She made a feeble effort to free herself.Don’t hurt her,her aunt had pleaded. But he would if he had to. He was cruel enough. He loved her enough. He would take the blame.
“I’m hardly the only one who wants you to put off your widow’s weeds and have a future. Doesn’t your family? Doesn’t your aunt urge you to it? Even that desiccated reverend who used to haunt your house. I saw the tracts he copied out for you. Bible words about guilt and duty and a woman’s place. Damn all that. What doyouwant?”
She looked stonily ahead, back toward the castle and the town. There were tears on her cheeks. She dashed them away.
“Alfred—” He repeated the word as she tried to shake him off. “Alfred wouldn’t want this. You hate me for saying it, but you know it’s true. He would want you to live. Not to forget him. Never to forget him. But…but to build something new around him. Look at this place.” He gestured to the marsh, running east and west forever. “They keep trying to defend it. They build walls and castles, and the land keeps moving, reforming itself, keeping itself free and…and stupidly vulnerable. The French could take it in a day. The sea could flood it. But it wants to be free. It wants tohurt. To feel and breathe and live…”
“I know. I know all that.”
“So if you won’t…if you won't choose me, at least choose something.”
He let go of her arm. He let her go. If she walked away then…then he would lose everything. But perhaps she might live.
“I have my work,” she said. “My family.”
“But you’re not happy. Or not…not as happy as you deserve to be.”
You’re not as happy as I long to make you.
The piping call of the redshanks came loud across the marsh. The sad laughter of the godwits.
Her chin was up, her blue gaze intent on some distant spot. Her eyes were dry, despite the stinging wind, despite everything.
She pulled her shawl tighter around her, glancing over her shoulder. “We should seek shelter.”
A black line bloomed on the horizon. She led them away from the waves.
Thirty-One
He was dressed inyellow buckskins and brown boots with tan fold downs. His coat was pale grey and his waistcoat was copper. Was this how he dressed for the countryside? He looked as perfect for the part as he did in his London blacks and whites.
Now he walked at her side down a sheep track. Neither of them said anything. She felt extremely stupid.
Or reckless. Or restless. Or embarrassed. Her mood might as well have been sheep’s wool, caught in the furze, stuck and tangled and blown this way and that, defenceless against the wind.
Once they were off the shore and behind the scant shelter of the shingle ridge, she turned and led them parallel to the coast, towards the harbour, almost two miles distant.
She could not take him home. Not after her reaction when he’d arrived so unexpectedly at her door.
Daniel, Joseph, her mother…they’d all cornered her with eyes full of worry and with questions—and with loyal fury forhim, that fine-dressed London lord.
It was obvious enough what had happened. Excruciating enough, her secrets revealed. The sister, the daughter, the widow…she was only a foolish woman after all, a creature of base flesh to be seduced by height and breadth and strength. An untrue heart to be turned by words and gestures and the burning look in the darkest of dark eyes.
He walked beside her, his hands clasped at his back, the curved rim of his hat drawn low on his brow, set firmly against the wind.
Several significant parts of her appeared to have become unmoored, were escaping on a current. His appearance had caused large, echoing gaps inside her chest where before there had been certainty.
She’d sat on the shingle bank, watching the storm approach. The sky was wide enough to see it build, a bruise spreading. Above her, the blue had turned to white, to silver, to grey. The warm summer breeze had been blown away by a sharper, colder wind. She’d known there was perhaps an hour until the rain began, perhaps less. But she hadn’t moved.
Shewantedto get caught in it. To be soaked and battered, lightning overhead, the roar of thunder trying to crack the sky. She’d wanted to feel anything that might break the numbness inside her.“To hurt, to feel, and breathe, and live…”It was uncanny, the way his words had taken the secret feelings from inside her and offered them back to her.
Here,like a pamphleteer thrusting an uncomfortable truth under someone’s nose, shaking it in their face.Here. This is you.She didn’t want her truth to be in his hands. He was too brutal with it. Too honest. Too demanding.
He glanced up at the first few drops of rain, seeming to notice the changing weather for the first time. The droplets made dark dots on his grey coat.
She found herself saying, “Are you still on the committee?” He would say no and then everything would be easier. She wouldn’t have to admit she was glad he had come.
She was glad. She was terrified. She was angry. She wasglad.
