The Proposal

was the only woman with whom sex had ever been a shared thing and not just something for his own physical ease and pleasure.

He slowed his rhythm for a moment, raised his head, and gazed down into her eyes. She looked back, her own half closed. She looked almost in pain. Her teeth closed about her bottom lip.

“Gwendoline,” he said.

“Hugo.”

“My love.”

“Yes.”

He wondered briefly if either of them would remember the words. Saying nothing and saying everything.

He lowered his forehead to her shoulder and drove them both to the edge of the pinnacle and over it in a glorious descent to nothingness. To everything.

He heard her cry out.

He heard himself cry out.

He heard a puppy squeak and then suckle.

And he sighed aloud against her neck and allowed himself the brief luxury of relaxing all his weight down onto her hot, damp, exquisitely lovely body.

She sighed too, but not in protest. It was a sigh of perfect fulfillment, perfect contentment. He was sure of it.

He moved off her, reached out for the other blanket he had brought this morning—or yesterday morning, he supposed it was—and spread it over them. He lifted her head onto his arm and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“When I have more energy,” he said, “I am going to offer to make an honest woman of you. And when you have more energy, you are going to say yes.”

“Am I?” she asked. “With a thank you very much, sir?”

“Yes will be sufficient,” he said and promptly dozed off.

Chapter 23

Hugo,” she whispered.

He had been sleeping for a while, but he had been making stirring sounds in the last few minutes. She watched the faint light from the lamp flicker across his face.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Hugo,” she said, “I have remembered something.”

“Mmm,” he said again and then inhaled loudly. “Me too. I have just this moment remembered, and if you will give me a few moments, I will be ready to create more memories.”

“About … about the day Vernon died,” she said, and his eyes snapped open.

They stared at each other.

“I have always tried hard not to remember those few minutes,” she said. “But of course I have remembered. Nothing can ever erase the images.”

He spread his hand over the side of her face and kissed her.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“And something has always fluttered at me,” she said. “Something that did not somehow fit. I have never tried too hard to discover what it was because I did not want to remember at all. I still do not. I still wish I could forget altogether.”

“You have remembered what did not fit?” he said.

“It happened last evening,” she said, “when your neighbors were all trying to persuade you to waltz and everyone was laughing and you held up your hands so that you could give an answer.”

His thumb stroked her cheek.

“You held up your hands with your palms out,” she said. “It is what people do, is it not, when they want to say something or stop something.”

He did not say anything.

“When I—” she began and swallowed convulsively. “When I turned as Vernon fell from the gallery, Jason was turned to him already, and he was holding his hands up above his head to stop him. It was a futile gesture, of course, but an understandable one under the circumstances. Except that—”

She frowned, even now trying to bring the remembered image into focus. But she was right.

“His palms were turned inward?” he said. “Beckoning rather than stopping? Taunting? ”

“Perhaps I have misremembered,” she said. Though she knew she had not.

“No,” he said. “Memories like that are indelible even if the mind will not admit them for seven years or more.”

“He would not have been able to do that,” she said, “if I had not turned my back, if I had gone up to Vernon instead of to the library.”

“Gwendoline,” he said, “if nothing had happened, how long would you have remained in the library?”

She thought about it.

“Not long,” she said. “No longer than five minutes. Probably less. He needed me. He had just overheard something very upsetting. I would have understood that as soon as I stepped into the room. I would have drawn a few deep breaths, as I had done on other occasions, and gone to him.”

“He took the loss of your child badly?” he asked.

“He blamed himself,” she said.

“And he needed comforting,” he said. “Did he give you comfort?”

“He was ill,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “he was. And if you had both lived for another fifty years, he would have continued ill and you would have continued to love him and to comfort him.”

“I promised for better or worse, in sickness or in health,” she said. “But I let him down in the end.”

“No,” he said. “You were not his jailer, Gwendoline. You could not be standing watch over him for twenty-four hours out of every day. And sick or not, he was not without his wits, was he? You had lost a child as much as he had. More. But he took the burden of guilt upon himself and in the process robbed you of the comfort you so desperately needed. Even in the depths of his despair, he ought to have known that he was placing an unbearable burden upon you and doing nothing to fulfill what he had promised you. Illness, unless it is total madness, is not an excuse for great selfishness. You needed love as much as he did. He fell. No one pushed him. He was beckoned and taunted. But he was the one who fell— deliberately, it would seem. I understand why you blame yourself. I better than anyone, perhaps, can understand that. But I absolutely absolve you of all blame. Let it go, my love. Grayson cannot really be accused of murder, can he, even though his intent was doubtless murderous. Leave him to his conscience, though I doubt he has one. Leave him to his nastiness. And let yourself be loved. Let me love you.”

“He was with us when I fell,” she said, “when my horse did not clear the hedge. He had never missed a jump before and it was not the highest fence he had jumped. Jason was with us. He was behind me, crowding me, trying to encourage my horse to clear the jump, I have always thought. He could not have … Could he?”

She heard him inhale slowly.

“Is it possible,” she said, “that I did not kill my own child? Or is it wishful thinking because I have realized that he wanted Vernon out of the way? Even dead? Did he want our child dead too? Did he want me dead?”

“Ah, Gwendoline,” he said. “Ah, my love.”

She closed her eyes, but she could not stop the hot, scalding tears from spilling over onto her cheeks and diagonally across them to drip onto the blanket and pool at the side of her nose.

He gathered her into his arms, spread one great hand behind her head, and kissed her wet cheeks, her eyelids, her temples, her wet lips.

“Hush,” he crooned. “Hush now. Let it all go. Let me love you. You have love all wrong, Gwendoline. It is not