Gemma nearly gaped at the beauty of his warm, deep voice as he spoke smoothly and easily. It was as if having the words supplied to him by the book solved all the usual hesitancy and reticence within him.

Concealing her surprise, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the chair to allow the sound of his voice flow over her. It was not the poetry that she lost herself in. It was the mystery of a man so tangled in his mind that he had mislaid his own words. And yet when supplied with a rich and detailed soliloquy, he spoke so beautifully, with such emotion and intention! His slightly roughened baritone voice slid over her senses, stirring up thoughts and images best kept to herself.

She opened her eyes. It was her turn for revelation and a strange sort of dismay when she realized that although he missed not a single one of Shakespeare's words, his eyes were not upon the book at all, but fixed enigmatically upon her. Their gazes locked as he continued.

"O let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love and look for recompense

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed."

Gemma swallowed hard as his gaze darkened upon her, but she could not look away.

"O learn to read what silent love hath writ!

To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit."

What sort of man was he, a man of such education and talented oration? How had the war stolen that much from him as to render him very nearly mute? Were his thoughts so scrambled, was his mind so far from this world, that he could not cross that void with his own communication?

He had been robbed by battle, locked away from himself. The world had been robbed, much worse off with the loss of the man he must've been.

How much was left inside him? Was he whole within, merely struggling to return to this world? Or was he hollow, a soul drilled clean through by battle and trauma?

So beautiful. So gifted. So broken. The monumental task she taken upon herself suddenly terrified her. Who was she to think she could reach inside to take his hand, to lead him back across the shattered bridge to join the rest of the world?

He spoke on. He recited beautifully and probably flawlessly, every line cadenced just enough to let her know it was poetry, yet not so on the beat that she felt hammered by rhyme.

He moved smoothly from the twenty-third Sonnet to the twenty-fourth.

"Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee."