Why?

After pelting uphill and downhill and breakneck speeds, not talking but only trying to keep their seats and their breaths, they finally stopped at border of the forest. All three were panting, inhaling deeply and calming their jumpy nerves. Jevan slipped off the horse’s back and held up his hands to help Cecily descend. Together they looked out at the noonday landscape, and then she turned to him. There was that wild look deep in his eyes—a look that bespoke ambition and a man who knew himself, an her. Reaching her fingers up to brush his cheek, Cecily leaned in and touched her lips to his, and he responded.

   

Buttercup beauty, a photo by jillyspoon on Flickr.

It was a little different, though, she thought. Different than last time. There was passion, yes, and it felt so right, but was it only her imagination that there was the smallest hesitation? She pulled away from him and heard his voice, like water running over a deep blue, “Cecily, you are the first woman I’ve ever loved.”

   
“You are the only man I will ever love.”

   
“And what am I to say to that, dearest?”

   
“Jevan, when will we be married?”

   
The cold look entered his eyes, the look she almost feared every time she saw it. It was a look of distance, of backing away and into shadows where she couldn’t reach him. “Jevan?”

   

Fatality in the Rain

The Rain-Collecting Road, originally uploaded by ashleigh290.

Since you're obviously reading this, you need to know that this scene (this entire subplot) is no longer a part of the story. I included a snippet here, though, as it is one of the scenes that was hardest to cut. Enjoy!

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A cart was rattling rapidly down the street, the farmer was impatient to get home. Rain had been washing the world into a giant mud puddle for the past four days, and this street (nothing more than a narrow dirt track that caught the runoff from every other street in town) was becoming nearly impassable.

Most of the townspeople were sitting inside their warm, brightly-lit homes—the tall imposing ones that only well-to-do merchants could afford; the kind that seemed to lean in to touch each other over the street, blocking out the light. The farmer sneered at the tall houses as he passed under them, and was drenched with a bucketful of water from one of their rainspouts for his pains. Cursing and shivering, hunching up his shoulders against a world that hated him, he neglected to see a small child playing at the edge of the road. It was a little girl with golden hair, a red dress, and small white fingers that were making two wooden dolls fall in love.

The farmer did not see her. The horses did not see her. All they saw was the mist of rain that fell like a sodden gray blanket on the air. The girl did not see the cart or the pounding hooves of the horses. All she saw was her dolls. The only one who saw anything and everything was a woman with strands of wet, gray hair who stood at the other side of the street.