Simply Love

approach to intimacy sent her scurrying into her mind, where she was safe from her emotions.

She could not impose a frigid iceberg of a body on Sydnam, who deserved so much more.

Friendship would not be sufficient to offer. Only love might be-but she did not know what love was, not sexual, marital love, at least. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered what Lady Rosthorn had said one morning out on the cliffs.

…the real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

But she did not trust love. Love had let her down at every turn-in the persons of her mother, Henry Arnold, her father, her sister. And her love for her pupil, Prue Moore, had led to disaster. Love had caused her nothing but pain. She was afraid to love Sydnam or to be loved by him. It was as well that there was no real question of love between them.

“Anne,” Sydnam said softly, restoring her wandering mind to the present, “perhaps by tomorrow morning you will have different thoughts. Shall I ask you again before you leave?”

“No,” she said. And looking ahead, she could see the village approaching. “It has been a lovely afternoon, Sydnam, has it not? Let us just remember it and be grateful for it.”

Bottle it up, cage it up, hide it away with all its imperfections and lost possibilities.

“It has been pleasant,” he agreed.

But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.

She smiled as they entered the village and he greeted an elderly villager who was sitting on an old chair outside the door of his cottage, smoking a pipe.

“You spoke in Welsh,” she said as they drove on.

“I did.” He turned his head to grin at her. “I wished him a good afternoon-prynhawn da-and asked how he did and how his daughter and son-in-law did. Are you impressed?”

“Vastly,” she said.

They laughed.

It struck her then that she would miss more than just him. She would miss this place. She would miss Wales. It did not surprise her at all that it had become home to him, that he intended to spend the rest of his life here.

She envied him.

Perhaps if…

No. No, she would not even think of that.

But ah, she would miss him. And how she wished suddenly that they could go back to Ty Gwyn and set right what had gone wrong there. But there was only the future left-almost none of it that they would share. And that little bit would be an agony. She wished she could click her fingers and find herself two weeks farther on in her life, the pain of tomorrow’s departure well in the past.

She turned her head to gaze at his profile again, to imprint it upon her memory.

Sydnam drove the gig straight back to the stables. The others had not yet returned from their excursion, a groom told them.

And so instead of walking the short distance to the house and taking their leave of each other within the next few minutes, they strolled away from the house, and their steps took them without conscious volition in the direction of the hill they had climbed the night of the country dancing. They climbed it again now and stood on the top, looking out over the sea, which was a deep blue in the late afternoon light, while the land was bathed in the golden glow of a sun that was beginning to sink in the direction of the western horizon.

They were standing a couple of feet apart, two friendly strangers who just happened to have lain together an hour or so ago.

It had been a mistake, but they had no more time together in which to regret it.

He heard her swallow. He heard the gurgle in her throat. And he knew that though she had cringed from the intimacy of sex with him, she liked him, she would find leaving him difficult. She was his friend-it was gift enough.

“I will miss you,” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice, though steady, was higher pitched than usual. “I did not want to come, you know. It seemed horribly presumptuous to come only on an invitation from Lady Hallmere. As the carriage approached Glandwr, I would have done anything in the world to be going back to Bath. But now I find it hard to leave.”

She did not have to leave. She could stay here with him for the rest of her life. But he did not say so aloud. He knew the impossibility of it. And she had made her decision back at Ty Gwyn. She had said no.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come back another year.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

But they both knew she would not. They both knew that once she left tomorrow they would never see each other again.

And if it was true that they were just friends, that it was merely loneliness that had brought and held them together, it would not matter that they would never see each other again. Not really. They would quickly forget and resume the normal course of their lives.

But he knew he would not forget.

Losing Anne Jewell was going to be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of his life.

He reached for her hand, and her fingers curled about his and clung tightly.

“I have enjoyed knowing you, Anne Jewell,” he said.

“And I you, Sydnam Butler.”

He turned his head to look at her and they both smiled.

Perhaps there was a possibility…Perhaps if she were given time to…

But she pulled her hand abruptly away from his even as he opened his mouth to speak and pointed in the direction of the house and driveway.

“Here they come,” she cried. “I must be there when David arrives. I have been away from him all day. Oh, I do hope he has come to no harm.”

A line of carriages was making its way up the driveway.

“Go,” he said. “You can be there on the terrace waiting for him by the time he arrives.”

She turned her head to look at him.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll take the shortcut back to the cottage.”

She hesitated for only a moment, an instant’s indecision in her face, and then she turned and ran down the hill as she had the other night, when he had run beside and a little ahead of her to reach the bottom before her.

He looked after her now and wondered if he was sorry or glad that he had been prevented from speaking, from begging her to reconsider.

He rather thought he was glad.

Or would be by next week.

Or next year.

Or the next lifetime.

Anne was very close to tears by the time she reached the terrace just as the first of the carriages rolled to a stop before the doors. She was desperate to see her son, to hear his voice, to hold him in her arms. And yet she was aware too that she had just left Sydnam behind, without any sort of good-bye, that in all probability she would never see him again.

But she hated good-byes. She hated them. It was better this way.

David came tumbling out of the second carriage as soon as he spied her standing there and came dashing toward her, his legs pumping, his eyes sparkling, his mouth in motion, the volume of his treble voice almost deafening. She caught him up in a tight hug, laughing, and kissed the top of his head.

“You should have been there, Mama…Cousin Joshua…and you should have seen me…Davy…and then we…Lord Aidan…it was such fun… Cousin Joshua…Becky and Marianne were scared of the winding stairs, but I helped them up and Lady Aidan said I was a perfect gentleman and…Alexander…Cousin Joshua and Daniel…the little ones…I wish you had been there, Mama, to see…”

Anne laughed again as they made their way up to the nursery. She had missed most of the details of his day,