“It would be good while it lasted,” he said.
“Like yesterday and last night?” she asked.
“I cannot promise you jewels every day,” he said. “I would be beggared.”
“Not even pearls?” she asked, and . . . smiled.
He might, he thought, fall in love with that smile. Again. He had fallen in love with it fourteen years ago. Strange. Yesterday he could not remember her having ever smiled. But she must have. He had fallen in love with her smile. And with her. There must still have been traces of his old self left when he met her that he had used that phrase in his own mind.
“Perhaps a single pearl every second day,” he said.
“A bracelet to match my necklace and earrings,” she said. “How many pearls, do you suppose? Twelve? Twenty-four days, then. Will we have tired of each other by then?”
“If not,” he said, “we will add a pearl ring. And perhaps that ankle bracelet you resisted yesterday.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “One carriage,” she said. “Hire one.”
“I shall find a better one than this inn has to offer,” he said, getting to his feet.
“I will wait,” she promised.
* * *
• • •
He was gone an hour. An hour during which to change her mind. But she would not do so. She used the time instead to write brief notes, one to Camille and Abigail in Bath and one to Mrs. Sullivan, her housekeeper at Hinsford. She could not after all reconcile it with her conscience to disappear without a word to anyone. She told her daughters that she was going away somewhere private for a while—perhaps for a week or two—and they were not to worry about her. She would write again as soon as she returned. She informed Mrs. Sullivan that her return to Hinsford had been delayed indefinitely and that she would write again before she came home. She apologized for the inconvenience she must have caused when she did not arrive yesterday.
She gave the letters with money to cover the cost of sending them and an additional tip to the maid who had been serving her. The girl put them in the pocket of her apron and promised with a warm smile to set them in the bag for outgoing mail right away.
And so Viola waited to run away. To disappear where no one would find her. To do something just for herself. She was not going to think any longer about whether she was being selfish and self-indulgent. She was not going to think about the moral implications of what she was doing—and had done last night. She had not harmed anyone—except perhaps herself—and was not going to do so by going away for a while. She was not going to think about being hurt or about what would come after. She would think of that when the time came. She had lived a life of the utmost rectitude and propriety and been hurt anyway. And she had no illusions. The affair would come to an end and that would be that. If she ended up unhappy—well, what would be so new about that?
Marcel returned with a black, yellow-trimmed traveling carriage that was smart and shining with newness. And he came with horses that were a definite cut above the quality of the ones available at most posting inns, including this one. He also brought a burly coachman, who was clean shaven and well groomed and smartly dressed and quietly deferential.
“You did not hire this,” Viola said when she stepped out into the innyard. “You purchased it.”
He raised his eyebrows in that arrogant way he had and held out a hand to help her up the steps. Their bags, she could see, were already strapped on behind. What must it be like to have that much money? But she had known once upon a time. It seemed a long time ago. He had stranded himself yesterday by sending his own carriage on its way with his brother—so that he could spend the rest of the day with her. And he had solved his dilemma today by simply buying a new carriage.
“Does the coachman come with it?” she asked as he got in after her and seated himself beside her. “Did you employ him too?”
“It seemed wise,” he said. “If I had hired him merely for the journey, I would have had to pay his stagecoach fare back here, and it might have put a strain upon my purse. Besides, what if we wish to use the carriage while we are in Devonshire? Or run away to Wales or Scotland? Would you ride up on the box with me if I were forced to take the ribbons myself? I might die of loneliness if you would not.”
“Very well,” she said. “It was a foolish question.” A stagecoach ticket might put a strain upon his purse, but a coachman’s salary for an indefinite length of time would not?
The coachman had put up the steps and shut the door. Moments later the carriage rocked into motion on what were obviously excellent springs. There was the pleasant smell of newness inside—wood and leather and fabric. And there was instant luxurious comfort.
He took her hand in his and laced their fingers—as he had done last evening before they returned to the inn. And he dipped his head and kissed her. “The strap beside your head looks far more reliable than the one in the other carriage did,” he said. “But I hope you will not find it necessary to use it. I am the same man I was last night. The same man I will be tonight.”
They were deliberately seductive words, and of course had an immediate effect upon her body. She felt the ache of wanting, as he had known very well she would. His head was still turned toward her, his dark, apparently lazy eyes boring into hers. But she no longer had to fight the seduction. She had surrendered to it. And it was not even seduction, for that implied that she was unaware of what was happening and would be an unwilling victim if she were. She was fully aware, and she was fully complicit.
There was something freeing in the thought.
“What?” she said. “You do not improve with practice?”
She had the satisfaction of seeing a startled, arrested look on his face before he laughed. And, goodness, she did not believe she had ever seen or heard him laugh before. Laughter made him look more youthful, less hard, more human—whatever she meant by that.
* * *
• • •
At the inn they had just left, the maid who had taken Viola’s letters and her generous tip was called to some busy work in the kitchen before she could go to the office and the post bag. And as bad luck would have it, the elbow of the cook’s helper standing next to her sent a bowl of gravy spilling down the front of her frock and apron. She was sent off to change in a hurry since she was still needed urgently in the kitchen. She dropped the dirty garments into the laundry basket on her way back to work and forgot the letters until a couple of hours later, when it was too late to save them. They came out of the laundry tub still inside the apron pocket but reduced to a soggy clump.
It was impossible to smooth out the clump into anything resembling paper, much less individual pages. And even if it had been possible, there were no words left to be read. The ink had turned the inside of the pocket and some of the outside too a mottled gray and black and ruined one perfectly good apron.
The poor girl felt quite sick, not least because the cost of a new apron would be taken out of her wages. But she did not confess to the soggy clump’s having once been letters entrusted to her by a lady customer who had already departed. She claimed instead that it had been a letter she had written to her sister, who worked at a private home twelve miles away.
The letters had probably not been important anyway. Letters rarely were. Or so she consoled her conscience.
Seven
They took their time. There was no hurry, after all. They were running away, not to anything in particular. The journey was as much a part of it all as was the destination. They stopped for practical purposes—to change horses, to partake of meals. The latter they did at their leisure, and sometimes they went walking afterward if the place where they had stopped seemed of interest. They explored a castle, descending to the dungeons down long, spiraling stone steps and then climbing to the battlements in the same manner to gaze out over the surrounding countryside, the wind threatening to blow his tall hat into the next county. They looked about churches and churchyards. She liked to read all the old monuments and gravestones to discover what age those buried there had been when they died and how they were related to one another. She liked to work out how they had been related to others in the graveyard.