He swiftly descended the stairs and pushed open the door into the garden, moving stealthily toward the conversation. The grass muffled his footsteps.
Alexandra and the man stood with the garden gate between them. Their closeness and their postures suggested a familiarity that made the hackles rise on Brightwall’s neck.
He could not see the man’s features; he was a tall, slim, shadowy figure. Coltish. Clearly young.
His breath ceased flowing into his lungs when the man lunged across the gate for Alexandra and pulled her into his arms.
And he kissed her.
She went rigid.
Every muscle in Magnus’s body tensed to lunge toward them, to hurl that man away from his wife. To tear him limb from limb.
But some instinct made him wait.
Because somehow he knew.
He watched her soften in the man’s arms. Watched their two dark silhouettes blend into one as her arms went round his neck. Watched her give herself up passionately to a lingering kiss.
Brightwall felt as though his lungs were being ripped from his body.
Long moments—an eternity, it felt to him—later Alexandra pulled away.
The two of them tenderly, briefly held each other’s faces.
Then she stepped away abruptly and ducked her head and shook it swiftly, roughly.
She uttered a single syllable. It sounded like “go.”
The man backed away from the garden gate. For a long time, he walked backward, as if to savor every last sight of her.
And then he ran.
Magnus watched until he could no longer see the man’s shadow darting through the trees. It occurred to him that he hadn’t really drawn a breath in all that time.
He was reluctant to draw one now, in a world that had just changed forever.
Alexandra dashed a palm against her eyes, as if to brush away tears.
Magnus watched, heart lodged in his throat, as she straightened her spine resolutely and turned toward the house.
That’s when she saw him.
Her face at once flashed stark white as the moon.
She swayed as shock poured violently through her.
And even then his muscles tensed to spring to catch her before she fell.
But she didn’t faint.
Nor did she flee.
She stood before him, silently, like a rabbit caught before a wolf.
He knew a little about rank fear. Doubtless she couldn’t move right now if she tried.
Oh, but he could move. He was accustomed to moving forward through unbearable circumstances. To making wounded limbs do things against which sense and sanity balked.
