Chapter 46

46

DAMN THE LIST!

Leo sat looking at her in stunned silence. At his wife. For a long moment, he was incredulous, and could not believe his own ears. She was – she could not be, but she was – telling him that she loved him. It couldn't be real. He'd called it up somehow, this fantasy, out of his enormous need for her. Or she was lying, as women sometimes were forced to, knowing how precarious her place in the world would be, and that of her unborn child, if he deserted her. He'd never thought her a liar – but she must be lying now.

But when she raised her eyes to his, the desperate anxiety and suspense in every lineament of her dear face told him that she was speaking nothing more or less than the truth. He'd always found her easy to read, and he could read her now. It was dazzling in its simplicity.

She loved him. She did.

He couldn't speak. He must, he needed to reassure her, but he couldn't. His heart was too full. He reached down with clumsy urgency and pulled her up into his arms. He set his hands either side of her face and held her there for a moment, and then from somewhere deep inside he found the ability to murmur with fierce intensity a few broken words. ‘Isabella! Isabella, my love, my love, my dearest love!'

And the relief and comprehension that flooded her face and banished all the worry was the loveliest thing he'd ever seen. There was no more need for words after that, not for a long time. They kissed, both of them at last fully aware of all that was hidden beneath their physical passion and constant need for each other. They lay in each other's arms and kissed, sweet and deep and slow, and needed no more than that for a while.

At last, Isabella pulled back a little. She was lying in Leo's close embrace and they were both flushed and breathless, dizzy. She said, ‘I'm sorry. So sorry I hurt you with my coldness when there was no need for it. I wish I could go back and alter that. I put you through so much unnecessary pain.' He shook his head in vehement denial, and she knew that in this moment he would forgive her anything. It was wonderful, but she must not take it for granted or abuse it. She had to try to make him understand her, in so far as she understood herself. ‘Bear, I'm not like other people.'

All at once he was laughing as he looked up at her. ‘My love, I know that well enough! I don't want you to be like other people. You're unique, and I adore you for it.'

‘Yes, that's all very well, but… Stop laughing, and listen! I'm serious. I don't like change, and I can't cope with it. Sudden, unexpected events, like Ash's death, hit me very hard. I know they'd hit anyone hard – I'm not claiming some special sensitivity or sensibility, please don't think that. I'm not saying I'm superior to others, quite the reverse. I'm weak. I'm not strong like other people. I find it hard to move on, when tragedy strikes. I get stuck. That's what my illness was, in great part. I couldn't accept what happened – which was after all nothing that hasn't happened to thousands of other women in these years of war. People who have loved ones taken from them – as your mother did, as Lord Irlam and his siblings did, as my parents did when they lost one tiny infant or unborn child after another – they mourn, but eventually they pull themselves together and carry on with life, because they have no choice. I couldn't do that. My future was all planned out, and when those plans were broken into a thousand pieces, it broke me too.'

He was listening intently, and he stroked her hair back from her face with a loving hand, but he could see she hadn't finished, so he let her continue without interruption. ‘And so I couldn't continue after Ash's death. I didn't want to, in fact. I clung to his memory like a drowning person clinging to a spar, and when people tried to talk to me, to make me see things differently, I wouldn't listen. Did you know that Blanche before she left told me that she hoped, as did Gabriel, that I would marry again and find happiness? That she believed that was what Ash would have wanted for me? I refused to hear her. I told myself it was because of my great love, and that nobody understood it or felt as deeply, but it wasn't really. It was all about me, and the way my mind is made.'

He did speak now. ‘You're too hard on yourself. Your self-criticism might be just, perhaps, if ten years had passed. It's not been two, since you lost him. It's no time at all.'

‘I know that's right, but I'd have been no different in ten years, or twenty, I promise you. I might say to you that I was afraid to love again, for fear of getting hurt, but it wouldn't be true, or not completely. Because that would be reasonable, if not very brave. And it wasn't that. I'm serious, Leo – I'm not like other people, and though I will try to be conscious of it, and fight against it, I don't think I can change my nature. I want you to be fully aware of what I am.'

‘I love all that you are. I don't need you to change, nor should anyone, least of all me, ask you to. You are so very brave, and you don't know it. You took such risks, trying to take back your life. Who else would do that?'

‘And that's another thing. I was afraid that you would think I had persuaded myself that I loved you, because in the end I was ashamed of what I'd done, after I realised the consequences of it, and it was easier to tell myself I must be in love rather than accept I gave my body freely to a stranger.'

‘I don't think that. I do believe you, my love, and not just because I want to. I am a good judge of people – I have had to be. I know when I'm being lied to, and when I am not. There's no deception in you.'

‘So you will know I am telling you the truth when I tell you that I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I don't think that loving you justifies what I did, because in my mind it doesn't need justification. Lady Carston said to me once that the world will change when women admit to themselves that they don't have to be in love with men to go to bed with them. I disagree with her in part. I think lots of women do admit that already, if only in private, because they aren't yet in a position to choose the men they marry or take as their protectors. But she believes, as I do, that we deserve what most men have and we do not – the freedom to choose for ourselves what we do with our lives and our bodies, with love or without it. And I chose you, out of all the men in the world, Bear, and I'm so glad I did. But I also happen to love you – not because I should, not because it's convenient or morally right, or because we've made a child together. Just because I do, and always will.'

Naturally, these highly gratifying words obliged the Captain to kiss his bride again, but he realised that he too had a secret he must share, and now was the time. He said, ‘My love, I must tell you something in my turn. It is not a great matter, perhaps, but I will feel easier in my mind when you know it.'

She looked at him questioningly, and he went on, ‘I know that you believe I was first presented to you in London this autumn, by Georgie. But it's not true, you know. We had met before, though very briefly, and though I know I should have reminded you of it long since, I could never find the right moment.'

‘How could that be?'

She had no notion of what he was about to reveal, and he continued with a little difficulty, ‘I danced with you, just once, a wild country dance in a very crowded room. I wasn't properly introduced to you, and I didn't hear your name or realise that you were married until some time later. I must admit that I was greatly struck by you, and perhaps I have carried your image in my heart ever since – certainly in my memory. It was in Brussels, my dear. Late May last year. I recalled it, but for reasons I can fully appreciate, you did not. You can, I hope, see why I have hesitated to mention it.'

She stared at him, a little frown creasing her brows, and for a second he worried that he had distressed her; that the wound caused by Lord Ashby's death was still too fresh and always would be, coming to ambush their happiness and cloud their joy over and over again. He regretted speaking now, though he'd known he must. But then she said slowly, her frown clearing, ‘I do remember… I wore blue, we were laughing together. Oh Leo, my dearest love, of course I see why you could not tell me! Nobody dares to speak of Brussels to me, or of Ash. Oh, but then… You saw him?'

He nodded, and then said, his voice low, ‘I saw you together, and I could see that you were happy.' He couldn't manage any more than that.

She smiled at him through tears. ‘We were, you know. Thank you for telling me. Perhaps later we can talk of it all, and of the strange coincidence that we were both there, and met. It's past and done, Leo, and it must no longer be a topic we avoid. It has no power to hurt us unless we let it, and I do not mean to let it. We have our future to look forward to. And my immediate future is not this sofa, but your bed.'

He laughed, his heart suddenly much lighter. ‘I'm so glad, for I find myself in perfect agreement with you, madam. I'm going to carry you upstairs to bed – yes, in the middle of the afternoon, and I don't care who knows what I'm about. Are you not my wife? I made all sorts of promises today, and I intend to fulfil them. And along the way that list of yours is going to receive some serious attention, before I sleep in your arms for the first time, and wake to look at you, as I have longed to do.'

‘Damn the list,' said Mrs Isabella Winterton, shockingly. But she smiled as she said it, and was smiling still when her husband picked her up and – with a little assistance in the awkward matter of opening doors – carried her out into the hall and up the stairs to his bedchamber. The only other coherent thing she said for a long while was, ‘I'll want my dinner later, sir. If you mean to ravish me, or I to ravish you, or both, you needn't think you can get away without feeding me.'

‘You shall have your dinner,' he said. ‘But not for a good while yet, and it'll be on a tray, and taken in bed.' She had no objection to make, after that.

It was hours later, and Isabella rose, naked, to add logs to the fire, which had sunk low while she and Leo had been otherwise occupied. He lay and watched her in lazy appreciation, telling her that she'd exhausted him, and he was completely unable to move. It was true that she now had several items to cross off her list. The jewellery box that contained it, along with her trunk and all her other possessions, was no doubt sitting close at hand in her dressing room, wherever that might be. She had no inclination to explore the house just now, she told him; she wanted to get back to bed, to his arms. But having said that, she paused for a moment by the window. She'd gone to close the curtains against the winter night, but did not immediately do so. He watched the firelight play across her pale skin and strike glints of gold from her long hair, which at an earlier stage of the afternoon he'd unfastened from its plaits and ribbons with infinite care and tenderness, so that he could bury his face in it as he loved to do. Looking at her, perhaps he wasn't quite as tired as he'd thought… ‘What's the matter, love?' he said. ‘Don't think I'm not admiring the view, for I am, but I don't want you to catch cold. Come here, and let me warm you!'

She turned in all her naked glory, and said, ‘I was just looking out for a moment. Leo, we won't be heading out to London tomorrow morning, and Yorkshire will have to wait a while. It's snowing!'