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‘Shall we eat? I’m ravenous,’ she said and advanced towards the food. Food to calm her nerves and dull her appetite. It was merely hunger that had given her this giddy feeling. ‘You are right. I am famished, but there is far too much for one.’
He gave her a speculative glance and she knew her cheeks slightly flamed, but she wasn’t ready to say goodnight. She wasn’t ready to be alone with her thoughts.
‘It would be wrong to waste a good meal after the innkeeper’s wife went to much trouble.’
‘Indeed it would.’
‘Well, then.’ She sat down and gave a nod towards the other chair. She could keep the topics on general subjects; when they were finished, she’d be able to bid him goodnight. She would demonstrate that she was immune to his charms. ‘Shall we begin?’
* * *
Halfway through supper, Robert covered her hand in his. ‘Now are you going to tell me why you are always insistent about looking after others? You are willing to make yourself ill if it means that others don’t suffer.’
Henri looked at her barely touched food and withdrew her hand. It would be far easier to tell him about such things than to speak about how much she wanted him. She had thought it was just hunger, but it was a different sort of hunger. She wanted to feel his lips against hers.
She took another sip of the wine and tried to concentrate on the fire.
‘I suppose it comes down to my mother.’ She began to explain about her mother and her sayings and how the only thing that was important when she was growing up was what her mother wanted. How her mother had needed constant attention and how it had driven her father away, and how she had learnt to manage.
He gave a nod, refilled her glass and motioned for her to continue.
She sneaked another look at the bed, and then back at him and how he looked in his shirt sleeves with his stock ever so slightly undone. She toyed with her piece of pie. There had to be a way of controlling her desire. ‘I suppose I ought to explain about Edmund.’
His hand froze in mid-air as he topped up her glass of wine. The wine spilled over the edge before he recovered his composure. ‘Only if you want to.’
‘He understood me, you see. He had a lonely childhood as well. He was always getting sick and having trouble breathing.’ Henri looked over Robert’s shoulders towards the glowing coals. ‘He had the time to listen to my dreams and he was such a gentle person. When I was fourteen, he became seriously ill for the first time, but his guardian was far too busy. I decided to look after him. At sixteen I proposed. He refused me, but then when he saw how upset I was and how they were going to take me away, he relented and agreed to elope. He needed someone who cared about him, rather than just servants.’
‘What did he have?’
‘A weak chest. Each time he became ill, it went straight to his chest and he had trouble breathing. The night we eloped, it rained and he caught a cold. We had planned to go to Italy once he was well. The air is supposed to be better there for weak chests.’
‘But he didn’t get better.’
‘I tried and tried, but I don’t have Sophie’s knack for nursing. Every day, he seemed to get weaker. I wanted him to fight, but he told me that I had to fight for both of us.’ She hugged her arms about her waist as her stomach knotted in on itself. ‘The only day he ever became angry with me was the day he died. I had brought a vase of daffodils to brighten the room and show him how alive the world was. He thought I was mocking him. He accused me of wanting too much. I told him to stop lying there and to take an interest in life.’
‘You had words.’
‘An angry exchange. It was so unlike him. I flounced out of the room; by the time I returned, he had slipped away. No one should have to die alone, especially not someone like him.’ She put a hand to her head. ‘If I’d known. My last words to him were angry and bitter. He deserved better. I shortened his life. Everyone said so. You asked me earlier why I have a hard time forgiving. I never had to forgive Edmund anything except for dying.’
‘Hush.’ He came over to her then and raised her up from her seat. His arms went around her and held her. She gave a shuddering sigh and laid her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
His fingers lifted her chin. ‘Henri…’
She put her fingers to his lips. ‘So you see.’
‘What happened with you and your husband was fate. No one’s fault. I’ve seen men have horrible accidents and survive and others die over the most trivial of things. Nobody chooses the time of their death—it just is.’ His arms tightened about her. ‘And you can’t change it as much as you would sometimes like to. Neither can you blame yourself for not being somewhere. You can only look towards the future. Forgiving mistakes means you can be forgiven.’
