Longing (41 page)

It had been one of the happiest days of his life.

He strolled on to the meeting place and looked down into the valley again. Perhaps after all he should leave, he thought. Perhaps
he should go back to the life and the land that were familiar to him and appoint a competent and sensitive manager to look after developments here. Perhaps that would be best.

Perhaps she would stay and teach in Cwmbran if he left. She should stay. This was where she belonged. Yet she was leaving tomorrow. Someone had mentioned that last night when she had been suggested as a teacher.

She was leaving tomorrow. His depression was suddenly converted to a deep stabbing of despair.

He was the one who should be leaving, not her. She was the one who belonged here. He did not. He belonged in England. He had roots there—memories and relatives and friends and an estate. It was his world. He should go back there.

Yes, he was the one who should leave. He should have someone talk to Siân today, before it was too late, and persuade her to stay and take on the challenge of the new school. He would leave with Verity. They would go tomorrow. Anything that could not be packed in time could be sent on later.

He was gazing sightlessly downward. His valley. His. It all belonged to him. His eyes focused again. But it was all a matter of wealth and property and inheritance. It belonged to him, but he did not belong to it.

He stood very still as the now familiar feeling washed over him again, leaving him shaken and bereft.
Hiraeth.
The deep—the bone deep—longing for something beyond himself. The longing to be a part of the beauty and the struggle and the passion and the soul of this little part of Wales. The yearning for—he shook his head. There was no real word for it.

He had stepped into the unknown in coming here. And he had continued to step forward, unwilling to accept facts and conditions that he had been told were essential to the prosperity of Cwmbran. He was breaking new ground now with all the plans he and his people were about to put into effect.

Walking always forward into the excitement of the unknown. It was something he had never done before. He had always accepted his
life for what it was and enjoyed what it had to offer while taking his responsibilities seriously. He had never thought of himself as a rebel or a radical or a stirrer of troubled waters.

Was he to go back now and leave all the excitement behind? So that Siân could stay?

Was she not his final step into the unknown? The woman he could not think of marrying because it was simply not done in his world to marry so beneath himself socially? The woman who could not be happy with him because he would be removing her from her world but would be unable to take her into his?

The world was changing. And even if it were not, could not one man change? One man and one woman? He had no doubt that she was as miserable as he over the fact that they could not be together. Were the conventions, the rules, so much more important than they were?

He did belong to Cwmbran, Alex thought, turning at last and beginning to plod upward. He had lived there for several months and he had loved it from the start. He loved its people. One did not have to live in a place from birth to belong there. One did not have to be the same as the other inhabitants to belong. One merely had to love—and be loved.

It was his place. He had come home when he had come to Cwmbran, driven by the need for some solitude and peace after a broken engagement. Yes, it was not an utterly fanciful thought. He had come home.

His head was down, watching the ground beneath his feet. But he glanced up eventually, realizing with a start where it was he was going.

And he stopped.

She was there before him.

She was sitting on the level piece of ground where they had loved, her knees drawn up, her forehead resting against them.

He stood quietly watching her for a while. Siân. His love. His world. His home. And then he continued on his way up.

*   *   *

She
heard him when he was quite close and looked up sharply. She was almost not surprised. And she was not as upset as she might have expected to be to find that good-bye was to be said all over again. She could never feel distress or despair when he was with her, though she knew she would feel them even more intensely when he left. She could only feel rightness and peace with Alexander.

He sat down beside her, his shoulder not quite touching hers, saying nothing. She looked back down into the valley.

“I am saying good-bye to it all,” she said. “My father is coming for me tomorrow.”

“It was mentioned at the meeting,” he said.

“I heard it went well.” She smiled though she did not look at him. “I am glad, Alexander. I am glad you have been accepted here and that life is going to improve. I will always think of it as your gift to me, though I hope you would have done it anyway.”

“There seemed to be common agreement that you would make the best teacher for the new school,” he said.

Oh.
She closed her eyes briefly. “No,” she said.

“You would,” he said. “You are a good teacher, and you are loved here. You belong here.”

“No.” No, she did not want this turmoil. There was no decision to make. But oh, the sweet seductive thought.

“Because I will be here?” he asked.

“Yes.” He knew the full truth. She had never tried to hide it. She would not pretend now, then. “Yes, because of that, Alexander. But I am happy that you will be here. There are many good schoolmasters who will be only too happy to take the teaching job.”

“It does not seem right,” he said, “that you not be here to see it all, Siân, when you were the one to dream it. Do you remember the afternoon when you told me your dreams—what you would do in Cwmbran if you could?”

“Yes,” she said. She remembered and cherished every moment she had ever spent with him. She would always remember.

“I want you to stay.” His arm came loosely about her shoulders. His hand clasped her upper arm.

“No.” She knew what it would mean to stay. She knew the limits of her strength. No, she had to go. Tomorrow. She should have gone last week.

“Siân,” he said, “I don't know that I have the will to do it without you. I don't want to contemplate life without you. I don't think I can live it alone.”

She had counted on his honor. Even though a part of her had hoped and even expected during their return from Newport that he would renew his offer, a firmer part of herself had trusted him to behave with honor. She had trusted him to let her go, her own personhood intact.

“Don't,” she said, sagging sideways against him despite herself and burrowing her head against his shoulder. “I could not do it, Alexander. I would give myself and you temporary happiness and ultimate misery. And I would become a pariah. Don't ask me. I know now that I will not give in to the temptation, but I don't want to remember you as a tempter. I want to remember you as a man of honor and integrity. I want to remember you as a man worthy of my love.”

“Siân—” he said, his mouth an inch from her own.

“Make love to me,” she said, closing her eyes, bringing her arm up about his neck. “Let there be one final good-bye. But let me go, then. Let me be able to remember that you set me free.” She was crying.

He turned her in to him, crushing her with his arms. “Not as my mistress,” he said. “I am not asking you to stay as my mistress, Siân. I am begging you to stay as my wife.”

She felt as if all the air had been knocked from her lungs. “No,” she said. “No.” The dream was too painfully sweet to contemplate.

“I love you,” he said. “You know I love you, Siân. And I know you love me.”

She buried her head against his shoulder, her mouth open in her agony. “Alexander,” she said. “Alexander, we can't. It is an impossibility. Please. I have accepted that. I must go tomorrow. Let me go. Please let me go.”

He cradled her in his arms, rocked her against him. He said nothing for a while. She knew he was waiting for the tension to go out of the moment. But she knew too that he was not going to let her go. She knew he was not going to accept the impossibility as she had.
I am begging you to stay as my wife.
Had he really spoken those words?
My wife.
Alexander's wife. His friend and companion. His lover. Mother of his children. His wife.

She relaxed against him.

“We are both widowed,” he murmured against her ear. “We have both recently been freed of engagements. We love each other. We are lovers. Tell me why we should not take the logical step of marrying, Siân.”

For a few moments she could think of no reason. There seemed only to be every reason why they should marry. But there were reasons—several of them, each an insurmountable barrier.

“You are the Marquess of Craille,” she said. “I am a nobody, and an illegitimate nobody at that. There are those who would say that you had looked too low even for a mistress if you took me.”

“And I would remind those impertinent persons that my life and your life are none of their business,” he said.

“Alexander.” She drew a deep breath. “It is not as simple as that. You know it is not.”

“No, it is not.” He set a hand beneath her chin suddenly and lifted her face. He kissed her warmly and deeply. “It is not a simple matter at all. It would not be easy for you to feel at ease in the sort of life I am accustomed to and expected to live in England. And I know it is very possible that you would not be readily accepted there. I know that here it might be difficult for you suddenly to be lady of the manor. I know that in time our children may find themselves having to fight against well-bred contempt at their birth. I know that you are the one who would do most of the suffering and that I would suffer knowing that you did and that I had caused it. But, Siân, think of the alternative. Are you really willing to live with the alternative?”

A month or two in the cottage in which she had lived with her
mother. And then strangers and a strange place and a new teaching job. A new life. And no Alexander.

“You would be ashamed of me,” she said.

“Never!” His answer was quite vehement. He still held her chin. He was gazing into her eyes. “That at least will never be one of our difficulties, Siân. You must know that it won't be. Marry me. Our lives are controlled so much by rules and social conventions. I have been asking myself during my walk on the hills why it is we are usually so willing to put the rules before people. Siân, are we willing to part today, never to see each other again, when the only obstacle between us is a rule? And not even quite that—a social expectation. A lifetime without each other because we were born into different social strata. No other reason. There is nothing else, is there?”

She could think of no answer. If she could look at anything except his blue eyes perhaps she would be able to think clearly. But his hand was firm beneath her chin. Short of closing her eyes, there was nowhere else to look.

“Alexander,” she whispered. And then she thought of something. “Verity?”

“Now you are grasping at straws.” He smiled unexpectedly. “The prospect of having you as a mother will have her running up hills and down hills for three days at a stretch, transported by delight.”

She laughed despite herself.

“Is there any chance you are with child?” he asked.

She shrugged and felt herself flush. “I suppose so,” she said. “There is a chance, though it was only one night.”

“And four separate assaults on your fertility,” he said. He was actually grinning. “If we only knew for sure, Siân, there would be an end to the matter without further discussion. I insist that all my children be legitimate, you see.” His smile softened. “I want children with you, my love. I want to give you a son to console you for your Dafydd, though not to take his place. He will always be your firstborn, as Verity will always be mine. But I want sons and daughters
with you. I want a life with you. That is not an unrealistic ambition, is it?”

Her womb was throbbing with need—for him and for his child. She shook her head.

He looked deeply into her eyes. “No, it is not unrealistic?” he asked. “Or no, you will have none of me.”

“Alexander,” she whispered.

He drew her head to his shoulder again, wrapped his arms tightly about her, and waited. She knew that he had come to the end of his arguments. She knew that he could use one more method of persuasion that would surely work. He could make love to her. But she knew that he would not do so. Not until her answer was given.

He had given her her freedom after all. Freedom to decide for herself. It was the reason too why he had brought her head to his shoulder. He would not use even his eyes to make her decide in a way that she might regret. It was her choice now.

She relaxed against him, breathing in the distinctive smell of him. “We would live most of our lives in England?” she asked.

“Hardly any, I think,” he said. “Even before I got to know Cwmbran, Siân, I felt a strange feeling of homecoming here. I felt it again this afternoon when I was deciding to take Verity back to England so that you could stay here. I would not be going home, I realized. I would be leaving home.”

“You were prepared to go away so that I could stay?” she asked.

“And still would,” he said. “If one of us must leave, Siân, it should be me. You have more right to be here than I do. And more to lose by leaving.”

She thought about it. “No,” she said, “we have an equal amount to lose, Alexander. Each other.”

His arms tightened a little.

“I loved Gwyn,” she said. “He was a decent, caring, hardworking man. And I loved Owen. If you had not come, my love for him would have been enough to have seen us through a lifetime. It would have been enough to have helped me over the difficulties there would
have been—there was much over which we did not see eye to eye. But you did come. And I have discovered with you what I believe few people are privileged to know in a lifetime. It is the sort of love immortalized in great literature. In poetry. I am not exaggerating, am I?”