She half choked on a laugh.
“Would you?” she said. “Would you really? I would almost pity him.Almost.”
They fell silent for a few moments.
“What I have never been able to contemplate with any calmness,” she said, “is the fact that David is his son. He even looks like him. I try so very hard not to see that. I did not even know I was about to admit it aloud now until the words came out of my mouth. Helookslike him.”
“But David is not Albert,” Sydnam said. “I am not my father, Anne, and you are not your mother. We are separate persons even if heredity does cause some physical resemblance at times. David is David. He is not even you.”
She sighed.
“How did Albert Moore die?” he asked. “Apart from the fact that he drowned, I mean?”
“Oh.” He could hear that the breath she drew was ragged. “I was already with child and living in the village. Lady Chastity Moore came one evening and told me that Albert and Joshua were out in a fishing boat. Joshua was apparently confronting him over what had happened. But Lady Chastity, Albert’s sister, was going down to the harbor to await their return. She had discovered the truth—from Prudence, I suppose. She had a gun. I went with her.”
“He wasshot?” Sydnam asked.
“No,” she said. “When the boat came back, Joshua was rowing it and Albert was swimming alongside. Apparently he had jumped out when Joshua threatened him. Joshua turned without seeing us and rowed away as soon as he saw that Albert could wade safely to shore, but Lady Chastity raised the gun and would not let Albert come to land until he had promised to confess to his father and to leave home forever. He laughed at her and swam away. It was a rather stormy night. He never did come back. His body was discovered later.”
“Ah,” Sydnam said.
Sometimes, it seemed, justice was done.
They lay there in silence for a while.
“Iwilltake Henry Arnold limb from limb if you wish,” he said at last. “Do you?”
“Oh, no.” She laughed softly and touched his face—the damaged side—with one hand. “No, Sydnam. I stopped hating him a long time ago.”
“And did you also stop loving him?” he asked softly.
She drew back her head and looked at him. She was flushed and red-eyed and lovely.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I did. And I am glad now that he did not have the courage to stand by me. If he had, there would not be you.”
“And that would be bad?” he asked.
“Yes.” She stroked her fingers lightly over his cheek. “Yes, it would.”
And she turned farther onto her side in order to kiss him on the lips. He felt himself stir into an unwelcome arousal.
“It is hard to understand,” she said, “how if all the bad things had not happened in both our lives, we would not have met. We would not be here now. But it is true, is it not?”
“It is true,” he said.
“Has it been worth it?” she asked. “Going through all we have been through in order that we may be together now like this?”
He could no longer imagine his life without Anne in it.
“It has been worth it,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “it has.”
She gazed steadily at him.
“Make love to me,” she said.
He gazed back at her, and she licked her lips.
