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I.
„God has treated me harshly,“ her mother often says when Henriette Anne is still learning to unterstand her words in two languages. „But at least he ensured I would have one good child to always love me. He gave me you. Mon enfant de benediction.“
This is one of the few certainties she grows up with: she is to be her mother’s reward and comfort. Her mother who used to be Queen and is now an eternal guest depending on the charity of her sister-in-law and nephew. Henriette Anne has never known it to be otherwise. She is the last, the youngest of her mother’s children, born at a time of civil war, smuggled out of the country of her birth when she was but two years of age. When they tell her her father was beheaded – or has become a martyr, that is how her mother puts it – she has no memory of him, only of the miniature portrait Maman carries at her breast. Losing her father thus is no different than hearing of the martyrdom of saints that lived centuries ago, save that her mother’s violent grief makes her cry as well. That is when her mother first speaks the words: One good child to always love me.
She is the youngest, but knows her siblings only in brief snatches plucked from time. Her sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, she has never seen. Elizabeth has died while still imprisoned by the rebels, and Mary lives in the Hague, the widow of a Dutch prince who wasn’t called that. As for her brothers, at first they are young men fighting the rebels in that lost country she cannot recall, and then, when they do come to France defeated, they never stay very long. Maman charges them for their upkeep when they lodge with her.
„This is what it has come to,“ she says. „And I a Queen of England. But your brother Charles could change all of this, if he would only listen.“
Charles is her oldest brother. Fourteen years older. When she first meets him, she is already four years old. He takes her in his arms and whirls her around, almost making her fly, and she is delighted; it’s a breath of air and joy in the eternal gloom around her mother. „Henriette Anne is far too long and cumbersome a name for such an airy creature, sister,“ Charles says, and lets her pick a name she likes for herself. She would never tell her mother, but this is wonderful. Henriette is her mother’s name as well, and Anne her aunt’s. It has always felt as if she’s meant to become one or the other.
„Minette,“ she says, having thought about it for a while.
„Minette it shall be,“ Charles confirms. He’s very unlike anyone else she’s ever known, not least in his appearance; tall, taller than all the other men, with pitch black hair and none of the formality of etiquette her royal cousins of France show in their every step, though they are still boys. Maman addresses him as „Sire“, for he is a King, now that her father the martyr is dead. But Maman also disapproves of him, she makes that very clear. She never calls him a consolation or a reward.
„Why don’t you listen to me,“ she says, and: „There is a clear path to bring God’s wrath down on the rebels and regain your Kingdom: embrace the true faith, my son, and marry your cousin, my brother Gaston’s oldest daughter. She has fortune enough to pay for an army, and once Madame my sister-in-law sees you are of the faith, she, too, will provide troops.“
„Nothing would make Cromwell happier,“ Charles replies. „If I am ever to be King of anything but empty promises, Mother, it will be King of England, and the King of England has to be a Protestant. The time for anything else has passed.“
Charles is the first person to openly disagree with her mother. No one else in her mother’s little court that has followed her into exile has ever done so, at least not in Minette’s hearing. She did not know it was possible. When Charles leaves not too much later, everything seems to be paler and more stifling, even the air.
Her mother dries her tears. „At least I still have you,“ she says. „My good and proper child. Oh, how I love you!“
Minette embraces her mother, and says the words back to her, as is expected of her. She cannot help but wonder, though: what it would be like to be not a daughter, but a son. To be Charles. To be able to leave.
II.
Her royal cousins, Louis and Philippe, are older than Minette, though not nearly as much as her brothers. Louis has six years on her, and Philippe four. She does not see them often, not least because the Queen their mother, her aunt Anne, is wary of Minette’s mother, wary of the fact that the former Queen of England will use every encounter for a plea or an argument. Still, they are permitted to live in the same palaces where the royal family of France resides, Minette and her mother, and so she does share the occasional meal with her cousins, she does attend mass with them, she gets dressed up for some receptions.
„My lovely cousin,“ Louis says, with perfect etiquette when he is sixteen and she is ten, but he doesn’t mean it. When he is encouraged to dance with her, he first says she’s a little girl, and then he makes a quip that finds its way to Minette all but an hour after it is spoken, for nothing travels faster than hurtful gossip. Dancing with her, Louis supposedly says, would be like dancing with the bones of Les Innocents, the most notorious cemetery in Paris. She’s growing fast at ten, and yes, quite thin.
The story must have reached her mother, too, but her mother pretends not to hear. Given that Charles will not marry his other cousin, the Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston d’Orleans, or rather, the Grande Mademoiselle will not marry him, Minette’s mother has put all her hopes into another marriage project. „You shall become Queen of France, my dear,“ she tells Minette. „Who better? Whose blood is nobler? And then you can change everything, for your entire family.“
Even at ten, Minette knows this is but a pipe dream. England is still ruled by the rebel Cromwell, and thus she is a Princess of Nowhere, just as Charles is a King of Nowhere. Louis, on the other hand, is very much the King of France, and a King of France will only marry a Princess who brings land, money and soldiers, not one who lives off his own charity.
„Cheer up, Cousin,“ Philippe tells her on the day Louis refuses to dance with her. „Louis is incapable of dancing with a partner anyway. Far too little chance of amazing people by showing off his ballet skills.“
It makes her laugh, and Philippe grins at her. „I like your dress,“ he says. „We should switch. You would look fine in mine, I think.“
He’s small for his age, just as she is tall, and thus they are of a size. It can be done. After enduring everyone’s stares which she imagines carrying scorn, pity or both as Louis‘ remark is making the rounds, Minette decides there’s nothing left to lose, and agrees. It won’t be the first time Philippe wears a dress, she knows that, but she has never been dressed in a gentleman’s clothing before. They help each other, and when it’s done, he crows delightedly, looking at them in the mirror of his dressing room.
„I knew I’d look better in that dress than you did, but you are a revelation in trousers, Cousin. We shall cause a sensation! Why, I think I do love you.“
Looking back years later, she decides that he was sincere that day. It will be the first and last time he says these words to her and means them.
III.
Jemmy is an unexpected present. She’s fourteen at this point and fast becoming a woman, at least that’s what everyone says. Jemmy is nine, and offers her the chance to be a child again, one more time. He’s her nephew, a son of her brother Charles and a woman whom her mother dismisses as „not worth talking about“, with whom he’s lived so far. Now he will join Minette and her mother in Paris and will stay with them, as opposed to her brothers who keep wandering across the continent in search of money, allies or lost dreams. Jemmy has Charles‘ dark hair and in general resembles him a lot, but as if someone had redrawn the features of Minette’s older brother into something softer, prettier. And far, far, younger, of course. It is delightful not to be the youngest anymore, to be regarded with awe instead of condescension, to be treated as the fountain of wisdom. What’s more, Jemmy is an affectionate child, who has never been at any court and thus hasn’t learned to disguise his feelings. He hugs, he embraces, he radiates with joy or bursts into tears at any given moment. It is refreshing.
„Well,“ her mother says, „it is a good thing he is not really going to be important.“
Minette is stunned. So far, her mother has shown great fondness towards Jemmy, who has won her approval with his ability to dance the first day they met.
„Don’t you like him, Madame my mother?“
„Of course I do. A most pleasant boy. But we must not forget that he is a bastard, Henriette Anne. Indeed we must not. Much heartache awaits if people forget their proper stations. Haven’t the last years taught us this in abundance? Now a prince has to learn to show dignity at all times. Like your cousin Louis does so well. But Jemmy may well show every emotion that occurs, for he is not, and shall never be a prince.“
Jemmy races her through the gardens, he dances with her, and he pushes the swings for her so high that she feels she’s flying, as she did the day she met Charles for the first time. They even have a language of their own. Like her, he has been born to English parents but has never lived in England to his knowledge; like her, he speaks French easily because most people around them do, but does make an effort to speak English as well, for Charles wants them to. It’s a promise to the future, or a spell, or a desperate pledge, speaking English: expressing the hope that they will actually set foot on English soil again one day. But speaking English with the small number of her mother’s English courtiers is hard; they always feel as if they have to report her progress or lack of it to her. Not so with Jemmy. He cheerfully keeps switching between both languages, and so does she. This is how she learns to speak English without writing it; flung like a ball between them, to and fro.
„We’ll be together forever, won’t we, Minette,“ Jemmy says, the word ‚together‘ in English and the rest in French, and it shocks her out of her race back into childhood, for she knows that no matter what will happen with Jemmy, this will not be. Maman hasn’t given up her dream for Minette to marry Louis, which is more foolish the more years pass without Charles regaining his throne, but while Minette knows she will never be Queen of France, she will be married, to anyone with money and rank enough to be of use to the Stuart cause. And whichever European prince that might be, it is not likely he will wish to include her brother’s bastard in his household.
„But I thought you wished to live with your father and fight at his side?“ she replies as light hearted and teasing as she can make it sound, for she doesn’t want to hurt Jemmy. And it is true, she has heard him fantasize about being the most daring of Cavaliers, as soon as his father has an army again. „I cannot do that, Jemmy.“
He looks struck by the existence of mutually exclusive dreams. Truly, he is still a child. And she’s not.
Then he says, entirely in English, „But I love you, Minette, and I always will,“ and the wonder and heartbreak about Jemmy is that he will keep this promise.
IV.
Courtiers of two realms fall over themselves to tell Minette they love her by the time she is seventeen. By then, of course, everything has changed for her. Charles has at last regained his throne, and without having to fight a single battle, too. This means Minette goes from being a poor relation of the French royal family to a desirable match, in every sense of the word.
„Your beauty is beyond compare,“ swears the Duke of Buckingham, roguish son of a notorious father, and pesters her for one of her stockings.
„You are perfection itself,“ says the young Comte de Guiche, who looks does resemble Apollo, or so he’s repeatedly praised by Minette’s new husband. Who is none other than cousin Philippe.
„You must be my wife,“ Philippe had said. „I am the most elegant man at court, and you are the best dressed lady. It surely is destiny. Besides, you’ll completely overshadow the clumsy Habsburg cow my brother married, Cousin.“
„So unkind. She is your first cousin, too, and mine“ Minette had replied, careful to let no true bitterness sour her flirtatious tone. „Besides, aren’t you supposed to convince me by proclaiming your love?“
He had shrugged „I think we’re a bit beyond that now, but if you wish it: of course I love you, my most beautiful of cousins. And wouldn’t you love being Madame of France?“
People often mistake Philippe for a fool, especially if they dislike him – God knows Jemmy does, who loathes him -, but he’s not. He’s not wrong, either. Being Madame, the wife of Monsieur, the King’s brother, the second woman in the Kingdom of France: it means no one will ever pity her as an object of charity again. Given Louis‘ new wife, their placid, harmless Spanish cousin, has evidenced no desire to shape the court’s tastes, to introduce new artists, to make herself the arbiter of disputes between powerful rivals at court, it would mean being the de facto Queen. Besides, what are the alternatives? Being married to some King or Prince she has never seen, in a country whose language she does not speak, with little chance of seeing any of her friends and family again. She would have done it as a way to help her brother Charles regain his throne, but now Charles is King without such sacrifice – why not do something with her life she wants to, for a change, and make a choice agreeable to her? For hasn’t she always got along well with her cousin Philippe? Yes, she does not love him as the heroines of Madame de Scudery’s novels desire their swains. No, she does not believe he adores her in that way, either; all the adoration she has seen him display has always been reserved for the handsome young men he surrounds himself with. But they could still be a good match.
She believes this until her wedding. Then her cousin Louis, the King of France, asks her to dance, opens the ball with her. Minette doesn’t like to think of herself as a grudge holder, but she has never forgotten that quip about the bones of Les Innocents, and so it is quite satisfying that this man, who didn’t consider herself as good enough to dance with, let alone to marry as her mother always hoped he would, now looks at her in unfeigned admiration as she effortlessly passes through all the intricate steps of the latest minuet with him.
This time, there is nothing bored or perfunctory about his tone when he says: „My lovely cousin.“
She has planned to accept the compliment graciously. After all, this is her wedding day, and everyone compliments the bride on such an occasion. But now she can’t help but tease him a little.
„Such masterful eloquence,“ Minette says. „Such rich variation and stunning dexterity with your words, Sire. Truly, I am undeserving.“
He pulls her closer, and then, suddenly, his thumb strokes over her palm.
„No,“ Louis says, „no, it is I who am the undeserving fool. But I shall try to do better now.“
She should smile, utter some banality and end the dance. Instead, she finds herself staring at him. He is not a handsome Apollo the way the Comte de Guiche is, no matter what the court poets say. But he has a rich voice, an intense gaze that for the first time is entirely focused on her, and a presence that seems to blot out anyone else in the room. Why has she never felt this before?
„Let me try to do better,“ Louis insists, and suddenly she remembers standing on the swings, encouraging Jemmy to push, higher, higher, for even if it meant she could fall, before that she could, for a short time, experience what it is like to fly.
That night she tells Philippe, truthfully, that she has her monthly courses, and therefore they will have to wait some days before consummating their marriage. She doesn’t expect him to mind, expects him to be relieved, rather.
Instead, he wrinkles his nose. There is actual hurt in his eyes, a sense of betrayal. „You stink, Madame,“ he says. „But apparently my brother does not mind. How thoroughly disgusting.“
The hell that is her marriage has begun.
V.
Five miscarriages, three births, two surviving children: by the time Minette leaves Dunkirk for Dover, she is a decade away from the young bride who became Madame of France. It might as well be several life times. Philippe has fought against her departure till the end, has even tried to get her pregnant again so he could forbid her to go. This has nothing to do with desire for her body, which he does not have, or even the wish for more children, though he is actually fond of the two girls who survive. He wishes to punish her for the fact Louis has sent his lover away, the Chevalier de Lorraine. The only thing the Chevalier has in common with his predecessor in Philippe’s affections, the Comte de Guiche, is the fact he is one of the most beautiful men at court. But where Guiche has admired Minette, has asked for her portrait, even, and carried it to his death, Lorraine shows only contempt for her. Worse, he’s been given power over her household by Philippe, has sent her favourite lady-in-waiting away, her confessor, anyone who showed too much loyalty to her and not enough to Philippe. And when Louis finally intervened by banishing the Chevalier, it made everything worse.
„I won’t be happy until he is back at my side,“ Philippe said, „so there is no reason why you should be, Madame,“ and at first completely refused his permission to let her visit her family. Which was his right as her husband. Then Louis intervened again, Louis who has long since stopped any flirtation with Minette in favour of dalliances with mistresses who are unrelated to him, but who has a very specific reason why he wishes her to visit her brother Charles that has nothing to do with love.
„Only Madame can negotiate this treaty between France and England, and do justice to both parties,“ Louis insisted, and Philippe had to give in. Though he still demands she is not to stay longer than three days, only at Dover, and see solely her brothers Charles and James, but not her nephew Jemmy, the Duke of Monmouth. Whether it is because Jemmy so openly dislikes him, whether he suspects that Jemmy asked Louis for his help regarding the Chevalier, or whether he actually assumes Jemmy to be having an affair with her, as he’s hinted now and then: Philippe wants her to not see him again.
„As I said,“ he returned coldly, when she had pleaded with him to reconsider. „There is no life for me without the Chevalier. Therefore, you, too, Madame, shall have no life.“
But he has been left behind in Dunkirk, and Minette is happy to see Charles has ignored Philippe’s condition. They all await her once her ship reaches England: all her surviving family of birth, for her mother is gone. Her brother Charles. Her brother James. Her cousin Rupert, who fought at her father’s side against Cromwell and is the oldest of the group. And Jemmy, the youngest: her brother’s oldest child, her almost brother, even. But never a prince.
She has been here before only once as an adult, a few months before her wedding, in the glowing aftermath of Charles‘ coronation. There is nothing familiar in the salty air or in the houses built of red brick. But the strangest, most unfamiliar feeling is this: she feels free. It won’t last. But right now, this is how she feels.
It gets even better, when a message arrives from France saying Louis has cajoled Philippe into giving her a fortnight, not just three days.
„Just how much does he expect of this treaty?“ Charles asks shrewdly.
„What a cynic you are, brother,“ she says without denying it.
What Louis expects is this: not just an alliance with England against his enemy, William of Orange, who also happens to be Minette’s nephew, just like Jemmy, her dead sister Mary’s son. An alliance with Catholic France against a Protestant country will not be popular in England regardless of that country’s ruler, but then again, England has already had a brief war with the Dutch and lost, most ignominiously, so it will not be impossible for the English to accept this. But that is the only part of the treaty which the public will be told. What Minette has promised to deliver, what finally gave her the key to her freedom and made Louis support her against his brother is nothing less than a miracle.
„It would have been our late mother’s dearest wish,“ Minette says when she’s alone with Charles, without the rest of the family, for this needs to be secret from them as well. „For you to accept the true Faith. It always broke her heart that of her children, only I was raised in it, and she rejoiced when James found his way to the Church regardless.“
„She was the only one who did,“ Charles retorts wryly. „The Commons and the Lords here are a squabbling bunch, but upon this news they rose in unison and shouted ‚No Popery!‘ As for me, I might have become creative with my cursing.“
None of which was a firm No, and Minette always has been good at hearing the unsaid as well as what was spoken out loud.
„You would not have to beg your Commons and Lords for money anymore,“ she says, „if you could get it elsewhere. Louis would be happy to provide it to a fellow monarch and a cousin. If he knew it served to help heal the harshest wound dealt to the body of Christ – when Christendom was split in two, when all those souls were lost and damned. These aren’t just fine words to him, Charles, you must not think that. Yes, he desires power and land, as all Kings do. But he truly is of the Faith. England and France have been enemies so often and for so long, brother, and it has gotten worse since religion, which should unite all Christians, separates us. We are of England and France both, you and I. Children of a Stuart King and a Bourbon Queen. Don’t you want peace and wealth between our parent countries instead of more strife?“
„What I want is not much to the point here, my dear, or else you would stay here with us, and we might visit the moon together, you and I, for I am very curious indeed about it. What matters is what can be done. You were born into the last years of the war, so you do not remember, Minette. But I was there when it started, though I was a child, I saw how it started, and I tell you, I shan’t go on my travels again. Being exiled is for younger men. Though I fear brother James might still have to try it again, if he continues on his stubborn path. This is not a country that will ever accept a King calling himself a Catholic again, Sis. Trust me on this. It just isn’t.“
Charles is fluent in French, of course, but he never uses it when writing or talking to her, though he did with their mother. He once referred to this as exercise to keep her English heart beating in a French body, and he might be right; it’s likely she would have forgotten what she learned in her youth by now otherwise, and it comes in handy in Versailles at times, being able to converse in a language few others are able to follow. It does mean she feels always slightly different when conversing with him, though, as if the English sounds reshape her into the woman she might have been had their father never been deposed, a woman like her and not, for France is not just in her blood, it is in her heart as well.
„And if you did not call yourself a Catholic at all,“ she says slowly, „except in your heart – until the time is right?“
The corners of his mouth curve. He takes her hands and folds them into his, still much larger than hers, for all that she’s a woman and a mother now and no longer the little girl he swung around. He has their Danish grandmother’s height, the only one of her siblings to do so, but his eyes and hair are Medici black, just like Louis‘ and Philippe’s: their other grandmother’s heritage, Maria de‘ Medici. They all carry so many people in them.
„Would that be enough for Louis?“ Charles asks. „Or would he become angry if the right time does not arrive for quite a while, and complain of my perfidy to the world? You realise such an accusation would not just send me travelling, Minette. Likely as not, it would cost me my head.“
It seems amazing to her that the one true religion should still be thus hated in this country, and yet, she knows he would not lie to her about this. There’s something else he’s asking her, too, with unsaid words. He would, in essence, take Louis‘ money to avoid the constant struggles with his Parliament, but leave his conversion an unfulfilled promise until the point it could not damage him anymore, which, given what he has just told her, would be his deathbed. This is not an even bargain, with advantages to both sides, except for one thing: Losing patience, Louis could break it for good and break Charles by revealing it to all and sundry. Unless she can somehow convince Louis that Charles‘ zeal for the Faith is real, and he needs to have near infinite patience. Essentially, Charles is asking her to help deceive not just her brother-in-law but the King whose subject she is. Whom she may or may not have loved for a while as something other than a brother-in-law. Charles is asking her to choose one of them over the other.
But there would be peace between England and France. And Charles has never lied to her. He is trusting her with the truth, and always has done. Louis, in the same position, would have accepted her suggestion, eagerly sworn his conversion to be imminent and would later have told her that being a woman, she did not understand the necessities of state.
„I would never let any harm come to you, my brother,“ she says. „Not to your life, and not to your immortal soul. And if you promise me that you will join the Faith, then I do trust you that you will, one day, no matter what. That is what I will tell our royal cousin of France.“
He kisses the top of her head. „I love you,“ he says. „More than anyone else.“
Because he says this, too, in English, there is a French part of her that asks: „But would you if I had chosen otherwise?“ Hastily, she represses it. Time is running out for them, even with a fortnight granted by her husband, and she wants to enjoy every moment she has here.
Unheard, unspoken, the question lingers.
VI.
She is twenty six years old and dying. There is no doubt about that, not in her nor in anyone around her. The pain is excruciating, tearing her up from the inside, far worse than any of the births and stillbirths did. When it started, after she drank a glass of iced chicory water, she suspected poison and said so. Philippe took her pet dog and gave him the rest of the water to drink to prove otherwise. The dog is fine.
He’s still in something of a panic, Philippe; he knows what everyone here thinks and who will be suspected. Not himself, but his absent lover, and if Louis believes the Chevalier has poisoned her, Philippe might never get him back. If speaking didn’t hurt her so much, she’d tell him not to worry; whether Louis believes the Chevalier to be guilty or not, he would never permit an accusation touching the royal family. Not least because it might threaten the deal she brokered between him and Charles, only a month ago.
That is the thing, though, why Philippe has come to hate her: not really on the Chevalier’s behalf. She can see it now, as she couldn’t then. It started at their wedding. There is one man more important to Philippe than all his minions, and that is his brother. When Minette started to flirt with Louis, he saw it as a betrayal, for which of course he could not blame Louis. So he blamed her. While he had not desired her body, there had been some affection and a level of trust, and then it broke, and never healed again, and so they’ve been imprisoned with each other ever since. That Louis trusted her with the English negotiations and did not tell Philippe a thing about them must have seemed like the ultimate insult. Now that she’s facing her death, she has to admit she’d known, and taken some gratification out of it. For all that her mother always urged her to be good, Minette has never been a saint. Philippe’s spiteful actions always caused her to retaliate. Why else take the Comte de Guiche from him, and continue talking to his brother?
His brother. Louis has tears in his eyes. He also has two of his mistresses at his side, past and present: Louise de La Valliere, her former lady-in-waiting, who was to have been a decoy distracting attention from Minette until Louis concluded he did love the lady and made her Maitresse en Titre, and Athenais de Montespan, who defeated La Valliere in the ever constant struggle for Louis‘ affections. She is not sure she ever truly loved Louis, though he has been the first man she desired. Was it the man, though, or the King of France? Poor Louis. Throughout his life, no one will be able to tell.
Her own brother is far away, and his envoy, kneeling with the other men at her side, asks her whether she has been poisoned.
„Accuse no one, Madame“, her confessor says hastily, who has been let back to attend her by Philippe, which truly told Minette she must be dying. „Make your death an offering to God!“
She shrugs, to show she does not know. Poor Montagu. She has been doing his job in all but name the last few years, but now he will have to act alone, and hopefully preserve the peace. Keep all the secrets. Oh, if she’d known she would die within the month she’d have remained in England with her brothers and Jemmy.
Her little daughters have been brought to her to say goodbye. They look at her with fear in their eyes. No wonder: she must offer a dreadful spectacle, and they only know her in stately robes, spending an hour or two with them before handing them back to their nurses and governess. They will forget her soon, and maybe that is for the best. Why is it that her family tree is full of orphaned little girls who never knew one of their parents? Her mother, too. Her mother was still lying in her cradle when Minette’s grandfather was murdered, the mighty Henri IV, and Maman never knew him, just as Minette had never known her own royal father.
„Don’t think of him as a martyr,“ Charles once told her, „that robs him of his life all over again. He was so very human: a man who did not like to speak in public and who stuttered when he was upset, but always, always tender with us, not remote. He would have been with you, too.“
She closes her eyes, just for a little while, and imagines it: that unlived life. Running through a park as she has done with Jemmy in that brief belated girlhood, but not in France; in England, where it hardly stops raining and the grass is more green than she’s ever seen it here. Her mother is there, too, but not bowed down with grief and resentment; she’s cheerful and laughing and opening her arms, not clutching, letting Minette go. Her siblings are there, the sisters she has never seen, Elizabeth and Mary, and her brothers, but she leaves them behind as she’s running towards him, this man whom she has never met: not tall like her oldest brother, not so much taller than herself, and with grey in his chestnut hair, but joy in his face as he, too, opens his arms for her. He’s been waiting for her all this time.
„I love you,“ she says in gratitude and amazement, „oh, I love you!“
And she’s gone.