Chapter 17: Chapter Seventeen: The Woman Who Could Return

The great doors were open when Verity limped up the front steps of the manor, and she entered into the silent hall feeling unsure and vaguely unwelcome.

"Mr Prothero?" she called, seeing no servants. "Mr Armiger?"

There were footsteps from above. A maid put her head over the banister of the mezzanine, saw Verity, gave a shriek, and ran off crying something in French. A moment later, Mrs Prothero came to the mezzanine, saw Verity, and came trotting down the stairs with a cry.

"Ma petite enfant!" she cried, taking Verity's arms. "You are safe! The men go to look for you – but you are safe! Come!"

She gave a directive to the maid in French, and dragged Verity off with her to the kitchen. Within minutes, she had Verity safely rested on a kitchen chair, wrapped in a blanket, with a cup of mulled wine in her hands, and was assuring her that a hot bath would be on the way in her room.

Warm and comfortable at last, Verity suddenly felt the overwhelming emotions of the situation hit her, and tears began to roll hotly down her cheeks. Until now, she had not cried once – not when she had first realized she had been left behind, not in the long dreary wait in the rain, nor even in that terrifying walk through the woods – but now she cried, as though her heart would break.

Mrs Prothero patted her shoulder delicately. "You are home now, home now," she said kindly. "You are safe."

Shakingly, Verity swallowed her wine, which was too hot and strong, and burned her throat and made her head swim. She wiped the tears from her eyes with muddy fingers, and looked sadly at Mrs Prothero.

She wanted to ask how she had come to be left in the forest, but she could think of no way to frame it that wasn't an accusation. Perhaps Mrs Prothero understood though. She launched into a broken explanation of the fact:

"It was because Henry falls in the water," she said. "He falls in the water, and Mr Armiger rescues him. We go home, Henry, Lord Armiger, I. Cloe, Mama, George, stay in the forest. They think you go with us. We think you go with them. When they come back, Mr Armiger says, 'Where's Verity?' and no one knows."

After some parsing, Verity understood, in a basic manner, what had happened. It hadn't been on purpose, she realized. Of course not. She had known that. Unfeeling logic had told her that people do not deliberately abandon guests in rainy forests, even if the people are French and the guests are English. But her feeling heart had not quite believed that logic.

"Are they looking for me now? Is Mr Armiger gone with them?" she asked.

"Yes, yes," Mrs Prothero reassured her. "They go. I send Cloe for them, to bring them back. Soon, soon, Mr Armiger returns."

She patted Verity's hand, and Verity gave her a watery smile. Not too soon, she hoped. She did not want him to see her like this: wet, and miserable, and dirty.

"He goes to look for you last night, and does not find you," Mrs Prothero added, sensing some reservation and mistaking the cause of it. "Where were you?"

"I – I got lost." Verity drank the last of her wine, and let its heady strength get to her head. "He came for me?"

"He goes as soon as George returns, and comes back at midnight, alone."

Verity put her head in her hands, and began to laugh, her entire, exhausted body shaking. He must have just missed her, somewhere on that dark road – and she had been too proud and unfaithful to wait!

"What is wrong?" Mrs Prothero asked. "What is wrong?"

"Oh. Oh, it doesn't matter." She rolled her head up to look at Mrs Prothero. "But I'm dirty – I don't want him to see me all dirty like this, when he comes back. Is the bath ready?"

The bath was not quite ready, but she went to her room, and undressed, and had the maid take her dirty clothes, and sank down into the water in relief. The maid remained to keep topping up the bath with more hot water, and Verity scrubbed the mud and grime from her skin and hair. The water stung the scratches of her face and ankles and hands, but she continued heedless of the pain. She had caught sight of her face in the hallway mirror as she came upstairs, and it had been an awful, tired, muddy, bloody thing. She was determined not to appear before her husband until she was pretty again. She felt stupid and small and was conscious that if she had waited just a little longer, had just a little more faith, she would not be scratched and limping and dirty now. It was a consciousness that made her feel stupider and smaller, and she scrubbed harder at her skin as though she could scrub the shame away with the mud.

Her bath was done, the water black and tepid. She dried herself, and the maid helped bundle her up and put her to bed, where another cup of mulled wine was brought for her, to warm her insides.

Slightly drunk, and very exhausted, it wasn't long before she fell into a dreamless sleep. She half-woke at one point to a touch at her face, and opened her eyes.

"Go back to sleep," Mr Armiger said softly. It was he who had touched her face, he who stood by the side of the bed. But he removed his hand now, and receded from her sight.

When she awoke again, it was noon, and she thought she might have dreamed it.

She sat up. Mr Armiger was sleeping in buckskins and waistcoat, on the settee by the wall. A maid was setting a tray on the little table by the window. She looked up as Verity began to untangle herself confusedly from the blankets, nodded, and pointed to the tray.

"Déjeuner, Mademoiselle."

But Verity understood the smell of the coffee and warm bread more than anything else. She got her feet to the floor as the maid left the room, and, wincing as her ankle ached anew from the weight upon it, limped to the settee and bent to shake Armiger's shoulder. The warmth of his flesh radiated through the thin muslin of his shirt, and he smelled like the almond-scented soap Mr Prothero supplied to his guests.

His eyes opened. There were dark shadows beneath them, particularly apparent in his strangely pallid face, and pinched creases at either side of his mouth.

"Shall you eat?" asked Verity.

"Mmmph," he grunted.

She turned away, and limped to the table. When she was pouring the coffee, he joined her, and sat down.

"You're limping. Are you hurt?"

"I sprained my ankle a little. It's not so bad." She poured his coffee. "A few days of rest, and I'll be fine."

"And the scratches?" His hand came to her face, and brushed gently below one of the deeper and more painful scratches. So it had not been a dream, she realized. He had touched her like this when she was sleeping.

"They'll heal too." She ripped into a bread roll, ravenous.

He must have been hungry as well, and for some time there was no conversation to be had. When they were done, and she pushed her empty cup and plate away, Mr Armiger stood and said,

"Sit down with me. I want to talk to you."

She went with him to the little settee, and curled on one end of it, while he sat down at the other, and rested his arm along the seat-back.

"I was so worried," he murmured, looking at her. "So damn worried – and I come back, and you're fast asleep, in bed, safe."

"I'm sorry." She put her own arm across the back of the settee, so she could briefly touch his hand. "I didn't think you'd come for me, so I decided I would walk back, and I – I was so stupid and got so lost. I slept beneath a tree, and I hurt my ankle, and..."

She bowed her head, to hide the tears that had sprung to her eyes. "If I'd waited..."

His hand closed over her fingers.

"It was little Henry. He fell in the river, and I got him out, so I, and he, and Mrs Prothero went home early. We thought you would come back with the other three, but they thought you'd gone with us. Between that, you were left behind. I'm sorry."

"She told me," Verity said, raising her head again, and leaning against the couch back. "Mrs Prothero, she told me. Though..." She smiled wryly. "Last night, I thought you were teaching me a lesson, by leaving me there."

His hand dropped from hers.

"You think I would do that?"

She pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. "No. No, when I think about it, I don't. But when I was feeling about it, in the dark, and all alone - feeling's different." But the hurt expression on his face made her feel guilty, and her guilt made her feel angry. She added, resentfully, "And it's not like you don't feel that I take – lovers."

"I know you don't!" He stood, and paced ferociously around the room. "You think I believe that!? I was angry and I said what I knew would hurt you. It's my besetting sin - my talent for a cutting word. I'm sorry, I'm sorry! How many times do I have to repeat it before you stop holding a grudge!? God, if you'd just stab me every time you were displeased with me, and be done with it! I could live with that – but your insufferable coldness! Damn British coldness! Damn it to hell!"

She stared at him in shock. He hardly ever cursed, and certainly had never raised his voice at her before.

Sweeping past her in his pacing, he continued:

"I knew you were cold when I married you. But I've never met a woman, who once she's found a flaw in a man, is so determined to judge his every sense of character to it! Haven't you ever accepted an apology in your life? Haven't you ever forgiven anyone? We're married, and I'm going to hurt you many, many times – and you'll hurt me. That's what happens when you're close to someone. If you can never forgive me – what can I do!? What can I do to earn your trust?"

He stopped his pacing, and his shoulders slumped.

"But perhaps I can't."

He picked up his coat from the chair and went to the door, without looking at her once.

"You should rest. You've had a long night, and you're injured."

The door shut softly behind him. Verity lay on her back, stared unseeingly at the ceiling. The maid came, cleared the dinner tray, and left again. Verity hardly noticed her.

The truth was that Verity never had accepted an apology in her life. She had heard so many insincere apologies over the years that she had come to distrust apologies in general, and the people who gave them. And she had thought she had trusted Neil, but she could see now that she had not. She had never trusted anybody in her life. She had been exposed so much and so young to the ugliness of human nature that once she caught the faintest glimpse of it in a man, she assumed he was ugly all through. She had seen some faint ugliness in Neil, and judged him wholly by it. That was not trust.

And she had believed that he had no faith in her!

She scrambled off the couch, flung her dressing gown over her shoulders, and limped hastily into the hall, still fumbling the tie about her waist.

She found him in the library again, once more dozing on the couch, one arm falling gracelessly to the floor. He must have slept late last night, and risen so early this morning.

She couldn't wake him.

Verity kneeled, and kissed his cheek. Within three of his slow, sleeping breaths, she had risen, crossed the room again, and gone.

*     *     *

After she had left, Neil slowly opened his eyes, and touched a hand to his cheek where she had kissed it. There was some alien bloom of emotion in his chest. It was not love, he knew, and it was not lust. He puzzled over it some time, lying on the couch. It was so strange, and he felt so carefree and contented by it.

He still hadn't defined it, when Prothero entered the room and asked his help shifting a heavy cabinet that Mrs Prothero had dropped a ring behind. By then, he was quite overcome by this strange new feeling, and the idea of shifting a cabinet seemed plebian and earthly in comparison.

"Sorry, George," Neil said. "I, er, the wife – you know?"

Prothero raised his eyebrows. "Elucidate, dear boy?"

"The wife," Neil eluded, slipping through the door. "The wife."

And it came to him: the wife. Verity. She had started this strange emotion. She would answer it.

He ran upstairs, and threw open the door of the bedroom, where Verity was sitting on the bed, reading a book.

"Neil!" she said reprovingly. "You've knocked over the vase!"

He had. He had knocked over the vase on the table behind the door, and the flowers had come out, and the water was leaking out on the floor.

"Damn the vase!" He laughed, and bent to pick it up, and put it sloppily back on the table. "Did I dream it? Did you kiss me?"

She blushed, and put her book down. "Well I did."

And he remembered, now, what she had said when he first entered the room.

"And – and did you call me by name, just now?" He crossed to the bed, and stood over her. "Did you?"

"I think I must have."

He kissed her then, because he couldn't not. It was the first time he had kissed her in a week.

"Neil," she breathed once more, when he let her go.

The strange new feeling was still within his chest. It was neither lust, nor love, but something else. Something wonderful and light and dancing. It made him want to kiss her, again, and again, and again.

He never managed to define it. Perhaps because he never realized that it wasn't a feeling at all, but the absence of one. For over a year now, he had still unconsciously been hoping that Giulia might one day return to him. It was a hope as dead as she. And a dead hope is a heavy weight to bear. But with Verity's soft kiss at his cheek, the dead hope had risen, and silently quitted his soul, without him ever knowing it had been there. He was no longer waiting for the woman who could not return. The woman who could return had.

He held her shoulders in the little silk-draped room, not entirely knowing who she was to him. She was pink-cheeked and smiling before him. Questioningly, he kissed her again. Her arms came up around him in answer.

After that, further definition of his emotions was superfluous.

I'm not sure if they made up too quickly or not. But then, they can't fight forever. There may be a mini chapter tomorrow as well, just to sort of tie this one up. It got very long.