After that he could not stop the sobs that tore at his chest and embarrassed him horribly. He turned to stumble away, but two arms came about him and held him tightly even when he would have broken away from them.
“No,” Anne said, “it is all right. It is all right, my love. It is all right.”
Not once before now had he wept. He had screamed when he had been unable to stop himself, he had groaned and moaned and later raged and suffered in silence and endured. But he had never wept.
Now he could not stop weeping as Anne held him and crooned to him as if he were a child who had hurt himself. And like a child that had hurt itself, he drew comfort from her arms and her warmth and her murmurings. And finally the sobs turned to a few shuddering hiccups and stopped entirely.
“My God, Anne,” he said, pulling back from her and fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. “I am so sorry. What kind of a man will you take me for?”
“One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest,” she said.
He sighed and realized suddenly that it had started to rain.
“Come and shelter inside,” he said, taking her hand and drawing her back under the roof of the temple. “I am so sorry, Anne. This morning seriously discomposed me. But I am glad I did it. David was happy. And he is going to be good with oils.”
She had laced her fingers with his.
“You must face the final, deepest pain,” she said. “No, more than that. You have, in fact, just faced it. But you have looked at it with despair. There must be hope, Sydnam. There is your artistic vision and your talent, and there is you. They have to be enough to propel you onward even without your right arm and your right eye.”
He raised their hands and kissed the back of hers before releasing it. He tried to smile at her.
“I will teach David,” he said. “I will be a father to him in every way I can. I will ride with him. I will—”
“You must paint with him,” she said. “You mustpaint.”
But though he had calmed down considerably, there was still a coldness and a rawness at the core of his being, where he had not dared tread during all the years since he returned from the Peninsula.
“And you,” he said, realizing something suddenly with blinding clarity when he had not even been thinking about it, “need to go home, Anne.”
There was a brief, tense silence between them while the faint rushing sound of rain beyond the shelter mingled with the lapping sounds of the lake water.
“To Ty Gwyn?” she asked.
“To Gloucestershire,” he said.
“No.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “it is necessary to go back before we can move forward. At least I think that must be so, unwelcome as the thought is. I suppose we both need to go back, Anne. Perhaps if we do it, both of us, there will be hope. I cannot see it in my own case, but I must try.”
When he looked at her, he found her staring back, her face pale, her look inscrutable.
“It is what you want me to do,” he said.
“But…” She paused for a long moment. “I cannot and will not go home, Sydnam. It would change and solve nothing. You are wrong.”
“So be it, then,” he said, taking her hand in his again.
They sat in silence, watching the rain.
Anne eyed the horses apprehensively. They looked so very largeand full of energy, and the stable yard seemed to be filled with them. It was some time since she had ridden. But she would do so this morning in a good cause. She glanced over to where Sydnam and Kit were supervising David as he mounted. Having accomplished the task successfully, her son gazed down, triumphant and happy, atbothmen—and then across the stable yard at her.
“Look at me, Mama,” he called.
“I am looking,” she assured him.
Kit had turned his attention to Lauren, helping her mount her sidesaddle, and lifting Sophia up to sit with her.
Sydnam came striding toward Anne.
