Simply Love (16 page)

The stile—where this had all started.

She shivered slightly. But she was not allowing her thoughts to speak too loudly to her. She did know, though, that she had wanted—and dreaded—this almost from the beginning of their acquaintance. Perhaps from the moment when they had admitted their loneliness to each other.

It was a mutual loneliness that impelled them now. It was not a bad motive, surely, for what they were about to do. There was compassion in sharing and alleviating another's loneliness. There was a certain tenderness in it.

She felt an overwhelming tenderness for Sydnam Butler, who had demonstrated almost incredible courage and suffered so much yet had pieced his life back together with determination and dignity though he had believed himself untouchable ever since.

Now she would touch him and prove that he was mistaken about himself. And he would touch her and she would feel again like a desirable woman. Perhaps.

Please, God.

She turned as she heard him close the door and looked uncertainly at him. But her resolve had not weakened in the distance from morning room to bedchamber. She
did
want him with a knee-weakening desire.

“Please,” he said, smiling at her and closing the distance between them, “may I be the one to take down your hair? You could do it ten times faster with your two hands, I daresay, but may I do it?”

She smiled and stood still while his fingers fumbled awkwardly with the pins that held her hair up. She looked deliberately into his face as his hand worked. She did not even know, she realized, what lay behind the black eye patch. But she was struck again by the extraordinary beauty of the left side of his face. He was twenty-eight years old—one year younger than she. He could never have been a rake, she thought, even if
this
had not happened to him. He was a serious, gentle, affectionate man. He would have been married by now to some woman with a beauty and social rank to match his own. He would have had children. He would have had a family to bring with him to TÅ· Gwyn.

But no—he would never even have come to Wales if he had not also gone to the Peninsula against the advice of everyone who knew and loved him.

She would never have met him.

And if she had not been raped, she would be married to Henry Arnold now and living in Gloucestershire. She would not be standing here in the master bedchamber at TÅ· Gwyn, having her hair taken down by a one-armed man who had become strangely precious to her.

How strange were the ways of fate.

But she was mentally prattling, she thought, when her hair came cascading down over her shoulders and he reached behind him to set her hairpins down on a table without taking his eye off her.

Her thoughts came crashing to a halt then, and she felt horribly, horribly vulnerable—not because she did not believe in her own beauty but precisely because she did. Beauty could blind the beholder to all else, even the personhood of the one who possessed it. And she could see in his eye that he found her beautiful.

I am Anne,
she wanted to cry out to him.
Please do not forget that I am Anne.

Please, please, please do not call my hair my crowning glory.

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth with closed lips. Desire shot through her like a lightning bolt, almost causing her knees to buckle. And with it came the return of thought.

All was going to be well. Surely it was.

“Anne,” he murmured so softly that she almost missed it.

And then he turned away and shrugged out of his coat and sat down on the side of the bed to pull off his Hessian boots. It was a hard thing to do one-handed—she could see that. His valet must, of course, do it for him at home. She did not know if she should offer to help, but she did not do so, and he managed. She guessed that he managed most tasks that a two-armed person would find impossible to do one-handed.

His right shirtsleeve was pinned to his side just as his coat sleeve was.

She waited tensely.

But when he got to his feet again, he drew back the bedcovers and turned to reach out his arm to her, and she realized that he did not intend to remove any more of his clothes.

“Anne,” he said, “will you take off your dress yourself? It would take me too long.”

He watched her until she stood before him in just her shift and her stockings. She sat on the bed to take off the latter, but he kneeled before her and removed them one at a time himself.

“Ah,” he said, sitting back on his heels and gazing up at her when the task was complete, “you are incredibly beautiful, Anne. I am sorry. I am so very sorry—”

“No.” She leaned forward and set her hands on his shoulders, and her hair fell forward to frame both their faces. “Please don't be. Please, please do not. I would never have met you if you were not like this. I would not be here with you now. And I would not be here if I were not as I am. I
want
to be here with you. And if you say you are sorry, then I must say it too. I do not want either of us to be sorry for anything this afternoon.”

“Anne,” he said, “I am not very experienced. And I have had no experience at all since…this.”

It was somehow reassuring to know that he felt his own insecurities and anxieties just as she felt hers. Perhaps that was why she had found the courage to come this far.

“I am not very experienced either.” She smiled at him.

He closed the gap between their mouths and kissed her. And this time he deepened the kiss, parting his lips, passing his tongue over her lips until she opened her mouth and his tongue came warm inside and she wrapped both arms about his neck and pushed her fingers up into his hair, making a sound of appreciation deep in her throat as she did so.

Or perhaps it was he who made the sound.

“Lie down,” he whispered against her mouth as he raised his head. “Will you remove your shift? But only if you feel comfortable doing so.”

She crossed her arms and pulled it off over her head before lying down and moving over so that he could lie beside her. And strangely she did not feel uncomfortable though he stood looking down at her for several moments. He had called her beautiful and he desired her. But he had also called her by name, and she knew somehow from the look in his eye, though there was desire there, that it was
her
he saw, not just her voluptuous beauty. Beneath his gaze she could feel simply herself.

And this at least was new. She had never been naked with a man before.

She throbbed with wanting him.

He lay on his right side facing her, and his hand moved over her, warm, sensitive—and trembling. She turned toward him, smiled at him, and caressed him through his clothing with her own hand—and on his left side.

He was all warm, hard-muscled masculinity. She could feel the muscles in his arm and shoulder and rippling along his back. She could feel the muscles in his buttock when she rested her hand there while her eyes drifted closed and she licked her lips. He was doing exquisite things with his thumb and forefinger at the nipple of one breast and then the other.

Curiously, the presence of his clothing against her own bare skin excited her as much as nakedness would have done. Perhaps more.

Desire pooled hot and sharp between her thighs. And she moved closer to him, pressing her breasts to his shirt while his hand moved lower, slid between her legs, and found that aching spot and caressed it.

He set his mouth to hers and his tongue came inside again and circled her own slowly before moving to the roof of her mouth.

“Turn onto your back for me,” he whispered against her mouth.

He was, she realized then, unbuttoning his pantaloons at the waist and opening the front flap.

She almost forgot his disabilities as he rolled on top of her and his legs pressed between her own, spreading them wide until she twined them about his powerful thighs encased in the warm fabric of his pantaloons. His weight was heavy on her. She felt him position himself against the sensitive opening to her desire and her womb and spread both hands over his buttocks as he slid his hand beneath her.

He came into her with one slow, hard, deep thrust.

And memory flooded every inch of her body.

She did not fight him. She did not call out or try to push him away. Her mind was sharply at work with a different message from the one her body was sending her. Her mind told her that he was Sydnam Butler, that he was filling her with himself because it was something they both wanted, that until the very moment of entry she had been filled with wonder and pleasure and the desire for more.

Her body was rigid with tension, she realized, and his was heavy on her. He was deep inside her—and holding still.

“Anne,” he said. “Anne?”

“Sydnam.” She had never spoken his given name aloud before, even to herself. But it saved her now, the knowledge that that was who he was. “Sydnam, it is all right. It is all right. Don't stop.”

She moved her hands up his sides until she became suddenly, horribly aware that there was no arm on the right side.

But at the same moment he moved in her, withdrawing to the brink of her, pressing in again, smooth and hard against the slickness of her inner passage.

It was all terribly, terribly carnal, terrifyingly intimate.

Body and mind waged a war—and both won, both lost. She knew he was Sydnam, she recognized the beauty of what he did with her, she still desperately wanted it, she relaxed and opened to him.

And yet physically, sexually, she felt nothing. Not horror. Not pleasure. Only the mental satisfaction that this was happening to her again and that perhaps the memory of it would replace the memory of the other time.

His left hand took her right, twined fingers with hers, and lifted their joined hands over her head as he worked in her for several minutes until finally he sighed against the side of her face and she felt liquid heat at her core.

His fingers relaxed about her own.

She felt like weeping then. It had been beautiful, yet somehow she had missed the beauty. It had been intimate, yet she had hidden away from it in some deep, secret part of herself. She might have shared something deeper than their joined bodies with him, but she felt very separate from him.

He rolled awkwardly off her almost immediately and sat up on the side of the bed facing away from her without looking at her. He buttoned the flap of his pantaloons and got to his feet to cross to the window, where he stood looking out.

He was indeed beautiful, she thought, looking at his broad shoulders, his narrow waist and firm buttocks, his long, well-muscled legs. And he had just been inside her body. He had made love to her.

And he knew that it had not been good for her.

She knew what reason he would give himself for that.

She opened her mouth to assure him that it had not been so very bad, and that his disfigurements had had nothing to do with her lack of complete pleasure.

But how could she say that aloud? What reassurance would there be in such words?

And how could she tell him the truth—that the shadow of another man had come between them at the moment of their joining, that for that moment she had felt such a revulsion that she had almost fought him in maniacal panic?

How could she tell him that for a moment he had become Albert Moore to her?

What
could
she say to him?

She said nothing. She had
not
fought him after all or said or done anything that had shown open revulsion. And she
had
told him beforehand that she was inexperienced.

Perhaps for him their lovemaking had demonstrated no more than that fact.

But she had so wanted the afternoon to be perfect.

She had so wanted…

Ah, dear God, she had so
wanted
.

Sydnam stood at the bedchamber window looking out. It was still
only late afternoon. Probably no more than half an hour had passed since they had come up here.

He did not know if Anne Jewell was sleeping on the bed behind him. He would not look to see. But he doubted it.

He felt sexually satiated, and that ought to have been a wonderful feeling after such a long celibacy. Instead, he felt a terrible sense of failure. Not that his sexual techniques were so lacking, he supposed, especially to a woman of no real experience. No, it was something else that had caused her to withdraw as soon as they reached the point of real intimacy.

Had he expected that she would find him beautiful, that she would find
it
beautiful?

Had he not realized from the moment she kissed him in the rose arbor that she had steeled herself to show him compassion, to assure him that in her eyes he was a normal man? Had he not realized too that her offer of herself had come out of her terrible loneliness? She ought to have been married years ago to a man of her own choosing, but circumstances beyond her control had made her virtually unmarriageable.

Perhaps, he thought, they had both got what they deserved from this ill-advised ending to their afternoon together—and to their acquaintance. Loneliness was not a good enough reason for what they had done together—not when each of them was lonely for commitment and permanency. Yet it was impossible for them to find such things together.

That had just been made painfully obvious.

He wished the matter had not been put to the test.

Too late he realized that sex did not take away loneliness. It probably made it far worse. The next few days would reveal the truth of that to him, he suspected.

He did not want to turn his head to look at her. He would, he thought, find that Anne Jewell, his friend and confidante, the woman with whom he supposed he had allowed himself to fall in love during the past few weeks, was gone, to be replaced by a stranger with whom he would feel uncomfortable because they had been intimate together when there was after all no real intimacy between them.

And tomorrow she
would
be gone—literally. When he next returned here, he would come to this room and stand just here and try to pretend that he could turn around and find her asleep on the bed.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would stand here and wish he could forget that she had ever been to TÅ· Gwyn with him.

He turned. She was lying with the covers drawn up under her arms, those arms and her shoulders bare, her glorious honey-colored hair in a shining tangle about her head and shoulders and over the pillow. Her crowning glory, he thought, though he did not say so aloud. It was too much of a cliché. And the time for such words was past anyway.

She was looking steadily at him, her expression unfathomable. She was probably hoping he had not noticed that their mating had not been good for her.

He smiled and said what he had not known he was going to say though it was what he realized must be said—later even if not now.

“If you wish, Anne,” he said, “we will marry.”

It was not much of a proposal. He realized that as he spoke the words. But how could he ask her any other way? How could he lay an obligation upon her by speaking of emotions that would doubtless embarrass and even dismay her? He certainly did not want her pity.

“I am well able to support you,” he added, “and your son. I think it might be a good idea. Don't you?”

It struck him that it was possibly the worst idea in the world.

She gazed at him for a long time before answering.

“I think,” she said then, “that friendship and need and some mutual attraction have been justification enough for what we have just done together. But they are not a good enough justification for marriage.”

“Are they not?” He felt a terrible sorrow—and an enormous sense of relief. “Not even friendship? Is it not desirable that a man and his wife like each other and find it easy to talk with each other? And laugh with each other?”

“Yes,” she said. “But there ought to be very much more than just that.”

Love? It was such an overused, underdefined word. What
did
it mean? But he did not think she was talking about love. There should be a physical attraction between husband and wife—that was what she meant. Or at the very least, there should be no actual revulsion.

It would not be possible for her to marry him, to share a bed with him for the rest of their lives. But he had always known that it would not be possible for any woman.

Had she said yes to his tentative marriage proposal, then he would have pressed forward with wedding plans. Had she even looked as if she
wanted
to say yes, he might have assured her that his feelings were engaged, that he was not merely making an honorable offer because he had bedded her. He might then have proceeded to a proper marriage offer.

But she had neither said yes nor wavered.

And part of him was relieved. Since coming to Glandwr he had retreated into a deeply private life, and on the whole he had been happy with that life.

He smiled at her again.

“I will say no more on the subject, then,” he said. “But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.”

She gazed silently at him.

“Promise?” he said.

She nodded.

Perhaps he ought to have asked differently, he thought belatedly as he stooped to pick up his coat and tuck it beneath his arm while he picked up his boots. Perhaps he ought to have thrown his heart into his proposal and trusted her to make her own decision without pity. But it was too late now. He had asked, and she had refused.

Yes, sex
did
make loneliness worse. He already felt his own like a raw pain.

“I'll leave you some privacy to dress,” he said, crossing the room toward the door, taking his own clothes with him—and then of course having to set down the boots until he had opened the door. “I'll see you downstairs.”

“Thank you,” she said.

                  

The gig bounced along the lane and turned onto the narrow road that would take them back through the village to the gates of Glandwr. The sky was still cloudless, the late afternoon sun still hot.

Anne could feel the unexpectedly pleasant aftermath of love in her body—the slight languor, the sensitivity in her breasts, the leftover ache between her thighs, the near-soreness inside. She tried to concentrate her mind only on the beauty of what had happened. It had been undeniably beautiful—it
had
.

It ought to have been the perfect end to the perfect day—and the perfect holiday.

A bend in the road sent her swaying sideways, and her arm pressed against Sydnam's. She looked up at him as she set some distance between them again. She gazed at the left side of his face, which was impossibly handsome, though truth to tell she no longer found the right side ugly. As she had told him earlier, it was simply part of him.

“I hope the weather remains good for your journey,” he said.

“Yes.” They were back to talking about the weather, were they?

By this time tomorrow she would be far away from Glandwr.

Panic grabbed at her stomach.

She did not look away from him. She knew that in the days to come, until memory started to recede, as it inevitably would, she would desperately try to remember him as he looked at this moment—and that she would just as desperately try to assure herself that what had happened between them had
felt
as beautiful as her mind told her it had been.

But above all else they were friends, she thought, and friendship was a very dear thing.

She ought not to have offered herself to Sydnam this afternoon. It had been a terrible mistake. Loneliness and compassion and even sexual need had not been enough. And she still could not bring herself to try to explain to him. That, she believed, could only make matters worse. Besides, neither of them had said anything about its not having been quite perfect. Perhaps for him it had been.

She had refused his marriage proposal, she reminded herself. She had refused a man whom she liked and respected and admired and a man moreover who was able to support her in comfort—she, who had thought no man would ever again offer her marriage. Why had she said no?

If you wish, Anne, we will marry.

Kind words, kindly and dutifully spoken—because they had lain together.

He did not wish to marry her.

And she could not marry him even if he did—or any man. She was still too deeply wounded by the past. Any approach to intimacy sent her scurrying into her mind, where she was safe from her emotions.

She could not impose a frigid iceberg of a body on Sydnam, who deserved so much more.

Friendship would not be sufficient to offer. Only love might be—but she did not know what love was, not sexual, marital love, at least. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered what Lady Rosthorn had said one morning out on the cliffs.

…the real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

But she did not trust love. Love had let her down at every turn—in the persons of her mother, Henry Arnold, her father, her sister. And her love for her pupil, Prue Moore, had led to disaster. Love had caused her nothing but pain. She was afraid to love Sydnam or to be loved by him. It was as well that there was no real question of love between them.

“Anne,” Sydnam said softly, restoring her wandering mind to the present, “perhaps by tomorrow morning you will have different thoughts. Shall I ask you again before you leave?”

“No,” she said. And looking ahead, she could see the village approaching. “It has been a lovely afternoon, Sydnam, has it not? Let us just remember it and be grateful for it.”

Bottle it up, cage it up, hide it away with all its imperfections and lost possibilities.

“It has been pleasant,” he agreed.

But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.

She smiled as they entered the village and he greeted an elderly villager who was sitting on an old chair outside the door of his cottage, smoking a pipe.

“You spoke in Welsh,” she said as they drove on.

“I did.” He turned his head to grin at her. “I wished him a good afternoon—
prynhawn da
—and asked how he did and how his daughter and son-in-law did. Are you impressed?”

“Vastly,” she said.

They laughed.

It struck her then that she would miss more than just him. She would miss this place. She would miss Wales. It did not surprise her at all that it had become home to him, that he intended to spend the rest of his life here.

She envied him.

Perhaps if…

No. No, she would not even think of that.

But ah, she
would
miss him. And how she wished suddenly that they could go back to Tŷ Gwyn and set right what had gone wrong there. But there was only the future left—almost none of it that they would share. And that little bit would be an agony. She wished she could click her fingers and find herself two weeks farther on in her life, the pain of tomorrow's departure well in the past.

She turned her head to gaze at his profile again, to imprint it upon her memory.

                  

Sydnam drove the gig straight back to the stables. The others had not yet returned from their excursion, a groom told them.

And so instead of walking the short distance to the house and taking their leave of each other within the next few minutes, they strolled away from the house, and their steps took them without conscious volition in the direction of the hill they had climbed the night of the country dancing. They climbed it again now and stood on the top, looking out over the sea, which was a deep blue in the late afternoon light, while the land was bathed in the golden glow of a sun that was beginning to sink in the direction of the western horizon.

They were standing a couple of feet apart, two friendly strangers who just happened to have lain together an hour or so ago.

It had been a mistake, but they had no more time together in which to regret it.

He heard her swallow. He heard the gurgle in her throat. And he knew that though she had cringed from the intimacy of sex with him, she liked him, she would find leaving him difficult. She was his
friend
—it was gift enough.

“I will miss you,” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice, though steady, was higher pitched than usual. “I did not want to come, you know. It seemed horribly presumptuous to come only on an invitation from Lady Hallmere. As the carriage approached Glandwr, I would have done anything in the world to be going back to Bath. But now I find it hard to leave.”