“You’ll find out when you taste what I made you.”
Roast pork on big pieces of bread, smeared with butter and grated horseradish; potatoes, mashed up in cream and reheated on the kitchen stove; a little salad made of the watercress that grew year-round along the banks of the Wyck; and an ancient bottle of Chambertin from his father’s tiny cellar—good or bad, they would find out together.
They ate it in bed, Anne wearing one of his shirts, and midway through she pronounced it all delicious, the best meal she’d ever eaten in her life.
“Does this mean I don’t have any flaws?” he wondered.
“None that I’ve been able to discover. But you must have some, everyone does, and I’m looking forward to ferreting them out. Over the next fifty years or so.” They kissed, in a sort of lips-toast, and went back to their feast, both smiling.
“I don’t make very much money,” Christy said presently. “I think of the rectory as my home because I was born and grew up here, but it really isn’t; it’s part of the income from the ecclesiastical benefice. It’ll pass to the next incumbent when I’m gone.”
“Well, then,” she said carelessly, “nobody can say I married you for your money.”
“No, but they might say I married you for yours.”
“Nonsense. No one who knows you could think that, Christy, not for a second.”
He didn’t answer. He thought people would think, and probably say, any number of things once their engagement became known. But there was no sense burdening her with that at this early stage.
“Anyway, I expect you’ll be a bishop in a few years,” she said airily, biting into one of the apples he’d brought for dessert.
“I will, will I?”
“A man with no flaws has got to rise, it’s a law of physics. How do you get to be a bishop, by the way?”
“The prime minister nominates you and the queen appoints you, subject to a formal election by the cathedral chapter.”
“Oh, Lord, I’m going to have to learn what all that means, aren’t I? Cathedral chapter, benefice, incumbent. Canons and deans. Advowsons.”
“Candlemas, Martinmas, Michaelmas,” he threw in. “Whitsuntide. Rogation Day.”
She slid down on her pillow in mock despair. “Exegesis, eschatology. Apostasy.”
“Saint Swithin’s Day.”
“Oh, no, you made that up.”
“Not a bit. July fifteenth. They say if it rains on Saint Swithin’s, it’ll rain for the next forty days.”
“Well, that I don’t doubt. And that’s another thing, Christy, I hate the winters here.”
He shook his head sadly. “Not much I can do about that.”
“No, but at least I want credit for the sacrifice I’m making.”
He set his empty plate down and rolled onto his side to face her. “I’ll give you credit. I’ll give you all the credit you know what to do with.” He reached across her to pull her closer. “I’ll keep you warm, too.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that, either,” she said breathlessly. Her mouth, when he kissed her, tasted of apple. She shimmied down lower in the bed until her head was off the pillow entirely, inviting him. Her hands coasting over his skin felt like warm flames. “What time is it?” she murmured, her voice sultry.
“Late.”
“How late?”
“Three, three-thirty.”
She smiled. “That’s early. Nothing stirs at the Hall in winter before six. We’ve got three whole hours.”
“Time enough for you to finish telling me your life story.”
“Pardon me?”
“The thrilling conclusion.”
“Now?”
“Unless you don’t want to.” He pulled a stray strand of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “You needn’t tell me. But I know something was wrong between you and Geoffrey, something worse than the trouble I’d expect between two people who didn’t suit and didn’t love each other. Something you won’t speak of.”
She broke their gazes to stare past his shoulder at the ceiling, and her eyes were cloudy with indecision. She sat up. She plumped her pillow and tidied the bedclothes over her legs, turning the quilt back and folding the top of the sheet over it in her lap, running her hands pointlessly across the wrinkle-free coverlet. “I was going to tell you,” she said at last. “I kept putting it off. It’s just—I guess I’d have chosen some other time, some other place. But I’ve been using that for an excuse not to tell you for too long, and this is probably as good a time as any.”
“It is so painful, then?”
“It’s . . . unsavory.” She turned to him earnestly. “But nothing can spoil this, can it, Christy?”
“No, nothing can spoil this.”
The trouble left her face; she smiled at him tenderly. “No,” she agreed. “So. Well, then, where did I leave off? I believe Geoffrey had just left me for the first time.”
“Anne, don’t—” He stopped.
“What?”
“Never mind. Go on. No, nothing, go ahead.” He’d been about to say, Don’t use that terrible dry, brittle tone, because it hurts me to know how badly you were hurt. But she had to tell it her way, and if it helped to put that sardonic distance between herself and her story, he wouldn’t ask her not to. “Geoffrey had left,” he prodded when she didn’t continue. “How did you live in London all by yourself? Did he send you money?”
“Occasionally. How did I live? Not very well. He’d left me in a flat in Holborn with one surly servant and no friends. At first I naturally gravitated toward the London art set, but that soon became awkward.”
“Why?”
“Because the men wanted to seduce me and the women—not coincidentally—didn’t trust me. I was weary of their self-absorption anyway; I had only drifted into that world out of inertia.”
“What did you do with yourself?” He poured more wine into her glass and handed it to her.
“My main preoccupation was trying to find enough money to pay the rent. I tried painting, but as I’ve already told you, I didn’t have enough talent. I started a biography of my father, but couldn’t find anyone interested in publishing it. I—” she heaved a sigh, as if she were already tired “—wrote a few little memoirs, ‘Life with My Father in Provence,’ that sort of thing, and sometimes people even bought them and paid me for them. I kept a journal, a diary—still do, in fact.”
“What about Geoffrey’s father? Wouldn’t he help you?”
She looked at him rather pityingly. “You knew him better than I, Christy. What do you think?”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes, once. His written reply was a very short, very blunt refusal. In essence, he advised me not to darken his door again. I’d made my bed, et cetera.” She took a sip of wine and set the glass down with a little clatter, her movements stiff from old anger.
“So you were on your own.”
“Quite.”
“And yet you didn’t take a lover?”
She raised her eyebrows at that. “No, I’ve told you.”
“Well, forgive me for saying so, darling, but that doesn’t sound very sophisticated to me. That sounds—why, that almost sounds provincial to me.”
She rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. “I can see I’m not going to live that down for a long, long time.”
“No, but I’d have thought a true Continental sophisticate like you would have taken lovers while her husband was away. But you didn’t.”
“I could have,” she said defensively.
“I’m quite sure of that.”
“I was invited to do so more than once.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Certainly not because I thought it was morally wrong.”
“Certainly not.”
She sighed again. “Oh, Christy, I don’t
know. Lack of energy? I’d been betrayed. Geoffrey hurt me very badly.”
He picked up her hand and began to trace its outline against the coverlet on his raised thigh. “Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to have an affair? A kind of revenge?”
“I thought of it.”
“But you didn’t,” he persisted.
She hesitated. “There was a man.” Another pause. “Two men, in fact.”
Immediately he was sorry he’d raised the subject. “You know, Anne, maybe I don’t need to know this after all.”
“Oh, no, you asked me, and now you’re going to have all of it, the whole sordid story.” But she squeezed his thigh, telling him it wasn’t going to be that sordid. “There was a man, an old friend of my father’s. I’d known him most of my life; I thought of him almost as an uncle. When Geoffrey left me, I went to him for advice. He gave me money immediately—a hundred pounds, I think it was. Well—I daresay you’re ahead of me already in this story—it wasn’t long before it became clear that this was not precisely a loan. Or I should say, he wasn’t interested in being paid back in kind; he had a different tender in mind, so to speak.” The brittle tone was back, barely veiling the bitterness underneath. “That hurt me. It felt like another betrayal. After that, I was leery of helpful-seeming men. I stayed to myself. I got a cat,” she said with a short laugh. “I formed friendships with women in my neighborhood—most of them in remarkably similar circumstances—and we helped each other whenever we could. And Geoffrey did send money occasionally. The time passed. Then he came home. He was ill and—”
“Wait.” He kept his gaze on her fingers, bending them backward and forward, pretending absorption in their amazing flexibility. “I believe you forgot the second man.”
“Ah. That was nothing. Really.”
“The whole sordid story,” he reminded her softly.
“All right, then. I was half in love with him,” she said, speaking quickly. “He was a sculptor. My marriage was an impediment at first; but then, as it became more and more impossible—I didn’t even know where Geoffrey was, or if I’d ever see him again—I came close to acquiescing in an affair with this man. I didn’t, though, and the relationship ended. About which I certainly have no regrets now.” She took her hand back and faced him. “Something held me back, Christy. I didn’t know what it was—I thought perhaps I was a cold woman, incapable of giving myself in that way. But it’s not true, and I know now why I couldn’t take him for my lover.”
“Why?”
“Because he wasn’t you. I didn’t love him enough. There won’t ever be anyone for me except you.”
They reached for each other and held on tight for a long, wordless embrace. Christy’s heart felt swollen. Love and gratitude streamed through him, and a profound humility. “I’m blessed,” he said, and Anne whispered back, “I feel blessed.” He thought that was a fine start.
She pulled away, dashing a hand at her shiny eyes. “I’ve not quite finished the whole sordid story. And—” she gave a forced laugh “—believe it or not, it gets much worse.”
He shifted onto his side and put his arm across her lap. “Tell me.”
“Geoffrey came back, after being away for more than two years. He looked—I can’t describe to you how much he’d changed. He’d been in Burma, he said, where he’d contracted malaria. He’d lost his hair, he—looked like an old man, his speech was slurred, he had lumps and swellings all over his body.” She closed her eyes, as if to block out the memory, then opened them again quickly, as if that hadn’t worked. “I didn’t like his doctor, I thought he was a quack, but we couldn’t afford anyone better. The drugs he took only made him sicker. I truly thought he was dying. It went on for months.
“But—gradually he started to get better. When he was out of bed and almost normal again, the doctor, the—quack I didn’t trust and couldn’t stand, told me something Geoffrey had made him promise never to tell Something that probably saved my life.”
A premonition chilled Christy; in its aftermath he wondered why he hadn’t guessed the truth before now. He didn’t move or speak. He knew exactly what she was going to say.
“Geoffrey didn’t have malaria. Why he lied, or how much longer he’d have kept lying—I don’t even want to know. What he had was syphilis. There was no telling exactly when he’d gotten it, but since I wasn’t infected, and since it had already progressed well into the second stage, the doctor concluded it must’ve been very soon after he went away.”
Christy pulled her closer. “Sweetheart,” was all he could think of to say.
“I found out why the medicine was making him as sick as the disease—sicker. He was taking chloride of mercury.”
“My God.”
“There was nothing else that would work, the doctor said, and it did seem to be helping; most of his symptoms went away and he swore he was cured. He even found another war to fight, someplace in India this time. But then he fell ill again, and they said it was mercury poisoning. And his disease came back—he wasn’t cured at all. That’s when he gave up his captaincy and came home for good. Or so I thought.”
“So when you first came to Wyckerley—”
“He’d recovered again, to some extent; he was as healthy during the months you saw him as he’d been since he first fell ill. Once again, he said he was cured. He was taking a different medication, iodine of potassium, and it seemed to be doing him good. Perhaps he was cured, I don’t know. Now we’ll never know.”
She leaned forward and put her head down, next to his, and spoke softly against his temple. “The second time he came home, Christy, it was absolute hell. You can’t imagine—I don’t even want you to know, not all of it. I’ve already told you about the violence—some of it. Enough. It was the drinking as much as the sickness that made him act like a madman sometimes. I’ve never seen anyone suffer as he did, physically, of course, but even more from despair. Just utter hopelessness. Soldiering was his life, and he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t control himself, and his erratic behavior had thinned his circle of acquaintances until he was down to rotters like Claude Sully. I think he could see himself decaying, literally decaying, piece by piece, falling apart. The pox was—racing through him. It can go fast or slow—I’ve become something of an expert on it, as you can imagine—and Geoffrey’s case was one of the quick kind. If he’d lived, I don’t know what would’ve become of him. I doubt that he was cured. How they could have let him back in the army is a mystery I’ll never understand.”
They lay quiet for a time, softly touching, listening to the fire in the grate. Finally Christy said, “I don’t know what I could’ve done or what I could’ve said. Nothing, probably. But I wish you had told me. Or he had. I just wish I’d known.”
“I couldn’t have told you then.”
“No, I don’t blame you.”
“But you’re right—it would’ve been better if you’d known. Geoffrey loved you, Christy, in his way.”
“Do you think he did?”
“I know it. And I don’t know what you could’ve said or done either, but I think you might’ve helped him. It was such a dreadful secret, and I was such an unsatisfactory confidante. You would never ask, and so I must tell you that we were never intimate again after our short-lived wedding trip. And—he wanted me. But I—couldn’t—give him anything. My body was the least of it. I couldn’t give him anything of myself, there was no love in me. I was his reluctant nurse, nothing more, and the bitterness between us was an absolute nightmare; And I could add guilt to my nightmare because . . .” She took a deep breath. Tears welled in her eyes, and she said on a near-sob, “Because at the end, I think he loved me. Oh, God.” Christy gathered her up, and she wept against his chest as if her heart were breaking. “I think he did—he never said, but I think so—oh, Christy—”
“Shh,” he soothed her, holding tight, rocking her a little.
A
fter a time, she grew calmer; she stopped crying, and used his handkerchief to wipe her cheeks. “I’ve never admitted that, even to myself, until this minute. I must’ve been trying not to believe it. It makes everything worse.”
“No, Anne, it doesn’t. If Geoffrey’s life at the end was hellish, then loving you must’ve been the only good thing left for him. How can that be anything but a blessing? It might’ve been a desperate love, maybe even twisted, but because it was love, it must have been gentle and good-hearted as well. You can be grateful for that. And glad for Geoffrey, not heartsick.”
She turned in his arms to embrace him. “I love you, Christy,” she said, and the tears were back—he could hear them in her voice when she hid her face in his neck. But her open mouth felt hot on his skin, and her hands were making short work of the buttons down the front of the shirt she wore. “Make love to me.” Bare-breasted, she yanked at the belt of his dressing gown and dragged the cloth away, then lay down on top of him. Searing heat flared in him, and he resigned himself to the knowledge that passion between them was going to be unpredictable and out of his control. God help me, he prayed automatically, but it wasn’t sincere: He didn’t want help. All he wanted was Anne.
She put his hands on her breasts. He kissed her while he fondled her, her body arched over him like a bow, but he had to stop when she began the soft, slow squeeze of her thighs around his rock-hard erection. “God!” he ground out through his teeth, and she threw her head back and laughed with lusty, uninhibited gladness. The sound freed him from the last restraint, and he reached for her, wanting to hold her against his heart, overcome with love.
But she glided out of his grasp. Sliding down his body, she made a curtain of her hair and caressed him with it, softly, back and forth, brushing his skin like cool silk scarves. Bent over him, she slipped her hands under his buttocks. The tantalizing hair-caress became more intimate, immeasurably more exciting, and now it was her lips and her cheeks she was nuzzling him with, humming softly with her own pleasure. He made a strangled sound when he felt her tongue circle the sensitive tip of his penis. She took him into her mouth, and he made a grab for her knees, his body jerking in stunned reaction. “Anne,” he groaned. “Oh, Jesus—Anne—”
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