At long last Audrey speaks. Though her silence was deafening. 

“I am empty ma chér,” she said, a most absurd lie, but one she had always insisted upon telling herself. 

“There’s no heart in here, not for man, nor woman, nor even myself,” she murmured sadly. 

“Everyone has a heart,” Tallmadge denied. “We’d be thoroughly lost without it, even the most low and unwell can be reformed. Without a heart, we’d be nothing,” he said gently. 

Preachy? Perhaps. Did he believe his own words? He didn’t know. But surely there is some certainty in them. 

Yet, Audrey’s face turns melancholy, green eyes begin to pool with tears and Ben gazes back at her, his sadness feeling at least doubled. Like he was a deer being torn apart by wolf-clawed melancholy.

“Madam I..” he said meekly. “I am sorry, I never meant… please forgive me. Whatever wrong I’ve done you, I most gladly renounce, just… please.” 

It didn’t help. So instead, Ben shifted alongside her to abate the flood of tears coming from her green eyes. 

“Do you grieve for the woman you once were? For your previous life?” He asked, softly. 

Audrey has to resist the most cynical and bitter of laughs. Has she not made it more than clear who's in control here? Despite the fact, it’d be quite different outside of the walls of her house. Good thing she isn’t that foolish. Husband one was bedridden and tedious, the poison was discreet and merciful. Husband two was an arrangement from a cousin. Nasty business that one, it was the rope. Husband three was supposedly a love match until he began abusing her like an ill-used doll, he tried his luck, and she cut his throat with an Italian stiletto. It is as much as she’ll ever get, justice is virtually nonexistent anyway. There’s no self-defence plea for women in either America or France. Especially not a whore. No, they deserve every ounce of pain they get. Though, Mary Magdalene was allegedly an unscrupulous woman. Perhaps that says more about the church and faith than her. She’s already said too much about her maker.

Nuzzling closer despite her better judgement feeling rather like a wolf being beaten by a deer and wishing to crawl away and lick her wounds. She’ll do no such thing. He’s right, to some extent. But as with any worthwhile thing, it’s complicated.

“I continue… because I know no other way. I endure, God or no God, and I doubt they exist. I am dead to the world, certainly. I was the second I traded the daughter of a Vicomte for being a wife in watercolours and paid well for it. But if the rules are unfair I shall not abide by them.”

Ben blinked, dub founded. He could simply not comprehend why one would choose godlessness. 

“You—you don’t truly wish to be nothing do you?” He said, earnestly. 

Pillowed against his chest. Vampiric speed on her side, she catches Ben before he can slip away. She tries for a moment to not think about how gentle he’s being and how gentle she’s being in return. He had his way, yes, as so many others have. But he didn’t break her or do her harm. For he could shatter her like a glass art piece in an instant and she could smash to pieces him like a porcelain doll. Tear him apart, if she so wished. But she’d never wish ruin upon this man. She only wishes he wouldn’t go. Hearing his words she settled on a hesitant plan.

Hearing his conviction she merely nods. “I was the same once until I had nothing left to lose but myself, then it seems I have misplaced that too. I am not nothing,” she insists softly. “I believe in myself, I believe in you,” she manages gently.

“You say faith can save even the most damned, well perhaps you should hear my confession,” a sigh. “I shall see you to Yorktown, but there are… terms,” She says. It’s strange the sensation that follows those words. The warm fuzzy sort. The kind she fakes for most. Her body is warm from the blood of evildoers and his embrace. Usually so cold, so fragile. She doesn’t even know what this is but she’s not letting him go, certainly she is not giving into her apathetic nature. 

“To Love all compounds hateful be, Give me the pure or none,” she says quoting Brome. “I don’t want your money, I want you,” she adds. “Regarding beauty,” a small laugh. “It’s one of the only reasons I stay. Mankind is as vicious as they are beautiful and you as fair as some golden angel, with eyes like a sunrise, I’ve too often been denied. I am a poet, as well, but prose and earnest love do not pay my debts.”