But everything would be gone...
Ashley...
Even as she thought his name, before she could push it firmly away from her, she felt him. He was there. Not just at Bowden. He was there, here, close by, watching her. She had but to open her eyes and turn her head to see him.
For a few moments she hesitated. If she did not look, he would perhaps go away. And there would be an end to it. For once she left the falls, she knew, she must never come back. In many more ways than one, she must never come back. Ashley would be gone. Gone forever, even though she would see him at the house over the coming days, with his wife and his son.
And so this was the end. Or not quite. There was this now, this final moment. And she could not resist it. She was not yet strong enough in her new commitment. She opened her eyes and turned her head and looked at him.
He was dressed for riding, with the old careless elegance that had always characterized him. His long dark hair, unpowdered, was caught at the back of his neck with a black ribbon. His three-cornered hat was in one hand. He was leaning lazily against a tree, smiling at her.
And yet she was aware that beneath the relaxed, careless stance was the haggard weariness that had translated itself into frenzied gaiety the night before. His thin, haunted body pretended to a well-being this morning that might have fooled everyone but Emily.
She was not fooled for a moment.
6
SHEdid not move. She stayed where she was, unsmiling. But there was nothing unwelcoming in her stance either. She merely looked at him.
He remembered then that the first time he had met her here he had been alone, hurrying toward this place to find solitude and peace. But she had been here before him. And had bounded down the rocks to take him by the hand and lead him back up to join her. They had sat side by side on the flat rock and she had asked him to talk to her—yes, she had, even though she had not been able to ask in words. And so he had talked.
There was an ache of something in the memory—of a friendship lost.
She did not come down now. Or invite him to join her. But she did not tell him to go away either, as she had just told Powell. He pushed his shoulder away from the tree and lessened the distance between them. He stopped at the foot of the rock pile.
“I should have known I would find you here,” he said. “Where else would you be so early on a lovely spring morning?”
But she was not to be amused. Her eyes, which watched him unwaveringly, gained depth, but she still did not smile.
“Emmy,” he said, reaching up one hand, “come down.”
But he wanted to go up to her. How many hours had they spent sitting together on that rock while he talked and talked, pouring out his heart to her? And yet, strangely, those monologues had felt more like conversation. Though silent, she had seemed like a participant. He longed for her friendship again. But she was no longer a child. Was friendship with this woman possible?
It was as if she had read his mind. She shook her head slowly and beckoned once—and then touched the fingers of her beckoning hand to her heart.
He felt a fluttering of memory. It had been one of their secret signals. Not justYes, please join me,butYes, do join me. I want your company.Without that extra sign they knew that the other was just being polite and therefore had not intruded—not that that had happened more than once or twice in the year they had known each other.
He wondered now if she remembered—if the gesture had been conscious.
He must not try to recapture the past, he told himself. She was a woman with a life of her own, not a child willing and even eager to listen while he unburdened himself of all his troubles. He grinned at her as he strode quickly up to stand beside her. “He said he would go back to the house and perhaps see you at breakfast,” he told her. “He said that the two of you must talk further. Did you wonder what he was saying, Emmy, when you would not turn your head? ’Twas nothing more significant than that.”
She looked down at her hands for a moment and then back at him.
“I did not hear it all,” he said. “You must not fear that I was eavesdropping. Was it a quarrel, Emmy?”
She did not answer him.
“Do you wish to talk about it?” he asked, smiling at her. He meant what he said. She could tell him if she would. Emmy had always been able to make herself understood to him—on some things at least. But then, that had been a long time ago. “As to an old friend, Emmy? As to a brother?”
The thought of listening sympathetically to someone else’s concerns, toherconcerns, was strangely seductive. To be able to give back a little of what she had once given him so unstintingly. To forget for a few moments about his own concerns.
Her eyes went beyond him, down the slope, and back to him again. She raised her eyebrows.
He turned his head and looked. “The painting?” he said. “You quarreled over the painting? He did not like it? What a scoundrel he was if he said so. No gentleman would do so, Emmy. Shall I go down there and give you my judgment?”
But she caught at his arm and shook her head, and then dropped her hand quickly. He caught the look in her eye. It was one of dismay, even fear. She wasafraidto let him see the painting?
She pointed in the direction of the house and then at herself. She indicated the whole of herself with hands sweeping downward from her head. And she took a step back so that he could have a good look at her. She looked at him ruefully. The truth was, he supposed, that if she had been anyone else but Emmy he might have been almost shocked. Her body was softly and revealingly feminine beneath the loose dress. Her legs were bare to well above the ankles. Her hair was displayed as no woman’s hair should be except to her husband in the privacy of their own bedchamber.
