Aidan kissed the top of her head.
Freyja gazed at them rather wistfully. She had never seen any public display of affection between them before now.
'I am not,' she said. 'I need air and exercise and the wind in my face. Take me down onto the beach, Josh?'
Alleyne grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows, but no one voiced any comment or-more to the point-any protest. They all went off to bed while Freyja changed hastily into a woolen dress and a warm, hooded cloak, and sturdy shoes. It was a chilly night-she knew that much even though it was a light night too. They would have no need of any lantern to light their way down into the valley and along the river path. Joshua had changed out of his evening finery too, she noticed when she met him in the hall.
There was a depressing feeling of anticlimax needing to be blown away in the wind. The danger to Joshua was over-after what really had been a wonderfully satisfying scene in the ballroom. All the uncertainties about that night of Albert's death had been put to rest. It was over. There was nothing left to be done.
Nothing to keep them at Penhallow.
Nothing to keep them together.
'Will you stay for Prue's wedding?' she asked.
'Yes,' he told her.
'A whole month while the banns are read?' she said. 'You will endure all that time here, Josh, because you love her?'
'Yes,' he said.
He was not at all the sort of person she had thought him. The realization had annoyed her just a few days ago. Now she was glad he was not, and she was glad she had been given an opportunity to discover the sort of person he really was.
'And what then?' she asked. 'Everything here will go on as it always has, and you will . . . what? Wander? Enjoy life again?'
'I have a feeling,' he said, 'that Constance's marriage will not be long delayed. Her eyes were finally opened to a number of things tonight, I believe. Certainly she was making an almost public acknowledgment of her feelings for Jim Saunders before the evening was over, and he looked as if he was very willing to be persuaded to marry so far above him.'
'The match would have your approval, then?' she asked. She wondered what Wulf would have to say if she suddenly embarked upon a romance with one of his stewards.
'It would,' he said. 'But my approval is supremely unimportant, is it not? Constance is of age and not my ward. And, like Prue, she has a mind of her own and is quite capable of deciding what will give her greatest happiness in life. I cannot think dynastically, Freyja. I was not raised that way.'
'You will stay for that wedding too, then?' They were approaching the end of the valley, and the steep hillside no longer protected them from the fresh west wind, which sent their cloaks billowing out to the side.
'Yes,' he said. 'I would like to settle them in the dower house, but I will need to work out a few details first.'
'And so poor Chastity will be left at Penhallow alone with her mother,' Freyja said. 'But at least she will have her sisters close.'
'My aunt can no longer live at Penhallow,' he said, turning his head and looking down at her. 'Penhallow is going to be my home.'
'Oh.' She looked at him in some surprise. But she could think of nothing else to say. She was feeling a little hurt for some reason she could not yet quite fathom.
'She will have to live at the dower house herself if no other solution presents itself,' he said. 'But I am going to do all in my power to find her somewhere else to live. And I daresay she will not want to be in such close proximity to me.'
'Chastity?' she said.
He sighed. 'My ward,' he said. 'But not my prisoner. I cannot decide what she will do, can I? Perhaps she will choose to go wherever my aunt goes. Perhaps she will go to live with Constance-or remain here. I shall give her the chance of a Season in London if she wants it, though I am not sure how I would go about it. I am the Marquess of Hallmere, though, am I not? A man of importance and influence.' He grinned at her.
They rounded the headland, and the wide flat sands of the beach stretched before them, the towering cliffs to one side, the sea to the other. It was half out or half in-Freyja did not know which. She could hear the rush of the water and see the moonlight sparkling across its surface. It was chillier here, the air damper and saltier. She lifted her face and drew in great lungfuls of it.
He was going to stay, then. He was going to take on his responsibilities as head of his family. He was going to settle down. Without her.
'Perhaps I will see you in London next spring, then,' she said. 'Morgan will be making her come-out.'
'I want the first waltz at the first ball,' he said. 'We have waltzed together only once, Free, and even that was interrupted by the necessity of chasing after the master of ceremonies to announce our betrothal.'
They set off across the beach, the wind in their faces.
'The first waltz is reserved, then,' she said.
They walked in silence for a while. They were not touching. She had her hands inside her cloak. He had his clasped behind him.
'The tide is on the way in,' he said. 'But we have plenty of time before we get cut off from the valley.'
