At Last Comes Love

The air was warm without being oppressively hot. "There used to be a private little nook down here," he said, "not far from the boathouse. I used to sit there dreaming when I wanted to be alone or inventing some darkly secret club with my cousins. Ah, yes, here it is." It was a small inlet in the bank, grassy and overhung by coarse grasses and shaded by a cluster of bushy trees. It was a place to sit unobserved from the house above.

They settled there side by side. Margaret clasped her knees and gazed out at the light dancing off the river. "This homecoming has been all me, me, me, has it not?" he said after a few minutes of silence. "/My/ home, /my/ park, /my/ ancestors, /my/ memories." She smiled. "But it is my home now too," she said. "I want to learn all I can about it and about you." "But what about you?" he said. "Who are /you/, Maggie? What childhood experiences shaped you into the person you are now?" "It was a very ordinary childhood," she said. "We grew up at the rectory in Throckbridge. It was a smallish house in a small village. We were neither rich nor abjectly poor. At least, I believe we /were/ rather poor, but we were sheltered from the knowledge by a mother who was an excellent manager and a father who preached, and believed, that happiness was something that had little to do with money or possessions." "You were happy, then," he said. "And we had good neighbors," she told him, "including the Dews at Rundle Park. There were a number of children of all ages both there and in the village. We all played together." "And then," he said, "your parents died." "There was some time between the two events," she said. "Our mother died first. It was a terrible blow to all of us. But our lives did not change a great deal – though I suppose our father's did. He was a sadder, quieter man afterward." "How old were you when he died?" he asked her. "Seventeen." "And you promised him," he said, "that you would hold the family together until all of you were grown up and settled." "Yes," she said. "If your father had not died," he said after a while, "you would have married Dew." "Yes," she said. "It is strange, is it not? All these years I have believed that if only that could have happened I would have lived happily ever after. It was all I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed of." "But now you have changed your mind?" he asked. "I can never know how my life would have turned out," she said. "But I think perhaps I would not have been very happy. Even if he had remained devoted to me – and I suppose he might have done if I had been with him all the time – I would have been an officer's wife. I would have followed the drum, and I would have had no settled home all these years, or on into the future." "You would not have enjoyed that?" he asked. "It seemed glamorous at the time," she said. "It has always seemed glamorous since – until recently. But I am not an adventurous person, you know. When I remained home with my brother and sisters, I thought I did so out of necessity. And that was indeed part of the reason – maybe even most of it. But home is where I belong. I do not mean necessarily one particular house and neighborhood. I have never had that attachment as you have. But /home/. Somewhere – some fixed place – that is my own with people who are my own and neighbors I can like and trust and with whom I can socialize. Somewhere to make into a home not just for myself but for those who are close to me. I do not believe I could bear to be a nomad." The silence stretched for a long time. It was not at all uncomfortable.

Margaret was absorbing what she had just said. It was absolutely the truth. If she had married Crispin at the age of seventeen and gone off with him to the wars, perhaps she would have adapted to the life she would have been forced to live, but she did not think so.

She was a home maker.

She had always been happy making a home for her sisters and Stephen. The only thing missing had been someone to share the heart of the home with her.

She had always thought he was Crispin.

But Crispin, she knew now, could never have filled that role.

And she would not have been entirely happy. /… someone to share the heart of the home with her/.

She rested her forehead on her knees and tightened her arms about her legs.

Would she ever find that someone? Had she found him? If she had not, she never would, would she? She was married.

After a few moments his hand came to rest warmly against the back of her neck. "Maggie," he asked softly, "what is it?" "Nothing," she said, but her voice was thin and high pitched, and before she could clear her throat and say something in a more normal tone, he had unclasped her hands and drawn her down to lie on her side on the grass. He lay close to her, one arm beneath her head.

He dried her eyes with his handkerchief.

She had not realized that she was crying.

She felt very foolish. For so many years she had guarded her emotions.

Now her control seemed to be slipping. "What is it?" he murmured again. /I have been so lonely/, she almost blurted aloud. /So very, very lonely. I am so lonely/.

It was all very well to be cheerful and practical, to make plans for a workable marriage and a home that would be comfortable and welcoming and not unhappy.

But it was impossible to fool the heart all the time. /I am so lonely/.

It was abject. It was selfish. It was despicable.

It was not like her. "Nothing," she said again. "Maggie," he said, "I wish there had been time to court you as you deserved to be courted. Time to win your love. Time to fall in love.

Time to do everything properly. I wish there had. But since there was not – " She set two fingers across his lips. "There never would have been time," she said. "If we had not both been desperate for different reasons when we collided, we would not have stopped for anything more than a hasty, embarrassed apology. The only time is /now/. Now is the only time there ever is." "Then I will court you now," he said, and his eyes were very deep, very dark. "I will make you fall in love with me. And I will fall in love with you." "Oh," she said, "you need not make such promises just because I have been shedding tears, Duncan. I do not even know why I have been doing so." "You are lonely," he said just as if she had spoken her thoughts out loud, "and have been for a long while. So am I – and have been for a long while. It is foolish to be lonely when we have each other." "I am not lonely," she protested. "Liar," he said, and kissed her.

She kissed him back with a sudden, desperate ardor. She had everything.

If she were to write a list, it would be a long one indeed, and it would include almost every imaginable dream any woman could possibly want or need to make her happy. Except something at the core of her being.

Something for which she searched blindly in the kiss and knew she would not find there.

Could one make a conscious decision to fall in love? Could two people? "I do love you, you know," she said, drawing back from him. "Yes," he said, "I /do/ know. But it is what you do in life, Maggie. It is what you have always done. You have always selflessly loved others and given of yourself for them. It is not enough." She looked at him, stricken. "But you have been a giver too," she said. "You gave up everything in order to shelter Mrs. Turner from harm – your family, your friends, your home, your good name. You are no stranger to love. That is what love does when it must." "It is not enough," he said again. "We have to fall in love, Maggie, and falling in love is different from simply loving. It calls for the willingness to receive as well as to give, and you and I are probably better at giving." She stared back at him. Was he right? "Opening ourselves to love is to make ourselves vulnerable," he said. "We might get hurt – again. We might lose the little of ourselves that we have left or that we have pieced back together. But unless we can open ourselves to receive as well as to give, we can never be truly happy.