Kneel For Me

Saturday

Fenwick’s was quiet on Saturday morning.

I found the personal shopping floor at ten, gave Greer’s account reference to a woman named Patricia who had the particular manner of someone who’d dressed half of London’s professional class and would never say so, and let her pull options while I stood in front of a mirror that was too honest for a Saturday.

“The dinner,” Patricia said. “Black tie, you said. What’s the occasion?”

“Business. A signing.”

“And the impression you want to make?”

I thought about it. “Capable,” I said. “Not decorative.”

She looked at me in the mirror for a moment. Then she went back to the rail and moved three options aside and pulled out something I hadn’t noticed — deep navy, structured at the shoulder, simple everywhere else. The kind of dress that didn’t ask for attention and got it anyway.

“Try this one first,” she said.

It fit like it had been waiting.

I was back on the street by eleven thirty, garment bag over one arm, thinking about nothing in particular and Lucian Voss specifically, which was becoming the same thing.

My phone rang at twelve fourteen.

Unknown number. London area code.

“Sera.”

His voice. On a Saturday. On my personal number, which I hadn’t given him either, which meant he’d had it since before I arrived and had simply — waited.

“Lucian,” I said.

A pause. The particular pause of a man who’d made a decision and was now on the other side of it without a script.

“Are you busy,” he said. Not quite a question.

I looked at the garment bag. At the Saturday street around me. At the particular London grey of the sky.

“No,” I said.

“I wanted to ask about the Alderton clause,” he said. “The third point. Greer’s response came back and there’s a framing issue.”

I waited.

He said nothing else.

“You could have emailed it,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Or texted.”

“Yes.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he said finally. “Thursday evening. About it being human. Caring about someone.” He stopped. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

I stood very still on the Saturday pavement, London moving around me, and understood that Lucian Voss had called me on a Saturday to tell me something he didn’t have words for yet.

“You don’t have to do anything with it,” I said carefully.

“That’s not—” A pause. “That’s not how I operate. I don’t carry things without knowing what to do with them.”

“Maybe this is different.”

“Everything with you is different.” Said quietly. Flatly. The way he said things that cost him.

I didn’t say anything.

“That’s not a complaint,” he said. “I want to be clear about that.”

Something in my chest did something complicated. “I know.”

A long pause. I could hear London on his end too — the particular quality of it, upmarket and quiet, somewhere with more space than my street.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Kensington. I walk on Saturdays.” A beat. “It’s the only time the phone stops.”

I thought about that. Lucian Voss, walking through Kensington on a Saturday morning with no jacket and no agenda and no frosted glass between himself and the world.

“The Alderton clause,” I said. “Third point. Send me the Greer response and I’ll look at it today.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to.”

A pause. Then, quietly: “Thank you.”

“Lucian.”

“Yes.”

“The clause isn’t why you called.”

The longest pause yet. Seven seconds. I counted.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

I waited.

“I wanted to know if you were all right,” he said. “After this week. After everything Webb did.” A pause. “After Thursday.”

After Thursday.

The orange light. The low table by the window. I don’t think you’re a mistake. Two people who’d stopped pretending.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Are you?”

He seemed surprised by the question. A small, telling silence.

“I’m — yes,” he said. “I think so.”

I think so. From a man who spoke in certainties.

“Good,” I said.

Another pause. Comfortable now, in the strange way that silences with him had become — not empty, just full of things that didn’t need to be said out loud.

“The navy dress,” he said suddenly.

I looked at the garment bag in my hand. “How do you know I bought navy?”

“I don’t.” A pause. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

Something in his voice shifted — barely, just a fraction. “Good,” he said. “That will be all, Sera.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it — a short, surprised sound that I hadn’t made at work in three weeks.

He was quiet for a moment.

“You should do that more,” he said. Quiet. Almost careful. “Laugh.”

Then the line went dead.

I stood on the Saturday pavement with the garment bag over my arm and the dead phone in my hand and thought about a man walking through Kensington with nowhere to be, who had called me on a Saturday not about the clause at all, who had said everything with you is different like it cost him something and meant it anyway.

I started walking home.

The navy dress was the right choice.

I didn’t need to see his face to know that.