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The casket had been found buried beneath a willow tree at the edge of a patch of land being cleared by developers. It’s excavators had felt a thrill as they’d lifted the small wooden box out of the earth, thinking they’d discovered a treasure hoard, but had quickly lost interest when they’d opened it and found only bundles of folded paper sealed with wax.
Treasure for someone maybe, but not for them.
The casket had then been passed on to the nearest museum, who had given it and its contents to their junior curator, who in turn had contacted an academic at the city university to ask for her help deciphering the long, looping writing and bunched up scrawl she had discovered inside the paper.
This was how photocopies of the letters ended up on Melinda May’s desk, which is where her eagle-eyed research assistant and PhD hopeful sees them for the first time.
Jemma doesn’t believe in fate, but as soon as her fingers pass over the glossy, colour-heavy photocopies she knows she is meant to study them.
‘May,’ she breathes, ‘please.’
May quirks an eyebrow at her, telling Jemma that her supervisor had full anticipated her reaction. Maybe even put the letters in her way deliberately. Taking this as an invitation, Jemma sinks into a chair next to the desk and pulls the photocopies before her.
‘Late eighteenth century,’ she says confidently, ‘maybe early nineteenth. The paper has been well preserved in the casket, so you wouldn’t need gloves to handle it.’ She squints. ‘There’s a discrepancy between the paper types, though. One is much finer than the other.’
‘Hmm.’ May inclines her head in proud assent. ‘The museum wants to make a big deal out of this. If we can find out anything of value, they might be able to stop the developers from building on the site. Apparently they want to turn it into another leisure centre...’
Jemma nods, although she is barely listening. Her fingers are still touching the photocopies and her heart is thumping as she tries to decipher the words before her.
A thrill runs down her spine as she imagines what it will be like to hold the letters in her hands. Because she has to. Not just because it will be the perfect subject for her thesis but because, deep down inside her, something is telling her that she has to be the one to find out what they mean.
‘…this afternoon,’ May is saying.
Jemma manages to drag her attention away from the photocopies. ‘What?’
‘The museum is expecting you this afternoon.’
Jemma’s heart leaps so high that she almost jumps out of her seat. ‘Oh, May, thank you! I promise I won’t let you down.’
The corners of May’s mouth twitch. ‘Don’t thank me yet.’ She reaches over and prises the photocopies away. ‘A car is coming to pick the two of you up at one.’
It takes a moment for the words to sink in.
‘The…two of us?’
‘Yes.’ May leans her cheek on her hand. ‘One of Dr Mackenzie’s students who specialises in the long eighteenth century has asked to see them too. The department has decided to send you both. You can work on the letters together.’
‘Oh.’ It is all Jemma can think to say.
May rolls her eyes fondly. ‘Come on, Jemma. A find like this, you didn’t think you’d be the only one it called to, did you?’
The ride to the museum is awkward, to say the least.
The PhD candidate tagging along with her is called Leo Fitz, and he tumbles into the car with his collar askew and his backpack open, letting papers and pens fall out onto the seats. If he tries to give her a rueful smile of greeting, Jemma doesn’t see it. She is too busy fuming.
This was not how it was meant to be. Whenever she’d pictured her first taste of academic success, whenever she’d imagined the glory of seeing her name in print for the first time, it had always been alone. It had been a dream that had kept her going, all through her degree and her Master’s and the long months buried deep in the archives helping May with her research. And now, when the chance to achieve it is within her reach, she is expected to share.
‘Crisp?’ Fitz offers her a bag of prawn cocktail, crumbs flecked about his lips.
Jemma shakes her head and slides further down in her seat. And to add insult to injury, she is expected to share with him of all people.
Her fury ebbs away the minute the casket is placed in front of her. She and Fitz have been given a small side room off the museum’s educational wing, but been assured that no hordes of school children will be allowed to disturb them at their work. The room is darkened, and they have a table and lights for examining the letters, space for their laptops and notes, and in the middle of it all, sits the casket.
Across the table from her, Fitz shrugs off his jacket and places it on the back of his chair.
‘Well?’ he asks her. ‘Are you ready?’
For a moment, caught in the lamplight, he almost looks handsome. There is a glint in his eyes that Jemma knows well as the sparking of passion and there is a brightness to his eager smile that pulls at her heart. For a moment, her breath catches in her throat.
But then Fitz sits down and pulls a single pencil out of his pocket, mottled, and apparently chewed at the end, and the moment passes.
Wrinkling her nose, Jemma pulls out her pencil case and unzips it to pick out her own pencil, mechanical and most definitely unchewed.
‘Yes,’ she announces primly. ‘I am.’
Jemma doesn’t think about anything other than the letters for about a week.
She is in the tiny museum room at seven o’clock every morning and only leaves, yawning, when it closes at six every night. At night, words from the pages she’d read that day dance before her in her dreams.
It soon becomes clear that the letters are the collected correspondence between two people. Their distinctive handwriting betrays this, as well as their different styles of address. From an initial skim of the dates at the tops of pages, Jemma approximates that there is about a decades-worth of letters to read through, from 1810 to the early 1820s. Every time she prises open a wax seal, she gets the sense that she is diving deeper into history than she ever has before, that it is seeping even further into her bloodstream.
She feels a connection to the letters, so much so that it is only after several days of fervent reading and note-taking that she looks up, blinking itchy eyes, to remember that she is not alone in studying them.
Fitz is there, chewing diligently on his pencil, as he must have been all week. He catches her staring at him and gives her a confused smile. Jemma forces her gaze back down to the letter in front of her, hoping that the heat on her cheeks is only coming from the lamp.
After that, she finds herself annoyingly aware of his presence. His breathing, the tapping of his foot against the floor, even the smell of his shampoo wafting across the table in the early morning. It’s a rather pleasant smell, warm and earthy, but since all it does is remind Jemma that he is here, piggybacking onto what should be her discovery, she decides to hate it.
One afternoon, Fitz stands up and stretches.
‘I’m going to go get a drink,’ he says, his voice croaky from disuse. ‘Do you want anything?’
Jemma mumbles no without looking up; she has reached a particularly difficult part of a letter to read. She hears the door click shut as Fitz leaves but remains absorbed by the page in front of her until she finishes decoding the passage and falls back into her chair with a satisfied sigh.
Pleased with herself, she lets her gaze trail across the table. The casket still sits between their work stations in a kind of No Man’s Land, in easy reach for both them but not nearer one than the other. Beyond it, Fitz’s notes and research papers slide from their piles into one large heap, burying the letter he is working on. Despite the chaos, Jemma can see that he is throwing a huge amount of energy into what he is doing. He is passionate about his work, just like her.
For the first time, she wonders what it would be like if she and Fitz were to work together on this project – not just in parallel. It would certainly make the work go faster and it might be interesting to be able to bounce her ideas off someone other than her cat…
A handful of papers that had been balancing precariously at the top of the pile starts to make a downward slide. Jemma jumps up to stop it burying the letter even further and carefully extracts it from the mountain of research. She is about to place it back on Fitz’s desk, out of the way of any more landslides, when something catches her eye.
The handwriting on the letter, the same tight, upright lettering she has spent the past hour deciphering, is almost identical to the pencil scrawls covering Fitz’s pages of notes.
Standing in the centre of the room, Jemma goes very cold and then very hot. She is just placing the letter alongside the notes when the door swings open.
‘This place calls itself a museum but there’s not a decent tea or doughnut in sight,’ Fitz tuts, entering with a steaming polystyrene cup in one hand and a packaged shortbread in the other. He stops short when he sees what she is holding. ‘Jemma?’
She turns to him. ‘Have you been…practicing the letter’s handwriting?’
‘What? No.’ The tips of Fitz’s ears flush pink. He moves to set his cup down on the table. ‘Don’t be daft.’
Jemma’s mind is racing. She has heard of this before, a cautionary tale from her first year tutor. Original documents being sold for thousands online while fraudulent copies remained on display. World-renown experts could be deceived by these counterfeits.
‘Well, it certainly looks like it. Are you going to replace a letter?’ she demands. ‘Or do you plan to forge a new one?’
‘Neither!’ Fitz protests. ‘My…my handwriting just looks the same. I promise.’
‘So exactly?’ Jemma holds both the letter and his notes up, forcing him to look at them. ‘You can’t think I’m stupid enough to believe that.’
Fitz’s face turns crimson.
‘I know you’re not stupid,’ he says quietly. ‘And I know you don’t like me much, either. But I hoped you at least trusted me enough not to accuse me of fraud.’
Turning away from her, he grabs his academic planner out of his backpack and tosses it across the table towards her. Jemma stares down at the tattered diary, covered in ink blotches and stickers.
‘You can check in there,’ Fitz says shortly, ‘if you’d like proof. It’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow, that is unless you report me to the chancellor before then.’
Grabbing his coat from his chair, he storms out. Jemma stares after him, already feeling a lurch of guilt in her stomach.
She grabs the planner and flicks through it. Her finger lands on a page from several months ago and she sees with a sinking feeling that the neat boxes of dates are filled with same scratched handwriting as the letters. Fitz had been telling the truth. Somehow, in some freakish coincidence, his handwriting matches the writer of the letters exactly.
Groaning inwardly, Jemma rolls her gaze to the blackened ceiling. After a mistake like this, there is only one thing she can do.
Predictably, Fitz is more than a little surprised when he answers his doorbell and finds her on his front step.
He blinks. ‘How did you find out where I live?’
Jemma gives a rueful shrug. ‘The assistant curator. When I told her that you’d left this behind,’ she holds up his planner, ‘and that I didn’t mind dropping it off for you, she was perfectly willing to give me your address.’
Fitz reaches out for his diary, and, as she passes it over, their fingers brush together. His touch is warm and it makes Jemma take half a step back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, not believing in beating about the bush now that she is here. ‘I accused you of something awful, and I shouldn’t have.’
‘No,’ Fitz agrees, ‘you shouldn’t have.’ He turns his planner over then sheepishly admits: ‘but I should have told you before. When I first realised it. It would have saved us all this hassle.’
This is perfectly true, but Jemma doesn’t think she should mention it when she is meant to be apologising.
‘Why didn’t you?’ she asks.
Fitz looks up at her and the way his eyebrows knit together tugs at Jemma’s heartstrings.
‘It’s difficult to explain but ever since I first saw the letters, I’ve felt a…connection to them. I’m not saying it’s destiny or any of that malarky,’ he adds quickly, ‘but somehow it feels…I feel…’
‘Like it was meant to be,’ Jemma finishes softly.
Their eyes meet across the threshold. With a small smile, Jemma holds up the paper bags she’d been holding by her side.
‘I’ve brought the doughnuts,’ she offers. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got the tea?’
It takes only a heartbeat for Fitz to open his door and let her step in.
They devour the doughnuts and drink the tea as they talk. Jemma is surprised at how easy it feels to pour out all her thoughts and theories to Fitz, someone she has barely known a month. He is an excellent listener, attentive and responsive, and she is pleased to find that they agree on many things about the letters.
‘There’s definitely a difference in their social standing,’ Fitz says with certainty. He reaches out to take another doughnut. ‘Higher on his side than hers, I think.’
Jemma nods. ‘Oh, absolutely. The paper quality of his letters alone shows that.’
‘But then there’s the way they write to each other.’ Fitz pauses, chewing his doughnut thoughtfully. ‘You can tell that they don’t like each other much, but because he’s higher in society than she is, he has to be politer. It makes for hilarious reading.’
Jemma tilts her head at him. ‘You think they don’t like each other?’
‘Oh, Jemma, come on.’ Fitz snorts. ‘You’ve read just as many of these letters as I have, maybe even more. They hate each other.’
‘Then why do we have over ten years’ worth of letters between the two of them? Why would they spend a decade sending all these missives back and forth?’
‘What are you saying?’
Jemma crosses her legs and lifts her mug smugly to her lips. She’s been sitting on this hypothesis for days and now that she finally has the opportunity to share it she is glad that it is with Fitz.
‘I’m saying that they don’t hate each other. They’re falling in love. I think we’re discovering a love story.’
Fitz stares at her for a moment, before pulling a face and shaking his head.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He pops the last of his doughnut into his mouth. ‘You’re going to have to convince me, Simmons.’
There is a tiny sliver of jam sitting on his upper lip and Jemma has to hold herself back from reaching over and wiping it away with her thumb. She grins into her tea.
‘Alright, then. I will.’
The next three months pass in a blur. Fitz and Jemma spend every working day at the museum, reading the letters, researching things that they mention, and piecing together two lives that were lived over two hundred years ago. Sometimes they even spend part of the weekend there too and when they are not at the museum they are often at each other’s homes, camped out on sofas and sharing ideas.
Jemma is soon no longer able to tell who she feels a stronger connection to – the writers of the letters or Fitz. Sometimes, it feels like the same thing.
Slowly but surely, they begin to build a picture of their two episolarians. The man, they agree, is almost certainly of the nobility, maybe a minor earl or lord. The woman is a little lower in standing, the daughter of some local gentry. They meet as teenagers through the union of mutual friends and so begins a twisting tale of reluctant acquaintance, grudging friendship and, at last, enduring love.
Jemma will never forget the evening that Fitz gets up from his chair and crosses over to her side of the table. He hands her a letter, one of the young man’s, and stands beside her, one hand over his mouth as she reads it.
Jemma’s eyes skim over the page, much more attuned to his handwriting now after weeks of practice. As she realises what the letter is asking, understands the sincerity and devotion he is offering his correspondent, she feels tears prick her eyes.
Delighted, she looks up at Fitz.
‘You were right,’ he admits, and even his hand can’t hide the width of the grin spreading over his face. ‘It’s a love story.’
Unfortunately for the two lovers, their story doesn’t end there. Jemma is agonised to discover that they find themselves separated by war, the English channel and the Napoleonic Wars insurmountable barriers between them.
Some of the letters she and Fitz discover at the bottom of the casket were clearly never sent – they aren’t travel-stained and the seals are unbroken. They tell of heartbreak and longing, love and pain. They repeat the same words over and over again like a prayer: I miss you.
These are the letters that ought to make Jemma feel that she is being invasive, trespassing into another person’s most private world. Instead, they only make her feel closer to the writers. Their words fill her until the ache she can read in the pages enter her own heart.
She is poring over one particularly lonely letter one day when she feels Fitz’s hand touch her gently on her shoulder.
‘Jemma? Everything alright?’
Jemma blinks and finds that she is crying. With a sniff, she sits up and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘Oh. Yes, sorry.’ She gives him a watery smile. ‘Thanks for stopping me. I think I was one line away from giving a historical document permanent water damage.’
‘No problem.’ Fitz returns the smile easily and perches on the desk beside her. ‘Not that I was thinking about that though. I just didn’t like seeing you upset.’
There is a tender concern in his eyes that makes Jemma’s heart perform summersaults inside her chest.
‘I’m not upset,’ she says. If he still has any doubt about this, she reassures him with a pat to his knee. ‘Not really. I’m sad that they both had to suffer for so long before they could be together. But looking at all the letters we still have to read tells me that their story is far from over. And I have hope that their faith in each other will carry them forward and lead them to where they need to be.’
This is a rather wistful confession, one that Jemma would normally keep to herself. She says it shyly, then glances sidelong at Fitz to see if he understands. It is rather alarming to see that he has paled and is staring at her with wide eyes.
‘Fitz? What is it?’
He shakes his head. ‘No. Nothing.’
‘Clearly it’s something. What’s wrong?’
Sucking in a deep breath, Fitz reaches across the table and picks up a letter from his desk. It is one of the unsent ones, written by the woman, and flecks of her broken wax seal fall off onto Jemma’s skirt as she takes it in her hands.
‘I’ve been reading it all morning,’ Fitz says quietly. ‘I know I should probably have moved on but I couldn’t make myself. Something about the prose of this one…the words…’
All of a sudden, Jemma knows what he means. At the end of the letter, just before the woman has signed her initials in her long, looping cursive, is a hauntingly familiar sentence – our faith in each other will carry us forward and lead us to where we need to be-
Jemma’s heart skips a beat. Quickly, she drops the letter onto her desk as though the paper has burnt her fingers.
‘It’s a coincidence,’ she whispers. ‘Just like how your handwriting is a match.’ She rubs her eyes. ‘We’ve been working on these letters for so long it’s only natural that we’d start to…mimic…their language patterns. It’s not…’
She struggles for a word.
Fitz nods slowly and picks up the letter.
‘You’re right,’ he soothes her, folding it up and rubbing his thumb against the wax. ‘It’s a coincidence. Nothing more.’
But, when they are both seated again and have resumed their work, he holds out his hand across the table. Jemma takes it, without a second thought.
It is not the last coincidence the two of them discover, not by a long shot. In fact, it happens so frequently that Jemma starts to feel comforted rather than disquieted by them.
Somehow, it feels right to hear Fitz echo a line she’d read that morning. It feels good to speak a thought out loud and see him shoot her a smile and push a letter across the table for her to read it in writing. It feels like they are discovering something entirely new together and Jemma loves it. She loves having a secret to share with Fitz.
Soon, the déjà vu is so familiar to Jemma that when it stretches into something else she forgets to be startled by it. The woman’s letters and her own feelings seem to blur. She finds herself nodding knowingly at something written in a letter or giving a soft chuckle at a joke no one else would find funny. Sometimes it is hard to remember that they were written two hundred years ago, and not the day before with her own pen.
Her favourite letters are the ones written shortly after their two lovers are married, separated by business and travel this time, rather than war. Jemma cannot remove the letters from the museum, so she takes the photocopies home instead, to read over and over again, poring over every line. Her breathing hitches as she reads of the woman’s desire for her husband and she has to cross her legs when she reaches the parts where she describes what she wishes he would do to her if they weren’t apart.
Heat pools in her belly when she realises they are exactly the same things Fitz has been doing to her in her dreams.
‘I suppose it’s a shame we never found out who they were,’ Fitz says.
The two of them are standing in the museum, across the room from where a crowd of murmuring tourists are gathered around an exhibit. They have been standing there for a while, enjoying watching people come and go, and taking pride from the fact that their hard work is being appreciated.
It had taken several months for them to prepare the letters’ exhibit, long hours of brain-storming and late nights holed up in their small side room making plans. The museum had dragged its heels as long as it could, holding out hope that there would be some miraculous revelation and they could present the public with the names of the mysterious lovers. They didn’t need the discovery to preserve the development site anymore – the uncovering of a Roman wall had done that – but they were eager to eke out every last shed of history they could from the find. Despite many days spent trawling through local archives and digital records of peerages, Fitz and Jemma were unable to fulfil their wish. Whoever the letter writers were would remain a mystery forever.
Jemma hums her agreement.
‘For the museum, yes,’ she says. ‘But I actually think I prefer it this way.’
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Fitz turn his head towards her. ‘Really?’
Jemma shrugs. ‘They never signed the letters. Then they got buried deep down in the earth. Surely that shows that they never wanted to be identified. They wanted to keep their names to themselves.’ She tilts her head to one side. ‘Although I do agree that a portrait or two would have elevated the exhibit, rather. Maybe we should have borrowed some from the portrait gallery just to show who they could have been…’
‘Maybe,’ Fitz agrees. He moves slightly, so that his shoulder just brushes against her own. ‘Is that your only reason for being glad we never found them out?’ he asks quietly.
Jemma smiles. If she didn’t know him as well as she does, she’d think he’d read her mind.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, slyly, shooting him a sideways glance. ‘Do you think I might have another?’
It is a dark room, the lights suitably low to protect the precious artifacts on display, but Jemma swears she sees him blush.
Before them, the crowd disperses, moving on to the next room of the museum. This leaves the space in front of the exhibit empty for the first time that morning and Fitz takes advantage of this by slipping his hand into hers and leading her forward to stand in front of it.
Behind the glass display, the wooden casket sits on a pedestal. Its lid has been opened and on the wall behind it the letters have been pinned in place. They are not the originals, naturally, but cleverly rendered photocopies folded into origami butterflies that look like they are exploding out of the casket to freedom. Beside the display, information boards explain about the project, giving details about where the letters were found and the love story they reveal.
The university is cited, and so are the two of them. Their names appear side by side, and Jemma couldn’t wish for anything more.
‘I can only speak for myself,’ Fitz begins, ‘and I guess it’s a bit selfish to say so, but I’m glad we never found out because then I’d have to admit the reality of who they were. And then they’d feel less real. I didn’t want to know their names and see their faces and lose the sense of…of realness I feel every time I read one of their letters.’ He hesitates. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
He is still holding her hand and Jemma squeezes his fingers gently.
‘Keep going,’ she whispers, feeling her heart lift with hope.
‘When I read their letters, I don’t feel like myself anymore. Or rather, I feel like I’m more than myself. So, I’m glad that we never found out who wrote them and I’m glad no one will get to read them in as much depth as we did.’
Jemma can sense his eyes on her and it makes her feel like glowing.
‘I never wanted to share them with anyone but you,’ Fitz admits. ‘Not once we’d started. I like it that you’re the only other person who knows them like I do.’
For the first time, Jemma turns to him. A silent understanding passes between them of a truth they both know but will never tell. It will remain a secret shared between the two of them, buried as deeply as the casket had been.
‘I like that too,’ Jemma says, with a small smile.
Fitz pulls a face. ‘You don’t think it sounds a bit stupid for a historian to say?’
Jemma laughs; she can’t help it.
‘Maybe,’ she says, ‘but if it is, then we can be stupid together. Because I feel exactly the same way.’
There was no room dark enough to dim the light that spreads across Fitz’s face, as bright as the sun and twice as brilliant.
‘Yeah?’
To answer him, Jemma tilts her face upwards and kisses him.
When he kisses her back, his lips warm and ready, all thoughts of the letters and their writers leave Jemma’s mind, until there is only one pair of lovers in that room that matters to her.
Perhaps there always was.