“But the party,” Estelle protested.
“We do have a choice, Aunt Jane,” Bertrand said. “We can go and find out where he went, or at least try. We have come this far. Why go back now without at least making an effort to track him down?”
Jane could have offered a very good answer, but how could she speak bluntly to her two young charges? “He is probably busy and will resent the intrusion,” she said.
“You think he is with that woman, Aunt Jane,” Estelle said. “Well, what if he is? I daresay it is not the first time and will not be the last. But I want him to know that I have arranged a birthday party for him. I want to tell him to his face that he has . . . inconvenienced me.”
Her aunt stared at her in some exasperation. It was so very unlike Estelle to be stubborn. What a shame it was that children had to grow up.
“Onward with the search, then?” André asked cheerfully, offering his hand to help Jane into the carriage.
“Yes,” Estelle and Bertrand said in unison.
After that, the pursuit was relatively easy. They found the inn at which Miss Kingsley’s hired carriage had set down its passengers, and they found out about the newly purchased carriage without having to leave the inn. They spoke with the ostler who knew which direction the carriage had taken—with both the lady and the gentleman. All of Jane’s worst fears were confirmed. The same ostler was obliging enough to mention that four other people—two gentlemen and two ladies—had gone in pursuit of that same carriage two days earlier. Even more obligingly he gave them a description of that carriage too.
It was merely a case after that of following a trail that fairly blazed before them. Almost everyone they spoke with remembered one or other of the two carriages, or, in many cases, both. They were further assured that they were going in the right direction when André suddenly remembered something.
“Oh, I say,” he said with a loud clicking of his fingers. “I will wager Marc has gone to the cottage.”
“Cottage?” Jane asked.
And André told the story his mother had told him of the great-aunt on their father’s side who had taken a fancy to Marcel when he was an infant long before he, André, was born, and of her making him her heir and leaving him her cottage somewhere in the wilds of Devonshire.
“It seems a likely sort of place to take a wo—” André said before being cut off too late by a pointed glare from Jane and a sharp elbow in the ribs.
“Woman,” Estelle said. “Where in Devonshire, Uncle André?”
He rubbed one side of his nose, but doing so did not prompt his memory further. Or perhaps, he admitted, he had never known. Close to the sea, perhaps?
That was very little help.
Twelve
The sky had cleared and the wind had died down, at least in the valley. The hillsides and the valley floor had had a day to dry out. It was time to go out again, Viola announced, to take a long, brisk walk along the valley to the sea.
“There will be mud,” Marcel predicted.
“It can be stepped around,” she said. “Coward.”
It turned out to be not the brisk hike she had anticipated. The valley floor beside the river was spongy at best after all the rain, muddy at worst. In places, old, dead branches and even whole, rotted-out tree trunks were strewn across what had not really been a path in the first place. It was all very wild and overgrown. It was possible, even probable, that no one had walked here for years. But it was an exhilarating exercise anyway as they weaved about obstacles, clambered over a few, avoided the worst of the mud, and stopped frequently just to look about at the glory that was the early autumn trees and to listen to the birds.
“Is it not amazing,” she said, “how they make so much noise but are barely visible?”
“Amazing,” he agreed in the deliberately flat voice he used whenever he was teasing her enthusiasm.
She was not deterred. She had discovered this enthusiasm during the past couple of weeks and wondered why she had considered it so important all her life to quell it in the name of dignity.
It took them more than an hour to reach the sand of the beach—and the wind again. It slanted across the sea from the southwest unobstructed, ruffling the waves, taking their breath away, and flattening their clothes against them. He had to hold his hat on. The river, as it widened to flow in shallow runnels to the sea, had cut the beach in two. They strolled along their side of it, hand in hand, not talking. Often they did not. But it was never because they had run out of things to say. Sometimes there could be a more companionable feel to silence than to conversation. High cliffs rose to one side of them. The sea stretched to infinity on the other.
“I am glad the cottage was built in the valley, out of sight of all this,” she said.
“You do not like the sea?” he asked.
“Oh, I do.” She drew her hand from his and turned to see the whole panorama. The beach stretched for miles in both directions. Endlessly long waves were breaking in foam and flowing onto the wet sand some distance away before being sucked back into the deep. The air was cold and salty. A lone gull, buffeted by the wind, cried mournfully, or so it seemed. She must not ascribe human feelings to other creatures, though. “But I do not believe I would like to live close to it. It is too . . . elemental.”
“On that at least we are agreed.” He came to stand in front of her and dipped his head to kiss her. She leaned into him and kissed him back, seeking comfort and forgetfulness from him as well as warmth. They had been so very good, these weeks. The best of her life. Oh, by far the best. Why, then, had there been a thread of melancholy dragging at her spirits for the last few days, like a faintly throbbing bass note in an otherwise light and joyful melody?
“At least?” she said. “Are we not agreed upon most subjects?”
She had not meant it as a serious question. She was not sure he had taken it seriously. Except that suddenly it seemed to hang between them like a tangible thing. Were they not, in almost every way that mattered, very different from each other? It was easy to ignore that basic fact for a short idyll of a romantic affair. But it would not remain masked forever. Fortunately they did not have forever.
Fortunately?
She took a step to one side, fighting a certain inexplicable panic. “I am going to walk down to the edge of the wet sand,” she said.
I am going to . . . Not Let us . . . It had not been deliberate. Maybe he had not taken it that way. But he did not come with her. He remained where he was or he walked onward. She did not look back to see. Were affairs always this way? He would know. She did not. Did one suddenly know, without warning or any particular reason, that it was over? There was no reason. She was desperately happy here. She was deeply satisfied with their relationship, if it could be called that. But of course it could, however brief it would be. She was invigorated by his company and had come alive to his lovemaking. She still did not know how she was going to do without him once it was all over.
Soon, very soon, she would find out.
She stopped when she came to the edge of the wet sand. The tide must be on its way out, but the sand it had covered a short while ago had not dried yet. It gleamed with wetness in places. She felt isolated here, cut off from everything but her thoughts. She did not turn to look back. The wind whipped mercilessly at her.
Her daughters would be starting to worry. She had given no hint of where she was going or with whom, only that she was going. They would be starting to wonder what they would do if she never came back. She had not written again since she came here. Her great escape was seeming more and more like her great selfishness. And she was starting to worry about them, or at least to wonder. She was missing them. She was missing her grandchildren, or at least the frequent news she always had of them in Camille’s letters.