But he knew he would not be able to rest again until he was sure she was safe. And since it had never been in his nature to wait passively for something to happen if he could possibly help it, he knew that he was going to go out there looking for her. Just to see annoyance, even contempt, in her eyes for his pains, no doubt.
The marks of her bootprints were not quite obliterated, he discovered when he went outside. Slight depressions in the snow revealed that she had indeed gone toward the forest in a diagonal line, heading north. It was too dark when he finally got among the trees to find any sign still remaining that she had passed this way, but if she had not swerved out of the direction she had taken, she would have reached the river eventually. And if she had been headed there at such an angle, the chances were that she would not then have turned south. If she had gone north along the riverbank, it seemed probable that her destination was Pinky’s hut. She had been living at Thornwood long enough, after all, to have discovered it ages ago.
Why would she decide to go to Pinky’s hut today of all days? And at this time of day? And during a heavy snowfall? One answer was obvious to him. It was so that she might enjoy some privacy. He waded onward nevertheless, feeling somewhat murderous. Though she was not to blame, he supposed, if he was foolish enough to follow her, unbidden.
At first he thought he had been mistaken. There was no sign of a light in the window, not even the flickering light of a fire. And there was no smoke coming from the chimney. But he climbed the slope to the cottage anyway and opened the door.
He thought there was no one in there. Certainly there was no light, no sound, no movement. But there was something lighter than the surrounding darkness on the bed, and he stepped closer in order to have a clearer view. He left the door open behind him.
His eyes registered the fact that it was indeed she who was sitting silently there at the same moment as she moved. She jerked closer to the wall farthest from where he stood, and her arms came free of the sheepskin blanket in which she had been wrapped in order to cover her face protectively. She made a guttural sound in her throat.
He froze.
And then he turned to cross the single room of the hut again in order to shut the door. He found the tinderbox by touch alone—he knew where it had always been kept—and lit the single candle that stood in a holder on the table. He knelt in front of the hearth and set a light to the kindling so that the fire would burn and bring some warmth to the room.
“I am not going to hit you,” he said quietly.
She had been almost relaxed, almost warm, almost at peace. She had been in a half dream, though still awake. She had not heard anyone approach—but how could she have when any footfall would be deadened by the blanket of snow? When the door had opened and she had seen the silhouette of a man, first standing there and then stepping inside, she had been paralyzed with terror. Not of strangers. It had not for a moment occurred to her that some dangerous vagrant or fugitive might have found his way to the shelter of the hut.
She had acted from sheer instinct. She had tried to duck out of his reach. She had tried to protect her face. She had thought he was....
But he had not touched her. And even as he walked away and closed the door and groped for the tinderbox, even before she saw him clearly, she knew that she had been disoriented. Dead men did not walk. She knew who he was. The light from the candle, suddenly illumining his face as he bent over it, merely confirmed the fact. He did not look at her. He proceeded to light the fire. Only then did he speak.
“I am not going to hit you,” he said.
“I did not know who you were,” she said. It seemed that there was warmth in the room already. Perhaps it was just the light and the crackling sounds of the fire catching hold that gave the illusion.
“No,” he said. “I suppose you did not.”
He came to stand before the window beside the bed, though he did not look at her at all. He stood gazing out. Probably, she thought, with the light inside the room he could see nothing out there. But he stood there for a long time, not moving. She could have reached out and touched him if she had wanted to do so. She stayed where she was and did not move at all.
Why had he come? How had he known where to find her?
The answers did not seem important. Neither, for that matter, did the questions. He had come. It had been somehow inevitable.
She had been aware from the beginning of her marriage that it was here at Thornwood that he had grown up. She had never tried to place him anywhere in the house or park. She had never wondered which bedchamber had been his, which rooms he had spent most of his time in, which parts of the outdoors had been his favorite playgrounds. She had not wanted to know. But she had known, though neither she nor Mr. Pinkerton had ever mentioned his name, that this hut had been a haunt of his, that it had been a special place for him. How had she known? There was no answer to the question. She simply had.
And she knew now that she had been right. He belonged in this cozy little room. It breathed his presence. She had never consciously admitted to herself that she had come here through the years in order to allow herself the very small comfort of that knowledge.
“We left something unfinished at Vauxhall,” he said at last without turning from the window.
“Yes,” she said.
“We should have finished it and been done with it,” he said.
“Yes.”
He turned from the window but still did not look at her. He went to stand in front of the fire and gazed down into the flames, which were dancing about the logs piled in the hearth. He stood there for a long time before taking off his hat and gloves and greatcoat and setting them on the rocking chair where Mr. Pinkerton had loved to sit. He shrugged out of his coat and stood for a few moments in his shirtsleeves before starting to unbutton his waistcoat.
And so it would be ended, Christina thought as she watched him undress until he stood before the fire wearing only his breeches and stockings. It was a strange moment, beyond time. It was unreasonable, what was happening, what was about to happen, but it was a moment beyond reason. It did not need to be talked about, discussed, argued upon. It did not even need the spark of passion.
Something had not been finished. And so they would finish it now. There was no looking to the future. It was a moment without future.
He turned to her then, his expression blank, as she supposed her own was. Nothing needed to be said. She got off the bed and spread the sheepskin blanket over the woolen ones. She turned them all back to reveal white sheets. She took off her cloak. There was no need to spread it over everything else. The room was not large—it already felt almost cozily warm. She reached up her arms to undo the buttons at the back of her dress, but he turned her with his hands on her shoulders and did it for her. She drew off her dress, removed her stockings and undergarments, and turned to him, wearing only her shift.
She stepped against him, breathed in the warm, distinctive, musky smell of him before spreading her hands over his bare chest and lifting her face to his.
There was something to finish. They had both acknowledged that with a quiet sort of resignation. There had been no passion in their decision. But it was passion that had not been completed between them, the passionate desire—no, the passionateneed—to give and to take, to share all that was themselves—bodies, minds, hearts, souls. To rid themselves of the brokenness, the incompleteness of their separate selves in order to make one whole.
