Simply Love

“Good-bye, sir.” The boy bobbed his head in a quick gesture of respect and half dived into the carriage out of the rain.

And so they were left alone together for the last time, he and Anne Jewell-with people beyond the open door into the house on one side and people inside the row of carriages on the other side. The setting could hardly have been more public.

But he ignored everything except the woman standing before him.

Anne. Whom he liked exceedingly well. Whom perhaps he loved.

No-whom he did love.

She was leaving. He would never see her again even though his body felt its knowledge of hers like a dull ache.

And his heart? Well, it felt now rather as if it had acquired lead weights to drag it downward.

“You will remember your promise?” he asked, offering her his hand.

“Yes.”

She was looking at his chin. But she set her left hand in his. He bent his head over it and raised it to his lips for a few moments. He was terribly aware then that they had an audience-which quite possibly had assiduously turned its collective attention elsewhere since undoubtedly it had collectively arranged for this final, brief tete-a-tete.

She looked up into his face as he raised his head and released her hand, and he could see the drizzle beaded on her cheeks and eyelashes. A frown creased her brow.

“Good-bye,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Good-bye.” Somehow he smiled at her.

She turned and scrambled up the steps into the carriage with the children before he could offer to assist her, and her attention was taken by Freyja’s young daughter, who opened her arms to be picked up.

The coachman put up the steps and slammed the door shut before climbing to his perch, and the carriage rocked into motion and turned almost immediately to follow Hallmere’s down the driveway.

She did not look out.

Sydnam was scarcely aware that several other people had stepped out of the house to wave.

He felt lonelier than he ever remembered feeling.

Just this time yesterday he had been looking with satisfaction at the sunshine and anticipating a whole afternoon alone with her at Ty Gwyn.

Just yesterday.

Now she was gone.

A hand came to rest on his right shoulder, and he looked up into Bewcastle’s austere, impassive face.

“We will withdraw to the library, Sydnam, since you happen to be here,” he said, “and discuss what is to become of Ty Gwyn.”

Anne was exhausted with play by the time she arrived in Bath. The nurse’s motion sickness was worse than ever on the return journey, and Anne vigorously kept the children amused so that they would not grow petulant with the tedium of long hours spent in the carriage.

When they stopped for meals and for the night, she was determinedly cheerful as she conversed with Joshua and Lady Hallmere. She would not for one moment have them believe that she was in low spirits, though in fact they were as low as they could possibly be.

How foolish of her to have believed that she could lie with a man and then simply forget about it.

How foolish to have believed that they could take away each other’s loneliness for an hour and remember simply with gratitude.

And how foolish to have hoped she could lie with Sydnam Butler and taken pleasure from the experience just as if she were a normal woman.

Memory was like a raw wound that each passing mile only aggravated.

She had known him. She had been known by him. And yet her body had somehow remained aloof from the wonder of it.

She had been terribly afraid that he would not come to say good-bye.

She had been terribly afraid that he would.

And then when he had come, when she had looked for the very last time into his handsome, damaged face, there had been only pain.

And the terrible temptation to tell him that she had changed her mind.

She had not.

They had gravitated toward each other during the past month and spent time with each other-ah, yes, and lain together-because they were both lonely.

But that explanation was wearing very thin.

Surely it was not just the knowledge that she was alone again, without a man in her life again, that caused the sharp pain in her throat and chest that would not go away?

She supposed she had fallen ever so slightly in love with Sydnam Butler. Or perhaps a whole lot in love with him.

She had fallen in love with an impossibility.

The carriages stopped outside Lady Potford’s house on Great Pulteney Street, since Joshua and his family were to stay there for a couple of nights before returning to Cornwall. The one carriage was to continue on its way to Daniel Street with the baggage, but Anne and David chose to walk the rest of the way in order to stretch their legs. Joshua insisted upon accompanying them. He offered Anne his arm. David walked close to his other side.

“Anne,” he said, “it was a pleasant month, was it not?”

“Very pleasant indeed,” she assured him. “Thank you so much for thinking to invite us, Joshua.”

“And yet here you both are,” he said, “Friday-faced on a Tuesday.”

“I am not-” Anne protested.

“I wish we could have stayed forever and ever,” David cried passionately. He had come very close to shedding tears again a short while ago as he said good-bye to Daniel and Emily and shook hands with Lady Hallmere.

“Yes, it would have been desirable,” Joshua agreed. “But all good things end, lad. If they did not, there would be no new good things to look forward to. If Miss Martin can spare you, perhaps you will both come to Penhallow for Christmas. That will give us all something new to look forward to.”

David, Anne suddenly noticed, was actually holding Joshua’s hand, something he normally considered quite beneath his nine-year-old dignity.

“Anne,” Joshua said, turning to her as they made their way up Sutton Street toward the school. “I am sorry Sydnam Butler does not live closer to Bath. Yours was a friendship we all watched with interest.”

She was very glad she had not realized that at the time.

“It was just a friendship,” she assured him.

“Was it?” He looked into her face.

But they had rounded the corner onto Daniel Street, and Claudia and Susanna, alerted by the arrival of the carriage with their bags, were out on the doorstep watching for them. Anne was swallowed up in hugs and greetings and laughter. And just as she drew free and looked beyond them to the doorway, she saw another lady standing there, looking tall and dark and slender and elegant and exquisitely fashionable-and smiling joyfully.

“Frances!” Anne exclaimed, and stepped into her open arms.

“Lucius and I are just back from the Continent,” Frances, the Countess of Edgecombe, told her, “and came to Bath on our way home to see if one of you would like to spend the final two weeks of the holiday with us at Barclay Court. Susanna is going to come. Anne, how delighted I am that you have arrived home just in time for me to see you. I never stop missing you. And just look how bronzed you are!”

Frances had found love in a snowstorm when her carriage ran into a snowbank, driven there by the reckless driving of the earl and his coachman as they overtook it. It had been hate at first sight-and love ever after. For some time after Frances’s wedding the three remaining friends had looked at life with more hope, though they had not admitted as much to one another.

“I would have hated missing you,” Anne said. “Oh, Frances, just look at you.”

But she turned back to the doorway before going inside and could see that David was right up in Joshua’s arms