Page 26 of A Tryst By the Sea
“I would like you to spend the night here at the cottage.”
A cool feeling shivered through him. “With you? In the same bed?”
“With me. In the same bed, as man and wife.”
Vergilius had never asked Penelope for anything, and she had tried not to impose on him either. He was a busy man, with even more responsibilities than she’d realized. He was putting enough money and property into her hands that she could maintain her dignity and her charitable contributions, as well as a pleasant if retiring lifestyle.
That dignity hung by a slender thread braided of determination, selfishness, and—this astonished her—gratitude.
“What are you asking me, Penelope?” Vergilius stood beside her, and Penelope was as aware of him as if she were a new bride, or a wife whose husband was soon to march off to battle.
“I am asking you for a farewell to treasure. A send-off, a fond remembrance.” Penelope fumbled for those words, because she truly had no coherent answer. She had missed Vergilius for so long, the Vergilius she’d loved and respected andliked.
Of all places, she’d found him here, where she’d found him once before.
“You are sure?” he asked, his tone giving away nothing.
“We tried, Vergilius. We tried, and tried, and tried. Are we to have no reward for all that effort save some stilted meetings with stilted lawyers? When I run into you five years from now on some busy London street, may I not have one sweet, private memory to share with you as we nod and pass without speaking?”
“You might have one more regret too, Penelope.”
She rounded on him, abruptly out of patience with the tactful negotiator he’d become. “What of you, my lord? In the past nine years, have you never once been tempted to tap on my bedroom door? For old times’ sake, for a lark, in a moment of weakness, for any reason at all? We knew such pleasure before the heartache got the better of us. I want that again, if only for one night.”
Vergilius looked out to sea, and in the utter impassivity of his expression, Penelope saw one final, grand, implacable rejection. That it should come from him was fitting, when she’d been the one to give up on the marriage.
“You ask much, Penelope.”
I wish I had asked much years ago.“It’s the wrong time for me to conceive, if that’s what concerns you.”
He slanted her a puzzled glance. “And if you did conceive?”
“I suppose we’d have to remain married, but I won’t conceive. My courses are predictable.” And every month, they still made her unhappy. How much unhappier would she be as a woman who had abandoned her vows?
“This week has been…” Vergilius took her hand. “I was delighted to find you here. I saw an opportunity to bring everything right between us at last. I would be gallant and attentive and flirt my boots off, not that I know how to do that. You would fall into my lap, grateful and pleased to finally have harmony restored between us.”
She slipped her arms around his waist. “Vergilius, I am sorry.”
He held her loosely. “We are both sorry until we’re sick with it, but that, as you say, does not change the past. When you told me you were leaving me, my first thought was, ‘What took you so long?’ I know it’s been hard for me, and doubtless harder for you. My next reaction to your decision was simply to redouble my efforts to court you back into love with me. I leave tomorrow, and we must conclude that my efforts to woo you were in vain.”
“Not entirely in vain, certainly.”
“Right, we have made our final arrangements, as it were, and I do take some satisfaction from having kept the lawyers out of it thus far.”
“But I’m asking too much when I invite you to stay with me tonight?”
His embrace changed, no longer the comforting passive stance couples indulged in that had little of the erotic about it. For the first time in years, Penelope felt from her spouse not merely a husband’s touch, but a lover’s.
“I fear,” he said, “that much of what we regret is because we did not ask enough from each other. Enough honesty, enough trust, enough determination, enough ingenuity. If you want me in your bed tonight, Penelope, then in your bed, I shall be.”
A weight of self-judgment, loneliness,something, fell from Penelope’s heart. Truly, Vergilius understood the situation and had, like Penelope, reached a place of acceptance. That was sad, but it was necessary if either of them were to know peace and contentment going forward.
“I will return to the inn and order us some supper,” Vergilius said. “I will also pack for my departure in the morning, then I will join you for supper, and we shall all the pleasures prove.”
He’d used that phrase once before, as they’d bounced and kissed and cuddled their way along the king’s highway on their wedding journey. Penelope had wondered what a quaint little inn by the sea could possibly offer that was worth all that bother.
“I’ll see you in an hour or so,” she said, stepping back, “and lest the obvious go unsaid, thank you, Vergilius, for everything.”
A ghost of a smile touched his eyes. “And thank you, Penelope. For everything.” He bowed, gathered up his hat and coat, and left Penelope standing by the window, counting the minutes and wondering what in the name of holy matrimony she’d got herself into.
