“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you treated me with such kindness. Certainly before you kissed me. Why, then? I will know why.” In her anger and frustration, tears spilled down her cheeks. “My lord, I asked not even a chance, and yet you offered one, and now take it away.”
He looked at her and put his hand on her face, concerned and upset at how she was reacting to his words, “This is why I wished to say nothing, and my mind did tell me to not kiss you… to not touch you… and to not wish you within my arms, but… I could not listen to it, I could not hear upon those words.”
“Your every action belies your speech.” Despite her tears, anger emboldened Summer; she clasped his hand with one of her own, and reached up to brush his face with her fingertips. “Henry. Answer me. Why, last night? I thought it a dream. But you tell me ‘twas reality. /Why/?”
Henry sighed.
“I… in truth I do not know why I kissed you,” he said, “Perhaps it was an impulse I could not fight, to kiss you… because I wanted to… since that day when I missed you at the library.”
“You — /you/ chose. Do you not see, Henry? You say you do not know your own heart, and yet — do you truly not see? Even before you heard me expose my heart, here, already you encouraged my emotion, and yet deny your own.” She stopped, looking earnestly up at Henry. “If in the end, in the end, Henry, it is not to be, I would wish to know that we took the chance. That you allowed yourself the chance.”