The very idea that she might talk him into agreeing with her made his stomach churn uncomfortably. There was far too much risk involved.
He sighed and stood up, touching his fingers to Toby's hand before tucking it beneath the covers.
He had not forgotten the strange conversation he had had with Maggie down by the river just before Toby arrived with the Harrises. In fact, it had been very much on his mind ever since.
He had no idea where the words had come from. Or the idea behind them.
Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.
He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.
He was not, though.
He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still – and always – safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business.
For receiving meant opening up the heart again.
Perhaps to rejection.
Or disillusionment.
Or pain.
Or even heartbreak.
It was all terribly risky.
And all terribly necessary.
And of course, there was the whole issue of trust … He found her in the drawing room, working at an embroidery frame, something he had not seen her do before. She looked up and smiled when he entered the room. "Is he asleep?" she asked.
He nodded. "Maggie," he said, "I am sorry he was so rude when he arrived." "You must not be," she said. "He was not deliberately ill-mannered, only honest in the way of young children – and very frightened. He saw me as someone who could take you away from him. I was touched when he told me I could be his friend." "It was inspired," he said, "to tell him you needed to consider the matter and would give him your answer another time." She laughed. "He is a sweetheart," she said. "And a little devil," he said. "He almost toppled into the river looking for fish when he had been here scarcely two hours – after I had told him not to lean out beyond the edge of the bank." She laughed. "But I did not come here to talk about Toby," he said.
She rested her hand holding the needle on her embroidery and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide and somehow fathomless in the candlelight. "Didn't you?" she said. "I will spend time with him each day," he said, "because I must and because I wish to. And of course I must spend time about estate business just as you will go about the business of the house. There will be visitors soon, I do not doubt, and calls to return. But there must be time for you and me." She looked down at her work and with the forefinger of her free hand traced the silk petal of one embroidered flower. "To fall in love," he said.
She looked up at him. "Can it be done so deliberately?" she asked. "How else are we to do it?" he asked in return. "Let us not call it falling in love. Let us call it courtship instead. There was no time for it before we married, but it is not too late for it now. Is it?" "But courtship is a one-way thing," she said. "A man courts a woman." "Let us be rebels, then," he said. "Court me too, Maggie, as I will court you. Make me fall in love with you. I will make you fall in love with me. There will be magic." Her eyes filled with tears suddenly, and she bent her head to thread her needle into the cloth and set it aside. "Oh," she said, and her voice sounded a little shaky, "that is it, is it not? The grand dream. There will be magic." She looked up at him again. "Will there be?" "The moon is almost full," he said, "and the sky is clear. The stars are a million lamps. Let me fetch you a shawl and take you outside. What setting could be more conducive to romance?" "What indeed?" she said, laughing softly. "Go and fetch a shawl, then." Ten minutes later they were at the bottom of the flower garden and stepping onto the humpbacked wooden bridge that crossed the river. They stopped halfway across it to gaze down into the water, which gleamed in the moonlight. She held the ends of her shawl with both hands, and he had his hands clasped at his back.
He was thirty. So was she. The first flush of youth had passed them both by, ending abruptly for him just before his twenty-fifth birthday, leached gradually out of her after the death of her father and the departure of her lover and his ultimate faithlessness.
They had both given up on romance.
There was no scene more romantic than this. The evening air was cool but not by any means cold. He could smell the flowers and hear the water gurgling beneath the bridge. And he was in company with a beautiful woman who was his lover as well as his life's companion. "Turn your face to me," he said.
She did so, and they gazed into each other's eyes for a while until they both smiled.
He bent forward and rubbed his nose against hers before kissing her softly on the lips. "I think," he said, "it is possible to start again, don't you? Life, I mean. It cannot possibly be intended that we simply acquire experience upon experience like a lot of excess baggage to carry about with us until we stagger into middle age and old age beneath the impossible weight of it all. We must, as we grow older and wiser, be able to allow all the … all the pain to seep out of our bones and our souls so that we can start again. Do you think?" "I thought it was a matter of will and discipline," she said. "I thought the past was gone – off my shoulders, out of my life, until I had a letter from Lady Dew a few months ago telling me that Crispin was a widower and that he was back in England with his daughter and asking about me and wanting to see me again. I have used my will again since then, and discipline." "But to no avail?" he asked. "I married you," she said. "I did it for a number of reasons, none of them consciously to do with Crispin. But he was one of the reasons. I wanted to forget once and for all. I wanted to stop loving him – or rather, I wanted to stop fearing that I would love him again. I don't want to. I want the pain to go away. I want to start again. I want to love you. Oh, Duncan, I already do. But I want…" "The magic," he said. "Yes." He took one of her hands in his, laced his fingers with hers, and crossed to the other side of the bridge with her. They strolled along the avenue in silence, and it seemed to Duncan that she did not feel the awkwardness she had felt last evening. He felt that together they were allowing the cool quiet of the night, the moonlight and the shadows, to pour into their souls and heal them.
After a few minutes he released her hand and wrapped one arm about her waist. A moment later she wrapped her arm about his. Inevitably, her head came to rest on his shoulder.
Desire for her hummed pleasantly in his veins.
He was at peace, he realized. "Duncan," she said without raising her head, "I have just realized that I am happier than I have been in years." "Are you?" he said. "I am here in this lovely place," she said, "and it is where I belong.
And I am with a man I like and admire and with whom I have … pleasure. A man with whom I am embarking upon a courtship, a romance." "There is a summer house at the end of the avenue," he said. "Yes," she said. "I can see it." "Be prepared," he told her. "I intend to kiss you silly when we reach it." She laughed and lifted her head to look into his face, her eyes shining with merriment. "I would think the less of you if you did not," she said. "But be warned. I intend to give as good as I get." And he laughed too, throwing his head back, and felt more carefree than he remembered feeling in years.
They released their hold on each other and joined hands, their fingers laced.
He had intended lighting the lamp that he hoped was still kept ready in the summer house as it had always used to be. But there was enough moonlight streaming through the windows on all five sides of the structure that artificial light was unnecessary.