Serena and her parents arrive at the stables, and, as is always the case, Bernie is shooed outside, away, too grimy to be seen by people in fancy clothing, too uncouth for the people who live in the manor. These moments are nice, though, for as few and far between as they are, moments where Bernie can enjoy the horses, enjoy the nature around her, unclouded by tasks and to-dos.
She nuzzles her nose against Dom’s forelock, breathes in the scent of him, and he exhales softly, her hair fluttering in the breeze. She hears a whinny, a little in the distance, and looks down towards the stables, sees Serena standing there, looking at Bernie, a gloved hand shading the sun from her eyes. She hasn’t seen her in so long, and the time apart has not made her any less lovely.
She half-wonders if Serena will call out to her, but there’s nothing, and Bernie can only think of how much she misses the sound of Serena’s voice. Someone must say something inside the stable, because Serena turns, goes into the dark interior, and doesn’t look back. Dom nudges Bernie with his nose, a push against her shoulder, velvety soft and gentle.
“Yes, yes, I didn’t forget about you,” she murmurs to him, pressing her lips to his face. She pulls an apple from her pocket and holds it out, fresh-picked that morning, and his lips and teeth are wet as he takes it from her hand.
She only leaves the field and Dom when the family have left on their ride, sauntering down the manor path, to the forest, and Bernie tries not to think of Serena’s sun-dappled hair, of the way she sits so tall and proper, never wavering in the knowledge that she is everything she should be.
It’s later that day, when the sun is setting, and Bernie is closing stall doors, lining them with fresh hay for the night, that she hears the footsteps she has come to know instinctively as Serena’s. She turns at the sound, and sees her there, a lantern in hand, hair loose about her shoulders, her nightgown and shawl pale and stark in the darkened barn.
She’s about to bow, to curtsy, something, because of the shock of seeing Serena has overtaken her senses, the word “milady” already forming on her lips, when Serena speaks first.
“You saw me.” It’s the first time she’s heard that voice in ages, and she tries not to feel staggered with relief. It’s still so husky and lovely, the way the blacksmith’s wine feels slipping down her throat. Serena says the words without a question, they both know what happened.
“You were the one watching,” Bernie answers gruffly, patting Raf’s head, brushing back his mane, hears Fletch whickering to him from the next stall over. Serena’s hand on Bernie’s shoulder makes her movements halt, makes her freeze in place. It’s the first deliberate touch, real and true, without the guise of reins or tight space, or whatever they were fooling themselves by thinking.
Serena’s hand tips Bernie’s face towards her own, her fingers so delicate. She seems all the more lovely for the flickering candlelight on her face, her skin warm, alight in the dark, her eyes all the more sparkling. She doesn’t say anything else, just looks at Bernie with those brown eyes for a long moment, something Bernie can’t quite fathom dancing behind them.
And then she leans forward and presses a kiss to Bernie’s lips. It’s chaste and short, but for all that, it still sets Bernie on fire, blazing on down through to her fingertips. “Oh,” Serena says, seemingly as poleaxed as Bernie feels. It seems she’s about to lean in again, but Bernie steps back, her heel hitting a water pail, a clanging noise halting the quiet horse murmurs.
“I, uh, there’s something I have to take care of,” she says, the words sounding unconvincing to her own ears, her cheeks bright red, and she knows they’d be warm to the touch, forces herself not to think about Serena touching her face again, those delicate hands, free from callus and wear, gentle against Bernie’s sun-soaked skin.
She climbs the ladder, fumbling in the dark because she doesn’t have her wits about her enough to take a lantern of her own, just Serena’s bobbling light from below to guide her. Bernie leans against a hay bale, head tilting back, straw poking against her neck. Trying to slow her heart, slow her breath, she closes her eyes and tells herself to be calm. Tells herself not to be afraid of this, even though it’s the very thing she feared most.
She doesn’t move again until she hears a soft, “Good night, Bernie,” from below, and the sound of Serena’s retreating feet, the barn left in darkness once again.
-
Only a week passes before Serena appears again, this time in the afternoon, when Bernie is alone in the stable. Apparently still in possession of the gift for finding the time when no one else is about. She acts as if they never lost time, leaning against the door of an empty stable and watching Bernie. She tells her a story of her tutor trying to woo the newest maid, of how he tripped and nearly got the tap from the water pump outside the kitchen stuck in his rear.
She makes Bernie laugh so easily, and that sound is so foreign, even to her own ears, except in the company of this woman. She thinks of Serena’s bravery, of the way she leaned forward, and it’s enough to spur her into asking:
“Why’d you kiss me?”
Serena’s smile deepens the brackets around her mouth, and her eyes look like they’re lit from a light source of their own. She stands, moves toward Bernie again, and it’s all so familiar and still heart-wrenchingly new and Bernie feels as if she’s been rolled from a turnip cart, ass over tea kettle, not knowing which way is up. Serena is close enough that Bernie can feel her breath, those soft exhalations.
“Because you’re handsome,” she says, her fingers ghosting against Bernie’s hair, shaggy and unkempt, “because you make me smile. Because my horse likes you. Why’d you run away?” She presses forward, some unimagined rid of steel at her back and Bernie would never want to argue with her, knows she would lose in an instant.
She swallows, tries to find the words to say, and all that comes out is an ech of Serena. “Because you’re beautiful. Because you make me nervous. Because I like your horse.” Her smile is small, and there’s the unspoken tenor of her worry about employment, about the coins she’s given once a month, the coins she sends to her mother. “I don’t want to have to leave,” she adds quietly, ducking her face down, wondering if a true man would ever voice these hidden fears, if perhaps her mask is already slipping.
“You won’t,” Serena promises, and she sounds so sure. Bernie envies the conviction in her voice, threaded through with the same steel that runs down her spine. When she steps forward this time, Bernie knows what to expect, and this time, when she kisses Bernie, Bernie kisses back.
She’s been kissed by boys in the village, alternatingly gruff and teasing, but never real, and that’s what is different, the wanting that makes Bernie slide her tongue between Serena’s lips, that makes her push Serena back up against the stable door, that makes her hands tangle into Serena’s hair.
It’s just as silky and soft as Bernie might have imagined, slipping through her fingers. She feels as if she’s gasping for breath and Serena is the air she needs. It’s like the time she fell through a hole in the ice on the lake near town and her fingers scrabbled and clawed at anything, trying to get a firm hold on something that would help her.
That’s how kissing Serena feels, like the only thing that will save her.
When they part, Serena’s cheeks are flushed, pretty and pink, and her tongue darts out to lick her lips, her eyes dark and full of want, and maybe even need, and Bernie feels a monster uncurl in her stomach, desire rearing its head.
“Lady and a commoner. Doesn’t seem like a good match,” she says, casting her eyes downward, because if there were ever a time to protect herself, it should have started months ago, but now is as good as ever.
“It’s the only match I’m interested in,” Serena says, reaching for Bernie, those slender fingers touching the sleeve of Bernie’s tunic, but she steps away from her grasp, backwards toward the center of the barn.
“We can’t,” she says, and Serena tilts her head, looks as if she’s considering something, making a decision and Bernie isn’t even sure what the options are.
“Don’t shut me out,” is what she finally says. “I’ll live like a nun in your presence, chaste and pure, only let me still be your friend.” The words are a plea, and Bernie can hear the quiet desperation, thinks for the first time that while she has the horses and the whole of the outdoors as her home, Serena has none of that, a lonely existence inside a stately home.
“Friends,” Bernie says, offering her hand to shake, resisting the impulse to spit on her palm, the way she did years ago with the boys she grew up with, trading buttons for shiny stones.
Serena’s hand slides along Bernie’s, and her touch is deliberate, her face serious, and she clasps Bernie’s hand tightly. Bernie thinks she’ll remember Serena’s expression for as long as she lives.
And they’re both true to their word. Serena still visits, as often as she ever did, maybe more. She says she’s still almost running out of excuses to disappear from the house in the afternoons, that when the weather turns cold, it will be even harder to escape. “Imagine, I tell them I want to do my sewing outside and I can see my own breath. I’d come back an icicle.”
Bernie is tempted to offer to keep Serena warm, but she thinks that’s against their agreement, against what’s good for them both. So she just smiles and says, “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
Serena starts bringing Bernie books again, and then starts reading aloud while Bernie curries the horses. Her voice carries through the barn, and Bernie even notices one of the boys that’s in charge of fetching and carrying for them lingering to listen to the stories. It makes the day go by, makes the world seem larger and more wonderful.
When Serena can only escape in evenings, when dinner is eaten and the sun is disappearing, she comes with a lantern and climbs the ladder to the loft, skirts gathered in her hand. Bernie’s there to help her up the last few inches, to hold the light as a guide. She drapes her blanket over a bale of hay to keep Serena’s skirt clean, and thinks that she looks a pretty as a painting, perched upon the hay.
It smells sweet and clean in the loft, and Bernie boasts that she can tell which horse is which, just from their snores, their exhalations of breath, and Serena laughs at that, says she’s going to test Bernie some time.
Her face is relaxed and open, carefree, and when her laugh mingles with Bernie’s soft chuckle, the small smile that’s become wider, more brave, over the last few months stretches across her face. And because she wants to, because she can’t help herself, she leans in and kisses Serena, kisses her smile like she might capture that joy for her own.
Relief washes over her when Serena kisses back.
It’s a novel experience, to do this while seated next to each other. She has more leverage, she has more to hold herself up when her limbs feel weak from pleasure.
Serena, too, seems to feel a certain freedom here too, her hands traveling along Bernie’s neck, her shoulders, into her golden hair. Bernie feels a pang when she thinks of a world where Serena could have braided her hair, run her fingers through the long blonde strands. She hasn’t seen herself in anything but the reflection of water in the horse trough, knows how shaggy her hair is, how unkempt, and she’s been using a bit of leather to tie it back, thinks perhaps she needs to find some scissors in the storeroom.
All thoughts fly from her head when Serena’s teeth bite gently against Bernie’s lower lip, when her tongue slips into Bernie’s mouth. It’s heavenly, like the softest velvet, and she wants to bury herself in feeling. She’s lost in sensation, in action, logic and reason gone from her mind. Serena’s hands slide underneath Bernie’s tunic, her fingertips warm, but leaving goosebumps in their wake.
And then she freezes, stops, pulls away, and Bernie flushes beet red, can’t believe her carelessness. Serena’s hands found the binding around Bernie’s breasts, the strip of cloth she took from her mother’s house and has worn every day since.
“Were you injured?” Serena asks, tentative, unsure, like she wasn’t being gentle enough, like perhaps she thinks she’s made an injury worse. Bernie shakes her head automatically, before she can even think of a lie. This evening that began so innocuously now feels of paramount importance.
The friendship they’ve built, the companionship, this bond. Bernie can’t lie any longer, can’t go a moment more without telling the truth. Her face still pink, from exertion, from nervousness, from embarrassment, she pulls the tunic up over her head, lays it aside on the floor of the loft, baring herself in the candlelight.
Serena looks at her questioningly, her fingers twitching like she wants to touch, from curiosity or desire, Bernie isn’t sure, has to quell the feeling that rises up at the thought of their bare bodies pressed together. Slowly, Bernie begins to undo the wrapping, shame fading away in the face of the gravity of the moment. She’s never shown herself to anyone, only her mother and any horses that happened to be watching while she swam naked in a pond in the forest.
“You’re. You’re not a man,” Serena says, her voice not tinged with disgust, as Bernie feared, but wonder, a tentative excitement. And butterflies begin to take roost in Bernie’s heart, a feeling like hopefulness. And then Serena reaches for Bernie’s pale skin, still untouched by the sun, even for all the days spent in the field. Serena’s delicate, gentle fingers touch just below her breasts, touch the space in the center of her rib cage.
“I’m not,” she says, her hand coming up to hold Serena’s hand against her skin. The air feels warmer, like it’s holding more weight for them in this moment.
Serena doesn’t say anything, just looks at Bernie with that considering look that Bernie’s come to know so well in the last year.
“You’re not,” she says again, finally,, and this time, she leans forward to kiss Bernie, her hands purposeful and sure as they travel along Bernie’s bare skin. And she is sure as she lets Bernie pull at the ties of her dressing gown, and she is sure as Bernie lays her out against the hard floor of the loft.
Neither of them are sure about what they’re doing, neither of them experienced with a man, much less a woman, beyond what they know of their own bodies. But Bernie discovers the warm wetness between Serena’s legs, and sees the way her head tilts back, her eyes glassing over in pleasure. It’s a sight Bernie will never forget, as long as she lives.
The late night visits become commonplace, and they learn what is good, what stokes the fire best between them. When Serena decides to try placing her mouth on Bernie, right there, beside her thigh, Bernie feels as if her head might burst from the sheer magnificence of it. Her tongue is wonderful in Bernie’s mouth, and Bernie will never tire of it. But her tongue between her lower lips is another sensation entirely, and Bernie thinks a new galaxy will be born from the feeling that exploded inside her.
Serena finds other ways to help, appearing one afternoon with scissors from her dressmaker, and stands behind Bernie, her breasts grazing Bernie’s shoulders, and trims her hair, wisps of blonde catching in the breeze and floating away. She whispers to Bernie that she’s going to cut a lock of her hair to put in a necklace, to keep her always close.
Along with the scissors, Serena brings more fabric for Bernie to tie around herself, softer material, lighter, even helps her wrap it on occasion, when she’s spent too much time in the loft.
She also tries to think about what’s next, coming up with solutions, endless ideas of how they might be able to live out their lives together. Perhaps Bernie could disappear for a month, come back as a prospective lady in waiting. But they both know that’s not the life for her. She just wants to work with horses and to be with Serena, the only two things in the world that matter to her. She tries to reassure Serena that they can meet in the stables, that this is enough, that it can be enough. She thinks she’s trying to reassure herself, too.
“We could just...ride away,” Serena says one night, the flame from the candle casting shadows about her face. She reaches out and tucks a short strand of blonde hair behind Bernie’s ear. She never seems to get her fill of touching Bernie. “We take Elinor and we go.”
It’s tempting, so tempting. Her words are lined with hope, and Bernie can imagine the press of Serena’s back as they ride together, their bodies moving with the horse. “You couldn’t leave your family,” she says, because for all that Serena escapes to the stables, Bernie hears the love for her mother, for her sister, threaded through her words and in her stories.
“I would, for you,” Serena says earnestly, pressing her lips to the hollow in Bernie’s collarbone.
“We have this,” Bernie says softly, “and it’s good.” And she thinks, perhaps, that they have a someday. When Serena takes over the estate, when she can live the life she chooses. There’s a future for them, in this world. She can feel Serena’s eyelashes flutter closed against her chest and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
She’ll wake Serena before morning, and they can watch the sun rise before she leaves. They have this.
