From the moment I stepped into the Coalyork church as a girl of only five years of age, I knew the pastor had it out for me. He had been young then, his pompous Roman collar sitting a little too low and a little too large on his scrawny chest - he would stand by his altar, his thick, auburn curls bouncing aggressively in the late afternoon sun and his fresh, pink complexion growing red with passion. All that was gone now - his skin had grown pockmarked and pale over time and his hair had fled from his scalp, leaving his unattractively conical head as bald as that of a newborn child. The one attribute that had never abandoned the man was the frost that flickered ominously in each of his steel grey eyes. 

At the dignified age of twenty nine, he had taken a wife - a pretty young thing with twinkling green eyes and blonde locks so pale they appeared almost white in the summer months. I first encountered the girl at their wedding, with rosebuds braided intricately into her hair and a hefty green gown that seemed to swallow her slim frame whole. It was only when she had swanned past me on the path to her baleful groom that I noticed her eyes were swimming with tears.

It was not until the following autumn that we met once more. She had been walking home, her canvas satchel great with freshly picked apples and her stomach great with child. His child. A single, glistening fruit had fallen from her pack and I had left my post by my father's stall to rescue the offending produce. She had thanked me, her soft hair falling across her delicate features as she laughed, only just hiding the bashful blush that had crept out from behind her smile. We met more often after that, seeking one another out amongst the ooze of humanity that filled our market square, and by the first fall of winter's snow, I had begun to pay weekly visits to her drawing room. His drawing room. Sometimes she brought her child - a sweet and placid thing burdened with little awareness of the world by which it was surrounded - but most times, she did not, and we were alone.

It was there, warmed by the winking flames of a well-kept fire, that we conversed, tentatively at first and then with enthusiasm and relish. For countless weeks, conversations were all that passed between us. My stomach grew tight and a peculiar sensation burned in the left side of my chest. When she spoke, I became overeager, laughing at each and every sentence she uttered, and I choked on my words, rendered speechless by that burn aching beneath my throat.

At first, I wondered as to whether I had contracted some plague, some contagion. I would stare anxiously at my filth-ridden reflection in every windowpane or puddle I passed, looking for some sign of illness, some rash, some buboe. A month passed me by before I began to consider that my condition might have been borne of something other than disease. 

"Oh, I cannot bear it any longer," these were the words my brother declared as he stood outside the polished wooden door of his ladylove's home. "I simply cannot bear it." 

"What cannot you bear, brother?" I had accompanied him that day in a gesture of moral support and was beginning to regret doing so. Curse my kind heart.

"Love," he spat the word as though it were bitter to his tongue. "I cannot exist for one more second in a world without the knowledge that she feels as I do." 

"What does love feel like?"

"It feels as though you are being skewered with a lance. As though your lungs have been punctured and your soul set aflame. There is no air, there is no water, there is nothing but the stabbing pain in your heart that brings pain to every step and joy to every breath. And I hate it," he sighed and then grunted as he finally mustered the courage to knock on the door before him. 

We had, by then, been waiting outside for more than fifteen minutes. 

A few short seconds passed before Elizabeth - the object of his rhapsodic affection - opened the door, and a few rather long minutes passed as my brother pronounced his love in an increasingly florid manner. It seemed, however, that his strategy had been successful when the woman flung herself into his waiting arms and professed that they would be wed in the spring.

I did not understand their adoration for one another - Elizabeth was bright and charming, with caramel skin and in possession of the prettiest kirtles a woman could find for just shy of ten miles. She had a penchant for embroidery, you see. My brother, on the other hand, was short for his age, with calloused hands and an exceptionally broad face. I loved him, but I could not imagine what any woman could possibly see in the emotional depths of his green-tinted eyes that would so greatly overcome his shortcomings.

With his declaration of love, however, I came to understand that burn in my chest for what it was, and with that understanding, I found myself desperate to act upon it.

The next time the pastor's wife found me in the market square, my heart began to throb violently, pressing against my ribcage and threatening to escape my body altogether. And so I pulled her into my arms, and I kissed her. 

It was a stupid decision, really, to do such a thing in public, but even now, with all that has happened, I do not regret it. Her tongue was in my mouth and my heart was in my throat - it felt as though all the world were ending and we were the ineffable architects of its destruction. Oh, what a lucky man the pastor was - I had never before grasped quite how blessed the man was to be married to such a woman but now I knew. He was the luckiest whoreson ever to walk this earth. 

We parted, slowly, the air around us hanging low and heavy with words unspoken, and it was then that she allowed herself to smile. My heart and soul soared, my breast warmed wonderfully by her touch and I found I could hardly breathe. The burn within had come to consume me and I felt all the better for it. For a few moments in time, my love and I were one. 

It was criminal that those moments were so few.