“I know.” Suddenly she became aware of the hot tears on her own cheeks.

Barky looked down at the man who had been responsible for the murder of the Countess Balaton and her children—his mother and his brother and sisters.

“It’s over,” Ashley said.

“Yes. And I feel no satisfaction.”

36

MacGregor Stevens breathed in the warm mist on the terrace, and welcomed the light scent of his wife’s flowers. He’d been through hell, and he was glad to be back to this heaven. Elaine came out with a tray of lemonade, and she smiled at him so sweetly. And, not for the first time since he’d been transferred home from the Maine hospital, he felt himself brimming with emotion as he marveled at the miracle of her. She had every right to be done with him; he’d told her that. But she had said, “Haven’t you suffered enough already, my darling?”

No, he thought, not by a long shot.

“You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?” She handed him a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade and sat on the chair near him, always near him. “Ashley and David.”

He smiled at her and wished this weakness and melancholy would just disappear. He couldn’t maintain a smile, even one directed at this wonderful woman, to whom he’d finally told everything, from the beginning, when, in Vienna, he’d fallen madly, passionately, stupidly in love with Judith Land. “I never knew she was pregnant,” he said now, again. “It was my fault; I should have known.”

His wife leaned over and grasped his thin wrist. He’d lost so much weight during the past weeks. “Everything can’t be your fault, Mac. For heaven’s sake, you’re human. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Judith had plenty of opportunities to call you and tell you she was pregnant. Even after the babies were born, she could have asked you for help.”

“She didn’t know where I was.”

“She could have found out.”

He looked out across the terrace, to the Pacific Ocean, lost in the mist. “I never tried contacting her. It’s possible she died thinking I was already dead... that she was joining me.”

“Mac,” Elaine said sharply, “she died trying to make a life for herself and her babies. No matter what she and Andrew Balaton came to, she did marry the man. She wasn’t a goddess, Mac. She made mistakes. So did you. You were young and in circumstances beyond your depth. You did your best to do what was right. Now stop punishing yourself. If you’d known about Ashley and David, you’d have gone and fetched them, and we would have raised them.”

He nodded slowly, trying to accept the wisdom of her words, and to ease his own stubborn guilt. She could forgive him for never having told her about his brief, wild love affair with a legend. But could he forgive himself for not having pursued the truth sooner? For not knowing, for the love of God, that he had children? Twins!