A Dark and Distant Shore (25 page)

She could see how much it hurt, but for the moment, wouldn’t spare him.

He had no excuse, not even the excuse that gaming was in his blood. He enjoyed the challenge of cards; enjoyed trying to assess the quality of a horse. But the dice box held no magnetic attraction for him, and he felt no compulsion to go on betting when the odds were stacked against him. It was his own judgement, not the dice, that had failed him again and again. Yet he had persisted, regardless of reason, urged on by a kind of desperate, inexorable hope. He had chosen to go on betting –
chosen,
dear God! – and had lost all the way along the line.

After a time, he said, ‘Not dedicated, only desperate.’

They had reached a small clearing which, for a marvel, was empty. Knowing all they needed to know about each other, they still knew very little about each other’s lives. Now, laying a hand on Perry’s arm, Vilia forced him down on to a picturesque iron bench. ‘Why!’ she said. ‘Tell me why.’

And then it all poured out. Charlotte, a young widow in holiday mood, glowing under his careless attentions. His own weariness of being dunned by his tailor and his bootmaker, of being put to the most complex shifts to pay his debts. His feeling that, if he could start again with a clean slate, far from the cards and clubs and racecourses that had been his life – and his downfall – since he was sixteen, he might do better. The leisurely attractions of a country estate, with a pretty, lively wife, and no financial worries. None of it had been cold-bloodedly planned. Somehow, it had all just come about, and he had been content to drift with the tide.

But nothing had turned out as he had hoped. Nothing ever happened at Glenbraddan. He had no responsibilities, no occupation, no friends. When he had invited some acquaintances for a week’s sport, Charlotte had been ill at ease and fertile with reasons why he shouldn’t invite anyone again. Nor had he wanted to. Once home, Charlotte had lost her vivacity and become a bustling, preoccupied housewife. He had allowed his exasperation to show a little, and it had made things worse. He had tried, then, to spend most of his days outdoors, which meant that the early dark of winter had sometimes caught him far from home, and forced him to seek a bed for the night in some estate worker’s cottage. And sometimes – he hesitated and then plunged – sometimes he had been driven to seek comfort from a – a kind-hearted local girl. He had...

Vilia gave a strangled gasp. ‘Not Kirsty Macintyre?’ Then, at the sight of his face, she surrendered to helpless laughter. When she spoke again, her words were almost indistinguishable. ‘Oh, my dearest love!’ she wailed. ‘What a
dreadful
time you must have had! And sharing her with Magnus, too!’

He couldn’t believe his ears, but even the mention of Magnus wasn’t enough to divert him. ‘You don’t mind? You’re not hurt? Or jealous?’

She struggled to control herself as a small group of people strolled into sight, a young woman with a nursemaid and two children so well-behaved that they looked as if they had been starched and pressed. The young woman looked at her disapprovingly.

When they had gone, Vilia turned and said, with the slanting smile that stopped his heart, ‘Jealous? Why should I be? Why should I be jealous of what happened before we knew each other?’ The smile faltered a little. ‘It’s only the future I’m jealous of.’

This time, neither of them saw the people sauntering by. He, who had been so bitter with himself, so deeply ashamed, suddenly felt as he supposed the devout must feel when granted absolution. It seemed to him, now, as if there was nothing she would not understand and forgive.

And because of that he went on, almost without realizing, into deeper and far more dangerous waters. Smiling back at her, ruefully, he said, ‘Of all the mistakes of my life, marrying Charlotte was the worst and least forgivable. I chose an irresponsible way out of my irresponsible troubles, and I can’t break out of the trap except by wounding my daughter, and my stepchildren, and Charlotte herself. Perhaps mortally.’ His eyes, focused on a patch of shrubs on the other side of the clearing, were full of pain. ‘For, however little I deserve it, Charlotte loves me very much.’

It was his own need, perhaps, that made Perry think that Vilia had more wisdom than she did, in fact, possess, for she was not very experienced in human relationships, not very perceptive. She couldn’t believe that Charlotte would be much hurt, except in her vanity. She remembered the condescending woman of the Northern Meeting ball, and the much younger Charlotte who had come to visit the little girl at Kinveil. She had talked of sending some children’s books over, the kind with bright red marbled bindings and columns of nice, big, black print, and stories about Puss in Boots, and Blue Beard, and Cinderella. Vilia, offended, had refused, and had come off very much the victor of the counter by saying that she had her grandfather Gideon’s library to draw on, and had just finished studying Mr Wood’s
Views of Palmyra
and the Duke of Buckingham’s
Short Discourse upon the reasonableness of men’s having a religion,
and was about to embark on William Lithgow’s
Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations in Europe, Asia, and Affrica.

‘A mésalliance,’ Perry went on morosely. ‘And I have no idea what to do about it. For, if I stay with her, it will be a living death.’

It was a long time before Vilia was able to force the words out. ‘If you stay with her?’

Almost savagely, he turned to her. ‘I swore I would go back, and I meant it. I said I didn’t expect to see you – and I meant that, too.’

Her mind wasn’t capable of absorbing it. ‘See
me
?
’

‘Oh, yes! After the Northern Meeting ball, Charlotte was convinced that you were at the root of all our troubles. But I told her I was only concerned with my investments. I thought I was speaking the truth. And she said, “But we can manage without them!” and of course we can. All it would mean would be that I should be wholly dependent on my wife.’

Her mind was reeling and spinning, like a leaf trapped on the edge of a whirlpool. She hadn’t thought about the future at all. She had refused to think about it, because all she wanted to think about was herself and Perry, and the joy of lying in his arms. She looked down at the silk-sheathed handle of her parasol, grasped in slender, suddenly rigid hands. ‘But...’

‘Even if I win, and pay off my debts, what can I do?’ She thought that, if they had been alone, he would have shaken her. ‘Forget about honour and chivalry and all the spiritual virtues. Forget even about decent, civilized behaviour.
Tell me, what can I do
?
I’m a gentleman. That means I’m fit for nothing. Nothing but to live on my capital – which doesn’t exist – or on someone’s charity. On my wife’s charity. I have thought, and thought, and thought, in these last days. If I win, there might just possibly be some hope for us, but if I lose there is nothing in the whole wide world I can do but go to Mungo Telfer and beg him to save me. And after that, I must live out the rest of my life as my wife’s pensioner.’

‘And if Mr Telfer won’t save you?’ she asked through dry lips.

He sank his face in his hands. ‘How do I know? Flee to America, perhaps.’

‘You think that might be a more congenial place for an unemployable gentleman? What would you do there?’

Flinching a little, he said, ‘Survive, no more. But at least I wouldn’t be hag-ridden by all the rules and customs about what a gentleman may, and may not do.’

She couldn’t see his face, but her eyes scanned the supple muscles of shoulder and thigh outlined under the dark blue coat and pale, glove-soft leather breeches, and she felt a strong, subversive quiver run through her. Mind and body wholly at odds, she said dully, ‘I see I have no place in your plans for the future.’

His head came up at that, eyes flaming. ‘My darling,
why
am I holding on?
Why
haven’t I resigned myself to my own unforgivable, inconceivable stupidity?
Why
haven’t I gone trailing home already, like a cur brought to heel?’

Even in childhood, she had learned that the human race could be divided into two kinds of people, the invincible pessimists who, always expecting the worst, failed to recognize the best when it came, and those others in whom hope sprang eternal. The safe and responsible; the reckless and the vital. It was only the optimists, dangerous though they were, who could light up a room with their presence, or melt one’s soul with the warmth of their spirit. There were so few of them.

‘You were born out of your time,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘You should have been an adventurer, a corsair, a Crusader.’

‘Perhaps. Every generation, I suppose, gambles in its own way. It’s my misfortune that, in ours, one gambles with one’s money rather than one’s life.’

She gave a choke of overwrought laughter. ‘You sound more like a highwayman than a corsair!’

‘Have a care, madam! I may yet be reduced to holding up your coach on Hounslow Heath!’

‘And that would be a great waste of time, sir!’ Her laugh was more natural. ‘For I have no money or jewels, and I should be very much surprised if my coach would hold together if you waved a pistol at it!’

‘Perhaps it’s as well, then, that it would be you I wanted, not your money or your jewels or your coach.’

The tone in which it was said brought a warm colour to her cheeks, and the glow back to her eyes. Her voice trembled a little as she said, not without difficulty, ‘We have – we have no idea what will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Must I go on my knees to you?’

He was sitting forward, forearms resting on his thighs and the knuckles of his clasped hands white with stress, but he refused to help her.

She struggled on. ‘Can’t we live while we have the chance?’

It was wrong, all wrong. Last Sunday had been unplanned, their passion ungovernable. There could be no such excuse, Perry thought, if he were to take her in his arms again. That would be a real, deliberate betrayal of trust, of Charlotte’s love for him, and Andrew’s for Vilia. He had given Charlotte his word – and his word meant something to Perry who, despite all his faults, tried to live according to the code of honour he had learned in his father’s house. And then, with bitter self-mockery, he recognized that he was deceiving himself. There had been no excuse at all for last Sunday, and what right did he have now, in any case, to invoke a gentleman’s code of honour? If he stubbornly refused to do what he so consumingly wanted to do, it would only be another betrayal – this time, of Vilia.

She had been watching him, her eyes huge and vulnerable, but when he turned it was with a suddenness that startled her. And then it was all right, because he was smiling at her with the heart-stopping brilliance that was all his own. He lifted her hand lightly and kissed it, and although an onlooker would have seen only a courtly gesture, a little old-fashioned, his lips burned against her skin. ‘Why not?’ he murmured. ‘Why not?’

She wouldn’t have believed that the joy could be greater, or the ecstasy more complete. But this time they had all afternoon, and part of the evening; and this time, too, she knew where she was going, the pattern of her journey and the rapture of its end.

On the previous Sunday, he had led her slowly and with infinite self-control along the paths of beguilement, but today her desire was as urgent as his and even the haste of their first passion was beautifully, magically perfect. Swiftly, unerringly, he took them both straight to the heights, and held them there, quivering, glorying in it, for just so long as they could bear it. They were together all the way, and together, blindly and wonderfully at the end.

When they had lain in drowsy enchantment for a little, he raised himself to one elbow and looked at her. With the slim figure exposed, her hair loosened and silver-blonde on the pillow, and her fine skin warmed by the wildfire that had consumed them, her allure was breathtaking. Whatever happened, he knew that for the rest of his life he would never be complete without her. Absorbed, almost unthinking, he murmured, ‘If ever any beauty I did see, which I desir’d, and got, ’twas but a dreame of thee.’

The green eyes opened, crinkling a little with laughter, and she said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

He smiled back. ‘John Donne.’

She chuckled, and a tremor of renewed desire ran, swift and commanding, through his body. ‘I know,’ she murmured, and he sank his lips on hers again, and set his hands wandering, tender and tantalizing, over her flesh. ‘I am
very
well educated.’

It was not just her body he loved, although it was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. Nor was it her mind, whose quality he recognized. It was something far more elusive. It was the knowledge, perhaps, that in every single way they belonged together. It was as if they were inseparably part of each other, obverse and reverse of the same coin, the warp and weft of the fabric of life, the fuel and the flame of love and desire and every other aspect of being. Made for each other, and incomplete without each other.

His voice roughening, he murmured, ‘I love you. I love you.
How
I love you!’

She brought her palms to his temples, fingers meshed in the darkly waving hair, and her voice, too, throbbed as she replied, ‘And I you. So much, so very much.’ And then the cadence of her breathing changed as he began to move within her again, and she cried out softly in delirium.

At some time during the long, joy-filled hours of that summer Sunday, she realized that all his concentration was on her, and on her pleasure. ‘Teach me,’ she whispered, ‘teach me how I can make love to you, too!’ But all he would do was smile at her, and touch his lips to her breast, and run his hands, light as thistledown, over her tingling skin, and set himself pulsing inside her again, ravishing her senses, until she was reduced once more to moaning, mindless ecstasy. ‘Some other time,’ he murmured, lips to her lips. ‘Some other time, my darling.’ And then he, too, began to drown in the torrent that engulfed them.

When the light outdoors failed at last, she stirred in his arms. Although the house was still wrapped in Sunday quiet, faint sounds of activity were floating up from the windows of the kitchen, two floors below. When he had arrived, early in the afternoon, Vilia had opened the door to him herself, her face a picture of guilt and mischief, and a finger laid warningly to her lips. The door didn’t creak, nor the stairs as they walked lightly up, and when they reached the drawing-room she had looked at the expression on his face and laughed delightedly. ‘No, surely not! My darling, you look quite scandalized! As if there were something more improper in arranging to be private than in – than in...’ Her voice had trailed off because she was, after all, a gently bred girl and didn’t know the words to use.