She was deemed…

“I believe that beauty in memory is eternal. The object itself may fade, but the memory of beauty remains.”

What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?

She was silent for a moment. Then: “Yesterday at the forge, covered in soot, sweating, laughing as you hammered that nail. It was beautiful.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Josiah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“No.” I moved the wheelchair closer to where he was sitting. “Say it again.”

“You were beautiful. You are beautiful. You have always been beautiful, Elellanar. The wheelchair doesn’t change that. The broken legs don’t change that. You are intelligent, kind, brave, and, yes, physically beautiful.” Her voice grew prouder. “The twelve men who rejected you were blind idiots. They saw a wheelchair and stopped looking. They didn’t see you. They didn’t see the woman who learned Greek just because she could, who read philosophy for pleasure, who learned to forge iron despite having broken legs. They didn’t see any of this because they didn’t want to.”

I reached out and took his hand, his huge, scarred hand, capable of bending iron, but holding mine as if it were made of glass. “Do you see me, Josiah?”

“Yes, I see you all. And you are the most beautiful people I have ever met.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Dangerous words. Impossible words. A white woman and a black man enslaved in Virginia in 1856. There was no room in

society for what I felt.

“Ellaner,” he said carefully. “You can’t. We can’t. If anyone knew, they would…”