His hand gripped one of my arms, stopping it, keeping me still. His body went tense with the effort it took to listen.
The sounds of the night became deafening: the surf, the wind, the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, Cranwell’s breathing, the sound of a footfall on the concrete path.
My hands flew up toward Cranwell’s chest, and I hid my head between his shoulders. I couldn’t stand to look.
Cranwell covered my hands with his own and it was then, when I felt the warmth of his skin on mine, that I realized how cold my own hands were.
He noticed too, for he pulled my arms forward, bringing me closer to his back, and then he cupped my hands and began to blow into them.
The warmth of his breath spread from my fingers to the rest of my body as if a furnace had suddenly fired. It took the sound of another footfall to steer my focus from Cranwell to the precarious situation we were in.
“Freddie-”
Before he could say another word, I clamped a hand over his mouth.
Another footstep fell.
Cranwell gently pried my hand from his mouth.
I buried my head deeper between his shoulder blades.
He began to kiss my fingers. My knees sagged, and I leaned into his back.
Another footstep fell.
It sounded as if it were almost opposite us, but my eyes were screwed so tightly shut I couldn’t see. Didn’t want to see. I was flying, I was soaring. What could possibly interest me on earth?
The next footfall sounded like it had passed us. And by that time, it was all I could do to keep standing. Cranwell had worked his way to my ring finger.
And then he came to my ring. Peter’s ring.
He slowly released my hand and walked away down the path through the hills.
The sudden lack of support made me pitch forward, but I caught myself before falling. Sliding down the wall, I shivered from the sudden absence of his warmth. I sat there for a full five minutes, trying to recover my breath and put my thoughts in order.
Robert Cranwell was a very dangerous man.
26
“Are you cold?” He leaned my direction as he spoke, but he didn’t look at me.
“No.”
He crooked his arm for me, keeping his hand in his pocket. I hooked my arm through his and then returned my hand to my own pocket. Standing there, facing the wind, I reminded myself again that he flirted with everyone. Clearly he was involved in a relationship with Severine. The wind blew any romantic fantasies out of my mind.
“I’m sorry, Freddie. I had no right to do that. You always seem to be the victim when my old nature rebels against the new one.”
I could think of no reply.
Cranwell walked us to an area of rocks that jutted up from, its neighbors but was sheltered from the prevailing winds. He climbed up onto the highest of them. I nestled into the rock below it, leaning back against his legs, and drawing my own up in front of me.
Then Cranwell began to talk. “I’m not used to having a relationship with a woman that isn’t based on things physical. Freddie, I like you. You’re like no one else I’ve ever known. In my former life, the highest honor for that designation would have been to sleep with you. Of course, now, that should be the furthest thing from my mind. But it’s not. And I don’t know how to tell you how I feel about you without using my body to show you.”
Cranwell’s speech was very pretty. How he could have such high aspirations when he was sleeping with Severine was a little hypocritical in my opinion, but then, he never stopped and asked for my thoughts, so I kept them to myself.
“Every day I pray for the strength to respect you. And most of the time, I do. But once in a while, I don’t think, I feel. And that’s when the problems start. So, more than anything, I want you to know how much you mean to me. And I want you to know that I don’t ever want to hurt you. Or be the cause of delay on your way toward God.”
“Do we have to talk about Him all the time?”
“Freddie, how can we not talk about Him? Spoken or unspoken, He’s the cause of your being here. Why did you move to the chateau?-to flee from Him. You can’t flee from something unless it has presented itself. By your own flight, Freddie, you proclaim that God exists. If He didn’t, you wouldn’t have anything to run from. You believe, Freddie. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t hold such interest for me. And then there’s me: why did I come to your chateau?-to learn how to establish a life with Him. Away from everything I used to know. I could have gone anywhere, but I chose you because of Alix. Think how far back, how long ago, God planned this and how he reached back through history to bring us together. He amazes me.”
We stayed so long that I saw the stars shift in the sky. The thudding of the waves and the low whistle of wind through the rocks lulled my mind into numbness. I realized at some point that Cranwell had slid down his rock and that I was no longer leaning against his legs, but against his chest. I looked down, in wonder, to see his arms clasped around me, his knees drawn up next to mine.
Looking back on that night, I have no memory of how long we sat like that, but it was long enough that we were breathing in unison; his body had molded so close that it felt like my own.
“We need to go.”
He brought his mouth close to my ear. “Wait.”
“We need to go.”
Although I didn’t mind being Cranwell’s friend, I was not going to get into a relationship with him. Not while he was with Severine. I couldn’t trust him.
Clambering to my feet, I realized for the second time that night just how warm Cranwell had kept me against the chill.
We hiked back down to the car and snuck as quietly as we could back up to our rooms.
The next morning, it took three rinses of conditioner to get the knots out of my hair. And I was trying to do it in a standard French hotel bathtub/shower which had no shower curtain. By the third rinse, I was extremely peeved at Cranwell and the game he was trying to play.
With great impatience, I pulled on a pair of slim black pants and an ice-blue turtleneck sweater. After tugging on a pair of black square-heeled boots and winding my hair into a knot, I tramped downstairs to the dining area.
When I rounded the corner, I saw that Cranwell was already there. He was wearing an outfit I was wild about: black wide-wale cords and a tweedy charcoal roll-neck sweater. He rose from his table when I entered the dining area. If he were a scoundrel, at least he was a gentleman about it.
He must have read my mood, because he didn’t try to speak to me but kept his nose stuck in an
The coffee was sour, the bread was stale, and the croissants were greasy. But a hungry girl has to eat. When the bread was finished and I’d read the entire front and back pages of Cranwell’s paper, I scraped my chair back from the table.
Cranwell got up too, folded his paper, and tucked it under his arm.
He walked me back to my room, but before he passed by and down the hall to his, he leaned against my doorjamb.
It blocked me from opening the door.
