“You are notpretty,” he conceded. “You very definitely are beautiful.”
What a bouncer. He would carry gallantry to the end, would he?
“I am not young,” she said.
“It is a matter of perspective,” he said. “To the girls in your school you are doubtless a fossil. To an octogenarian you would appear to be a sweet young thing. But we are almost exactly the same age, and since I do not think of myself as old—far from it—I must insist that indeed youareyoung.”
“I am not elegant or lively or…” She ran out of ideas.
“What you are,” he said, “is a woman who lost confidence in her beauty and charm and sexual attractiveness heartbreakingly early in life. You are a woman who sublimated her sexual energies into making a successful career. You are a woman of firm character and will and intelligence and knowledge. You are a woman bursting with compassion and love for your fellow creatures. And you are a woman with so much sexual love to give that it would take far more than your quiet, dull scholar to satisfy you—unless he too has hidden depths, of course. For the sake of argument let us suppose that he does not, that he is simply ordinary and dull with conversation to offer you and nothing much else. Nopassion. He is not a dream man at all, Claudia. He is verging upon nightmare.”
She smiled despite herself.
“That is better,” he said, and she realized that hecouldseeherface. “I have a marked partiality for Miss Martin, schoolteacher, but it is possible that she might choose to be a cold bed-fellow. Claudia Martin, the woman, would not be. Indeed, I have already had proof of it.”
“Lord Attingsborough—” she began.
“Claudia.”He spoke over her. “We have had our fairly brief stroll. We can return to the house and ballroom now if you wish. It is altogether possible that not above half of the guests here have noticed we are gone. We can enjoy the rest of the ball—separately so as not to arouse gossip among that smaller half. And tomorrow I can come and take Lizzie, and you can return to Bath, and we can both deal with receding memories over the coming weeks and months. Or we can extend our stroll.”
She stared at him in the darkness.
“This is one of those moments of decision,” he said, “that can forever change the course of a life.”
“No, it is not,” she protested. “Or at least, it is not more important than any other moment.Everymoment is a moment of decision, andeverymoment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.”
“Have it your way if you must,” he said. “But this moment’s decision awaits us both. What is it to be? A desperate attempt to return to the way things used to be before I presented myself at Miss Martin’s School for Girls, a letter from Susanna in my coat pocket? Or a leap in the dark—almost literally—and a chance for something new and very possibly quite wonderful? Even perfect.”
“Nothing in life is perfect,” she said.
“I beg to disagree with you,” he said. “Nothing ispermanentlyperfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more such moments. Last evening was perfect. It was, Claudia. I will not allow you to deny it. It was simply perfect.”
She sighed. “There are so many complications,” she said.
“There always are,” he told her. “This is life. You ought to understand that by now. One possible complication is that the little lodge in the woods might be locked tonight as it was not yesterday afternoon.”
She was speechless—except that she had understood the moment he asked her to come walking with him where they would go. There was no point in trying to deny it to herself, was there?
“Perhaps,” she said, “they keep the key over the lintel or beside the step or somewhere else easy to find.”
She still could not see his face. But for a moment she caught the gleam of his teeth.
“We had better go and see,” she said, drawing her shawl more closely about her.
“Are you sure?” His voice was low.
“Yes,” she said.
This time when they walked on, instead of offering his arm he took her hand in his and laced their fingers. He held the lantern aloft. It was needed at the other side of the bridge, where the trees obscured even what little light was provided from the sky. They found the faint path by which they had returned yesterday and followed it through the woods until they arrived at the hut.
The door was unlocked.
Inside—she had only half noticed yesterday—there was a fireplace with a fire set in the hearth and logs piled beside it. There was a table with a few books on it and a tinderbox and lamp. There was a rocking chair with a blanket draped over it. And against one wall there was the narrow bed upon which they had found Lizzie.
It all looked prettier, cozier tonight. Joseph set the lantern down on the table, took up the tinderbox, and knelt at the hearth to light the fire. Claudia sat in the chair, rocking slowly, holding the corners of her shawl, watching him. There was the pleasurable anticipation of what was to come. All day her breasts had been tender and her inner thighs and inner passage slightly aching from last night’s lovemaking.
It was to happen again.
How absolutely lovely marriage must be…
