But it came anyway.
His rhythm quickened and his strokes deepened until he held still in her, every muscle tense, and then sighed and relaxed even as she felt the gush of a greater heat deep inside.
She swallowed against a moment’s disappointment that now it was over.
Forever.
It did not matter. Itwouldnot matter. She would always remember.
He drew free of her and rolled off her, careful to lower her skirt over her legs and lift her bodice over her breasts as he did so. He lay on his back beside her after setting his own clothing to rights, one arm flung over his eyes, the other hand palm-down over the back of hers as it lay on the grass between them.
It seemed to her that he slept for a few minutes.
How could anyone possiblysleepafter that? But he had, of course, expended a great deal of energy.
Deep inside her she harbored his seed.
The beginnings of rational thought niggled at the edges of her mind.
“Susanna,” he said sleepily, while she lay with closed eyes, reliving every moment of what had just happened.
She turned her head to look at him. He was tousled, slightly flushed, impossibly handsome.
“Come away with me,” he said.
“What?” An irrational hope blossomed for a moment.
“Let’s go away,” he said. “Why say good-bye when neither of us wants it to happen? Let’s go to North Wales. Let’s see Mount Snowdon together and go walking over the hills and along the beaches. Let’s do it. Let’s run free.”
And the horrible thing was, she thought as she stared at him, that he meant it. And that for two pins she would have cast caution and good sense to the winds and agreed to go with him.
“And afterward?” she said.
“Afterward?” He laughed softly. “To the devil with afterward. We will think of that when the time comes. I won’t ever leave you destitute, though, I promise. Come with me. Let’s do it.”
Rational thought came crashing back from wherever it had been hiding and took up residence in her conscious mind again.
She would be his mistress.
They would have a wild, doubtless glorious fling together, and then he would pay her off. Because he was a basically decent and kind man, he would see to it that she did not starve after he discarded her.
She could be his mistress.
His whore.
“I like my life as it is,” she said. “I love the school and my work there and my pupils and my fellow teachers. I have to go back tomorrow.”
“You do nothaveto do anything,” he said.
“You are right.” She sat up and straightened her dress as best she could with slightly shaking hands. “I do not. I do not have to go away with you.”
He sat up too.
“I cannot bear to let you go,” he said as she reached for her bonnet and pulled it on over her disheveled curls. “Can you bear to letmego?”
“No,” she admitted, pausing as she tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “But there are no alternatives that I can bear even as well as saying good-bye to you.”
“Susanna—” he began.
