Then Comes Seduction

“It seems very neglectful to abandon all our guests,” she said. But it was a weak protest. She did not resist the pull of his hand, and he walked her briskly away from the waterfall in the direction of the fork in the path, one branch of which led down to the beach while the other climbed up into the hills. He took the latter.

He was feeling too restless for a walk at slower than a snail’s pace. His thoughts had been swirling around in his brain for several hours, and he felt in dire need of peace and quiet.

They walked rather briskly despite the upward slope until they reached the ancient beech tree at one end of the rhododendron stretch of the walk. He stopped there and leaned back against the trunk for a moment, still holding her hand.

“Winded?” he asked.

He could hear that she was. But she turned to look down at the view, which was admittedly rather splendid. It looked down on the paddocks and kitchen gardens behind the house and over the house itself to the parterre gardens, the lawns and driveway, the village in the distance, and a patchwork of fields stretching into the distance in all directions. Just a little higher, he had always thought, and they would be able to see the sea. He had tried climbing the tree once, but he had sprained an ankle and a wrist as a result and, worse, had scuffed a newish pair of boots so badly that even the combined skills of several servants had not been able to cover up his transgression.

They had been putting on a good front for their family and guests, he and Katherine. But there was still a reserve between them in private that had been there since he had made an ass of himself at the lake. She must think him a sorry wager-wi

“Come,” he said after they had their breath back, and he took her hand again and turned off the path to strike straight upward through dense trees until they had reached almost to the top of the rise and into the sudden, unexpected clearing that as far as he knew no one else had ever discovered. It was like a miniature meadow or dell, all lush grass and wildflowers, completely enclosed by trees. Coming here had always felt like walking into another world, in which he was entirely alone and in which time and troubles mattered not at all.

“My most secret retreat as a boy,” he said, stopping at the edge of it. “I came here more often than I can remember, summer and winter.”

He had been somehow afraid that it would be gone. It was years since he had been here last.

“It is always carpeted with snowdrops in the early spring,” he said, “as if it had suffered its own private little snowfall. And with bluebells later on as if a patch of sky had taken refuge in the forest. I wish you could have seen it in the spring.”

“I will,” she said softly. “Next year and the year after. I live here, Jasper.”

He knew somehow from the tone of her voice that she understood, and he felt foolish and grateful.

One thrush, perhaps disturbed by the sound of their voices, flew out of a high branch with a flutter of wings, and she tipped back her head to watch it soar into the sky.

“I have always had places like this of my own,” she said, “though never anywhere quite so remote or more splendid.”

He looked over to the far corner of the clearing and was surprised and relieved to discover that it was, of course, still there-a great flat slab of rock jutting out of the hillside, level with his knees when he was a boy.

“Ah,” he said, “the stone is still there. My drea-”

He stopped abruptly.

“Your drea-?” she said.

“Nothing.” He shrugged.

“Your dreaming stone?” she said.

Good Lord, she had got it exactly right. His dreaming stone.

“A foolish boyhood fancy,” he said, striding away from her to take a closer look at it. It was covered with moss and twigs and other debris, and he leaned over to brush it off. “I was captain of my own ship here and lord of my own castle and navigator of my own flying carpet. I slew dragons and enemy knights and black-hearted villains of all descriptions here. I was my own favorite, invincible hero.”

“As we all are in our childhood fantasies,” she said. “As we need to be. Our games give us the courage to grow up and live the best adult lives of which we are capable.”

Had the vicar taught her that?

He set one booted foot on the stone.

“And sometimes,” he said, “I would just lie here watching the sky.”

“Flying on the coattails of the clouds,” she said. “And yet you scorned me when I told you that I dreamed of flying close to the sun.”

“I was a child at the time,” he said, lowering his foot back to the ground, “and knew nothing. It is here we have to do our living, Katherine. And not even here in this clearing or places like it, but down there in the world, where dreams signify nothing.”

“Our lives ought to be lived in both places,” she said. “We need both our retreats, our private places and our dreams, and our lives out there, where we make a difference to one another, for good or ill.”

He must think quickly of something about which to tease her. He was not accustomed to serious conversation. And he felt too raw for one now. Why, then, had he brought her here? He might easily have got away on his own.

He had never brought anyone else here-until now.

She stepped up onto the stone, looked around the clearing from that higher vantage point, and sat down. She took off her bo

A few weeks ago she had worn lemon and blue for the lake and the sunshine. Now she wore her pale green cotton for the woods, as if she had known they would come here. A sun goddess there, a wood nymph here.

And then she looked suddenly dismayed.

“I am sorry,” she said. “Am I encroaching upon what is yours?”

“You are what is mine, are you not?” he said, gri

It was no good. She had not responded to that provocative claim of ownership, and he could think of nothing else with which to tease or mock her.

She glanced down at him, looked into his eyes, and then came down to join him, her head beside his on the coat. He felt himself relax. It was safe here. There had always been that illusion. It was an illusion, of course. He had always had to go back to the house eventually, where he had been required to explain where he had been, why he had chosen to worry his mother so much with his long absence, why his lessons were not done or his Bible verses learned, why his clothes were dirty, why…

Well.

His body was relaxed, but his thoughts had a busy agenda of their own. He could not still them. He could not think of a single thing to say that would make her laugh or that would draw a spirited retort.

He was not himself at all. He ought to have come alone.

“He loved Rachel, you know,” he said abruptly at last and felt like an idiot when he heard the words. He had spoken aloud.

“Mr. Gooding?” she asked after a pause. “Ought that not to be present tense? It seemed to me at our wedding breakfast that-”

“My father,” he said, interrupting her. “She was more than a year old when he died, and he loved her. He adored her, in fact. He used to carry her all over the house, to the frequent consternation of her nurse.”

She did not say anything.

“And he was excited about me,” he said. “He had been out shooting with some other fellows on the day he died and was carousing with them afterward, after the rain started, when word reached him that my mother was having pains. He was riding hell bent for leather back home when he jumped that hedge instead of taking ten seconds longer to go through the gate. Perhaps he did not even notice that it was open. And so he died-and the pains were false ones. I did not put in an appearance until a month later.”