[thomas] “Love is not something we wind up, or control.”
Jane finally understands.
She rereads the inscription in the book for the hundredth time, but this time it’s different; the words don’t make her feel sick, and like she’s discovered something dirty. She understands, because she knows this same feeling. Loving someone you shouldn’t is agony. It’s a death sentence for the soul. It is the sweetest, most noble of martyrdoms to give yourself so completely to somebody you can never have.
My truest love, it reads, and she is transported back to a dirty room, where she sits on a bed with a paper-thin mattress, counting coins with a temporary boy. The dull pain of it all has a lump catching in her throat.
“It’s against God, you know,” Jane says, but it’s a very weak opposition, more like she’s going through the motions than attacking. She isn’t really sure how much she even believes it anymore, and it shows in the way that her features have softened. If God created love, then surely He meant for those who love each other to be free to do so? Why should Thomas and Flint -- James, she reminds herself -- be punished for finding the love that they were born to find?
The book is extended out to Thomas as a sort of peace offering. Now that she isn’t in some righteous rage about the whole thing, it feels wrong for her to be holding it at all -- like wearing somebody else’s wedding ring.
“You’re lucky to have each other back.” Not an apology for her behaviour, but acceptance of the situation, her blessing for what’s to come. “And... In truth, sir, you’re right to have written that. Know no shame. I wish I could be as brave as you both.”