“A few days ago,” he said quietly, “you said that you had needed to be held.”
“I lost my temper,” she said. “It would have been better if I had said nothing.”
“Why did you not ask me?” he said. “To hold you. You must have known that I would have. You must have known that I came after you to be of service to you.”
She looked back at him suddenly, feeling the unwise anger building again. “Is that what you were doing when you lay with me?” she said. “Servicing me? Consoling me for the loss of Lieutenant Hastings? You would have serviced me further by holding me, had I asked? I am very glad I did not.”
She saw the answering flash of anger in his eyes. “You must have a strangely inaccurate memory of that night if you can believe that,” he said. “You insult me with your sarcasm.”
“You need not listen to my insults,” she cried. “You can go back to your own life any time you wish—with my blessing and with a clear conscience. I do not want you here. I do not want you in my life. I hate you. You can ask me a thousand times to marry you and I will say no a thousand times. You are wasting your time here.”
“I can see that I am,” he said.
She had never seen him angry before, though he was in perfect, icy control of himself. They had stopped walking and were standing face-to-face, glaring at each other. His dog, which had run on ahead, was loping back toward them.
“I will take my leave of you,” he said, bowing stiffly to her. “You may rest easy. I will be gone within the next couple of hours.”
But he hesitated as he was about to turn away and reached into his pocket to jerk something out. He held it out to her, his fingers closed over it, but before she could either take it from him or refuse it, he stepped forward and slipped something hurriedly over her head.
Then he turned and strode away from her. The collie raced ahead up the beach.
She watched him go. She had won. There would be no more such encounters. She could regain her equilibrium and her peace of mind.
I will be gone within the next couple of hours.
Gone forever. She was looking at him for the last time. For the last time ever. She would never see him again. She would never hear his voice again.
Her eyes strayed downward. Hanging from the thin black ribbon he had thrown over her head was an inexpertly carved wooden spoon. Her hand closed tightly about it.
“No!” she shrieked, furious with him. “You cannot do this to me.”
He stopped abruptly and turned toward her. She would have thought he was out of earshot. She stared mutely at him, and after a few moments he took a few steps back toward her.
“Cannot do what?” he asked. His voice carried to her, though apparently he had not raised it.
“You cannot do this to me,” she called again. She did not know herself what she meant. She was caught in a terrible panic.
He strode toward her and came to stand in front of her once more. His eyes looked directly into hers. “Do what?” he asked again.
She launched herself at him suddenly, the sides of her fists pounding harmlessly against the capes of his greatcoat. “I hate you!” she cried. “I hate you, I hate you.”
“Katherine.” His hand was hard against the back of her head and her face was being pressed against the capes she was still pummeling. “Katherine.”
“I hate you.” Her voice was muffled and she was crying noisily against him, all dignity gone.
“I know.” His arms were about her like iron bands. His cheek was against the top of her head. “I know.”
“I hate you,” she said one last time, without any conviction at all.
He would have cried with her if he had known how to cry. But he could not remember a time, even back to his infancy, when it had not been instilled in him by his parents, his nurses, his tutors, his schoolmasters that it was unmanly to cry, to show any strong emotion, to reveal any weakness whatsoever.
But he would have cried now if he could have. He had been striding away out of her life, away from the hope and the dream that had sustained him through five lonely years. He had been walking into a frightening emptiness. And then her call had stopped him, an outpouring of hatred. Except that it had not sounded like hatred, and her sobs did not sound like hatred. And he was holding her in his arms for the first time since that night, and he was still here with her.
With renewed hope, like a sharp pain in his heart. Hope despite her words.
“Why?” He whispered the word against her ear when she had finally stopped crying and had relaxed her weight against him. “What have I done to you, Katherine?” And then finally the inspiration came. “What have I not done?”
But the weeping and the weakness were at an end. She pushed herself away from him without looking up at him, fumbled in a pocket for a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and her cheeks with it, turned away from him and blew her nose, and then took a few steps away.
