Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(45)

He affected a dislike of fresh air and the outdoors for her amusement, she suspected. She did not for a moment believe that he was the hothouse plant he pretended to be—and she had once accused him of being.

“Mmm.” She turned her head to kiss the back of his hand.

“What do you want of life, Viola?” he asked her. “What do you most want?”

It was unlike him to ask such questions. He must be in a mellow mood. She turned her head to look through the window again. It was not easy to answer. The simplest questions very rarely were. What did she want? Happiness? But that was far too vague. Love? Still too vague. Meaning? But no one was ever going to spell out the meaning of life for her. What, then? She could not seem to focus upon anything specific. Except—

“Someone to care,” she said. “Are we all identified by labels, Marcel? I have always been daughter or sister, wife, mother, sister-in-law, grandmother, countess, mother-in-law. Perhaps it is why I was so disoriented when the truth came out after Humphrey’s death and some of those labels were stripped away from me, even my name. Oh, I know there are people who care for me. I am not self-pitying enough to imagine myself unloved and unappreciated. I am very well blessed with family and friends. But— Well, I am going to sound self-pitying anyway. It seems to me there has never been anyone who cares about me, the person who dwells within the daughter and mother and all the rest. No one even knows me. Everyone thinks they do, but no one really does. Sometimes it feels as though I do not even know myself. I am so sorry. I do not know quite what I am talking about. But you did ask.”

“I did, indeed.” His hand was gripping her shoulder more tightly.

The rain had stopped. For a few moments there was a glimpse of blue sky through a break in the clouds. A few multicolored leaves, blown far too soon from their branches, were strewn over the ferns, which were tossing wildly in the wind.

“And you,” she said. “What do you want most of life, Marcel?”

“Pleasure,” he said after a few moments of silence. “It is the only sensible thing to wish for.” And yet it seemed to her there was a sort of bleakness in his voice.

“Like this?” she asked, resting her cheek against his hand. “This escape?”

“Yes,” he said. “Precisely like this. Come to bed, Viola.”

It was the only time they went to bed during those two days, though they retired early both nights. He made love to her in silence and more swiftly than usual, without the lengthy foreplay at which he was so skilled. Yet she came to a shattering climax a few moments before he did—he always waited for her. He rolled off her almost immediately but kept his arms about her as he drew the bedcovers warmly up about them. He settled her head on his shoulder and laid his cheek against the top of her head before they both pretended to sleep. She was sure it was pretense on both sides.

There was so much pleasure, so much . . . vividness in these days of physical passion she was living through. She was nowhere near having had enough of him. She never would be. She knew that now beyond any doubt. And he was not done with her yet either. She would know if he were. She would sense withdrawal, loss of intensity and interest. He was not done with her. But there was something . . .

An edge of melancholy had crept into their affair with the autumn.

She suspected—no, she knew—that they had arrived at the beginning of the end.





Eleven





The Earl of Riverdale’s carriage made excellent progress after it left Bath and arrived without incident at the town where Viola had last been seen. They did not have the name of the inn at which the hired coachman had set down his passengers, it was true, but it did not take them long to find it. They were there by the middle of the evening.

The innkeeper remembered the two passengers concerned, a lady and a gentleman. He did not remember their name, however, if he had ever heard it. They had not taken a room and therefore had not signed the register. The reason he remembered was that the gentleman had made inquiries about the hire of a carriage, and there had been one here, a perfectly decent one. Far more decent than the one in which they had arrived, that was for sure. But the gentleman had gone off into the town anyway to look for something better and had come back with a spanking new carriage and horses—and even a coachman to drive it. The gentleman’s wife had remained at the inn, drinking coffee in the private parlor. The innkeeper had no idea where they had gone once they left. Perhaps one of the ostlers who had been on duty then would remember, or perhaps the maid who had served the lady had heard something. But she was off duty now.

The group from Bath took rooms for the night, and after an early breakfast the following morning Joel and Alexander went into the town while Abigail and Elizabeth had another cup of coffee in the private parlor and questioned the serving girl, who had been sent in by the innkeeper. She was looking pale and saucer eyed as she curtsied.

“Yes, I do remember her, my lady,” she said, addressing herself to Elizabeth. “She was waiting for the gentleman to return. But I do not remember their name. I don’t think she said.”

“She left no message?” Elizabeth asked hopefully.

If the girl hesitated for a moment, neither of her two listeners noticed or made anything of it. “No, my lady,” she said while her hands twisted the sides of her apron—the new one that had cost her so dearly out of her wages. “But she wouldn’t have left one with me anyway. I only brought the coffee. You could ask at the desk.”