But she had so wanted the afternoon to be perfect.
She had so wanted…
Ah, dear God, she had sowanted.
Sydnam stood at the bedchamber window looking out. It was stillonly late afternoon. Probably no more than half an hour had passed since they had come up here.
He did not know if Anne Jewell was sleeping on the bed behind him. He would not look to see. But he doubted it.
He felt sexually satiated, and that ought to have been a wonderful feeling after such a long celibacy. Instead, he felt a terrible sense of failure. Not that his sexual techniques were so lacking, he supposed, especially to a woman of no real experience. No, it was something else that had caused her to withdraw as soon as they reached the point of real intimacy.
Had he expected that she would find him beautiful, that she would finditbeautiful?
Had he not realized from the moment she kissed him in the rose arbor that she had steeled herself to show him compassion, to assure him that in her eyes he was a normal man? Had he not realized too that her offer of herself had come out of her terrible loneliness? She ought to have been married years ago to a man of her own choosing, but circumstances beyond her control had made her virtually unmarriageable.
Perhaps, he thought, they had both got what they deserved from this ill-advised ending to their afternoon together—and to their acquaintance. Loneliness was not a good enough reason for what they had done together—not when each of them was lonely for commitment and permanency. Yet it was impossible for them to find such things together.
That had just been made painfully obvious.
He wished the matter had not been put to the test.
Too late he realized that sex did not take away loneliness. It probably made it far worse. The next few days would reveal the truth of that to him, he suspected.
He did not want to turn his head to look at her. He would, he thought, find that Anne Jewell, his friend and confidante, the woman with whom he supposed he had allowed himself to fall in love during the past few weeks, was gone, to be replaced by a stranger with whom he would feel uncomfortable because they had been intimate together when there was after all no real intimacy between them.
And tomorrow shewouldbe gone—literally. When he next returned here, he would come to this room and stand just here and try to pretend that he could turn around and find her asleep on the bed.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would stand here and wish he could forget that she had ever been to Ty Gwyn with him.
He turned. She was lying with the covers drawn up under her arms, those arms and her shoulders bare, her glorious honey-colored hair in a shining tangle about her head and shoulders and over the pillow. Her crowning glory, he thought, though he did not say so aloud. It was too much of a cliché. And the time for such words was past anyway.
She was looking steadily at him, her expression unfathomable. She was probably hoping he had not noticed that their mating had not been good for her.
He smiled and said what he had not known he was going to say though it was what he realized must be said—later even if not now.
“If you wish, Anne,” he said, “we will marry.”
It was not much of a proposal. He realized that as he spoke the words. But how could he ask her any other way? How could he lay an obligation upon her by speaking of emotions that would doubtless embarrass and even dismay her? He certainly did not want her pity.
“I am well able to support you,” he added, “and your son. I think it might be a good idea. Don’t you?”
It struck him that it was possibly the worst idea in the world.
She gazed at him for a long time before answering.
“I think,” she said then, “that friendship and need and some mutual attraction have been justification enough for what we have just done together. But they are not a good enough justification for marriage.”
“Are they not?” He felt a terrible sorrow—and an enormous sense of relief. “Not even friendship? Is it not desirable that a man and his wife like each other and find it easy to talk with each other? And laugh with each other?”
“Yes,” she said. “But there ought to be very much more than just that.”
Love? It was such an overused, underdefined word. Whatdidit mean? But he did not think she was talking about love. There should be a physical attraction between husband and wife—that was what she meant. Or at the very least, there should be no actual revulsion.
It would not be possible for her to marry him, to share a bed with him for the rest of their lives. But he had always known that it would not be possible for any woman.
Had she said yes to his tentative marriage proposal, then he would have pressed forward with wedding plans. Had she even looked as if shewantedto say yes, he might have assured her that his feelings were engaged, that he was not merely making an honorable offer because he had bedded her. He might then have proceeded to a proper marriage offer.
But she had neither said yes nor wavered.
