She went to stand among the thick ferns that overhung the pool. She undid the strings at the neck of her cloak after a couple of minutes and tossed it aside. After a brief hesitation she pulled off her old dress too and kicked off her shoes until she stood there in just her shift. The air was cool, but to someone who had spent most of her life outdoors it was not uncomfortably cold. And she needed to feel. She stood very still. After a few minutes she tipped back her head and closed her eyes. The beauty of the moonlit scene threatened to steal everything for the eyes. She wanted to hear the sounds of water and insects and gulls. And she wanted to smell the ferns and the fresh water of the waterfall, the salt of the sea. And to feel the cool night air against her flesh and the ferns and soil beneath her bare feet.
She opened her eyes again once all her senses had become attuned to her surroundings. She looked into the dark, fathomless waters of the pool. The darkness with its suggestion of something to be feared was an illusion. The pool was fed by that bright fall of sparkling waterdrops, and it in its turn fed the shimmering sea. Darkness and light—they were a part of each other, complementary opposites.
"What are you thinking?"
The voice—his voice—came from behind her, not very far distant. The words had been softly spoken. She had neither seen nor heard his approach, but she was curiously unstartled, unsurprised. There was none of that terror, that panicked feeling that something menacing was creeping up on her that she had felt on the rhododendron walk and in the forest this morning. It felt right that he had come. It felt as if it were meant to be. What had gone wrong here could not be put right if he were not here with her. She did not turn around.
"That I am not just someone observing this," she said, "but that I am a part of it. People often talk about observing nature. By saying so they set a distance between themselves and what is really a part of them. They miss a part of their very being. I am not just watching this. I am this."
She was not thinking out the words, planning them, formulating a philosophy of life. She was merely speaking from her heart to his heart. She had never shared herself so deeply with another human being. But it seemed right to do so with him. He would understand. And he would accept.
He said nothing. Yet his very silence said everything. There was suddenly a feeling of perfect peace, perfect communion.
And then he was beside her, touching the backs of his fingers to the hair at her temples. "Then the one remaining garment has to go too, little water nymph," he said.
There was no element of suggestiveness in the words. They merely showed the understanding and acceptance she had expected. While she crossed her arms and peeled her shift off over her head, he was shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat and shirt.
"You were planning to swim, were you not?" he asked her.
Yes. She had not known it consciously, but yes, it would have been the next logical step even if he had not come to put it into words for her. She needed to immerse herself in the waters of the pool, to make herself an inextricable part of the beauty and peace that had been restored to her this night—the perfect gift.
She nodded. He was a part of it too, magnificent in his nakedness after he had stripped away the last of his garments. They looked at each other with frank appreciation and—oh yes, with the stirrings of desire, of hunger, of need. But there was more than just that. There were needs of the soul to be fed, and for now they were of greater importance than the cravings of the body.
Besides, there was all night…
He turned and dived into the pool—and came up gasping and shaking his head like a wet dog. His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. But before he could say anything Lily had dived in too.
The water was cold. Numbingly, breathtakingly cold. And clear and sweet and cleansing. She felt as if it were penetrating beneath the layer of her skin and soothing and cleaning and renewing. Now that she was in the water, she saw after she had surfaced and smoothed her hair back from her face, it was no longer black but shimmering with moving light. Darkness was only a perception, she realized again, dark from one viewpoint but bright from another.
It was not a large pool or even very deep. But they swam side by side for several minutes, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said. And they trod water close to the waterfall and reached out their hands in order to feel the sharp needles of water pounding against fingers and palms. The water was cold even after one had become accustomed to it.
"Wait here," he said eventually, setting his hands on the bank and lifting himself out in one smooth motion.
Lily floated lazily on her back until he came from the cottage with one towel wrapped about himself and others folded over his arm. He reached down a hand and helped her out and then wrapped a large towel about her shivering form. He reached behind her and squeezed the excess water from her hair before giving her the other towel to wrap turban-style about it.
"We could light a fire inside the cottage," he suggested, "if you wish to go inside there again, Lily. You would be in no danger from me. I will not touch you without your consent. Is the prospect of warmth enticing?"
Yes, it was. But more enticing was the thought of prolonging this night of magic, this night in which she could persuade herself that all of life's problems had been solved for all time. She knew life was never that simple, but she knew too that times like this were necessary, a balm for restoring the soul.
On a night like this love could become everything. Love could not always be so, but there were precious times like this that one ought not to deny.
Besides, the cottage was the one niggling fear that remained to be conquered.
She smiled. "Yes," she said. "I am not afraid. How could I be after this?" She gestured with one hand at the scene about them. He would understand, she knew. He had become a part of it with her. "I want to go inside. With you."
***
He must know the cottage very well, Lily thought. He had found the towels in darkness, and now it took him only a few seconds to find candles and tinderbox and bring the coziness of candlelight to the sitting room. While Lily pulled on her shift and dress, he knelt and lit the fire that was already laid in the hearth. There was more light then and the pleasant aroma of wood burning. Almost immediately there was a thread of warmth.
The remnants of fear vanished.
He sat in a chair beside the hearth after dressing—though he did not put his waistcoat and coat back on—while Lily sat on the floor close to the flames, her knees drawn up before her, her hair over one shoulder, drying in the heat. She was reminded of the relaxed, informal life of an army camp, though she had never sat thus with him there—there had been too much of a social gap between her father and Major Lord Newbury.
"After your father died, Lily," he said, perfectly in tune with her thoughts, it seemed, "did you have all sorts of regrets about what you might have said to him or done for him if you had only known that he was to die on that day? Or were you always so aware that as a fighting man he could die at any time that you left nothing unsaid, nothing undone?"
"I think the latter," she said after giving the question some thought. "I was fortunate to be able to live all my life with him even to the last day. I was fortunate to have a father who loved me so totally and whom I loved without reserve. I wish, though—I do wish I could have known what he wanted so badly for me to have after his death. He was always so insistent that there was something inside his pack for me. But there was no chance to see what it was—he had left it back at the base. But the important thing is that I know he did love me and did try to provide for my future." She looked up at Neville, sprawled and relaxed and yet elegant too in his chair. "You were not so fortunate?"