He was not strolling. He was not out there with any thought of enjoying his surroundings or of merely taking the air before retiring to bed. He was hurrying with purposeful strides, his head down. He looked almost as if he thought himself pursued, though he did not look back either.
He looked haunted.
He was going to the falls. Of course he was going there. He was close to breaking. All last evening, all today, his smiles, his laughter, his gaiety had scandalized some of the family and aroused the pity of others.
“How very brave the poor boy is being, Theo,” she had seen Aunt Marjorie, Lady Sterne, say to Lord Quinn.
Emily had known that the gaiety had been no more than skin-deep. She had known that the company of his family had not helped him at all but had possibly had the opposite effect. She had known that he was close to breaking and that he might very well break.
She could not help him. She leaned forward until her forehead was against the glass of the window, and closed her eyes. Ashley.Ashley, I cannot help you.
But she would not believe it. Nothing had really changed. She was here and he was here. She could still listen to him. And he could still talk to her. Luke had come back to Anna’s sitting room that morning, pale and weary, and said that he had tried to talk to Ashley, had tried to assure him that there were love and healing to be had at Bowden for the taking, but that he was not sure he had accomplished anything. Ashley had built a wall about himself.
Luke hadtalkedto Ashley. Perhaps what Ashley really needed, as he had more than seven years ago, was someone to listen. Someone who could not give him verbal consolation or advice. Someone like herself.
Perhaps he would talk to her if they could be together at the falls again, as they had so often used to be. As they had been this morning. Perhaps he would feel some of the old magic return. Perhaps some of the burden could be lifted from his soul. Perhaps he could be saved from breaking apart.
She had been like a dear sister to him, he had said just that afternoon. His words had hurt. They still hurt. He had been so much more to her than a brother. But her feelings did not matter. Besides, she no longer could be more to him than a sister. And perhaps a friend.
But was she fooling herself? She kept her eyes closed and looked honestly at the question. Could she go to him there, break the promise she had made to herself just that morning, and not be deeply hurt herself? Would she be going only for her own sake? Because she wanted to go to him?
But she did not matter, she thought. It was Ashley who was hurting. Even though she would allow her feelings for him to make no difference in her life from now on, she was never going to deny to her inmost self that he mattered to her more than anyone or anything else in her life—herself included. If she was hurt, it did not matter. She would heal, as she had healed before. And his pain was so much worse than her own.
She wanted to go to him, she decided, because he needed her. If she was mistaken, if he spurned her, then she would bear the humiliation. But she did not believe she was wrong. There had always been an extra sense where Ashley was concerned—almost as if it had been given her in place of the sense of hearing. Sheknewthat he needed her.
And so promises and propriety and common sense and the very real possibility of being hurt mattered not one iota. Lord Powell, her betrothal, were forgotten.
Ashley needed her.
She was hurrying after him, in the direction he had gone, less than ten minutes later, having donned a dress and a warm cloak. She was wearing shoes against the chill of the night, and had tied her hair back with a ribbon at the nape of her neck.
•••
Hestood for a while on the flat rock, looking down into the almost black water beneath his feet as it spilled and bubbled over the stony basin of the steep descent. He was enclosed by trees and night and the rushing sound of water. He breathed deeply and remembered how he had always been able to come here and feel that he had left the world and its cares behind. But his cares had been insignificant things in those days.
Even so, it was good to be alone. He had been alone in his bedchamber, of course, but it was not the same. He had felt surrounded by people, by family, by those who cared for him. He had felt suffocated by them. It had been a mistake to imagine that people would be able to help him. Least of all his family.
He had felt the depth of Luke’s love this morning and it had weighed heavily on his heart and his conscience. He had felt the love and concern of all of them. He had been unable to reach out and wrap it about himself. It had felt more like a heavy burden pressing down on him, stifling him.
But how could he feel otherwise? How could he take comfort from his family when his wife and Thomas had died and he had not been there? And when he had wished a hundred times for their deaths? No. No, that was not true. He shook his head from side to side, denying the terrible thought. He had never wished for Thomas’s death. Never. He must never burden himself with that untruth. And never seriously for Alice’s either.
But he had not come here to be plagued by memories or by guilt, he thought, closing his eyes, listening to the soothing sound of the water, trying to let it seep into his soul. He had come here for an hour’s forgetfulness. He wanted to be able to go back to the house later to sleep.
If only he could sleep.
He had been wildly, passionately in love with Alice. As she had been with him. Two strangers, who had mistaken an initial attraction for love. He had loved her because she had nursed him through a lengthy illness. She had loved him because he had needed her nursing. It had been almost inevitable. Neither could be blamed, perhaps.
And she had married him for another reason too—one he had discovered twenty-four hours after their wedding. After a difficult and disappointing wedding night. The passion with which his bride had responded to his kisses had changed to panic as soon as his hands touched her body and—it still made him shudder to remember—to revulsion as he entered her. He had finished the consummation quickly, unsatisfactorily.
And she had not been a virgin bride.
Her lover, she had told him when confronted the next morning, had been left behind in England. She had even told Ashley his name—Sir Henry Verney, a neighbor, her brother’s closest friend. And yes, she loved him still. She would always love him.Always.The fierce, almost fanatical, light in her eyes had left Ashley in no doubt of the truth of her words.
Ashley had been left wondering exactly why she had married him and exactly how he was to make anything of this marriage.
She had answered the first question, though he had not put it into words. He had reminded her of her lover, she had told him with bitter defiance. She had thought he looked a little like him. She had been mistaken—dreadfully mistaken. He had notfeltlike the lover, Ashley understood her to have meant.
Love had died an instant death on both sides.
