She grabbed his hand and pressed her lips to his knuckles. “David, you needn’t have done this. My love, you need not.”
My love. Were he not her love, she wouldn’t have allowed him to do this, but she would have eventually left him, nonetheless. This was a miniscule but real consolation.
He sat down again and drew his chair closer, but made no effort to retrieve his hand. Letty curled over it, and David hunched in, his shoulder to hers, stroking her hair with his free hand.
“The documents make it real,” he said. “These details, arrangements, logistics… they make the ending reality.”
Letty nodded, her grip on his hand desperate.
He spoke, because words were also something she’d allow him to give to her. “When my mother died, matters remained to deal with—in what clothes to bury her, what to put on her headstone, what flowers to put on the casket, who the pall bearers should be… I resented my aunt’s unwillingness to tend to these details. She’d known her sister much longer than I’d known my mother, after all. But Aunt would not act, and it was largely left to me. I understand now, the wisdom that drove her.”
“Wisdom?” Letty asked, raising bewildered eyes. “This torment of documents, funds, and deeds is wisdom?”
“These arrangements give me something tangible to focus on, Letty. Something to do that helps me acknowledge what you mean to me, what you will always mean to me.”
She started crying in earnest, and David slipped an arm around her waist, brought her head to his shoulder, and simply held her as she wept out her heartbreak and despair.
He crooned meaningless comforts to her, stroked her hair, her face, her hands. He imprinted on his memory—for the thousandth time—the rosy scent of her, the feel of her lithe warmth against his body, the way she yielded in his embrace without question. And still, he feared, it wouldn’t be enough.
They spent the day talking little, touching constantly. By consent, dinner was a glorified tea tray. Through a long, mild evening, they lay in the hammock and held each other, Letty’s head on David’s shoulder, David’s arms wrapped around her.
“What will you do?” he asked as the last of the light faded.
“I don’t know. Go home, perhaps. Find a cottage somewhere to live out my life in peace. Think of you every day and night.”
“And I of you.”
“Will you hire a replacement for me at The Pleasure House?”
“I think not.” Nor a successor.
For a time, they feigned sleep for each other, but in the garden, in their hearts, night was falling, and soon, they were forced back to the house.
***
For years, Letty had prayed with a sense that her communication with heaven was not earned.
After David had escorted her up from the garden, she’d climbed into bed and lay unmoving, trying to pray prayers of gratitude—for David’s generosity, his caring, his bone-deep decency and honor—and failing miserably. Then she tried praying for strength and for guidance and for strength again, which also brought no comfort. She fared a bit better when she prayed for David’s happiness—surely the Almighty would not begrudge a good man some happiness?—and then she prayed simply for sleep and the oblivion it would bring.
But even that prayer was destined for frustration, when deep in the night a beloved warmth enveloped her, a beloved scent wafted into her awareness, and a beloved hand stroked her cheek. David settled his weight over her, letting her know he did not intend a platonic sharing of warmth and affection.
Thank God. Letty’s hands coursed over David’s back, seeking, caressing, memorizing.
“We must be careful,” David whispered. “Your wound—”
Her wound, indeed. “Love me. Please, David, please just love me.” She leaned up to kiss him, his mouth, his eyes, his jaw… She was frantic, desperate to touch him everywhere, to possess him and be possessed by him.
“Hush. Easy, Letty-love, easy. We have all night. Be easy, and let me pleasure you.”
They had all night, but only all night.
His kisses were slow, lazy, savoring, not the kisses of a man who would never hold his love again. David was playing a final game, for his kisses were those of a lover secure in the affections of his beloved, confident of a future with her full of such pleasures. He eased the clothes from her body without Letty even being aware of it; he caressed her arms, her chest, her shoulders, her face. His hands moved slowly, in soothing, knowing strokes that comforted even as they aroused.
“Give me your weight, David. I need to feel your weight when we join.”
“You shall have whatever pleasure you desire, my love. Whatever is within my power to give you.” He settled into her body, taking some of his weight on his forearms, but resting on Letty as well. He clearly understood what she sought, a sensation of joining over as much of their naked skin as possible. A definiteness about his presence in her bed.
For surely, his absence tomorrow would feel very definite, indeed.
He began to move inside her, to advance, retreat, and advance again. His thrusting was slow, powerful, and so familiar and dear to Letty that tears threatened. Even as the tears closed her throat, her body sought pleasure from his, craved it, demanded it.
“Please,” she whispered. “David, now.”
He laced his fingers through Letty’s where her hands lay on her pillow. “Come with me. My love, my Elizabeth, come with me now.”
Letty’s fingers closed tightly around David’s as heartbreak, desire, and love coalesced, mingling pleasure and sorrow in such torrents that she could only hold on to him, tighter and tighter as the loving went on and on.
When David was silent and sated above her, Letty still held his hands. “I will miss you and miss you and miss you, my love.” For he was her love, and always would be.
“And then,” David murmured against her throat, “I will miss you some more.”
They made love again, slowly, sweetly, murmuring endearments and orders and pleas and wishes into the darkness. They brought each other pleasure, tenderness, sorrow, joy, strength, and in some odd, irrational way, hope.
But when Letty awoke the next morning, she was alone. She rolled over to where David’s scent lingered on her pillows, breathed in the memory of their last night together, and then forced herself to face the day.
Which was absolutely, without exception, the hardest thing she’d ever done.
***
One of the many wonders of the human body was that when physical pain reached a certain point, the mind granted oblivion. Pain could inebriate the senses every bit as effectively as strong spirits, yet the heart’s capacity for suffering was without limit.
David marveled at the intensity of the ache suffusing his every muscle, bone, and breath, even as he and Letty ate a subdued breakfast, each stealing glances at the other—searching, remembering, longing glances. Their hands brushed frequently; they poured tea for each other; they made meaningless small talk simply to hear each other’s voices.
David had lost loved ones before, too many, but those losses were not ones he chose, then orchestrated and executed. Like performing a surgery on oneself, an excision of the heart perhaps, without anesthetic.
When they’d lingered over the meal as long as possible while eating as little as possible, David offered Letty his hand. “Your stitches?”
Letty clasped his fingers. “Where?”
“Your bedroom,” he said, rising and holding her chair for her. “I’ll get my kit and meet you up there.”
He left her at the stairs and watched her retreating figure, the sway and twitch of her skirts, the absolute dignity in her spine.
She belongs here. She should be my viscountess, she and no other.
He wasn’t young enough or foolish enough to vow never to marry another, but he did wonder how on God’s great green earth he would br
ing himself to contemplate such a thing, even for Letty.
Spend time with the children, she’d told him as they lay in the hammock the previous evening. Clever, merciless woman. He fetched his medical bag and found Letty wandering her sitting room, touching this and that, probably to avoid looking at the clock—as he was.
David gestured toward the sofa. “Have a seat, and prepare to be surprised at how simple this part of it is. The stitches come out much more painlessly than they go in.”
Letty sat and loosened the sash of the dressing gown she’d worn down to breakfast. David took the place behind her and gently peeled the garment back from her shoulders, exposing bare skin.
“You were naked beneath this at breakfast?” he asked, unwillingly amused.
“I was not. I took my nightgown off when I came back up here.”
“Of course you did.” A good physician had the knack of distracting patients with idle banter, with questions and chatter. “The wound, if I do say so myself, is a work of art. You’ll have barely any scarring, Letty.”
Though who would ever admire that art?
“And I will have the ability to predict storms,” she replied, because such conversation was part of the walk to the gallows they would share with each other.
“What will you do this afternoon?” David asked, using small, sharp scissors to snick at the stitches.
“Probably nap and go through a quantity of handkerchiefs. I have a letter or two to write. What about you?”
“In place of handkerchiefs,” David said, tugging the threads, “I will likely go through a quantity of brandy. I’ve warned Jennings to leave me in peace for the balance of the week, and I’ve told my sisters I will be quite busy in Town for the next little while.”
As wounds went, this one had healed beautifully.
“You must not brood, David. You must go out and tend to your business and see your family. They will fret over you—continue to fret over you, I should say. And you must let your staff coddle you. Do not neglect your rest or eschew the company of your mare when the weather is fair enough for hacking out.”
She knew which platitudes a physician offered most often.
“And you,” David said, taking the last of the stitches from her flesh. “You should rest, stroll in the park, and laze about eating tea cakes. I never did fatten you up to my satisfaction, though you’ve at least gained some flesh in these past weeks.”
“I won’t overdo, lest you find out and inflict your wrath upon me, but I must see to my future.”
The stitches were gone, and abruptly, it was time Letty dressed. David wrapped his arms around her waist, when he should have been on his feet and making plans to meet her downstairs in half an hour.
“I hate this.” He rested his cheek against her bare shoulder. Just that, a small lapse in his efforts to return to the fiction that he was her physician, her friend, her companion, and not her lover.
“I know,” she said, placing her hands over his where they crossed at her throat. “And I think, maybe in another day, or another week, maybe I will be stronger then, more at peace with this never-ending ache, but I won’t be. Far kinder, I think, to simply abide by the plan we’ve laid out.”
“Kinder but by no means easier.” He sat back, kissed her nape, and eased her dressing gown up over her shoulders. “There you go,” he said, forcing a lightness into his voice. “You are still not to lift anything heavy with that arm, still to rest, drink extra fluids, and eat as much red meat as you can. You lost a lot of blood, and while you are not at risk of infection, you are not fully recovered either.”
“No,” she said, “I am by no means fully recovered.”
Thirteen
David apparently had enough experience in sickrooms—rooms rife with suffering—that he could be brisk, efficient, and even cheerful, when any sane person would run howling from the scene. His deft hands made short work of Letty’s braid and coronet, and no lady’s maid ever provided more competent assistance.
Maybe this was how soldiers felt going into battle against tight odds. Did they don a false bravado, put on more for one’s comrades than oneself? Did they suddenly become so achingly dear to one another that tears threatened moment by moment? Did they become unable to contemplate anything beyond the looming hours of terror and loss?
David finished with the hooks of Letty’s dress in silence, dropped a kiss on the side of her neck, and withdrew. She felt his absence like the loss of a talisman, a cherished symbol of luck and safety, as when someone had stolen her father’s Book of Common Prayer from his study. She took a last look at herself in the mirror, seeing a lady in better finances and even worse spirits than she’d sported before meeting David.
“You’re simply afraid,” she told her reflection. “Afraid you won’t endure the pain of losing him. Also afraid you will.”
Letty tied a bright red sash about her waist, her ensemble the same one she’d worn one of the first times David had come calling upon her. To know he’d recalled such a detail comforted her, to know she was parting from a man who could recall such a detail devastated.
David was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, smiling slightly, though the expression in his eyes was anything but cheerful.
“You’re going out for a hack,” Letty said, and why must he look particularly fetching in his riding attire? “Fine idea. Your mare will take good care of you.” Though leaving him to the good offices of a mere horse felt wretchedly like abandonment.
“I’ll ride later, perhaps after the heat of the day. I thought we’d take the coach to your house.”
Taking the coach would allow them to sit, touching and holding hands, in relative and quite improper privacy—and it would allow her to cry.
Thoughtful of him, as always.
He led her down the steps and turned to hand her up into the coach, when Letty paused to look back at his house.
“We have been happy here,” David said.
“As happy as two people could be.” And as miserable.
Though the horses were kept to a smooth walk, all too soon the journey ended.
“We are here,” Letty said, needlessly, of course. “Will you come in? I do not want to make my farewells to you in this coach.”
He should not set foot in her house, not ever again. They both knew it. She should not have asked.
“I will come in,” David said, opening the coach door, for the groom apparently knew better than to intrude. “Only for a moment, and no farther than the front parlor.”
Letty allowed him to precede her from the coach and then escort her up her front steps and into the house. He didn’t knock, he simply opened the door and ushered her through, as if they lived there together and had merely been out shopping or making calls.
In the front hallway, David undid the frogs at Letty’s throat, then stepped back as she removed her bonnet and gloves. He took off only his gloves.
“Whatever you’re trying to find the words for,” Letty said, “just say it.”
She expected a swift good-bye, a peck on the cheek, something painful but soon over, like a competent surgery.
“You will note a few changes,” he said, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “When you napped, I needed something to occupy myself, so I replaced the curios and knick-knacks you’d sold, took care of the minor repairs, had the gutters and chimneys cleaned and the windows reglazed. I also took the liberty of adding some books to your parlor shelves, and the larder has been provisioned with what staples and foodstuffs I thought you might need.”
He fell silent, while Letty wondered if he’d ever made such a thorough confession as a boy. A bouquet of roses sat on the table in the front hallway, and the Vermeer hung in discreet pride of place above it. A small silver angel that looked very like a porcelain angel she’d particularly admired at The Pleasure House stood, wings outstretched, beneath
the Vermeer.
“It’s lovely of you,” Letty said, though she could not bear to study the angel. “It’s loving.” She looped her hands behind his neck and leaned into him. “Thank you.”
“I hoped you’d understand.” His arms settled around her waist; his cheek rested against her hair. They stood like that, silent, not clinging, but unable to part.
I will miss you so.
“Letty?”
She stepped back at the question in his voice.
“If there’s anything,” David said, “anything at all, that you need or want, or even think you might enjoy, you must send word to me through Jennings, and I will see to it. I am still your friend, and hope you will be mine as well.”
He might manage this friendship-through-Jennings, while Letty dreaded the day Jennings would brusquely let slip that his lordship was negotiating an engagement with some earl’s daughter.
“I will not trespass,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “I fully expect you to sell this house and repair to some rustic cottage, perhaps without even letting me know your direction. But not yet. I still need—”
She put two fingers against his mouth.
“We both need to know, at least for a little while longer, that the other is in familiar surrounds, safe, and not too far away, adequately cared for. I expect I will sell this house, eventually.”
“Not just yet,” David concluded, relief in his eyes.
“Not just yet,” Letty agreed, and maybe, if the ache in her heart grew any worse, never.
A painful silence went by, while Letty tried and failed to find one more scrap of business to transact that might put off David’s leave-taking.
He took her in his arms. “Good-bye, my Elizabeth, my love, my friend.”
She would not cry. For the love of God, she would not cry. This parting was her doing, her last best gift to him and his future, and she would not make it any more miserable for him than it already was. “Good-bye, my David. I love you so,” Letty whispered, clinging just as tightly.
“Don’t watch me leave, Letty.” He brushed a kiss to her cheek and kept his forehead to her temple. “I won’t be able to walk away if I know you are watching me, tears in your eyes, your heart suffering the same agony as my own.”
David Page 24
