“Cold?” he asked her.
She shook her head and smiled at him, but he set an arm about her shoulders anyway and drew her against his side. She rested her head on his shoulder as they walked on.
“Ah,” he said.
And he needed to say no more. The moon was shining across the water of the lake. They stood still on the bank just a few feet from the oak tree beneath which they had sat.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “I’ll remember it this way all my life.”
“Will you?” He looked down at her and laid a cheek against the top of her head for a brief moment. “And that I was with you here?”
“Yes,” she said.
She waited to be taken to the tree. She waited for him to make love to her. And she yearned for the moment and regretted that it had come so soon and would soon be over. So much living to be done in the next few minutes. So many memories to be stored.
She was going to be happy. She was going to allow herself to be fully and finally happy. For happiness, she had learned in her twenty-six years, was never eternal—at least not in this life—but came in brief and glorious moments.
It was not right, he thought. There would be something almost sordid in coupling with her beneath the tree where they had been caught together. He was not sure he was going to be able to make love to her at all. It was not quite what he wanted. He did not want a brief moment of sensual satisfaction with her. He wanted a lifetime of total satisfaction.
And yet he could not speak to her. He was afraid to speak. He was afraid of ending something before he was ready to let it go.
He looked along the bank to the boathouse, where the two boats were kept. And he knew at last. There was a little piece of wilderness that would mean nothing at all to anyone else except the two of them. It was their piece of wilderness, visible from the house, but quite unremarkable except to two people who had stood there together and had wanted to remain there together forever, forgotten by the world and forgetful of it.
“I’ll get one of the boats,” he said, and he knew by the way she turned with him toward the boathouse and by the fact that she did not protest being taken boating in the middle of a March night that she understood.
And he knew finally his own foolishness. He knew that she could not be the other half of his soul unless he were the other half of hers. And he knew that such a feeling would be impossible unless she shared it. For the first time that night he relaxed and was happy. He kissed her briefly on the lips before going alone to launch one of the boats.
Rosamund sat idle in the boat a few minutes later, trailing one hand in the water until its coldness threatened to turn her fingers numb. And she glanced in wonder at the man who rowed the boat, the capes of his greatcoat making him look even more broad-shouldered than usual, his eyes smiling at her.
What had changed? Was it the calm water and the moonlight? When had peace taken the place of anxiety? When had she known beyond any doubt that their minds, their very souls, were in as great a harmony as their bodies?
Was she deluding herself? Was she being foolish in the extreme, not fortifying herself against pain to come?
But, no. She knew where they were going. And there was only one possible reason why he would take her there.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, gazing out across the lake, aware that she was repeating herself.
“Yes, you are,” he said softly, and they smiled at each other.
“The daffodils are still in bloom,” she said in some wonder. They were standing hand in hand at the top of the rise from which they had looked to the house on a previous occasion.
“Of course they are,” he said. “It has been less than a week.”
“Has it?” she said. “It seems like forever ago.”
“But most of them are closed up for the night,” he said. “And their color is not so apparent in the moonlight. I wonder if Wordsworth ever saw his ten thousand daffodils at night.”
“Daylight, moonlight, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is an enchanted place.”
“Our own little piece of wilderness,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever made love among daffodils?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Me neither,” he said. “It will be a new experience for both of us.”
