“What was mistaken about it?” she asked.
“I ought to have resigned my commission and stayed,” he said. “I was married. I had a child. I thought my main responsibility was to my regiment and the cause of right, whatever that means. I was wrong. My main responsibility was to my family. Caroline did not want to be left. She hated it at Rose Cottage and she hated... motherhood. Katy was helpless to make any sort of decision. I made the wrong choice and I lost her as a result. Perhaps permanently.”
“Would you have saved your marriage by staying?” she asked.
He thought about it. But he had done that many times before and knew the answer. “No, I do not think my marriage could have been a happy one,” he said. “But I would have had my daughter.”
“How did your wife die?” she asked.
Conversations were damnable things, he thought. They involved baring one’s soul and exposing all one’s guilt and all one’s pain. Or perhaps it was just marriage that was the damnable thing.
“She fell,” he said curtly. For a few moments he did not want to say anything more, but he could hardly leave it there. “She was somewhere in Cornwall and descending a steep cliff path she had been warned was dangerous. That very warning would have impelled her to do it, of course. She was like that. She fell. The people who were with her could not save her. Theyhadheeded the warning.” Actually, the official report he had read had mentioned just one person, a man. Probably a lover. But what did it matter now?
“I am sorry,” she said softly.
“The devil of it is,” he said, “that I am not.”
And she sat back in the seat, still cradling his hand in her lap, and turned her head toward the window on her side.
“I hated her,” he said. “I did not wish her harm, and I did notdoher harm, but I have been unable to grieve her death.”
She drew breath as though to say something but did not do so.
“You have married a hard man, Abby,” he said.
“I do not believe so,” she said softly. “I hate her too. She never intended to return, did she? She had abandoned both her child and you. And she lied about you to save face with her mother.”
They traveled a long way in silence, his hand in both of hers. He wondered if he would ever forgive himself for leaving his family when he had known Caroline to be desperately unhappy and when he had hada childwho needed her father at home with her. And he wondered if he would ever forgive Caroline for loving no one but herself and craving adventure, the rougher the better, and for lying about him as an excuse for dumping their child upon her mother before she ran away in pursuit of her own pleasure. The only thing hecouldforgive her for was dying.
Bitterness and hatred were like an ulcer bleeding into the innards. Especially, perhaps, when there was self-hatred too. He had never used violence upon Caroline, not even when she had begged for it during sex. But he had abandoned both her and their baby for the greater glory of war, and so he was equally to blame for the troubles he now faced. Oh, he could argue, as he sometimes did, that he had left his wife and child well provided for, even if he had died in battle, but it was not an argument that convinced him.
“Abby,” he said, “I will do better. Even if, God help me, I never get Katy back, I will do better.”
She turned her face back toward him. “I did not know,” she said, “that you blamed yourself.”
“I will do better by you,” he told her, “and our children. Some lessons are bitter ones, but I have learned mine.”
“We will get her back, Gil,” she said. “She has a father and a mother and a home to go to. And though you blame yourself for abandoning her, the world will not see it that way. You obeyed when you were called back to duty because this country and the whole of Europe were at a moment of peril. Almost no one would blame you for going except you.”
“You are too kind,” he said.
She took him by surprise then. She raised his hand with both of hers, kissed the back of it, and held it briefly against her cheek.
“We will get her back,” she said again.
“Abby,” he said a few moments later, “I am sorry I hurt you.”
“Last night?” She looked startled, and she blushed.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“I am not.” She lowered her head so that he could not see her face fully. “I am twenty-four years old. Perhaps you do not understand what it is like to be a woman who does not marry young. She cannot indulge in casual amours, as I believe most men do. I have wanted... what happened last night for a long time. Pain and all. I am glad it has happened at last.” She drew breath, hesitated, and then continued. “And I am glad it was with you.”
There had been no one since Caroline—until last night. He had been tempted a few times, but the days of his lustyyouth were behind him and rutting with a whore or even with a willing camp follower had lost its appeal.
“You must not drag aroundthatguilt with you on top of everything else,” she said, turning a blushing, laughing face his way and swaying against his shoulder. “I am very glad it happened.”
“Thank you,” he said, and turned his head to kiss her. Her hands tightened about his, and he prolonged the kiss.
