“I did not conceive during my marriage,” she said.
“Which does not mean you are barren,” he told her.
Did this mean their affair was over? Almost before it had begun? Would they not risk it again?
“I would not trap you into marriage,” she told him.
“I do not doubt it,” he said. “Thoughtrappedwould not be a pleasant word to use if there really were a child, would it?”
She did not answer him. But she did move off him to lie beside him. He reached for her hand and they laced their fingers.
“Must it end, then?” she asked him.
He did not answer immediately.
“Would it be a terrible disaster to you,” he asked her, “to be with child? To have to marry me?”
“Not a disaster,” she said. For a long time, while she had been living at Leyland Abbey, she had thought her life might be bearable if only she had a baby, though after Matthew was injured and came home, she had been deeply thankful that there was none. “Would it be a disaster to you?”
“If therewerea child,” he said, “I would not want to have to remember for the rest of my life that I had once called the possibility of his or her conception a disaster. Neither of us wants marriage, and the circumstances would make it difficult for us to marry even if wedidwant it. However, the needs of any child of mine will always come first in my life, and a child needs father and mother if it is humanly possible—married to each other and loving each other.”
He spoke in a soft voice, obviously choosing his words with care. Samantha felt a deep welling of…grief? No, it was not grief. But it was something that made her ache with a nameless longing and brought tears to her eyes and the soreness of unshed tears to her throat.
…married to each other and loving each other.
How wonderful it would be to be loved by Benedict Harper and to share a child with him. If only the circumstances were different…
She rested her temple against his shoulder. It was not supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be having a brief affair, entirely for pleasure.
“What are we going to do?” she asked him.
“We promised each other a week of lovemaking,” he said, “before we pick up the threads of our own separate lives. Shall we keep that promise and deal with any consequences that may arise if and when they do arise?”
She knew something then with a terrible clarity. She knew she was not made for casual affairs. She had thought after the first numbness of loss following Matthew’s death had passed that all she wanted was to be free, tolive. But all she really wanted to do, all she had ever wanted to do, was to love. And, if possible, to be loved.
Instead, she had begun an affair, something that by its very nature was temporary. Something that was purely carnal. Something that would leave her more bereft than she had ever felt before.
Unless there was a child.
Yet she must hope that there wouldnotbe, for she would not wish to bind him to her on such terms.
He squeezed her hand.
“I do not doubt,” he said, “that there will be people to take note of the exact minute and hour at which I return to the inn. I would not be so late that it will be obvious I have done more here than dine with you and sit afterward over tea and conversation.”
He leaned closer and kissed her on the lips, and then she swung her legs over the far side of the bed, got to her feet, and found her nightgown and dressing gown.
“I shall see you downstairs,” she said and left him to get dressed.
She walked out to the barn with him fifteen minutes or so later in her slippers and dressing gown while Tramp galloped about the garden, delighted to have an outing he had not been expecting. She waited while Ben hitched up the horse to the gig.
He spread one arm to her before climbing in, and she stepped close to him and hugged him. He kissed her and smiled down at her in the moonlight.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For?”
“For making me feel like a man again,” he said.
