A muted, rhythmic splashing caught his ear from just around the next curve of the path. It was coming from Duck Pond. His heart became a steady hammer in his chest. No longer could he deny this budding suspicion. Yet he couldn’t quite allow himself to believe it either.
Slowly, almost reverently, he moved toward the noise. Almost as if he would spook her if he approached without proper intentions.
Proper intentions? What exactly would those be in this circumstance? He and Mariana didn’t have a great record of abiding byproper intentions.
As he ascended the rise to the pond, he encountered more clothes—another garter, a dress, a shift, one boot, then the other. They lay haphazard as if they’d fallen off her body as she walked. Then he reached the top and all speculation, all thought, really, fell away at the sight before him: her naked form floating atop a black void of water, caressed by the mellow light of the moon’s nocturnal rays. His breath suspended in his chest.
“I thought I might find you here,” she called out.
Her words jolted a laugh from him, allowing his breath to release.
Playing along, he returned, “What a coincidence that you happened upon me.”
Her serious gaze traveled across the water, dispelling the moment of levity. “I’m not sure I know you.”
The directness of her words nearly leveled him, confirming what he already knew about his wife. She was formidable and brave. It was a rare strength to make one’s self open and vulnerable. It was a strength he’d never possessed, but one he must summon if he was to slip inside this chance he was being offered. And he heard within her words a chance.
“Is that so very bad?” he asked, his body tense and hot with anticipation of her answer, as if his very life depended on it.
Perhaps it did.
~ ~ ~
“It might be very good,” fell from her lips without thought. She was tired of thinking and overthinking. She was ready to succumb to a feeling, and she had a feeling about Nick.
“The man I thought you were made a lousy husband.”
She began breaststroking toward the shore . . . towardhim. . . luxuriating in the cool slide of water as it curved around her bare skin. Just before the water became too shallow to remain fully immersed, she halted her forward momentum and began to tread water. She had something to say to this man, and she preferred to say it from here with an insulating measure of distance between them.
“You couldn’t tell me about Percy,” she said. “I understand that now. You were protecting him from Uncle and . . . you were protecting me. You didn’t want to come between me and a beloved family member. And”—She willed her voice not to crack with sudden emotion—“you’ve been that man all along.”
She searched his face for a reaction, but he allowed her not the slightest glimpse into his thoughts. It was entirely possible that he’d only let her win at their card game in Paris. Unwelcome thought.
“Are you cold?”
Just as she began to shake her head, her body gave an involuntary shiver. “A blanket lies just to your right.”
It didn’t escape her notice that he’d evaded her words as if her praise had disconcerted him. If it was possible to fall more in love with her husband, she just did. This man was unaccustomed to recognition and thanks, his good works carried out alone and in the shadows, necessary and thankless.
Beneath her watchful gaze, he retrieved the blanket and spread it flat. Next, he shrugged off his overcoat and held it open before him. She glided forward. They both knew what was coming. She would step out of the water, naked.
Her feet found purchase on the bottom, and she began placing one foot in front of the other. Boldly, she rose out of the pond, like Botticelli’s Venus. A frisson of excitement pulsed through her at the way his unblinking gaze drank her in.
Tempted by the warm, dry overcoat held out for her, she sidestepped it. Instead, she set foot on the dense, woolen blanket and laid herself flat and supine, face aimed at the stars. Maybe if she squinted hard enough, she could discern within the universe’s depths a map to guide her through this night.
Nick hesitated no more than three heartbeats before joining her on the ground and silently stretching his long body alongside hers, their gazes now pointed in parallel at the night sky above. Awareness suffused the air.
Separated by a space no more substantial than an inch, a magnetic tension pulsed between them, daring them to succumb to the carnality achingly within reach. But, no, she would hold steady to the map she was improvising. She and he were on the border of a specific sort of territory . . . a territory too long unexplored. They must brave the edge.
“What I said in Paris was wrong.” She inhaled and crept closer to the edge. “You are neither inhuman nor ruthless. All this time you were the man I spent an entire decade trying to forget how much I liked. And now I feel as if it might be safe to do so again. Why did you hide yourself, your true self, away from me all these years?” Her gaze steadily trained on the mute stars, she ventured further, “It wasn’t due to your work with the Foreign Office.”
A tense moment passed. Then another. And another. She thought he might not answer, but then he spoke. “From the first moment I saw you, I knew I wasn’t worthy of you.”
“Oh, Nick—”
He shook his head once, and she quieted. She must let him tell his story his way.
“I fled to the Continent in the name of Crown and Country, but mostly I fled you.” He paused, and a nightingale trilled its lovely evening song. “This is the very spot where I first beheld you after that long year on the Continent.”
