by Mary Balogh
And yet physically, sexually, she felt nothing. Not horror. Not pleasure. Only the mental satisfaction that this was happening to her again and that perhaps the memory of it would replace the memory of the other time.
His left hand took her right, twined fingers with hers, and lifted their joined hands over her head as he worked in her for several minutes until finally he sighed against the side of her face and she felt liquid heat at her core.
His fingers relaxed about her own.
She felt like weeping then. It had been beautiful, yet somehow she had missed the beauty. It had been intimate, yet she had hidden away from it in some deep, secret part of herself. She might have shared something deeper than their joined bodies with him, but she felt very separate from him.
He rolled awkwardly off her almost immediately and sat up on the side of the bed facing away from her without looking at her. He buttoned the flap of his pantaloons and got to his feet to cross to the window, where he stood looking out.
He was indeed beautiful, she thought, looking at his broad shoulders, his narrow waist and firm buttocks, his long, well-muscled legs. And he had just been inside her body. He had made love to her.
And he knew that it had not been good for her.
She knew what reason he would give himself for that.
She opened her mouth to assure him that it had not been so very bad, and that his disfigurements had had nothing to do with her lack of complete pleasure.
But how could she say that aloud? What reassurance would there be in such words?
And how could she tell him the truth-that the shadow of another man had come between them at the moment of their joining, that for that moment she had felt such a revulsion that she had almost fought him in maniacal panic?
How could she tell him that for a moment he had become Albert Moore to her?
What could she say to him?
She said nothing. She had not fought him after all or said or done anything that had shown open revulsion. And she had told him beforehand that she was inexperienced.
Perhaps for him their lovemaking had demonstrated no more than that fact.
But she had so wanted the afternoon to be perfect.
She had so wanted…
Ah, dear God, she had so wanted.
Sydnam stood at the bedchamber window looking out. It was still only late afternoon. Probably no more than half an hour had passed since they had come up here.
He did not know if Anne Jewell was sleeping on the bed behind him. He would not look to see. But he doubted it.
He felt sexually satiated, and that ought to have been a wonderful feeling after such a long celibacy. Instead, he felt a terrible sense of failure. Not that his sexual techniques were so lacking, he supposed, especially to a woman of no real experience. No, it was something else that had caused her to withdraw as soon as they reached the point of real intimacy.
Had he expected that she would find him beautiful, that she would find it beautiful?
Had he not realized from the moment she kissed him in the rose arbor that she had steeled herself to show him compassion, to assure him that in her eyes he was a normal man? Had he not realized too that her offer of herself had come out of her terrible loneliness? She ought to have been married years ago to a man of her own choosing, but circumstances beyond her control had made her virtually unmarriageable.
Perhaps, he thought, they had both got what they deserved from this ill-advised ending to their afternoon together-and to their acquaintance. Loneliness was not a good enough reason for what they had done together-not when each of them was lonely for commitment and permanency. Yet it was impossible for them to find such things together.
That had just been made painfully obvious.
He wished the matter had not been put to the test.
Too late he realized that sex did not take away loneliness. It probably made it far worse. The next few days would reveal the truth of that to him, he suspected.
He did not want to turn his head to look at her. He would, he thought, find that Anne Jewell, his friend and confidante, the woman with whom he supposed he had allowed himself to fall in love during the past few weeks, was gone, to be replaced by a stranger with whom he would feel uncomfortable because they had been intimate together when there was after all no real intimacy between them.
And tomorrow she would be gone-literally. When he next returned here, he would come to this room and stand just here and try to pretend that he could turn around and find her asleep on the bed.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would stand here and wish he could forget that she had ever been to Ty Gwyn with him.
He turned. She was lying with the covers drawn up under her arms, those arms and her shoulders bare, her glorious honey-colored hair in a shining tangle about her head and shoulders and over the pillow. Her crowning glory, he thought, though he did not say so aloud. It was too much of a cliche. And the time for such words was past anyway.
She was looking steadily at him, her expression unfathomable. She was probably hoping he had not noticed that their mating had not been good for her.
He smiled and said what he had not known he was going to say though it was what he realized must be said-later even if not now.
“If you wish, Anne,” he said, “we will marry.”
It was not much of a proposal. He realized that as he spoke the words. But how could he ask her any other way? How could he lay an obligation upon her by speaking of emotions that would doubtless embarrass and even dismay her? He certainly did not want her pity.
“I am well able to support you,” he added, “and your son. I think it might be a good idea. Don’t you?”
It struck him that it was possibly the worst idea in the world.
She gazed at him for a long time before answering.
“I think,” she said then, “that friendship and need and some mutual attraction have been justification enough for what we have just done together. But they are not a good enough justification for marriage.”
“Are they not?” He felt a terrible sorrow-and an enormous sense of relief. “Not even friendship? Is it not desirable that a man and his wife like each other and find it easy to talk with each other? And laugh with each other?”
“Yes,” she said. “But there ought to be very much more than just that.”
Love? It was such an overused, underdefined word. What did it mean? But he did not think she was talking about love. There should be a physical attraction between husband and wife-that was what she meant. Or at the very least, there should be no actual revulsion.
It would not be possible for her to marry him, to share a bed with him for the rest of their lives. But he had always known that it would not be possible for any woman.
Had she said yes to his tentative marriage proposal, then he would have pressed forward with wedding plans. Had she even looked as if she wanted to say yes, he might have assured her that his feelings were engaged, that he was not merely making an honorable offer because he had bedded her. He might then have proceeded to a proper marriage offer.
But she had neither said yes nor wavered.
And part of him was relieved. Since coming to Glandwr he had retreated into a deeply private life, and on the whole he had been happy with that life.
He smiled at her again.
“I will say no more on the subject, then,” he said. “But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.”
She gazed silently at him.
“Promise?” he said.
She nodded.
Perhaps he ought to have asked differently, he thought belatedly as he stooped to pick up his coat and tuck it beneath his arm while he picked up his boots. Perhaps he ought to have thrown his heart into his proposal and trusted her to make her own decision without pity. But it was too late now. He had asked, and she had refused.
Yes, sex
did make loneliness worse. He already felt his own like a raw pain.
“I’ll leave you some privacy to dress,” he said, crossing the room toward the door, taking his own clothes with him-and then of course having to set down the boots until he had opened the door. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The gig bounced along the lane and turned onto the narrow road that would take them back through the village to the gates of Glandwr. The sky was still cloudless, the late afternoon sun still hot.
Anne could feel the unexpectedly pleasant aftermath of love in her body-the slight languor, the sensitivity in her breasts, the leftover ache between her thighs, the near-soreness inside. She tried to concentrate her mind only on the beauty of what had happened. It had been undeniably beautiful-it had.
It ought to have been the perfect end to the perfect day-and the perfect holiday.
A bend in the road sent her swaying sideways, and her arm pressed against Sydnam’s. She looked up at him as she set some distance between them again. She gazed at the left side of his face, which was impossibly handsome, though truth to tell she no longer found the right side ugly. As she had told him earlier, it was simply part of him.
“I hope the weather remains good for your journey,” he said.
“Yes.” They were back to talking about the weather, were they?
By this time tomorrow she would be far away from Glandwr.
Panic grabbed at her stomach.
She did not look away from him. She knew that in the days to come, until memory started to recede, as it inevitably would, she would desperately try to remember him as he looked at this moment-and that she would just as desperately try to assure herself that what had happened between them had felt as beautiful as her mind told her it had been.
But above all else they were friends, she thought, and friendship was a very dear thing.
She ought not to have offered herself to Sydnam this afternoon. It had been a terrible mistake. Loneliness and compassion and even sexual need had not been enough. And she still could not bring herself to try to explain to him. That, she believed, could only make matters worse. Besides, neither of them had said anything about its not having been quite perfect. Perhaps for him it had been.
She had refused his marriage proposal, she reminded herself. She had refused a man whom she liked and respected and admired and a man moreover who was able to support her in comfort-she, who had thought no man would ever again offer her marriage. Why had she said no?
If you wish, Anne, we will marry.
Kind words, kindly and dutifully spoken-because they had lain together.
He did not wish to marry her.
And she could not marry him even if he did-or any man. She was still too deeply wounded by the past. Any approach to intimacy sent her scurrying into her mind, where she was safe from her emotions.
She could not impose a frigid iceberg of a body on Sydnam, who deserved so much more.
Friendship would not be sufficient to offer. Only love might be-but she did not know what love was, not sexual, marital love, at least. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered what Lady Rosthorn had said one morning out on the cliffs.
…the real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.
But she did not trust love. Love had let her down at every turn-in the persons of her mother, Henry Arnold, her father, her sister. And her love for her pupil, Prue Moore, had led to disaster. Love had caused her nothing but pain. She was afraid to love Sydnam or to be loved by him. It was as well that there was no real question of love between them.
“Anne,” Sydnam said softly, restoring her wandering mind to the present, “perhaps by tomorrow morning you will have different thoughts. Shall I ask you again before you leave?”
“No,” she said. And looking ahead, she could see the village approaching. “It has been a lovely afternoon, Sydnam, has it not? Let us just remember it and be grateful for it.”
Bottle it up, cage it up, hide it away with all its imperfections and lost possibilities.
“It has been pleasant,” he agreed.
But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.
She smiled as they entered the village and he greeted an elderly villager who was sitting on an old chair outside the door of his cottage, smoking a pipe.
“You spoke in Welsh,” she said as they drove on.
“I did.” He turned his head to grin at her. “I wished him a good afternoon-prynhawn da-and asked how he did and how his daughter and son-in-law did. Are you impressed?”
“Vastly,” she said.
They laughed.
It struck her then that she would miss more than just him. She would miss this place. She would miss Wales. It did not surprise her at all that it had become home to him, that he intended to spend the rest of his life here.
She envied him.
Perhaps if…
No. No, she would not even think of that.
But ah, she would miss him. And how she wished suddenly that they could go back to Ty Gwyn and set right what had gone wrong there. But there was only the future left-almost none of it that they would share. And that little bit would be an agony. She wished she could click her fingers and find herself two weeks farther on in her life, the pain of tomorrow’s departure well in the past.
She turned her head to gaze at his profile again, to imprint it upon her memory.
Sydnam drove the gig straight back to the stables. The others had not yet returned from their excursion, a groom told them.
And so instead of walking the short distance to the house and taking their leave of each other within the next few minutes, they strolled away from the house, and their steps took them without conscious volition in the direction of the hill they had climbed the night of the country dancing. They climbed it again now and stood on the top, looking out over the sea, which was a deep blue in the late afternoon light, while the land was bathed in the golden glow of a sun that was beginning to sink in the direction of the western horizon.
They were standing a couple of feet apart, two friendly strangers who just happened to have lain together an hour or so ago.
It had been a mistake, but they had no more time together in which to regret it.
He heard her swallow. He heard the gurgle in her throat. And he knew that though she had cringed from the intimacy of sex with him, she liked him, she would find leaving him difficult. She was his friend-it was gift enough.
“I will miss you,” he said.
“Yes.” Her voice, though steady, was higher pitched than usual. “I did not want to come, you know. It seemed horribly presumptuous to come only on an invitation from Lady Hallmere. As the carriage approached Glandwr, I would have done anything in the world to be going back to Bath. But now I find it hard to leave.”
She did not have to leave. She could stay here with him for the rest of her life. But he did not say so aloud. He knew the impossibility of it. And she had made her decision back at Ty Gwyn. She had said no.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come back another year.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed.
But they both knew she would not. They both knew that once she left tomorrow they would never see each other again.
And if it was true that they were just friends, that it was merely loneliness that had brought and held them together, it would not matter that they would never see each other again. Not really. They would quickly forget and resume the normal course of their lives.
But he knew he would not forget.
Losing Anne Jewell was going to be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of his life.
He reached for her hand, and her fingers curled about his and clung tightly.
“I have enjoyed knowing you, Anne Jewell,” he said.
“And I you, Sydnam Butler.”
He turned his head to look at her and they both smiled.
Perhaps there was a possibility…Perhaps if she were given time to…
But she pulled her hand abruptly away from his even as he opened his mouth to speak and pointed in the direction of the house and driveway.
“Here they come,” she cried. “I must be there when David arrives. I have been away from him all day. Oh, I do hope he has come to no harm.”
A line of carriages was making its way up the driveway.
“Go,” he said. “You can be there on the terrace waiting for him by the time he arrives.”
She turned her head to look at him.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll take the shortcut back to the cottage.”
She hesitated for only a moment, an instant’s indecision in her face, and then she turned and ran down the hill as she had the other night, when he had run beside and a little ahead of her to reach the bottom before her.
He looked after her now and wondered if he was sorry or glad that he had been prevented from speaking, from begging her to reconsider.
He rather thought he was glad.
Or would be by next week.
Or next year.
Or the next lifetime.
Anne was very close to tears by the time she reached the terrace just as the first of the carriages rolled to a stop before the doors. She was desperate to see her son, to hear his voice, to hold him in her arms. And yet she was aware too that she had just left Sydnam behind, without any sort of good-bye, that in all probability she would never see him again.
But she hated good-byes. She hated them. It was better this way.
David came tumbling out of the second carriage as soon as he spied her standing there and came dashing toward her, his legs pumping, his eyes sparkling, his mouth in motion, the volume of his treble voice almost deafening. She caught him up in a tight hug, laughing, and kissed the top of his head.
“You should have been there, Mama…Cousin Joshua…and you should have seen me…Davy…and then we…Lord Aidan…it was such fun…Cousin Joshua…Becky and Marianne were scared of the winding stairs, but I helped them up and Lady Aidan said I was a perfect gentleman and…Alexander…Cousin Joshua and Daniel…the little ones…I wish you had been there, Mama, to see…”