The sexual delights, however, had been confined to the nights, while their days had been filled with almost nothing but the bracing outdoors, God help him. They went up and down the steep valley sides on both sides of the river as other people might ascend and descend stairs within a house. They walked pathways and no pathways and rough headlands. They almost got blown to glory one afternoon while tramping along the top of towering cliffs overlooking the sea, the wind in their faces before they turned back to be blown home. One morning they walked up to the village and through it to descend a steep flight of rough-hewn steps and an equally steep fall of large rocks and smaller pebbles to a small sandy cove. All they got for their pains on that occasion was sand inside her shoes and caked on the outside of his boots, and sand inside every piece of clothing on their persons and even in their hair. Oh, and there was the enormous pleasure of huffing their way back up to the village afterward and from there back to the cottage.
“Are you trying to wear my legs down to the knees, Viola?” he asked when they were almost home. But she just laughed at him. She did a lot of that during the week—laughing at him. Oh, and with him too.
He took great delight in her laughter. Even more in her smiles.
“I want to walk along beside the river to the sea one day,” she said. “I hope you will not be worn down to the knees, Marcel. You would be shorter than I am, and I should dislike that.”
“I would think you would enjoy the sense of power towering over me would bring you,” he said, and she laughed again.
And they talked. They were standing in the middle of the bridge one day at the end of their first week there and she had executed her long-promised pirouette and made the expected comments upon the breathtaking beauty of their surroundings. Actually he agreed with her, though he did not fling his arms wide, an ecstatic look on his face, as he turned once about. He would have been quite content to stand there in silent companionship with her with all his senses alive. Good God, he had senses he had never even suspected before. But she decided to talk.
“Why do you think we were born?” she asked, her arms resting along the waist-high parapet of the bridge as she gazed down into the water. “What do you think is the point of it all?”
If any other woman had asked him such asinine questions, he would have bundled her into his carriage without further ado, sprung the horses in the direction of London, and lost her somewhere in its busiest midst, never to be found again.
“I suppose we were born because our parents fancied each other one night nine months or so before it happened,” he said. “And the point of it all is that thereby the world will remain populated and we will not expire as a species.”
She chose to take his flippancy seriously. She was no longer looking down into the water or up at the valley sides surrounding them. She was gazing at him instead, and he was beginning to believe his colossal lie that her rosy nose was adorable. “But why?” she asked. “Why deliberately perpetuate something if it has no inherent value?”
Her words were a bit chilling if she meant that human life really was not worth living. He had not given much thought to the matter. Not for many years anyway. He did not particularly want to break that habit.
“You had children,” he reminded her.
“Yes,” she said, “because it was expected of me. It was my duty. Camille was a disappointment to Humphrey because she was not the heir he had anticipated. And after Harry, Abigail was a disappointment because she was not the spare to go with the heir.”
“It was only duty?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Well, no.” She turned to gaze with a frown along the river in the direction of the sea, which was not visible from here. “They were my joy.”
“Your only joy?” he asked. “The only things that have given meaning to your life?”
She considered her answer, her gloved fingers rubbing back and forth over the stones. “Yes,” she said. “Almost. But why did I feel joyful when I was merely delivering them to all the pains that awaited them in this life?”
“Their lives have been nothing but misery, then?” he asked.
“Camille was an unhappy child,” she told him. “She wanted what she could not have—her father’s love and approval. She is happy now. So happy that I almost fear for her. Harry insists that being in the Peninsula being constantly shot at is a great lark while I wait at home in constant fear of what the news might be when I next hear from him—or of him. Abigail is sweet and quiet and serene, and I fear what lies beneath it all and what the future holds for her.” With that, she turned to him abruptly. “Why did you have children, Marcel?”
“Because I was young and married and it happened in the natural course of what young married people do,” he said. And he had been so fiercely joyful that he still could not bear to think about it.
“Do you ever feel weighed down by the burden of fatherhood?” she asked him. “Not because you do not love them but because you do?”
He really did not want to be talking about this. This was not why he had come here. He had run away with her for a week or three of pleasure. Mindless pleasure. He had come because he did not want to go home and see evidence of his own failure as a father and as a human being. They were almost grown-up, Estelle and Bertrand, those much-adored babies.
They were almost grown-up.
He stared back at her, resentment mingling with something else he did not try to analyze. She lifted both hands and cupped his face with them. She brushed her gloved thumbs over his cheeks. For one moment he feared they were wet, but they were not.
“Sometimes,” she said, “your face turns hard and your eyes turn opaque, and I am almost frightened.”
“Of me?” he said.
“Of not being able to see you,” she said.
He did not ask what she meant. He did not want to know.
“I was not fit to raise my children,” he told her curtly. “I still am not, though there is not much raising left to do. They are seventeen.”
“Who does raise them?” she asked.
“Their aunt and uncle,” he told her. “My late wife’s sister and her husband. And yes, they were fit and are fit and my children are fine young people who will be fine and worthy adults.” It was not often he admitted that Jane and Charles had been good for his children.
“Do you love them?” Her voice was a mere breath of sound.
He grasped her none too gently by the wrists and removed her hands from his face. “That is a typical woman’s question,” he said. “I fathered them and have seen to it that they have the proper care. I have provided a home and the means for them to grow up according to their station in life. I have visited them twice a year since they were one year old. I will see to it that they are suitably established in life, and then my job, such as it has been, will be done.” He was still gripping her wrists.
“You were on your way to see them.” Her eyes, damn it all, had filled with tears.
“They will still be there when—”
“When we are finished?” she said when he stopped abruptly.
“I resent this, Viola,” he told her. “We came here to escape, to put our everyday lives behind us, to enjoy each other’s company, not to bare our souls.”
“I have enjoyed your company,” she said softly.