She had loved him with a woman’s love for years and years. She had resisted all of her parents’ attempts to finda suitable husband for their youngest child. If she could nothave John, she would have no one. She had decided thatwhen she was sixteen, perhaps earlier. If he had not caredfor her, perhaps she would have forced herself to turn hereyes, if not her heart, elsewhere. But she had always knownthat he loved her. There was a special gentleness, a specialtenderness in his treatment of her.
Not that he would have married her. She was a dreamer with a streak of realism. He was an older son, heir to aviscount’s title and fortune. More important than that, sheknew that he did not love her as she loved him. He lovedher, but she was not that one love of a lifetime, of an eternity, as he was to her. He loved her, perhaps, as he woulda beloved sister. Maybe a little more than that. He hadkissed her on her seventeenth birthday....
And then he had become ill. No one, at first, had been willing to admit what it was that was striking him down,robbing him of flesh and color and vitality. Butshehadknown from the start. She had watched her handsome,strong, vital, beloved John begin to die. And something inher had started to die too.
All her dreams became focused on one single impossible goal. She wanted to be the one to nurse him out of this life,the one to love him over into the kingdom of love so thatthere would be no darkness for him between the two moments. The dream had seemed even more impossible whenhe had left for Italy in the hope of some miracle cure. Shehad expected never to see him again.
But he had come home. She had gone with her mamaand papa to call on him. She preferred not to think about her first sight of him. Death hovered over him, very close.But her dream had lurched painfully into focus again.
She had found a way to be alone with him for a few minutes just two days later and she had asked him to marryher. He had protested, of course. For the first time he hadspoken the truth to her.
“I am dying, Adèle,” he had said gently. “I do not have long left. I have nothing to give you, dear.”
Somehow—she was not normally a bold woman—she had persuaded him that indeed he did. That he had thepower to enable her to be with him all the time, makinghim more comfortable.
“I cannot stay close to you if I am not married to you, John,” she had said. She had taken both his thin hands inhers and had kissed them repeatedly. She had not knownquite where her boldness had come from. “I can think ofno greater happiness than being close to you.”
And so he had married her just one week later. He had decided on some impulse to bring her here, to his home inWales, for their wedding trip. Everyone had thought himmad. It was such a long distance over roads that were notoriously rough. But she had not tried to argue with him.She had known it was a dying man’s wish—to die in theplace he considered the loveliest in the world. In the placethat had the loveliest name she knew—Cartref.Home.
She had come here with a strange hope in her heart. It was the hope for a miracle. It was strange because she hadnever had hope, not since the moment she had realized hehad consumption. Even when he went to Italy, she had hadno hope. When he had come home and when she hadbegged him to marry her, there had been no hope beyond the dream to be his wife and to have the privilege of comforting his last days.
But throughout the journey, hope had built, even as his body became weaker with exhaustion and as the coughingspells became longer and more frightening. By the timethey reached Cartref that new and strange inner part of herself knew that he was going to recover, even while therational, practical part of her was certain that it was impossible. She must not buoy herself up with false hope, shehad told herself repeatedly.
Besides—the thought had saddened her—if he recovered, he would find himself trapped in a marriage that was not entirely of his own choosing.
During the three days following their arrival in Wales, then, she watched the changes in him with a bewilderingmixture of hope and cold reason. He was rallying after theexhaustion of the journey. He was rallying from the pleasure of being in a place he loved. And from the knowledgethat no further great effort would ever be required of him.They had both known, though it had never been spokenbetween them, that he had come here to die, that he wouldnever have to make the return journey to England.
It was not unusual, she knew, for patients to rally and even seem to recover from serious illnesses for a shortwhile. That was what was happening to John. She tried tobelieve that and to be grateful that she was to have a littlemore of him than she had ever expected, especially duringthat dreadful journey. She had even doubted once ortwice—or the part of her that had not been borne up bythat strange hope had doubted—that he would get as far asCartref.
On the first day he dressed for dinner—his valet had looked at him in amazement and then at her in inquiry when he demanded it—and came down to the dining room with her. He even ate. Not a great deal, it was true, but thensince their wedding it had seemed to her that he existed onair. He had eaten no solid food.
“I have to eat,” he told her with a smile, tackling the fish course. ‘‘I just looked at myself in the looking glass,Adèle, and I am nothing but skin and bones. I do not knowhow you can bear to look at me.”
She would have wept except that there was a twinkle in his eye. “You are John,” she said. “I could look at youevery moment for the rest of my life and not grow tired ofdoing so.”
He chuckled—and her heart turned over with joy at the sound. “And I am so weak,” he said, “that I fear I madea dent in both the banister and your shoulder coming downstairs.”
They had taken the stairs one at a time, with a long pause on each one. The butler had watched anxiously and incredulously from the foot—John’s valet had carried him upstairs on their arrival.
On the second day he insisted on taking each meal in the dining room, even breakfast. And he forced himself to eat.She could tell that it was an effort and part of her wonderedif it was worth torturing himself when... But there wasthe other part of her that hoped and did more than just hope.There was a part of her thatknew.
He would not go back to bed except for one hour in the afternoon—he had her promise to wake him after an hour, provided she was awake to do it. He insisted that she lie down with him, and he held her hand, twisting her sapphire ring, until he drifted off to sleep.
For the rest of the day hewalked.It was incredible to see. He would not sit down to conserve his energy. And hewould not allow her to close the downstairs windows after he had thrown them all open, even though the air comingoff the ocean was brisk. He walked all about the house,slowly and doggedly, her arm drawn through his, thoughhe assured her that she must not feel obligated to trudgeher slippers to shreds on his account.
“I would trudge my slippers and my boots and the soles of my feet to shreds to be with you,” she told him, rubbingher cheek against his shoulder. “But do not exhaust yourself, John. And do not catch a chill.”
“Sea air and exercise are good for a person,” he said. “Once I am stronger, I am going to be marching along thebeach and running up and down the hills to build an appetite for breakfast.”
She laughed against his shoulder. Helpless laughter that bordered on tears. “Will I be able to keep up to you?” sheasked. “Or will I have to trail along half a mile behind?”
“I shall match my strides to yours,” he said. “But we will have to get you fit enough not to pant and wheeze aswe run.”
“Up hills?” she said, still laughing.“Hills,John? Have mercy.”
He even went outside on that second day and strolled very slowly with her along the graveled paths between theflower beds that stood between the house and the roughtrail that descended the hill to one side of the house andascended on the other side to the village of Awelfa, justout of sight over the crest.
He stopped frequently to draw deep breaths of the fresh salt air. She was terrified that he would bring on anotherof the coughing spells. He had not had one since just aftertheir arrival the day before.
