‘I’m just trying to explain that I thought it was what I wanted.’

‘Do you still love him? It’s a simple question.’ She thought she’d answered it; he clearly thought otherwise. ‘Is it because of him that you cannot be happy with Aubrey?’ he demanded.

She clamped her mouth closed and wondered when she had ever admitted that she was not happy with Aubrey. She was sure she hadn’t, not in so many words. She tried so hard to be careful and proper. He was a soldier. She was a wife. ‘No.’ Her voice squeezed out despite her brain instructing her lips to stay shut.

‘No what?’

‘No, not because of him.’

‘But you are unhappy with Aubrey.’ Obviously he needed clarity. He couldn’t risk making a mistake but he was demanding too much. She didn’t want to be disloyal.

‘I never said that.’

‘Say it now, why don’t you.’ His impatience bubbled over; he slammed his glass on to the table and stared intently at her. Interrogating her.

‘I can’t.’

‘But I am right.’ The seriousness slipped from his face; he sensed his victory.

She nodded her head a fraction. ‘I love my daughter, so much. I’m comfortable in this village now. I shouldn’t ask for more. It really is enough. Should be.’ Yet she’d invited him here.

His face flooded with concern, sympathy. ‘You are so complicated. Far more complicated than I imagined.’

‘What a wonderful relief that you think so. Most people would write me off as easy after hearing what you have.’ She felt a need to make a joke about her perceived morality. She wanted to kiss him. She felt her whole being flow towards him. Gratitude, desire. But he wouldn’t let her off the hook.

‘It should be enough, but it’s not.’

‘No,’ she admitted. Her fiercely frowning expression loosened into a look of bewildered, somewhat entertained, relief.

‘What would be enough?’

Something slithered through the air. A charge in the atmosphere. She felt it in her being too. She needed someone strong in body and mind, someone enthusiastic and empathetic. She needed him. Not someone like him. Him.

Howard nodded at her. He knew.

36

HER LIPS FELT strangely familiar. Like arriving home after a very long journey. Somewhere known, welcome, decent, good.

The sex was nothing like that; the sex was like being catapulted out of this world into somewhere exotic and exciting, unimaginable and incredible.

He’d kissed her carefully at first, tentatively. Not quite believing that she was agreeing to it, imagining that at any moment she’d remember who she was, or who he was, and say, ‘Enough.’ She did not say enough, not when he kissed her lips, her earlobes, her eyelids, her neck. Not when he started to undo the buttons on her dress. Instead she obligingly, neatly, slipped out of the dress and sat accepting, willing, in a broderie anglaise petticoat. A bride, a fairy, a patch of wild daisies.

Then, as though a switch had been flicked, gentle wasn’t adequate. Not for either of them. The kissing became cavernous and annihilating. He felt the blood roar around his body. A gushing tide in his brain. Now he could see and hear and feel everything so much more clearly, so much more deeply. All that had gone before was ethereal, indistinguishable. Remote. Other kisses with other people were in anticipation of this. All the words they had traded, and those they had not managed to speak, seemed unnecessary now that they were stripped, exposed by their craving and requiring of each other. They tore at their own and each other’s clothes – belts, ribbons, braces, lace – mouths still clasped to one another’s. Their hands raced over each other’s bodies, pawing, grabbing, grasping all they could.