It took a while longer to see the stragglers inside the house off to bed and then to hug Estelle and shake hands with Bertrand and thank them for that most precious of birthday gifts—the party. But finally he was able to retreat to the library alone after favoring André with his most forbidding look when it seemed his brother might follow him. He stood in the middle of the room for a couple of minutes dithering, trying to choose between sitting down to read for a while and going straight up to bed.
So he went to Viola’s room and stood outside her door to dither. He could not be sure, but it seemed to him that there was a thread of candlelight beneath it. Or perhaps she had left the curtains open and it was merely moonlight. It must be half past one at least by now. He had not looked at the clock before leaving the library. But one o’clock, half past one, two o’clock—the actual time was not important. The fact was that it was far too late to be paying a social call, and even if it had been one o’clock in the afternoon it would still be improper to call upon a lady in her bedchamber. Which was a mildly ridiculous thought under the circumstances.
He tapped lightly on the door with one knuckle. He could hardly hear it himself. If she did not come before he counted at medium speed to ten, he would go away. One . . . two . . .
The door handle turned noiselessly and the door opened a crack—and then a wider crack.
It was candlelight. A single candle burned on the dressing table.
She was wearing a nightgown. Her hair waved down her back. She was also wearing her marble expression. The bed behind her had been turned down for the night but did not look as if it had been slept in yet. The candlelight winked off something at the foot of the bed. Some things, rather. A hideous pink drawstring bag was there too.
Someone had better say something soon, and he supposed it ought to be him. “You had better invite me in,” he said softly.
“Why?” Her voice was just as soft.
He tipped his head slightly to one side but said nothing more. She had choices—open the door wider and step to one side, shut it in his face, or stand there for what remained of the night. He left it to her to decide.
She turned and walked away, leaving the door ajar. So she had chosen the fourth option. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.
“I interrupted you while you were estimating the value of your treasures?” he asked, nodding toward the bed.
She glanced at the cheap jewels spread there and looked mortified.
He strolled over and looked down at them. “I noticed,” he said, “that tonight you wore a string of pearls that were rather small and insignificant in comparison with these.”
“I have no taste at all, do I?” she said.
“And you had no diamonds or emeralds or rubies to add some color and sparkle either,” he said. “You looked almost—”
“Genteel?” she suggested.
“That is it,” he said, turning to look at her in her nightgown and slippers. “The very word for which my mind was searching. Ever and always genteel.”
“Not always,” she said softly, and stepped up beside him, gathered the jewelry as though it was precious indeed, put it away inside the bag, and tightened the drawstrings.
He had the Hideous Handkerchief—he always thought of it as though the two words began with capital letters—in an inside pocket of his evening coat. He had put it there to lend himself the courage to speak up at dinner.
“You will stay for a few days?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “My things are packed. So are Abigail’s. We will leave tomorrow—or today, I suppose I mean. Our leaving will make life very awkward for my family, but I cannot cope with everything.”
“They will be made welcome here,” he said.
“Thank you.” She set down the pink bag. “You will be able to leave here soon and resume your life where you left it off a couple of months ago. That will make you happy.”
He felt a spurt of anger and . . . hurt? “That will be pleasant for me,” he said. “And you will return home and be respectable and genteel.”
“Yes.”
It was the very thing she had been fleeing when she left Bath in that sad apology for a hired carriage. She had come full circle after an aborted adventure courtesy of himself and a lot of embarrassment courtesy of himself and his daughter. Now she was content to crawl back to safety. But why be angry? He had just had a very fortunate escape from an entanglement that would have adversely affected the whole of the rest of his life. And that was courtesy of her. She had made her feelings quite clear on that windswept beach. She wanted to go home. The affair had served its function, but she had tired of it—and of him. She had never told him anything different in all the times they had talked since then.
He took a step closer to her. He could still smell the subtle perfume she had been wearing earlier—the perfume she always wore. He could feel her body heat, the pull of her femininity.
“The answer to the question you asked earlier is yes,” he said. “I loved you fourteen years ago, Viola. If I had not, I would not have left when you told me to go.” A strange paradox, that. But true. He had not thought of it before.
She did not raise her eyes to his as she lifted a hand and set it against his chest. She looked at her hand instead. He could feel its warmth through his waistcoat and shirt. “I loved you too,” she said. “If I had not, perhaps I would not have told you to go away.” Ah, a matching paradox.
“And I loved you again this year,” he said while her eyes came to his for a moment. “It was very good while it lasted, was it not? That absurd village fair and the night that followed it in the saddest apology for an inn it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. Though in this case it proved to be good fortune. And the unhurried, meandering journey, which would have driven me mad under any other circumstances. And the cottage and the valley and all that ghastly fresh air and exercise and nature appreciation. And what happened inside the cottage at night and occasionally by day. It was very good, Viola, was it not?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It was very pleasurable. While it lasted.”
He gazed down at her in silence for several long moments while the candle cast shifting shadows on the wall behind her. “It could not have been expected to last, of course,” he said. “It never does. You grew tired of me, and I was in the process of growing tired of you. It was time to go home. We would have done so and parted on the most amicable of terms if our families had not come in pursuit of us. I am still not sure how they found us or why they went to all that trouble. However it was, it was unfortunate, and I am sorry I made matters worse.”
It could not . . . last. It never does. I was in the process of growing tired of you. What he said was surely true. Why, then, did it feel like the most barefaced of lies?
“You have made amends by setting them to rights,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, “for attending the party. You must have wished yourself a thousand miles away.”
“I did it for Estelle’s sake,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “And for Bertrand’s, since he is exceedingly fond of his twin. And because it was the genteel thing to do.”
“Thank you anyway,” he said. “And I will endure being reminded by all my neighbors that I am forty years old.”
There was nothing more to say. There had been nothing even before he came here. They gazed at each other, her palm still against his chest. He raised a hand to hook a fallen lock of hair behind her ear and left his hand there, cupping one side of her face. She did not jerk away.