He had gone.
There was only empty space where he had been standing a short while ago. So much for her boldness, she thought, descending the steps slowly, holding the ends of her shawl crossed at her bosom. He had gone. But even as she thought it she saw him. He was striding across the lawn in the direction of the driveway. He was walking rather fast, she thought. She hesitated for one moment before going after him.
“Kit.”
He was on the driveway already, not far from the bridge. Lauren was half running over the grass. She could feel its wetness about her ankles and the hem of her dress.
He stopped abruptly and turned toward her even though she had not called out loudly.
“Lauren?”
He sounded surprised. Was he also displeased? Had she done entirely the wrong thing? She came up to him in a few moments but stopped several feet away.
“I saw you from my window,” she said. “It is not the first time. Could you not sleep?”
“And could you not?” It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he was annoyed or not.
“I thought I might walk with you,” she said. “I thought it might be . . . comforting to have some company.”
“Do you have trouble sleeping, Lauren?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. She had not used to. But despair after her aborted marriage had robbed her of the oblivion of sleep she had so longed for, and then sleeplessness had become a habit. It was the time when she most ached with nameless yearnings. She could usually keep herself well occupied during the day, but at night . . .
“We should stroll back to the house,” he said. “You would not want to come with me where I was going.”
“Where?” she asked.
“A gamekeeper’s hut in the forest actually,” he said. “I suppose I have spent too many of my adult years alone, living under rough conditions. A civilized home, especially one filled with other people, oppresses me. I feel that I cannot breathe freely. Since I came home I have equipped the hut with the bare necessities, and sometimes I go there at night. It somehow soothes my mind. Sometimes I sleep there.”
“Ah,” she said, wishing she had not acted so hastily. “You do wish to be alone, then. I am sorry. And you do not need to walk back to the house with me, Kit. Really you do not. Good night. I will see you in the morning. Will we—will we swim?”
He did not answer immediately. She felt awkward, rather humiliated. She turned to hurry away. But his voice stopped her.
“I would like you to come with me,” he said.
“Truly?” She looked back at him. “You need not say so just to be polite, Kit. I do not wish to intrude.”
But he was smiling at her and looking his usual self.
“Truly.”
She walked beside him, holding her shawl. He did not offer his arm.
“What sort of troubles keep you from sleep?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What happened last year?” he suggested.
She shook her head again. “I don’t know.”
“What masks we wear,” he said. “No one looking at the beautiful and dignified Miss Lauren Edgeworth in Lady Mannering’s ballroom a couple of months ago would have suspected that she nursed an utterly shattered heart. I am sorry that I did not have the sensitivity to know it or even suspect it. I am so very sorry, Lauren.”
“It was my life that was shattered more than my heart,” she said. “But looking back, I am not sure . . .”
“Of what?”
They were walking through the Palladian bridge. She could hear the water rushing beneath it.
“I am not sure it was quite the disaster I thought it at the time,” she said. “I was only half a person at that time. Don’t ask me to explain, Kit. I am not sure I know quite what I mean myself. Life was lived by a rigid set of rules. It had a set pattern. But that is not real life, is it? At some time surely I must have woken up to that fact. Life could not have continued placid and perfect to the end.” And maybe placidity and perfection did not go hand in hand, anyway, although she had used to think so.
He looked curiously at her, but they did not speak again. Soon after they crossed the bridge they reached the trees, and he took her arm and turned off the driveway. It was very dark among the trees. She would have been totally lost and not a little frightened if his own steps had not been sure. As it was, all she had to do was put her trust in him—a remarkably easy thing to do. She would always feel perfectly safe with him, she believed, even if a hungry wild beast were to step into their path. She smiled to herself at the thought.
She had no idea how he found the hut in the dense darkness, but he did. He felt along the top of the lintel, produced a key, and turned it in the lock. He left Lauren standing on the threshold and went inside. A few moments later the feeble light of a lamp sprang to life, and she stepped into the small wooden cabin and closed the door. He was on one knee, setting a light to the fire that was laid in the small grate.
It was a remarkably cozy interior. There was a low bed covered with blankets, an old wooden rocking chair, and a roughly hewn wooden table with a single chair pushed beneath it. There were two books on the table, and the lamp. Apart from those things and a rush mat on the floor, the hut was bare.
“Take the rocking chair,” Kit said. He had pulled the top blanket from the bed and was spreading it over the bare wood.
“Thank you.” She sat down and the chair rocked gently beneath her weight.
Kit sat on the side of the bed, his arms across his spread knees, his hands dangling between. It was an informal, relaxed pose. Lauren smiled at him, relaxed back in the chair, and closed her eyes. It was not a cold night, but the warmth from the fire felt good. She listened to the crackling of the kindling.
“Why do you have trouble sleeping?” she asked.
“Sleeplessness is a defense against nightmares, I suppose,” he said, “though not always a conscious one.”
“Nightmares?”
“You would not want to know, Lauren,” he said. But he continued speaking anyway. “I became a military man because it was what my father had always planned for his second son. And it was my personal choice too. I cannot remember a time when I did not dream of becoming an officer and distinguishing myself on the battlefield. I was not disillusioned after my commission was purchased for me, either. The life suited me. The tasks at hand were ones I could do and do well. I jumped at the opportunity to become a reconnaissance officer when it came my way, and I never regretted my choice. Selling out last year was a hard thing for me to do. In some ways I felt that I was giving up a part of my identity. And yet . . .”
The rockers of the chair squeaked. It was not an unpleasant sound. It was almost lulling.
“And yet?” she asked.
“And yet it involved killing,” he said. “I lost count long ago of the number of men I have killed. There are all sorts of ways of justifying killing in war, of course. It is a kill-or-be-killed situation. It is most comforting, though not often possible, to think of the enemy merely as a mass of evil monsters who deserve no better than death. Certainly when one is a soldier one must find a way of overcoming one’s scruples and simply do what must be done. But the faces of dead men come to me in my nightmares. No, not dead. Dying. The faces of dying men. Ordinary men with mothers and wives and sweethearts at home. Men with dreams and hopes and worries and secrets. Men like me. In my worst nightmares the man who is dying has the face of the man I see in the mirror every day.”
“And so you prove that you are human,” she said. “War would be truly monstrous if it destroyed all horror of killing.”
“But it would be easier to sleep if one were an unfeeling monster,” he said.
She had never thought to wonder if men’s minds were permanently damaged by the atrocities of war. She had always considered that Englishmen fought for right and justice and so would have nothing on their consciences.