“Because he looked like me?” he said.
“Perhaps.” She smiled.
He kissed her then, keeping his hands at her cheeks for a little while before wrapping them right about herand hugging her close.
“So I am your dark rider,” he said after a while.
“No,” she said, “you are Edgar. The dark rider has a lady and he is almost two hundred years old. Alittle too old for me.”
“So,” he said, “you will make do with second best.”
She shook her head. “I do not envy her,” she said. “I only feel happy for her. For I know how it feels tolove, and now I know why she longed to be in herlover’s arms. I don’t love him, though he is a wonderfully romantic figure. I love my flesh-and-blood Edgar.”
He smiled at her and kissed her again.
“I hope the boat was there waiting for them,” she said, and she felt sudden anxiety. “I hope they gotaway safely. Do you think they did, Edgar?”
“Maybe we had better look down and you can tell me,” he said.
The scene from the edge of the cliff was the same as the one she had seen less than an hour before. Theship was in deep water beyond the bay, the small boatapproaching the shore rowed by two oarsmen.
“Can you not see them?” she asked.
“The moonlight is lovely on the water,” he said. “Not at all sinister, as it should be on All Hallows’Eve.”
The boat disappeared onto the beach and reappeared again a few minutes later with its two passengers. Thedark rider held his lady on his lap with her armswrapped about his neck. He slipped his hand beneathher cloak, and Dinah knew that he was touching theswelling that was the child he had just been told about.
“Oh,” she said, and the images blurred before her vision. “They are safe, Edgar. They are on their way.I think they will have a happy life. After so long theydeserve it. They will be happy, will they not?”
He turned her toward him and kissed her once more. “They were happy, my love,” he said. “Just as wewill be. If the power of love can bring happiness, thenthey must have lived a long and prosperous and happylife together. And so will we. I love you, sweetheart.”
She wrapped her arms about his neck and smiled at him. And set her head against his shoulder andbreathed in the warm masculine smell of him. “Takeme back to Malvern, then, Edgar,” she said. “Takeme home.”
The dark rider and his lady, on their way to a new life and to happiness, were temporarily forgotten.
