Forever and Ever (21 page)

Instead he smiled. “What do you want to know?”

“What was it like when you were a boy? Were you happy?”

“Sometimes.”

“Were your brothers kind to you?”

“Sometimes.”

“And your parents?”

“Always.”

She felt relieved. “Why were you unhappy? Sometimes.”

He sent her a look through his long lashes, assessing her interest. Then he sat up and began to sift sand through his fingers. “Things were expected of me.”

“What kinds of things?”

He kept his head down, but she saw his lips quirk. “Great things.”

More silence. She sighed. She wasn’t going to pull the story out of him word by word; if he wanted to tell her, he could tell her. She wound her arms around her knees and stared out at the white-lipped waves.

“We were poor,” he finally resumed. “You’ve seen Trewythiel—you can imagine what it was like.” But he glanced at her briefly, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was: no, she really couldn’t. “Practically everyone in the village worked in the tin mine at Feock, including the women and children. My family was no exception. When the price of ore was high, we lived all right, and when it dropped, we starved.”

“Did you work in the mine?”

“No, not me. I told you, I was special. I was the youngest son, the golden one. I went to school, not the mine. And when there wasn’t any money for school, Reverend Gregg tutored me for nothing. You met his wife today. His widow.”

She nodded. “Did you hate it?” she asked in spite of herself, too interested to keep quiet. “The schooling, not being allowed to do what everyone else did?”

“No. And yes. I loved the reading and studying, but I was also ashamed of it. I tried not to enjoy it, tried to make it a burden. That way I didn’t feel as guilty for not doing anything useful to help my family survive.”

“What did they want you to be?”

“A gentleman and a scholar.” He gave a short laugh. “No, I’m joking, of course. They were deluded, but they weren’t insane. What they wanted for me—it was never named, never put in words. But everyone knew I was the hope for the future. I was supposed to find a profession—the law, politics, journalism—that would give me enough power to make things change.”

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “You were a
communist
,” she realized all at once.

This time his laughter was truly amused. “Do you even know what a communist is, Sophie?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, blushing. She had no idea. “Something very, very bad.”

“And how do you know that?”

“You know how.” She smiled sheepishly. “My uncle.”

His eyes twinkled—he liked her best when she was being honest. She liked herself best that way, too. “Someday we’ll have a long talk about communism,” he promised. “But for now, just believe me when I tell you it’s not my philosophy. I want reform, not revolution.”

“All right, I believe you.” She watched him lie down, clasping his hands under his head, and close his eyes. “So,” she prodded, afraid he was going to sleep. “Go on, finish telling the story. You told my uncle you went to a university. How could you afford it?”

“I was given a scholarship. Not much of one, but then, it wasn’t much of a university.”

“Where was it? Is it?”

“Was it—it’s closed. Manchester. Afterward, there was no money to study at one of the Inns of Court, so that left articling myself to a lawyer for five years, at the end of which I’d be a solicitor, not a barrister. It was disappointing, but I told myself it was the next best thing.”

“You wanted to be a barrister?”

“Desperately.”

“What happened?”

“After three years, the man I was apprenticed to died.” He rubbed his eyes with his hand, momentarily hiding his face. “Right after that, my mother died. She was the last—there was no one left but Cathy.”

“And Jack.”

“And Jack. But Cathy was sick, and Jack couldn’t take care of her and make a living at the same time. So I moved to Truro—”

“Where had you been living?”

“Falmouth. I moved to Truro, because we had an aunt there and she’d said Cathy could stay with her. I began clerking in a law office. The pay was miserable, but it was better than nothing—which was what I’d earned before.”

“Nothing!”

“Room and board; that’s what apprentice lawyers make. And then . . . then she died. She was eleven years old.” He put his forearm over his eyes, and all she could see was his mouth, the lips tight with pain. “That was the worst. Worse than any of the others. Much worse. Because she was so young. Jack and I . . .” He stopped talking, and she didn’t urge him to continue this time. She brushed his sleeve, then took her hand away, not certain if he’d felt the touch or not.

She watched the gulls wheel in the blue sky, their cries shrill against the steady sighing of the surf, and she thought of her father, and how his death had devastated her. What must it have been like for Connor to lose loved one after loved one, each as dear to him as her father had been to her? Inconceivable. She could not imagine it.

He sat up.

“If you don’t want to talk anymore—”

“No, I want to finish it,” he said with his face turned toward the sea. “I owe you my life story. Such as it is.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I’ll make it quick. I was at loose ends, as they say. My clerk’s job meant nothing; in fact, it was intolerable. I was wasting my life. Jack had begun to get sick, but he was still working at Carn Barra. He introduced me to some men—reformists, agitators. Communists, for all I know,” he said with a skewed smile. “I liked what they stood for—change—but not the way they wanted to accomplish it.”

“Violently,” she guessed.

“Some of them, yes. Then a man from the Rhadamanthus Society contacted me—”

“Excuse me, but what does that word mean? Why did they call it that?”

“Why, Sophie,” he chided, “I thought an educated lady like you would understand the reference.” She only cocked a patient eyebrow. “Rhadamanthus was one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld,” he explained. “Don’t you remember him from your
Aeneid
?”

“No. But how perfect—they named themselves after a mythological figure who sent souls to heaven or to hell, depending on his mood. You don’t find that just a trifle arrogant? A trifle overbearing? Just a wee bit—”

“Yes, I do,” he snapped. “I did before and I do now, but unlike you, I was broad-minded enough not to hold their name against them before I found out what they stood for.”

She dipped her head in mock contrition. “And what do they stand for?”

“Change, the same as the others. Only they were reasonable, pacific, bent on working from the inside, through the government. Shavers is their man. You and your uncle have no use for him, but at least he doesn’t advocate burning down the manor house. Or
strikes
,” he said deliberately, using the word to traumatize her, she knew.

“Do you still work for them?”

“No. I told you, I disassociated myself from them. The report they published on Guelder was preliminary, and they knew it and printed it anyway.”

“But you wrote it,” she said coolly. “Preliminary or not, they were your words.”

“Not completely.”

“No?”

“I gave them facts, and they turned them into an accusation. They changed the tone.”

“Ah. A distinction, forgive me for saying so, without a difference.”

“Do you think so?”

“I don’t know.” She looked away. “I don’t want to fight with you, Connor. No, I suppose not,” she finally conceded. “But it’s not the point anyway, is it? It’s not . . .”

“It’s not what you can’t forgive me for.”

She stared at him for a loaded moment, wondering if they would talk about it now, the thing he had done. But in the end, she scrambled to her feet, brushing sand from her skirts. “I think I’ll go for a walk,” she announced, and left him where he was.

She didn’t go far; the cove was small, and girded by impassable piles of fallen rock. He watched her bend to take her shoes off, then lift her skirts to dabble stockinged feet in the white-lace edge of the tide. The wind caught at her straw hat and whipped it off her head; she had to let go of her skirts to grab it back. Just then a wave batted at the hem of her frock, drenching it, and he thought he heard the light peal of her laughter as she dashed back, out of reach of the surf.

Her leggy, wild pony beauty startled him sometimes, took him unawares, because she liked to present to the world an altogether different picture of herself—poised, self-possessed, utterly competent. He loved the mix, all her fascinating contradictions, and he found it intensely exciting to think that she was his. His. The pretty girl darting after a tern along the wet shoreline, graceful as a wand—she belonged to him. No matter what happened. For better or worse.

He thought of the things he’d told her about himself, relieved because the whole truth was out at last. His fear that it would distance her from him even further had proven groundless; she’d heard him out calmly and with no visible horror. She knew it all now, there would be no more unpleasant surprises, at least not from his past. As for the future . . . it jolted him to realize he was looking forward to it. Maybe today, because they had finally let go a little of their pride, could mark the real beginning of their marriage. It was as if they’d taken the first step on a long road, not back to where they had been, before everything went to hell, but toward something new and unexplored, and even better. He hoped.

He couldn’t keep away from her. He got up and went toward her, plowing through the sand to the water’s edge. She was examining a piece of driftwood washed up by the tide, running her hand over the smooth sides. She didn’t see him until he was beside her. Then she smiled, and the color of her eyes was the color of the sea, and the wind teased and played with the ends of her golden hair. “Look,” she said, showing him her find. “Doesn’t it look like a bird?” He said it did, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat to keep from touching her. The water glittered like a blue enamel plate, scored by the long, slow lines of breakers parading in toward shore. Out to sea, the sun was dropping behind thin veins of gaudy cloud, orchid and gold, yellow and salmon pink. There was a bite in the wind; the warmth of the day was fading with the sun. Good: he wanted it to be night.

“Are you hungry?”

She nodded vigorously, widening her eyes at him as if he’d said something quite brilliant, something perfect. She brushed sand from the soles of her feet and slipped on her shoes. Her bonnet strings were knotted under her chin; he helped untie the knot, thinking of the day they’d met, wondering if she was remembering it, too. They walked home holding hands.

***

Sophie wouldn’t stop talking.

She was putting her nightgown on inside the narrow, three-sided partition that served as a dressing room, and under her constant chatter he could hear the sounds of cloth rustling and snaps unsnapping, shoes hitting the floor. And something else: a brush gliding through her hair? The topic of her monologue had finally shifted from the weather to food, and now she was telling him all about the meal they’d just eaten in the restaurant next door, as if he hadn’t been there with her. It was the sea air that made one ravenous, she opined; normally she herself was a rather dainty eater, delicate even. But she always made a point of eating fish when she was at the seashore, any kind of seafood, although shellfish were her favorite, particularly prawns and mussels. One ought to eat a lot of fish when visiting seaside places, because of course then it was freshest, but also because it intensified the experience, didn’t it, made one feel more—unified with the ocean, the . . . She tapered off into silence, and he could imagine the blush on her face. He had the smile wiped off his own face by the time she appeared, buttoned to the throat in her dressing gown, her pretty hair down and gleaming around her shoulders. She looked relieved to see him already in bed, his mostly naked body decently covered up. “Shall I close the shutters?” she asked, moving uncertainly toward the balcony.

“If you like.”

“Are you chilly?”

“No. Are you?”

“No. The wind blows from the west, so we must be facing south. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Anyway, it’s not cold. Do you smell flowers? Marvelous how the fuchsias bloom the year-round here. Camellias, too. I can’t see the moon—I think it might rain.”

She ran down again, and finally there was nothing for her to do but come to bed. She sat on the edge with her back to him to take off the robe she’d just put on. He’d pulled the sheet and blanket back for her; she slid in and covered herself up in one smooth, fast movement.

“Don’t blow out the lamp.”

She turned back from the night table, looking at him inquiringly. “Aren’t you sleepy?”

“Not particularly. It’s early.”

“I’m sleepy all the time.”

“And hungry. And not just because of the sea air.”

She smiled slightly, and put her hand on her stomach. “No.”

He laid his hand over hers. “We never talk about it. The baby. Are you perfectly well, Sophie?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good. What is it like? How does it feel?”

“It felt ruddy awful at first,” she said feelingly.

“Were you sick?”

“Yes, very.”

“I’m sorry.” He gave her hand a squeeze.

“But now—I think I’ve never been healthier in my life. I feel very strong—when I’m not sleeping. Very . . . alive.”

“Are you glad?”

“Oh . . .” She sighed. “I can’t say. Yes, sometimes. Euphoric, really. Other times . . .”

“Not so glad.”

“It’s frightening.”

“Yes.” He moved her hand aside, so he could touch her stomach. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

“That’s because I’m lying down. I can feel a bulge sometimes. I’m starting to get fat.”

He laughed. “Let’s see.” He drew the bedclothes down, and cupped her belly through nothing but her cotton nightgown. “Oh, very fat,” he murmured, stroking her with his palm. The quality of the stillness between them changed, became breathless, and he realized he’d been waiting all day for this. “The night we made love,” he said quietly. She exhaled slowly, motionless, expectant. “After the first time, I tried not to make a baby with you.”