Soon after, they had returned to the main avenue to rejoin their party and begin living happily ever after. Less than a week later he had called upon her father …
“Matilda,” he said now as they walked along the main avenue, “how long did it take you to stop loving me?” For shehadloved him. He had doubted it for a long time, when the pain was raw, but no longer.
“About as long as it took you to stop,” she said. “Gil was born the following year.”
“I dealt with my unwanted love in a thoroughly unbridled and immature way,” he said. “I suppose I remained immature long after the age at which most men settle down. Until ten years or so ago, in fact. I did not love Gil’s mother, though I do not want to speak disrespectfully of her. She was not a woman of loose morals. I believe she genuinely thought I loved her and would marry her. She punished me very effectively when she understood that I did not and could not.”
“By keeping you away from your son?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me, then,” she asked him, “that all the behavior for which you became notorious was because of me? Did I hurt you so very badly?”
“I was hurt,” he admitted. “But my behavior was mine to own. You were not responsible for any of that, Matilda.”
“Humphrey always assured me whenever I asked,” she said, “that you were not hurt at all, that you had been lying to me when you told me you loved me, that you were incapable of love just as he was. You were a capital fellow in his estimation. He told me to grow up to the real world and not expect love outside the pages of a book.”
“And you listened and believed?” he said.She had asked her brother about him?
“I did not look for love from any man,” she said.
“Because of me?” he asked.
“No, of course—” She stopped. “Yes. Because of you.”
He drew a slow breath and let it out on an almost audible sigh.
“Your mother treats you poorly, Matilda,” he said. It might seem to be a non sequitur, but it was not. “You gave up love and marriage in order to be treated with impatience and irritability even before strangers? Do you not regret—”
“Regrets are pointless,” she said sharply. “My mother is sometimes impatient with me because Icoddleher. I have fully realized it only lately. I have always been so determined to show my love and devotion, to make my life seem meaningful, that I have treated her, at least in recent years, like an old woman rather than as a person of dignity still able to be in charge of her own life. I have been a severe trial to her—as she has been to me. Don’t judge from the outside, Charles. She has her own demons to deal with. She feels guilty for blighting my life. My presence forever at her side and my … fussy behavior are a constant reproach to her. I could have behaved differently all those years ago. I could have fought for myself instead of giving in so meekly to my parents’ fears and commands. I could have married someone else of whom theydidapprove. Oh, but regrets are pointless, Charles. Must we spoil this most wonderful of wonderful evenings by talking of the past?”
The avenue was crowded. They dodged other revelers and probably annoyed a number of them with their slow pace. The orchestra had resumed its playing, but the music was almost drowned out by the sounds of raised voices and laughter.
Perhaps her mother was not such an ogre, then, Charles thought. Apparently she had a conscience. Perhaps she loved her eldest daughter after all. Probably she did, in fact. And Matilda loved her in return, even though her mother had blighted her life—an interesting choice of words. No, he must not judge. Close human relationships were often a great deal more complex than they seemed to outsiders. His own relationship with his wife, for example, had been far from simple, far from one-faceted. On the whole it had been a decent marriage, even though he had been a wayward husband much of the time and she had told him even before they wed that she had no real interest in men but recognized the necessity of conforming to society’s expectations by marrying him. Yet they had produced three children who had grown into affectionate, sensible adults of whom they had both been proud.
“We will not spoil the evening,” he said. “Itiswonderful, is it not?”
He could not be sure in the dim, swaying light of the lanterns, but it looked to him as though her eyes had filled with tears. And how much she had revealed about her feelings!
… this most wonderful of wonderful evenings.
Ah, Matilda.
“Come,” he said, turning her onto a side path just as he had more than thirty years ago. “Let us seek a little more privacy.”
He could not be sure it was thesamepath. But it did not matter. It was narrow as the other one had been, a little too narrow for two people to walk comfortably side by side. He drew his arm away from hers and encircled her waist with it. Far from showing any outrage or resistance, she set her own arm about him and very briefly rested the side of her head against his shoulder.
Justlike last time.
“This is better,” he said. “The noise seems more muted here.”
“Yes,” she said. “Charles—”
“Mmm?” He waited for her to continue.
“Surely this is impossible,” she said.
“This?”
