scandalized enough. What difference would it make if he – He kissed her.
And she kissed him back, first cupping his face gently with her palms and then sliding her arms about his neck.
It was a warm, unhurried, quite chaste kiss that did not even involve their tongues. It was the most dangerous kiss Stephen had ever shared.
He knew that as soon as it ended and he lifted his head to look down into her face again.
Because it had been a kiss of shared affection bordering on love. Not lust. /Love/.
'And now,' she said, 'will you do as I suggested a few minutes ago and come down here and look? Upward? At the sky?'
She spoke softly, without smiling, despite the teasing nature of her words.
He stretched out beside her and looked upward – and knew what she had meant when she spoke of connection to the earth. He could feel it, firm and eternal beneath him despite the thickness of the blanket. And above him he could see the blue, cloudless sky and – connecting the two – the leafy branches of the oak tree.
And he was a part of that connection, that gloriously spinning place, as was Cassandra.
He reached over and took her hand in his. He laced his fingers with hers.
'If you could just step off into the sky,' she said, 'and be a new person, /would/ you?'
He gave the question some consideration.
'And so lose myself as I know me, and everything and everyone that have helped shape me into the person I am?' he said. 'No. But temporary escape would be good now and then. I am greedy and want the best of both worlds, you see. Would you?'
'I can lie here,' she said, 'and dream of letting go and floating off into blueness and light. But I would have to take myself with me or the whole exercise would be pointless. And so nothing would really be changed, would it? If I had to leave myself behind in order to escape…
Well, I might as well be dead. And I think I would hate that. I want to live.'
'I am glad to hear it,' he said, chuckling.
'Oh, but you do not understand,' she said. 'It surprises me. For a long time I have thought that if given the choice without actually having to take my own life, I would choose death.'
He felt a sudden chill.
'But you no longer feel that way?' he asked her.
'No,' she said. She laughed softly. 'No! I want to /live/.'
He squeezed her hand more tightly, and they lay together in silence while he pondered what she had just said. What must her life have been like if she would have preferred death to life – and if the preference was so habitual that it actually surprised her now to discover that she preferred life?
Sometimes he forgot – or chose to forget – that her life had been so intolerable that she had killed.
But he would not think of that today.
He turned his head to look at her after a few minutes, and she returned the look. They both smiled.
'Happy?' he asked.
'Mmm.'
He sighed and set his free arm over his eyes. He had not stepped out into space, but he had stepped into something new after all. This was not seduction. This was not even simply friendship. This was… He did not know what it was. But he had the feeling his life would never be the same again.
And he was not sure if the thought alarmed him or exhilarated him.
After a few minutes he drifted off into that pleasant state of being asleep and yet half aware too of everything around him.
/14/
STEPHEN was asleep. He was not exactly snoring, but he was breathing deeply in such a way that there was no doubt he was sleeping.
Cassandra closed her eyes and smiled – and felt a desperate sort of tenderness for him and for the stolen, carefree pleasure of the afternoon. She had decided to enjoy herself, and that was what she was doing. All her defenses, all her anxieties, all her mistrust of anyone outside her own tiny circle of friends, had been left at home, to be taken up again after the picnic was over.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
She allowed herself the cautious belief that perhaps after all there was one good man in the world, and he was lying beside her, his fingers relaxed about her own. She knew he was not perfect. As he kept reminding her, no one was. But he seemed as close to being perfect as anyone could be.
And if he did have character flaws or even vices, she would never know.
For, of course, she would not know him for long. Not beyond the end of the Season, at the latest. And if she was very fortunate, she would never hear any unsavory stories about him in the future.
She was going to live in the country again. She had decided that just now, while lying here. It was as if this little piece of the country, the earth beneath her, the sky above, the tree branches between, had cleared her mind of a dense, dark fog that had befuddled it for a long, long time. She was going to find a little cottage in a small village somewhere in England, well off the beaten track, and she was going to live there and grow flowers and embroider bright tablecloths and handkerchiefs and go to church every Sunday and help serve teas at parish functions and dance at local assemblies and…
Well.
She swallowed against a lump in her throat. Perhaps she had stepped off into the sky, after all. But it was not an impractical dream. Or an impossible one.
For something else had just struck her with overwhelming force.
She had been a victim for ten long years. She had not been able to help the vicious beatings. Nigel had been stronger than she, and he had been her husband and had had the legal right to discipline her as he saw fit.
But she had developed a victim's mind, a cowering, abject thing intent more than anything else upon remaining hidden in every conceivable way, upon figuratively holding her breath lest someone notice her and come at her, fists flying. And her victim's mentality she /could/ help. If her mind was not under her control, then life was really not worth living.
Life had not felt worth living for almost ten years.
Today, suddenly, it did. She turned her head toward Stephen, tears in her eyes, but he was still sleeping. /Fortunately/, he was still sleeping.
Ah, how terribly beautiful he was. How achingly attractive. How she longed…
But he had no part in her new dream. How could he? She had seduced him and made him feel obligated to her. It was all quite unfair. He should be back firmly in his own world with young ladies like the one who had walked with him this morning.
But this new dream did have something to do with him. She had him to thank for it. By being kind to her when he had absolutely no reason to be, he had reminded her of her own worth. Of her power over her own life.
Could she make such an extravagant claim for him when her acquaintance with him was so slight, when it had begun in such an ugly manner, with seduction and then ensnarement?
Was he /really/ an angel?
She smiled through her tears at the fanciful thought. She would be seeing wings and a halo soon.
She was no longer going to be penniless and dependent and abject and frightened and defensive and all the horrid, cringing things she had been since Bruce had tossed her out of her home and washed his hands of her.
She was going to fight boldly back.
Tomorrow she was going to find a lawyer who would be willing to take on her case despite her near- poverty. With Stephen's money she was going to pay him a small retainer, with a promise of the rest of his fee
