“Like war.” She said.
“Like a war,” he agreed.
For the moment, both of them simply absorbed the silence and the wonder of the symmetry around them, and the destruction. She couldn’t help but feel that the rocks represented mankind in general. Order, misunderstood purposes, destruction and decay.
“Thank you for bringing me here.” She broke the silence they’d fallen into. Disappointment ebbed over her as a group of visitors approached from the same road they’d walked along, promising to put an end to the feelings of isolation and solitude the place exuded. The monument was still wonderful, magnificent even, but it had seemed magical to be alone with him amongst the mysterious markers.
“I’m happy to see that look in your eyes. There’s a wonder about you…” He turned and dropped one hand on her shoulder, staring at her lips in a way that made her believe he might be meaning to kiss her. And she was not opposed. She tilted her chin, parted her lips, and just as she was about to close her eyes, voices bounced off of the stones around them, a reminder they were no longer alone.
He dropped his hand and leaned back against the gigantic stone.
Aubrey exhaled loudly. They had decided they wouldn’t do that again, hadn’t they? He had merely brought her here to see something special. He’d wanted her to have a good memory of her journey with him. They had becomefriends.
She stared at the rocks around her. Why were they here? Why had Mr. Bateman come along just when she’d seemed to need him the most?
“This is a great example of all we don’t know, about those that came before us, about the world, about ourselves.” She stared straight ahead as she spoke.
“Aubrey.” His demeanor seemed almost apologetic.
“A bit how I feel about my future.” She didn’t want to hear the reasons he had for not kissing her, and so she forged onward. “About what will happen after I get to London. Will I be lonelier there than I was as Harrison’s wife?” she laughed at herself, at her own insignificance.
“You will not be lonely.” He stood very close. Both of them still leaning against the giant stone.
She turned her head to see his face, if only his profile. “Why do you think that?” Genuine curiosity compelled her to ask.
“Because of who you are. You are smart, you are beautiful, you are warm, and real. A man is lucky to meet a woman like you, to come across you in the course of his life.” A raw edge in his voice sent warmth flooding through her. But she shook her head.
“I am not beautiful.” She was just… Ambrosia… Aubrey.
“You are.Très belle.” At some point he’d taken hold of her hand again, and he squeezed it. “Some gentleman, many, I imagine, are going to realize what a diamond you are and pursue you. And none of them will be good enough, but you will marry.” He finally turned his head and met her gaze, his eyes looking even more brilliant against the gray sky. “You will have children, and then grandchildren, and they will all love you.”
Aubrey hadn’t even considered that. “I wasn’t going to marry again—ever.” She surprised herself in that she put her intentions in the past, as though knowing him had caused her to change her mind about something so important already.
“Promise me you’ll be careful who you select. Know him the way you know me.”
“I should not care who his family are or what he does or who his acquaintances are?” She asked, half teasing.
“Know all of those things.” He smiled. “But also know the other. Know who he is inside. Make him prove he is worthy of you.”
Only in that moment, Aubrey couldn’t imagine any other man making her trust him the way she’d come to trust this one.
“What of you? Will you marry? Do you plan to have children?”
He turned his head away from her again. “I will.”
The thought of him marrying some other woman… It hurt. To imagine him holding another lady’s hand, of smiling at her with those laughing eyes, of another woman having the right to touch that dimple whenever she wanted…
It hurt Aubrey’s soul. “Will you marry for love?”
She watched his throat move as he swallowed hard. “I will marry for duty, I always hoped love would play a part, though.”
Oh, but this conversation had grown far too depressing.
“I am picturing in my mind, all of your sons, a roomful of tiny little Mister Batemans… creating havoc and tearing through their grandmother’s castle.” Because at some point, she’d decided in her imagination that he’d grown up in a castle. What she did not know of him, she filled in with her own inventiveness.
“And you shall raise tiny little princesses, with auburn hair and wide emerald eyes. Each of them lovely on the outside, but also filled with compassion and wonder and courage… just like their mother.”
His throat moved, as though to swallow his emotion.
