“Are you asking me if I intend still to marry William, now that I know you’re alive? Are you offering me a ... a divorce?”
She could barely say the word, had never in her entire life considered she would be the type of woman who would need one.
Finn seemed to bristle at the suggestion, straightening up on the bench. “I wasn’t offering you anything of the kind.”
“Then what are you asking?”
He took a deep breath. “Do you love him?”
Rose didn’t have to consider, and she couldn’t lie to him.
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t have become engaged to William if I didn’t.”
What did Finn think? That she would pine for him and then agree to marry just anyone who came along and asked her.
His unspoken question was, of course, did she still lovehim? Similarly, she wondered what werehisfeelings?
“Why did you come back at this time?” she asked him for the second time.
“My apologies,” he said, his manner curt. “I didn’t mean to spoil your plans.”
How dare he inject a tone of bitterness! As if she’d been trying to marry someone secretly behind his back.
“That’s hardly the point,” she said. “Tell me why now.”
“I told you. The news of Boston’s high society reached me in Scotland,” he said.
Finn hadn’t bothered about her until she had decided to move on. Obviously, the announcement of her engagement and of the subsequent party at the Tremont had drawn him back to his long-neglected wife.How terrible!
“I couldn’t stay away any longer. I had to know—”
Right then three sharp whistle blasts sounded from across the harbor, as the Boston and Maine train to Portland left its Haymarket depot. Neither of them moved though Rose realized it was probably the same rail line that had brought Finn back to Boston from up north. From his home.
“Had to know?” she prompted into the silence.
“How you had fared,” he said at last though she didn’t think it was what he originally intended to say.
“I grieved a long time for you,” Rose told him, thinking of the countless hours of unnecessary sorrow. “Since meeting Mr. Woodsom, I have felt happy again.” She almost added “finally” for it had seemed a long time of nothing apart from overwhelming sadness and of everything around her being dimmed and colorless.
To find out that Finn had been alive the whole time, studying in Glasgow!
“That’s no small thing,” she told him, wanting him to understand precisely how much William meant to her. “Before I met him, it was as though I were living under water. It’s a poor analogy to make to you, after what you went through,” she added, “but you will perfectly understand the sensation. My father often took us in the summers to escape the oppressive heat. We went northwest, about twenty miles.”
Rose remembered being with her brother and sisters, canoeing and swimming in the Sudbury and Concord rivers.
“You know what it’s like,” she continued, recalling swimming down to the shallow riverbed, “not seeing clearly and being unable to hear sounds around you.” The isolating feeling of being under water, unlike anything else, had stayed distinctly with her. It was perhaps a poor analogy to make to a man who had nearly drowned, though she knew he would understand.
“After William began to court me, I ... well, I breathed more easily again, colors were brighter, experiences were richer.” And she’d laughed with him — so much gaiety between them — however, in the face of the serious man beside her, she didn’t mention that.
“I’ll have to tell him about you,” she added, thinking aloud.
Finn nodded. “What will you say to him?”
What indeed!Rose dreaded the scene, explaining how she had neglected to mention getting married before. She had been a widow who now wasn’t one, and hiding being a widowed wife was bad enough. Now she had to disclose a dead husband who was not really dead at all.
Groaning, she put her face in her hands and exhaled. To her surprise, she felt Finn’s arm go around her, and then he pulled her against him.
Stiffly at first, she held herself away, lowering her hands to her lap. His scent, familiar but until that moment forgotten, tickled her nostrils. She breathed deeply. Strange, yet also not strange.
