Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(41)

He set his hands at her waist, drew her against him, and kissed her openmouthed and at some length. His mouth was hot in contrast to the uncomfortable coldness of her person.

You must not fall in love, an inner voice of reason cautioned. You really must not.

Oh, but there is no fear of that, she protested silently. I am merely enjoying a brief escape from my life.

“There is a law of duality,” he said, “that insists, as laws often do, that what goes up must come down. Sometimes, however, when one least wants the law to reverse itself, it does.”

She looked up the hillside to the cottage, so idyllic and picturesque among the trees and ferns, climbing plants adorning its walls. It also looked welcoming with the one bedchamber window wide open and a line of smoke rising out of the chimney. Some of the leaves about them were changing color.

“It does look like rather a long climb,” she admitted.

She was out of breath halfway up and had to pause and cling to a tree trunk while pretending she had stopped to admire the view. She was out of breath again at the top and puffing inelegantly. He was breathing as though he had just taken a leisurely stroll along Bond Street in London—except that his boots had lost some of their luster.

“Your cheeks are becomingly rosy, Viola,” he said. “And so is your nose—perhaps not quite as becomingly.”

“Gallantry is really not your forte, is it?” she said.

“As I warned you,” he reminded her. “I believe it would be more accurate to describe your nose as adorably rosy.”

“Oh, well-done,” she said, and turned to precede him into the house.

“Never let it be said,” he murmured from behind her, “that I do not think quickly on my feet.”

She laughed.





Ten





After a week at the cottage, Marcel discovered with something of a surprise not only that he was still deeply immersed in this new affair of his, but that he was also thoroughly enjoying himself. Not enjoying just the affair—he would expect that. It never took him any time at all to put an end to any liaison he was not enjoying. No, he was enjoying . . . himself.

When he had thought of coming to the Devonshire cottage, it had seemed to him that it was the ideal place for the uninterrupted conduct of the affair. He had pictured them cozily ensconced in the house, the valley merely the secluded background that would cut them off from prying eyes and the distractions of civilization and the normal course of their lives. His family would not in a million years think of searching for him there, even if for some unfathomable reason they should consider searching at all, and her family would not even know of its existence.

He had not considered the place in terms of wild natural beauty and fresh—sometimes cold—air and bracing walks and conversation that stretched his mind to its limits. The very thought would have given him pause.

He had been right in his main expectation. They enjoyed long nights of sensual pleasures, which had not yet even begun to pall upon him. Quite the contrary, in fact. He was even growing slightly uneasy at the possibility that they never would, though he was being ridiculous, of course. Any day now he was going to grow restless, not just to return to civilization, but to regain his freedom so that he could look about him for some new source of pleasure.

The sexual delights, however, had been confined to the nights, while their days had been filled with almost nothing but the bracing outdoors, God help him. They went up and down the steep valley sides on both sides of the river as other people might ascend and descend stairs within a house. They walked pathways and no pathways and rough headlands. They almost got blown to glory one afternoon while tramping along the top of towering cliffs overlooking the sea, the wind in their faces before they turned back to be blown home. One morning they walked up to the village and through it to descend a steep flight of rough-hewn steps and an equally steep fall of large rocks and smaller pebbles to a small sandy cove. All they got for their pains on that occasion was sand inside her shoes and caked on the outside of his boots, and sand inside every piece of clothing on their persons and even in their hair. Oh, and there was the enormous pleasure of huffing their way back up to the village afterward and from there back to the cottage.

“Are you trying to wear my legs down to the knees, Viola?” he asked when they were almost home. But she just laughed at him. She did a lot of that during the week—laughing at him. Oh, and with him too.

He took great delight in her laughter. Even more in her smiles.

“I want to walk along beside the river to the sea one day,” she said. “I hope you will not be worn down to the knees, Marcel. You would be shorter than I am, and I should dislike that.”

“I would think you would enjoy the sense of power towering over me would bring you,” he said, and she laughed again.

And they talked. They were standing in the middle of the bridge one day at the end of their first week there and she had executed her long-promised pirouette and made the expected comments upon the breathtaking beauty of their surroundings. Actually he agreed with her, though he did not fling his arms wide, an ecstatic look on his face, as he turned once about. He would have been quite content to stand there in silent companionship with her with all his senses alive. Good God, he had senses he had never even suspected before. But she decided to talk.

“Why do you think we were born?” she asked, her arms resting along the waist-high parapet of the bridge as she gazed down into the water. “What do you think is the point of it all?”