by Mary Balogh
“When I decided to climb up here,” she said, “I did not think…” Her teeth sank into her lower lip.
“I am glad you did not,” he said quickly. “We are both maimed, Miss Jewell. But we both know the importance of refusing to live as cripples.”
She did something then that took him so much by surprise that he stood rooted to the spot, high on the rocks that divided the beaches, one foot slightly above the level of the other. She lifted her hand again and set her fingertips against his left cheek.
“We have both learned to see to the very heart of pain, Mr. Butler,” she said. “And so we have both changed-for the better, I believe. We are not cripples. We are survivors.”
She seemed to realize then what she had done, and even in the shade provided by the brim of her bonnet he could see her flush as she removed her hand hastily and rather jerkily.
“Has there been any man since-since Moore?” he asked her.
She shook her head quickly.
“No,” she said. And then after a brief pause, “Has there been any woman since your…I cannot call it an accident, can I?”
“No,” he said. “None.”
Awareness of their long, lonely celibacy pulsed between them, though neither of them put it into words. How could they? They were still virtually strangers to each other-and a man and a woman.
The embarrassment of their shared awareness of such an intimate thing took her suddenly and she turned and scrambled upward again until she stood on the crest of the rocks and looked over to the other side, one hand shading her eyes. He stood where he was for a few moments before going after her.
It was impossible to hide from himself the knowledge that there had been some revulsion in her hasty withdrawal of her hand from his cheek.
He must not even begin to think that because she was as lonely-and as sexually deprived-as he they could therefore…
He could never subject any woman to that.
And perhaps she was too damaged to have anything to offer another man.
He climbed up after her and stood beside her, not too close.
“It is awe-inspiring,” she said, gazing along the length of the main beach on which they had strolled the day before. And yet he sensed that she spoke the words that seemed appropriate to the view rather than ones that were deep-felt.
“It is,” he agreed. He had always wished he had two eyes with which to see it. But one was better than none.
The tide was almost fully out. Already it would be possible to walk about the end of the outcropping of rock on which they stood. They could have avoided the climb if they had waited.
“We can go down to the beach or back the way we came,” he said, “or we can climb to our right and get back up onto the cliff top that way. It is not a difficult climb. The choice is yours.”
When she looked at him this time, her eyes focused somewhere on a level with his chin rather than into his eye.
“It must be getting late,” she said, her voice cheerful-and impersonal. “I suppose we ought to go back by the quickest route. I have been totally unaware of passing time. I have enjoyed this afternoon very much, Mr. Butler. Thank you.”
Something irretrievable had gone from an afternoon that had seemed magical to him in many ways.
They had come too close to each other in the sharing of their stories. For a moment perhaps they had both mistaken a friendly sympathy for a physical closeness-until she had touched him and realized the impossibility of it all. And until she had touched him and he had realized how very wounded she was, how impossible it was for him to take her on emotionally even if he had been offered the chance.
He turned without another word and led the way to the cliff top and then along the footpath to the main driveway just below the cottage. They did very little talking on the way.
“I’ll walk up to the house with you,” he said when they drew level with the cottage.
“Oh, there is no need,” she assured him. “You would have to walk all the way back again.”
They stopped and looked politely and cheerfully at each other, like two strangers who had talked for a while but had nothing left to say and were eager to exchange good-byes and go their separate ways.
And really, that was all they were-strangers.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I have enjoyed the afternoon. I hope you enjoy the rest of your month here. I will not say good-bye. I daresay we will see each other again before you return to Bath.”
“Yes.” She smiled at his chin. “I suppose we will. Thank you for showing me places I have not seen before.”
And then she turned rather abruptly and strode off up the driveway in the direction of the house.
Sydnam stood looking after her, feeling an unwelcome dejection. She was merely a guest at the house, someone who had touched his life briefly and was now gone again. His life would not change because of his five brief encounters with her-and perhaps as many more before she returned to Bath.
But he ought not, perhaps, to have walked with her yesterday or invited her to walk with him today. He would not do it again. He did not want to go doing anything stupid, like falling in love with her.
He shook his head as if to clear it of such thoughts as she disappeared from view around a bend without looking back. He turned his steps in the direction of the cottage.
He set his hand in his pocket, remembering that her shells were still there. His fingers curled about them.
More than a week passed before Anne saw Sydnam Butler again-except for a brief glimpse one afternoon when she was returning to the house after a stroll outdoors with David. He was standing on the terrace some distance beyond the front doors, in conversation with the Duke of Bewcastle. His grace inclined his head in their direction and Mr. Butler, on whose blind side they had been approaching, swiveled right about to see them and also made them a little bow before turning back to his conversation.
She also heard that Lord Alleyne, Lord Rannulf, and Lady Hallmere had gone riding with him one afternoon, and was amazed to learn that he could ride. But she ought not to have been surprised, she admitted to herself. He was a man who fought his disabilities in almost every way imaginable-except his disability to paint. She wondered if there was any possibility that he could fight that battle too and win. But probably not. Some things were simply impossible.
It was not an unpleasant week despite the fact that she was not allowed to remain in the nursery area as a sort of governess but was drawn into the very thick of the daily activities with everyone else, adults and children alike. They all spent a great deal of time out of doors-walking, playing cricket and other ball games, swimming, boating, building sand castles on the beach, climbing trees, playing hide-and-seek among them, climbing the lower reaches of the cliffs, having picnics.
The Earl of Rosthorn explained to her one day that most of their lives were necessarily busy through much of the year-he and Joshua and the duke, for example, were members of the House of Lords-and kept them from their children and even their spouses for long hours at a time. When they did have free time, then, as they did now in the summer, they spent it together as families and played hard.
David was happier than Anne had ever seen him. And she was surprised to discover that he could be as boisterous and demanding and mischievous as any of the others. Indeed, if the trio of Davy, Alexander, and David had a leader, it was usually David. Becky, Davy’s sister, adored him. So did all the younger children, with whom he always had the patience to play. He adored Joshua-and Lord Rannulf and Lord Alleyne and all the other gentlemen too, to an only slightly lesser degree. He was in awe of the Duke of Bewcastle, it was true, but Anne spied him one day practicing lifting an imaginary quizzing glass to his eye while examining his aloof, haughty expression in the looking glass in his room, and it was perfectly obvious whom he was trying to imitate.
For his sake she wished the holiday need never end.
On her own account Anne was content to let the month run its course. Lady Aidan and Mrs.
Pritchard, her aunt, became Anne’s particular friends, as did the duchess, who as a former teacher herself liked to talk to Anne about school. And Miss Thompson, the duchess’s bookish sister, also drew Anne into lengthy discussions of books and educational theory and proved herself to be both an intelligent and an interesting-even humorous-conversationalist. Indeed, there was no one who was not amiable to her. Even the duke engaged her in conversation for a full half hour one evening after discovering that she had read a book he had just finished.
But contrarily she felt her aloneness far more acutely here at Glandwr than she had ever felt it at Claudia’s school in Bath. For one thing she felt like an impostor, even though everyone here must know exactly who and what she was. For another, all the other younger people had partners, with the exception of Miss Thompson, who seemed content in her spinsterhood. One night, when Anne was standing at her bedchamber window, brushing her hair and gazing out onto the moonlit garden and the sea beyond, she became aware of a couple strolling across the lawn away from the house in the direction of the cliffs, his arm about her shoulders, hers about his waist, and realized with something of a shock that they were the duke and duchess.
The stabbing of envy she felt was quite involuntary and quite acute. And her aloneness was exposed for what it was at that moment-raw loneliness for a man in her life.
She thought briefly of Mr. Butler, but she dismissed the memory of him. She had liked him, and she thought he had liked her. But she had touched him up there on the rocks between the beaches without at all knowing she was about to do so. She had felt the instant stiffening of his body and seen the look of shock on his face-and she had felt an answering shock and incipient panic in herself when she saw her fingertips resting against his cheek and felt the warmth of his sun-heated skin.
But for one mindless moment before that she had felt a yearning so intense that it had been like a stabbing of near-pain down through her body, setting her throat to aching and her breasts to tightening and her womb to throbbing and her inner thighs to pulsing with raw sensitivity. She had recognized her feelings for the sexual desire they were, of course.
And only one short moment later part of her had recoiled. The other side of his face, so close to where her fingers had rested, was purplish and nerveless. He had no eye. He had no arm. Who knew what other disfigurements lay beneath his clothing?
She dismissed him from her mind-but even so she found herself thinking occasionally about how he had acquired those dreadful wounds. It happend at night, sometimes keeping her awake, sometimes weaving its ways into her dreams.
Finally, though, they did meet once more. The duke and duchess had invited guests from the neighborhood to dine one evening, and when Anne went down to the drawing room, clad again in her best green silk, her hair elaborately piled and curled by an enthusiastic Glenys, one of the first people she saw on the far side of the room, in conversation with Lord and Lady Aidan, was Mr. Butler.
Her heart leapt with a gladness that seemed quite in excess of the circumstances. The last time they met he had recoiled from her-and she from him.
Mrs. Pritchard invited Anne to sit down beside her, and Anne was glad to do so, since she had not met any of the neighbors and was extremely nervous about doing so. She would have avoided coming down this evening altogether if the duchess had not pointedly invited her.
Introductions were not to be avoided, of course, after the guests began arriving. There were a few English landowners with their wives and older children, a couple of the duke’s tenants with their wives, the vicar and his wife and son and daughter, and the Welsh minister and the village schoolmaster, both of whom spoke English with such pronounced Welsh accents that Anne had to listen carefully in order to understand them. Though she had had some practice-Mrs. Pritchard spoke with almost as thick an accent.
And then dinner was announced-and it was Mr. Butler who had been appointed to lead Anne in and to seat her at his left side.
She smiled uncertainly at him as she took his offered arm, and he smiled back at her.
She felt curiously like crying-and curiously like laughing with joy.
She had missed him. She had told him more of her inner self than she had told even Claudia or Susanna or Frances. He had confided some of his deepest self in her. But he had been content to let more than a week go by without making any attempt to see her again.
What had she expected?
That he would court her?
He had said during their walk together that humans can be remarkably resilient creatures. Anne saw the truth of that statement as she observed the way he used his fork in his left hand to cut his food and convey it to his mouth with deft movements that bordered on elegance and the way in which he turned his head without any apparent awkwardness to look at Lady Hallmere on his blind side while he conversed with her.
He spoke with Lady Hallmere through much of the meal-but perhaps only because Anne had given her attention to Mr. Jones, the village schoolmaster, almost as soon as he sat beside her. He was interested to know that she too was a teacher. Most teachers in Wales, he explained to her, were male.
She felt strangely self-conscious with Mr. Butler-perhaps because their conversations with each other had bordered upon intimacy. How many near-strangers admitted to each other that they were lonely, that there had been no one of the opposite sex in their lives for years and years?
Inevitably, though, as good manners dictated, Lady Hallmere turned toward one of the English landowners on her other side and Mr. Jones turned toward Mrs. Lofter on his.
“Miss Jewell,” Mr. Butler asked politely, “are you and your son enjoying your stay at Glandwr?”
“Enormously,” she said. “Thank you.”
“And has he done more painting?”
“Yes,” she said. “Twice, both times with Lady Rosthorn.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “Did you know there is to be entertainment this evening?”
“Yes,” she said. “Lady Rannulf is going to act. Apparently she is very good at it. And Joshua and Lady Hallmere are going to sing a duet even though Lady Hallmere was very belligerent when everyone was trying to persuade her. It was only when Joshua commented that no one was going to be allowed to bully his wife when he was there to protect her that she bristled with indignation at him and agreed to do it. She did not see the winks he exchanged with her brothers.”
Mr. Butler laughed and she joined him.
“It has always amazed me,” he said, lowering his voice, “that Hallmere seems to know just how to handle Freyja. She was always a hellion and a spitfire. There is to be another duet too tonight. Huw Llwyd is to sing while his wife accompanies him on the harp.”
Mr. and Mrs. Llwyd were the duke’s tenants, a youngish couple.
“They are good?” Anne asked.
He set his spoon down in his empty dish and tapped two fingers over his heart.
“Their music comes in through the ears,” he said, “but it lodges here. You will know what I mean when you have heard them.”
“I look forward to doing so, then,” she said.
“What you ought to hear,” he said, “is the congregation of the Welsh chapel singing hymns on a Sunday morning. They come close to raising the roof off the building, though not with indiscriminate noise. They sing in four-part harmony without ever coming together during the week to rehearse. It is quite extraordinary.”
“It must be indeed,” Anne said with feeling.
“I would like to take you there next Sunday,” he said. “If you can bear the prospect of not understanding a word of the service, that is. It is all in Welsh. But the music!”
Anne had gone to church the previous Sunday, as she did almost every week. But she had gone to the English church with the Bedwyn family. She had sat in the special padded pews set aside for them at the front of the church. Many of the other pews, she had noticed, were empty.
“I should like to go,” she said.
“Would you?” He lo
oked up from the plate of fruit and cheese a footman had set before him and focused full on her. “Will you walk by the cottage on Sunday morning, then, and we will go together?”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
And suddenly she felt breathless, as if they had made some sort of secret assignation. She had agreed to go to church with him, that was all. But what would everyone think of her? And why should it matter what anyone thought? She wanted to go.
And he was looking at her, she thought, as if he wanted it too.
Lady Hallmere claimed his attention again at that moment and soon Mr. Jones turned back to Anne, and they conversed for a few minutes before the duchess got to her feet and invited the ladies to follow her to the drawing room while the gentlemen remained behind to enjoy their port.
More than half an hour passed before the gentlemen joined the ladies. Anne felt almost annoyed with herself when she realized that her eyes had gone immediately in search of Mr. Butler among them. It was no big thing, after all, that he had invited her to attend the Welsh church with him on Sunday so that she might hear Welsh singing for herself.
Except that it was.
She felt stupidly like a girl again, being singled out for a gentleman’s attention. It was stupid. She was twenty-nine years old and this was nothing remotely connected to courtship. But until less than two weeks ago she had not stepped out with a man, even in simple friendship, since Henry Arnold. And that was a whole lifetime ago.
She had offered to sit behind the tea tray, pouring tea, and the duchess had accepted her offer. But she was not so busy that she could not observe the way people gathered into conversational groups-the wealthier English landowners with the Bedwyns, Mrs. Llwyd with Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Thompson, the vicar and his wife with Baron Weston and Miss Thompson, Mr. Llwyd, Mr. Jones, Mr. Rhys-the Welsh minister-with Mr. Butler and the Duke of Bewcastle. The duchess moved from group to group, drawing smiles wherever she went.
Mr. Butler was deep in conversation and did not once glance Anne’s way-she was on his blind side. But later, after she had got to her feet and brushed her hands over her skirt during the bustle of the removal of the tea tray, she found that he was standing beside her.
