Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(49)

“Is it not amazing,” she said, “how they make so much noise but are barely visible?”

“Amazing,” he agreed in the deliberately flat voice he used whenever he was teasing her enthusiasm.

She was not deterred. She had discovered this enthusiasm during the past couple of weeks and wondered why she had considered it so important all her life to quell it in the name of dignity.

It took them more than an hour to reach the sand of the beach—and the wind again. It slanted across the sea from the southwest unobstructed, ruffling the waves, taking their breath away, and flattening their clothes against them. He had to hold his hat on. The river, as it widened to flow in shallow runnels to the sea, had cut the beach in two. They strolled along their side of it, hand in hand, not talking. Often they did not. But it was never because they had run out of things to say. Sometimes there could be a more companionable feel to silence than to conversation. High cliffs rose to one side of them. The sea stretched to infinity on the other.

“I am glad the cottage was built in the valley, out of sight of all this,” she said.

“You do not like the sea?” he asked.

“Oh, I do.” She drew her hand from his and turned to see the whole panorama. The beach stretched for miles in both directions. Endlessly long waves were breaking in foam and flowing onto the wet sand some distance away before being sucked back into the deep. The air was cold and salty. A lone gull, buffeted by the wind, cried mournfully, or so it seemed. She must not ascribe human feelings to other creatures, though. “But I do not believe I would like to live close to it. It is too . . . elemental.”

“On that at least we are agreed.” He came to stand in front of her and dipped his head to kiss her. She leaned into him and kissed him back, seeking comfort and forgetfulness from him as well as warmth. They had been so very good, these weeks. The best of her life. Oh, by far the best. Why, then, had there been a thread of melancholy dragging at her spirits for the last few days, like a faintly throbbing bass note in an otherwise light and joyful melody?

“At least?” she said. “Are we not agreed upon most subjects?”

She had not meant it as a serious question. She was not sure he had taken it seriously. Except that suddenly it seemed to hang between them like a tangible thing. Were they not, in almost every way that mattered, very different from each other? It was easy to ignore that basic fact for a short idyll of a romantic affair. But it would not remain masked forever. Fortunately they did not have forever.

Fortunately?

She took a step to one side, fighting a certain inexplicable panic. “I am going to walk down to the edge of the wet sand,” she said.

I am going to . . . Not Let us . . . It had not been deliberate. Maybe he had not taken it that way. But he did not come with her. He remained where he was or he walked onward. She did not look back to see. Were affairs always this way? He would know. She did not. Did one suddenly know, without warning or any particular reason, that it was over? There was no reason. She was desperately happy here. She was deeply satisfied with their relationship, if it could be called that. But of course it could, however brief it would be. She was invigorated by his company and had come alive to his lovemaking. She still did not know how she was going to do without him once it was all over.

Soon, very soon, she would find out.

She stopped when she came to the edge of the wet sand. The tide must be on its way out, but the sand it had covered a short while ago had not dried yet. It gleamed with wetness in places. She felt isolated here, cut off from everything but her thoughts. She did not turn to look back. The wind whipped mercilessly at her.

Her daughters would be starting to worry. She had given no hint of where she was going or with whom, only that she was going. They would be starting to wonder what they would do if she never came back. She had not written again since she came here. Her great escape was seeming more and more like her great selfishness. And she was starting to worry about them, or at least to wonder. She was missing them. She was missing her grandchildren, or at least the frequent news she always had of them in Camille’s letters.

She was worried about Harry. Always, always, always. Pointlessly worried. There was nothing she could do to ensure his safety. But she should at least be there to read any letter that came from the Peninsula. Oh, would the wars never end?

And what had happened to her moral core? Morality had been her compass through her life until . . . how long ago? Two weeks? Three? She was losing track of time. But in that time she had been living a life of sin. Or had she? Was it sinful to love a man and to allow him to love her? It was not love, though, what was between them. It was lust.

It felt like more than lust. But that was self-deception. He had never pretended that this was anything more than business as usual for him. How many days ago had he told her what he wanted most out of life was pleasure? She had known it from the start, though. She had not been deceived. She had come with him because she had wanted pleasure too.

Because she had lusted after him, and still did.

She lifted her face to the wind and closed her eyes. A gull—the same one?—cried mournfully again. She felt horribly, despicably lonely. But she deserved no better. She turned and walked back up the beach. He was standing surely in the very spot where she had left him. She stopped a short distance away.

“I need to go home,” she said.

And then felt sheer, raw panic.