The Rain at the Gate (#3)
Mid-April, 1912. A sudden downpour.
I had not anticipated the rain.
The morning had been clear — one of those delicate April beginnings that gives the impression of permanence. Blue skies through linen curtains, birdsong faint enough not to demand notice. I stepped out without bonnet or shawl, intending only to check the lilacs. The air had smelled of soft things: upturned soil, warm stone, and something faintly sweet drifting from the orchard wall.
I wasn’t planning to linger.
But the clouds came quickly. As they always do. And I, foolish in my optimism, found myself a fair walk from the house when the sky turned.
The rain did not begin with drama — no thunder, no wind. Just a hush. A slow shifting of pressure. And then, a first drop. Then another. Then many.
I took shelter beneath the old elm by the garden gate. It was more symbol than shelter — its branches wide but thin, its cover more poetic than practical. Still, I could not make myself retreat. There was something about the moment — the hush between the drops — that stilled me. I stood in that softened space, arms folded, curls dampening at the edges, and listened to the sound of the garden dissolving.
And then I saw him.
Yates.
He was walking up from the lane, coat darkened at the shoulders, boots already muddied from the lane’s low dips. His stride slowed as he approached, not from fatigue but from something quieter — consideration, perhaps. The kind of pause a man allows himself only when he thinks he is unobserved.
Our eyes met, and he hesitated.
Just briefly — just enough to register. Then he continued toward me with that maddening calm of his, the kind that always makes me feel as though I am the one who ought to apologize for something unnamed.
When he reached me, he removed his hat — not in the showy way some men do, but carefully. Deliberately. He held it in one hand and extended the other slightly, as if to offer it, or to ask something without speaking.
I declined. Just a soft shake of the head, paired with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. To take it would’ve meant touching his hand. And I didn’t trust myself to be casual.
He didn’t insist.
He stepped just close enough to share the slight shelter of the elm. Not close enough to touch. But close enough to feel — in the shift of the air, in the invisible thread that pulls when one presence leans too near another.
We spoke of small things.
The roses had bloomed early this year.
The leak in the conservatory was being seen to.
The light, he remarked, had gone very soft.
I replied. I think. I don’t remember my words — only the sound of his voice, low and dry, softened by the rain. It was not what he said that held me. It was how he stood, how he listened, how his coat held that elusive scent I couldn’t name — citrus, perhaps, or bergamot, but not quite either. Sharp and familiar. Like something I once wore. Or someone I once wanted to become.
There was a moment — unmarked by time — when he turned toward me slightly, and our eyes met without pretenses to hide behind. I felt the breath catch in my throat before I remembered to mask it with a comment about the moss underfoot.
He smiled. Not fully. Not safely. Just a soft pull at the edge of his mouth. A silent acknowledgment that we both felt the storm and were pretending it was only weather.
The rain eased.
Not stopped — just softened. Like a curtain being drawn between acts.
He looked toward the house, then back to me. His head tilted in the barest gesture of farewell — nothing formal, nothing spoken. And then he walked on.
I did not follow. I remained beneath the elm, rain touching my sleeves, fingers loose at my sides. I stood there until I could no longer hear his footsteps.
Only then did I exhale.
I had not anticipated the rain.
Nor the storm it left behind.
Not in the sky.
Not in me.
—L.B.
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