Page 81 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

He reached her, hot, breathless, feeling dishevelled, ridiculous. She looked so small in her practical dark-brown stuff coat and skirt, just a working woman no-one would give a second glance to; but to him she was limned in light.

There was a bench a little way along, and they sat in silence while he got his breath back and his heartbeat slowed. He took off his hat and laid it on the bench beside him, and felt the fingers of air cooling his head. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and everything about her quiet, but he felt her tense unhappiness as though she were radiating it.

When he could talk normally, he said, ‘How long have you been in Henley?’ It seemed as good a question to start with as any.

‘Some days. A week, perhaps,’ she said. ‘I lose track of the time.’

‘But why didn’t you come to see me?’

‘I didn’t know you were there. I thought you were at the Castle.’

‘Then – why did you come to Henley?’

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, ‘Because it was your place. I’ve stood and looked at your house. Just because it was your house.’ She stopped.

‘How have you been living?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been so afraid that you – were destitute.’

‘I had some money saved. And I’ve had odd jobs. Scrubbing, mostly. I earned a shilling here and there. I couldn’t get a proper job because I had to keep moving.’

Now he turned to look at her. ‘But why?’ he cried in anguish. ‘Why did you run away?’

She began to speak, and stopped, and made a useless gesture with her hand. ‘It all seemed—’ She stopped again, and looked away from him, as if she was ashamed. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.

‘Dory!’ he protested.

‘It was such a shock,’ she said. ‘All these years I’ve lived with the fear. Always looking over my shoulder. Never able to settle. Not really a person at all. And then there was you.’ She stopped again, at the worst moment for him.

‘Did I make it harder for you?’ he asked.

‘You did,’ she said.

His heart hurt. ‘I never wanted that. I never meant to add to your burden.’

‘But it was good. A good pain, like the pins-and-needles when numbness wears off. Only – there was no future to it. I knew that. So I couldn’t let myself . . .’ She shook her head. ‘It would have been wrong to enjoy it. And then you came and said you’d killed him. What was I to do? I couldn’t let myself be that person. All I had left was my self-respect. It was all that kept me breathing. If I lost that I might as well be dead.’

He had winced at the word. ‘But I didn’t kill him! I never said that. If you’d only let me explain – but you ran away. And what did I feel when I realised you’d gone, not just from me but from Ashmore, from everything, all alone again when I wanted only to look after you and make you happy?’

She sighed deeply. ‘Tell me it again, then. It was such a horror, I don’t think I really took it in properly. Tell me everything and I promise I’ll listen.’

He could hear from the tone of her voice that she still thought it was hopeless, but he was determined not to waste this one chance Fate had given. One last chance of life.

Quietly, unemotionally, he told her everything, in detail, of his dealings with Mr Bland, his visit to Brighton, how he had found Jack Hubert, and exactly what had been said and done between them. He described the inquest, and then the days when he had wandered about the seaside town, too shocked and debilitated to go home straight away. And then he stopped.

She was silent for a long time, staring in the direction of the river. At last she said, quietly, ‘His death was caused by you. You were the reason of it.’

‘He was trying to kill me,’ Sebastian said. ‘I had to defend myself. I would not willingly have killed him. He was the villain of the piece, not me. You must see that.’

She sighed again. ‘How could I ever lie easy—’ she began, almost too quiet to hear.

His patience broke. ‘No!’ he said, and, startled, she looked up at him. ‘He was a bad man. You told me yourself he would have killed you if he’d found you. He tried to kill me, for no reason except that he was drunk and mad. You ask how you could lie easy? There is no trial of conscience here! Not mine and not yours. An accident has freed you, not of your causing and not of mine, either. The only question you have to answer is, do you love me?’

He was so afraid of the answer that he could hardly bear to wait for it. He was an ordinary, middle-aged man of no particular beauty, and he had fallen in love with a woman of strange courage and luminous integrity, who could have married him for his money and never mentioned the previous husband – who would ever have known? – but instead had held fast by her self-respect, and would die for it if she had to. After a lifetime of loneliness he had found the one person he wanted to be with, and the idea of losing her was terrible.

He made himself look steadily down into her face; and she scanned his, as though hoping to see some holy script written there.

‘Do you love me?’ he asked again, when she didn’t answer. It might have been the bravest thing he ever did.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, as if it was an irrelevance, and not what was really being asked at all. ‘How could I help loving you? You are so kind and good and clever and – and everything a woman could want. But—’