“But you do not all have to wait for us at the foot of the pagoda,” Matilda said. “We can do our duty quite adequately from up here. It makes a splendid watchtower. I daresay there is not a square inch of the Gardens that will be invisible to us.”
Mr. Keithley groaned aloud and clutched his chest.
There were lots of trees, of course, and a person could not see into them or under them from up here. But young people must be allowed some time alone together. And what could they get up to in ten minutes? Though of course it would take about that long again to get down from here, and then one would no longer be able to see to all corners of Kew, let alone into all the crannies. But—
“I trust you all to behave yourselves as young ladies and gentlemen ought,” she added in her severe Aunt Matilda voice. Not that she had ever been a severe aunt. She had never interfered with her brother and sisters or her in-laws concerning the ways they chose to deal with their children.
“That was very sly of you, Aunt Matilda,” Boris told her. “Now you have forced us to be good.”
“Not that we would ever dream ofnotbeing good,” Dorothea Keithley said as she followed Mr. Sawyer down the winding staircase. “Don’t look at me that way, Ambrose.”
“Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” her brother protested, offering his hand to Jessica to help her onto the top stair.
Soon they were all gone, clattering downward noisily and cheerfully.
“We will all gather outside the orangery in half an hour’s time,” Charles called down after them.
And Matilda was aware of the sound of wind all about the outside of the pagoda, and of nothing else. She stepped up to one window and gazed down upon trees and lawns and the red-bricked front of Kew Palace. She moved to the next window and saw temple follies among the trees and land stretching to infinity beyond the Gardens. She moved again and simply gazed. She was aware of the warmth of Charles’s right arm along her left, though they were not touching. She could smell his cologne.
“Oh, there they are,” she said, pointing downward. “They have stayed all together.”
“I can spot no budding romance between any of them,” he said, “with the possible exception of Bertrand Lamarr and Miss Keithley. They are merely enjoying one another’s company.”
“Yes,” she said.
“In a similar situation we were only too eager to snatch time for ourselves,” he said. “And we were fortunate enough to have a pair of chaperons who were happy to remain well below the top story of the pagoda.”
He had kissed her here, maybe on this very spot. He had told her he loved her and she had not for a moment doubted the truth of his words. She had told him she loved him and had meant the words with all the passion of her young heart. But not a month later she had sent him away, told him she would not speak with him or even see him again. She had told him when pressed, when it had seemed the only way to convince him, that she did not love him, that she never really had.
“Didyou mean it?” he asked now, and she knew he had turned his face toward hers, was no longer looking at the view but at her. “I have often wondered.”
“Did I mean what?” she asked, but she knew what he meant. It was as though he had read her thoughts.
“That you loved me,” he said.
She frowned and watched a horse and cart inching along a ribbon of roadway on the distant landscape.
“I do not remember,” she said. “Are you talking about the time we were here together all those years ago? How am I to recall what I said or what I meant?”
“You told me you loved me,” he said, “after I had said I loved you. And then, not long after, you turned me away. But the cruelest cut of all came with the words you spoke as you did it. You did not love me, you said, and never had. But you did love me when we were here. You did mean it, did you not?”
From beneath contracted eyebrows she returned his gaze. Why was the answer important to him? “You have lived a lifetime of memory-bringing events since then,” she said. “You fathered Gil. You married Lady Dirkson and had children and then grandchildren. You lived through years filled with … with riotous living. Why try to remember now what happened or did not happen here years and years ago when we were young and foolish and could not possibly have known our own minds? Why bother to remember? We have scarcely seen each other since. We have spoken only a few times, all of them very recently. What is the point of all this, Charles? If we ever had a … a chance, it is long gone. Those things happened to other people in another lifetime. We are not the same people now. Not even close.”
“Werewe foolish?” he asked her. He had turned to look downward again. Matilda could see the young people, still in a group together, making their way along a grassy avenue toward one of the domed temples. “But yes, of course I was. I was young and in love and then hurt as only the young can be. I was blinded by hurt. Instead of waiting for a year and then trying during the next Season to get you to change your mind and to get your father to see that I had changed, I immediately leaped into wild pleasure seeking in an attempt to forget you and soothe my bruised sense of self. I never did try to win you back. Yes, I was foolish. Were you?”
“Foolish?” she said. “No. I had always been obedient to my parents. I had always believed they knew what was best for me and loved me. I believed them when they told me you were no suitable husband for me, that your wild debaucheries would bring me nothing but misery.”
“Debaucheries?” He turned to look at her again. “Atthatstage of my life? Hardly. So you werewiseto break off with me? To tell me you did not love me?”
“Yes,” she said.
He was looking steadily at her, and almost inevitably she had to turn her own head and look back.
“Tell me,” he said, “that that at least was not true. And please do not tell me you do not remember.”
“Why should I remember?” she asked. “It was a lifetime ago. Oh, Charles,of courseI loved you. We were young as these young people are young now.” She gestured with one hand toward the window, though she did not look out. “You were handsome and you were paying court to me. You danced with me and talked endlessly with me and smiled and laughed for me alone, it seemed. Of course I loved you. It would have been strange if I had not.”
“But you stopped?”
