Simply Love (28 page)

                  

She hugged her knees tightly and bent her head to rest her forehead against her knees.

He wondered if she would have told David about her family and even agreed to take him there if he had not said what he had at the temple folly two afternoons ago.

They had rejected her. No, they had
forgiven
her, which had apparently been worse. And they had never asked about David or expressed any wish to see him.

He could only imagine what she was feeling now. But her decision, he knew, was irrevocable. David was excited about going.

“Have you ever rowed a boat?” he asked.

“What?” She looked up at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes.

“I have,” he said, “but not for years. I could do it now, I suppose, but the exercise would be mildly self-defeating. It strikes me that a one-armed rower would move in a perpetual circle and never get anywhere. Which is something like life, I suppose, if one cares to take a pessimistic view of it.”

He grinned at her. Making fun of his disabilities was something he rather enjoyed being able to do.

“I have rowed a boat, yes,” she said, looking warily beyond him to the boat both he and David had painted a little while ago. “I lived in Cornwall right by the sea for a few years. But I have not done it for a long time. And I was never very good at it. I always used to dig the oars too deep and try to push the sea past the boat instead of moving the boat through the sea.”

“Sounds exhausting,” he said.

“And impossible,” she agreed.

“I have not been to the island for years,” he said. “Do you fancy going there today?”

“With me rowing?” She shaded her eyes, presumably to judge the distance. “If you have an hour or three to spare.”

“But I am far too gallant to expect you to do all the rowing alone,” he said. “I was thinking of us as a team—you on the right hand oar, me on the left.”

“It sounds like a recipe for disaster,” she said.

“Can you swim?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“And I can bob around and somehow keep my head above water,” he said. “We would survive a ducking, which I do not expect. I trust your rowing prowess and my own. Of course, if you do not have the nerve…”

She smiled and then chuckled and then laughed aloud.

“You are mad,” she said.

“Guilty as charged.” He grinned back at her. “But the question is—did I marry a mad wife?”

“How deep is that water?” She shaded her eyes again and looked dubious.

“About up to your eyebrows at its deepest point,” he said.

“My
raised
eyebrows?”

“You
are
a coward,” he said. “Let's go back to the house, then.”

“We will never fit side by side on that seat,” she said, turning her attention on the boat again.

“Yes, we will,” he said, “provided you do not mind some intimacy. I do not have a right arm to take up room, remember. And you are not very large—yet.”

Her eyes flew to his and she blushed.

“You
are
insane,” she said again. “Let's do it.”

It
was
a mad suggestion—he did not mind admitting it to himself. He had long ago decided what was difficult but possible—riding a horse, for example—and what was absolutely impossible. Rowing a boat fit into the latter category. But then so did painting. Indeed, that had always been at the top of the list. But he had painted this morning. And now he felt capable of anything. He felt like a veritable Hercules.

The jetty was not as steady as he remembered it. But he walked carefully out onto it and held the boat while she stepped into it—
very
gingerly and without the aid of his hand since the only one he possessed was holding the boat. She turned and sat on the seat and laughed and looked terrified as she pushed her cloak out of the way of her arms. He climbed in after her, and she edged along the seat to give him room, causing the boat to tip and rock alarmingly. She shrieked and they both laughed.

She had been almost right. They were very tightly packed on the seat.

“I hope,” she said, picking up one of the oars and fitting it into its lock, “I remembered to say my prayers last night.”

“I did if you did not,” he said, grappling with the other oar.

“They cover both of us.”

He unwound the mooring rope and pushed them away from the jetty.

She shrieked and laughed again.

It took them all of half an hour to row across to the island. But as he informed her when they finally pulled onto the beach there and jumped out to drag the boat together up onto dry land, they might have crossed the English Channel and back if only they had proceeded in a straight line instead of meandering around in rough circles for the first twenty minutes while they both tried to recapture the knack of rowing and—once that was more or less accomplished—tried to row in harmony with each other.

They were both laughing so hard that she could scarcely get any words out.

“How on earth are we going to get ba-a-a-ack?” she asked.

“Not on earth,” he said, “unless you want to try running over the lake bottom, Anne. You had better keep your eyebrows raised if you do, though, or you will get them wet. I intend rowing back.”

He took her hand in his, noticed that her palm was red and ridged from the oar, and held it to his lips.

“If you end up with blisters,” he said, “I will never forgive myself.”

“A few blisters would be a small price to pay,” she said, “for the fun of doing this. When did you last have
fun,
Sydnam? Silly, mad fun like this, I mean?”

He tried to remember and could not.

“It was forever ago,” he said.

“And at least that long ago for me,” she said.

“This
has
been fun,” he agreed. “But perhaps we had better wait until we have our feet safely back on the other shore before we pass a final judgment. Come and see the other beach.”

It was a tiny man-made island. But the adjacent side of it had always been a favorite spot, since it offered excellent swimming and faced away from the house, which was well out of sight anyway. The grassy bank sloped gradually into the water and was covered with wildflowers in the summer. Even now some hardy varieties survived. He and his brothers had often swum nude here, but they had never been caught.

“It is really quite blissful here,” Anne said, sitting down and gazing into the water.

“We ought to have brought the blanket,” he said.

“The grass is dry.” She rubbed it with one hand. “And it is sheltered from the breeze here. It feels almost warm.”

He sat beside her and lay back to gaze up at the sky.

“Sydnam,” she said several minutes later, bending over him to look into his face, “you will take us?”

“To Gloucestershire?” he said. “Yes, of course. You know I will.”

She gazed down at him.

“I suppose,” she said, “I ought to tell you what happened.”

“Yes,” he said, “I think you ought.”

He lifted his hand and touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek.

“Come down here,” he said, and spread his arm across the grass so that she could rest her head on it. When she had done so after tossing aside her bonnet, he wrapped his arm about her and drew her head onto his shoulder.

“I think you ought to tell me,” he said again.

“I was going to marry Henry Arnold,” she said. “But we were both very young—too young to marry—and my father was having financial difficulties and I offered to take employment as a governess for a couple of years. I went to Cornwall and thought for a while that my heart would break—I had known Henry all my life and missed him more than I missed any of my family. We were not officially betrothed, but everyone knew we had an understanding. Everyone was happy about it—both his family and mine.”

And he had abandoned her. Sydnam waited for the most painful part of her story.

“And then,” she said, “soon after I had made a visit home and we had celebrated Henry's twentieth birthday, I was forced to write home to tell…what had happened to me. I wrote to Henry too.”

And the blackguard had rejected her.

“My mother wrote back,” she said. “She told me that they forgave me and that I could come home afterward if I wished—I assumed she meant after the baby was born—but that perhaps it would be better if I did not.”

Sydnam closed his eye, and his hand played with her hair. How could any mother not have rushed to her side at such a time? How could any father not have rushed to call to account the rogue who had ruined her?

“Henry did not write,” she said.

No, he would not have done.

“And then, just three weeks after her first letter,” she said, “my mother wrote again to announce that Sarah, my younger sister, had just been married—to Henry Arnold. One month after my letter must have arrived. Just time for the banns to be called. She added again that perhaps it would be best if I did not come home—and I assumed she meant ever.”

Sydnam's hand lay still in her hair.

“I did not know how many more blows I could take,” she said, her voice more high-pitched. “First, Albert. And then the discovery that I was with child. Then my dismissal by the Marchioness of Hallmere—Albert's mother. And then rejection by my own mother and father. And finally the betrayal. You cannot know how dreadful that was, Sydnam. I had
loved
Henry with all my young heart. And Sarah was my beloved sister. We had confided all our youthful hopes and dreams in each other. She
knew
how I felt about him.”

She buried her face against his shoulder. He turned his face to kiss the top of her head and realized that she was weeping. He held her close, as she had held him just two days ago. He did not attempt to speak to her. What was there to say?

She was still at last and quiet.

“Do you wonder,” she asked him, “that I have never gone home?”

“No,” he said.

“My mother writes at Christmas and my birthday,” she told him. “She never says a great deal of any significance, and she has never once mentioned David, though whenever I write back I tell her all about him.”

“But she
does
write,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I tell you what I would do,” he said, kissing the top of her head again, “if Albert Moore were still alive. I would find him, and I would take him limb from limb even with my one hand.”

She half choked on a laugh.

“Would you?” she said. “Would you really? I would almost pity him.
Almost.
”

They fell silent for a few moments.

“What I have never been able to contemplate with any calmness,” she said, “is the fact that David is his son. He even looks like him. I try so very hard not to see that. I did not even know I was about to admit it aloud now until the words came out of my mouth. He
looks
like him.”

“But David is not Albert,” Sydnam said. “I am not my father, Anne, and you are not your mother. We are separate persons even if heredity does cause some physical resemblance at times. David is David. He is not even you.”

She sighed.

“How did Albert Moore die?” he asked. “Apart from the fact that he drowned, I mean?”

“Oh.” He could hear that the breath she drew was ragged. “I was already with child and living in the village. Lady Chastity Moore came one evening and told me that Albert and Joshua were out in a fishing boat. Joshua was apparently confronting him over what had happened. But Lady Chastity, Albert's sister, was going down to the harbor to await their return. She had discovered the truth—from Prudence, I suppose. She had a gun. I went with her.”

“He was
shot
?” Sydnam asked.

“No,” she said. “When the boat came back, Joshua was rowing it and Albert was swimming alongside. Apparently he had jumped out when Joshua threatened him. Joshua turned without seeing us and rowed away as soon as he saw that Albert could wade safely to shore, but Lady Chastity raised the gun and would not let Albert come to land until he had promised to confess to his father and to leave home forever. He laughed at her and swam away. It was a rather stormy night. He never did come back. His body was discovered later.”

“Ah,” Sydnam said.

Sometimes, it seemed, justice was done.

They lay there in silence for a while.

“I
will
take Henry Arnold limb from limb if you wish,” he said at last. “Do you?”

“Oh, no.” She laughed softly and touched his face—the damaged side—with one hand. “No, Sydnam. I stopped hating him a long time ago.”

“And did you also stop loving him?” he asked softly.

She drew back her head and looked at him. She was flushed and red-eyed and lovely.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I did. And I am glad now that he did not have the courage to stand by me. If he had, there would not be you.”

“And that would be bad?” he asked.

“Yes.” She stroked her fingers lightly over his cheek. “Yes, it would.”

And she turned farther onto her side in order to kiss him on the lips. He felt himself stir into an unwelcome arousal.

“It is hard to understand,” she said, “how if all the bad things had not happened in both our lives, we would not have met. We would not be here now. But it is true, is it not?”

“It is true,” he said.

“Has it been worth it?” she asked. “Going through all we have been through in order that we may be together now like this?”

He could no longer imagine his life without Anne in it.

“It has been worth it,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “it has.”

She gazed steadily at him.

“Make love to me,” she said.

He gazed back at her, and she licked her lips.