She felt that for the first time since she had known him she was seeing him as he really was. She had never associated him with any weakness. He was so splendidly male, so tough and strong, such a dominant lover; he had seemed invulnerable to her. But tonight she had seen something else. She had seen a man who knew what it was to love, to be rejected, to be betrayed, and above all, to be alone.
For the first time she considered the possibility that she had failed him more deeply than he had failed her. She had never given him a chance. She had driven him away, and in so doing she had hurt him badly. She had seen that tonight, in the scene with Ophelia.
She thought of all that she had seen tonight and she felt humbled and ashamed and cowardly. She had been so afraid of being hurt herself that she had taken no thought for the hurt she might be inflicting. And she claimed she loved him. Poor Kit, she thought. He deserved better. He had told her once that she saw through to the heart of him, but that wasn’t true. If she had, she would not have sent him away without giving him a chance to explain.
He would be tied up with the cast party for a while, but she didn’t want to see him in a crowd of people. And she wanted to see him tonight—she felt she must see him tonight. She left her cottage and walked resolutely next door to his, went in and curled up on the sofa, prepared to wait.
He came about an hour later. There was a frown on his face as he pushed the door open; the light had warned him someone was waiting for him. “It’s only me,” she said quietly from the sofa.
“Mary!” He sounded surprised and a wary look came over his face. “What are you doing here?” He came into the room and dropped rather heavily into the wing chair. She noted with a pang of anxiety that he looked very tired.
Now that she faced him she didn’t quite know what to say. He looked so weary. She said with a curious note of huskiness and uncertainty in her voice, “I only came to tell you that if you still want me back, I’ll come. But if you tell me to get out, I certainly won’t blame you.”
He closed his eyes. All the muscles in his face wait rigid. When he opened them again he said, “Do you mean it this time? I don’t think I can take it if you change your mind again.”
Tears began to pour down her face. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so horrible. And I love you so much. Please, please take me back.” She wasn’t sure who made the first move, but three seconds later she was in his lap, locked in his arms, her head buried in his shoulder. She continued to cry. “I’ve been so afraid of you, afraid of loving you,” she got out “You hurt me so much before.”
“I know I did,” he replied. His own voice was husky with emotion. “Mary”—his arms tightened, his lips were in her hair—”I was so sorry about the baby, sweetheart, I was so sorry.”
Her body was shaking with sobs but she made no attempt to stop them. She felt as if a hard knot that had been lodged within her for four years was slowly dissolving and washing away with her tears. “I blamed you,” she said into his shoulder.
“I know,” he repeated. “I knew, as soon as I got that call from your mother, that I had made the biggest mistake of my life in neglecting you. All the way in on the plane, I knew it in my bones.”
“But why, Kit? Why didn’t you ever call me? Why did you just—disappear?”
“It was unforgivable. I know that now—I knew it as soon as I got your mother’s call. But I was like a man driven, Mary. I pushed everything that wasn’t my career to the back of my mind—and that included you. I knew this was my only chance to make it and I just grabbed everything that could possibly be useful.
Even Jessica Corbet. I didn’t go to bed with her, but I didn’t try to squash those rumors either. I think I must have been a little mad.”
“Your only chance?” Her sobs were lessening now and she lifted her head to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if I hadn’t made it with
The Russian Experiment—
if I hadn’t gotten another picture with a good salary out of it—I was going to quit acting.”
Her eyes were great blue pools of astonishment. “Quit acting! But why?”
“Because I was going to be a father and I was damned if I’d have my kid raised the way I was. I had to give him financial security. And I was damned if I was going to let you stop your studies because we couldn’t afford a baby-sitter. I have a math degree—-I was going to see if I couldn’t get a job in computers.”
“Computers!” She couldn’t have looked more horrified if he had said he was going to run numbers. He smiled a little at her expression. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because of the way you look now,” he replied. “And I thought that if I put everything I had into it, that I
would
make good in Hollywood. And I did. But in the process I lost everything that mattered.” He put his cheek against her hair and held her to him. “I lost my son. And I lost you.” There was a long moment of silence, then he said, as if he found the words difficult, “Where did you bury him?”
She felt a fierce pain about her heart at what she had shut him out from. “In St. Thomas’s, next to my grandparents; I’ll take you there if you like.”
“Yes” he said very low. I’d like that.”
She closed her eyes. “I was such a beast,” she whispered.
“No, you weren’t. You weren’t in any state to listen to explanations. I realized that and that’s why I did what you asked and left. After I thought you had had a chance to recover a little, I wrote you. I wrote you twice, telling you just what I’ve told you tonight. But you never answered.”
“I tore the letters up.”
“I see.” His voice was flat.
“I told you I blamed you.” She took her head out of his shoulder and spoke somberly. “If there’s one thing the Irish know how to do. Kit, it’s nurse a grudge. I’m really not a very nice person. I don’t know why you even want me back.”
He smiled at her and there was pain as well as tenderness in his look. “No, you’re not ‘nice.’ You are intelligence and integrity, beauty and passion. It’s like touching solid ground in a quagmire to touch you again.”
She cupped his face between her hands. “I never really thought you needed me,” she said. “Not like I needed you.”
“You seem to have gotten along fine without me,” he returned. His face was very still between her palms. “You have your job, your family.”
She kissed him. “I was operating on half a heart” She kissed him again and felt him begin to smile.
“I know. All these years I’ve felt as if something of me was left out. It’s only when I’m with you that I feel that I’m a whole person again.”
She sighed and snuggled, if possible, even closer. “To think we owe all this to that wretched magazine,” she murmured.
“What magazine, sweetheart?”
“The one that found out we were married and spread my picture all over the front page. If it hadn’t been for that, you would never have come to see me. ‘And I would never have told you I was working at Yarborough.”
“True,” he sounded a little cautious.
“You did come to Yarborough because you knew I’d be here, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought the whole setup was too neat to be a coincidence,” she said complacently.
“Actually, I called my agent right after I saw you.” He was speaking slowly, carefully, as if testing her reaction: “I told him just to get me in, I’d play any part. It was only luck that Adrian Saunders got that movie offer. Otherwise I might have been stealing one of the student’s parts.”
She sat back on his lap and stared at him. “Good heavens, I’d no idea you’d done that. I thought that when the part became available you’d taken it because you knew I would be here.”
“No.” He looked measuringly into her eyes and seemed to be reassured by what he saw there. “I have another confession to make.”
She compressed her lips a little. “What is it?”
“I was the one who leaked the story of our marriage to
Personality.”
“You what!” Her eyes were wide with incredulity.
“I leaked the story,” he repeated. “I was desperate to see you again and I couldn’t think of any reason for me to present myself. And then, too, I thought that making the marriage public would force you to do something about it. You hadn’t even tried to get a legal separation, so I hoped that maybe there was a chance you’d consider coming back to me.”
“You stinker,” she said, but the lines of her mouth were soft.
He grinned. “It worked.”
“Why couldn’t you just have come to see me?”
“Would you have listened to me if I’d arrived at your doorstep, hat in hand?” He looked at her skeptically.
Her lips curled a little. “No, I suppose not. I was too well armored in all my grudges.”
“Well, the course I took was crude, I’ll admit that. But it was effective.” He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Do you know something?” he asked in a kind of astonishment. “I’m starving.”
“Of course you are,” she answered sympathetically. “You didn’t eat a bite of your dinner.” She pushed herself off his lap and stood up. “I have some peanut butter and jelly in my fridge. Come on and I’ll make you a sandwich.”
He stood up and staggered a little.
“Ow! I think you cut off all the circulation in my legs.”
“You’re so romantic,” she murmured. He hobbled around the room for a bit and she watched him, smiling. When he finally came to a halt she said, “Bring your toothbrush and pajamas and a change of clothes.”
He swung around with no suggestion of stiffness at all. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” she returned serenely. “I won’t even push you out in the morning.”
He heaved a great dramatic sigh. “Thank God for that. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m really a very domestic type. All this creeping about in the dead of night doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
It was true, she thought, as she watched him collect his things. He looked like every woman’s dream lover, but he had been happy as a clam refinishing furniture and painting walls in their first apartment. And he had not been indifferent to the thought of fatherhood; quite the contrary. If he had been willing to give up acting for it, he took it very seriously indeed.
She thought back to that dreadful argument they had had when she first told him she was pregnant. She remembered how angry he had been when she said she would give up her fellowship. It had upset her dreadfully, that anger. She had not realized that it sprang from his great and generous love, from his passionate desire to see her free to fulfill the promise that was in her. He still felt the same way. She remembered how concerned he had been when she had said she would give up teaching.
They walked together in companionable silence back to her cottage. He sat down and stretched his long legs in front of him while she made the sandwiches and poured two glasses of apple juice. He looked at her in admiration as he bit into the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
“You’re wonderful,” he said. “You always have whatever’s needed right on hand.”
She laughed at him. “Just like the mother in
The Swiss Family Robinson.”
“Well,” he replied dryly, “not quite.”
He finished his sandwich and yawned. Mary did the same. “I’m dead,” she said. “You use the bathroom first and I’ll clean up these crumbs.” In five minutes they were both in pajamas and in bed. In seven minutes they were asleep.
* * * *
Mary woke to find the sun streaming into the bedroom. She had been so tired last night that she hadn’t closed the shade. She hopped out of bed, drew the shade down, and got back in next to Kit. The New Hampshire morning was chilly and she snuggled down comfortably under the covers. He was still asleep and she curled up against his wide, warm back, closed her eyes and dozed.
Half an hour later he stirred and rolled over. She propped her cheek on her hand and looked down into his face. He gave her a sleepy smile and yawned. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Nine-thirty,” she replied. “I feel very decadent.”
“You haven’t started to be decadent yet, sweetheart,” he said with slow amusement.
She tried to look severe. “Everyone will be looking for you.”
“Let them look,” he murmured. “Kiss me.” His voice was very deep and she seemed to feel it in her bones. She bent her head to him. His mouth was gentle under hers; their kiss was infinitely tender. He made no move to touch her. She raised her head and looked down into dark dark eyes. As she stayed where she was suspended over him, he slowly raised his hand to touch her hair. “It’s like silk,” he murmured. “All of you is like that. Silky and soft . . .” His eyes narrowed and they stared at each other.
Beyond his fingers tangled in her hair he had not touched her. Her body was crying out for him but she too deliberately held herself back, their denial feeding their desire as effectively as any caress could have done. “Take your pajamas off,” he said and her hands moved, shaking, to obey him. Their eyes never separated as they both slowly divested themselves of their nightwear. “Now lie down next to me,” he directed and she did as he asked, stretching out beside him, her beautiful body positioned for his love.
His hand slid across her stomach and cupped her breast. “Do you want me to wait?” he whispered.
“No.” she whispered back, her body on fire for him. “I want you now.” She arched up toward him and he came into her hard, his hands gripping her so strongly that he bruised her skin. But she did not object, clinging to him tightly herself, her mouth crushed under his, her whole body shuddering with the pleasure he was giving to her.
They finally lay quietly, breathing hard and still linked together. It was a long time before she found the composure to say, “Now
that
was decadent.”
“Um,” he answered. “Did you like it?”
“Wow,” she said simply, and he chuckled.
“Stick around awhile and we’ll try it again. Maybe we can improve.”
“I’m always interested in improvement,” she replied and he kissed her throat.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
* * * *
They stayed in bed until noon, at which time hunger forced them to get up. “I tell you what,” said Kit, yawning and stretching, “I’ll go into town and get coffee and donuts and the papers. We can eat here.”