“It appears we have had the same thought,” he murmured.
They stood quietly together for a while, staring at the tablet.
“Do you come here…often?” Viola asked.
“Sometimes. When I have to think. It is a good place to be.” He lifted a hand. “When I crave solitude. George would have liked to know what was happening in my life.”
“Ah.” So he came to talk to George. She wondered whether he’d told him everything. Whether he’d told him about her.
Viola repressed a shiver. “Sometimes it still hits me,” she found herself saying. “That George never received any of our letters. That autumn. That day. He was already…”
“Dead,” Sebastian finished. “At Talavera. They say it was one of the bloodiest battles fought on the Peninsula. We thought he had survived. The news that he had not did not reach us for months.”
Months after that fateful day. Weeks after Viola had left Westwood Hall. Communication from Spain had been catastrophically slow during active campaigning; everything was in disarray, and it was a miracle they had received letters from George at all. Still, Viola found it difficult to understand why it had taken them so long to notify the family of his death.
By then, Viola had already returned to Scotland.
Sebastian had written to her with the painful news.
She had not replied because something else had happened…
She heard herself speaking again, as if from a great distance. “George was one of the few people who saw me as I really was. We shared the same ridiculous sense of humour.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “We met at an assembly ball in Inverness. I was a wallflower, of course; no one wanted to dance with me. But I did not mind. I sat by the wall, watching the others, watching George. He was the handsomest officer at theassembly.” A faint smile crossed her lips. “What I did not know was that he had been watching me, too. When I left the room, he followed and introduced himself. Shocking, I know. But neither of us ever stood on formality. He asked me to dance, and I refused; I told him I would probably tread on his toes.” She gave a quiet laugh. “So, he sat with me instead. And we talked.” And talked and talked…
She had been barely sixteen, and the assembly’s handsomest officer had singled her out and spoken to her as though she mattered.
“I used to think George and I were the best of friends. He just understood me like very few people did.”
Sebastian was silent for a long moment. Something crossed his face, too quick for her to read, before his expression shuttered.
“You still love him.”
She looked at him, startled, as though she had half-forgotten he was there. Had she really said all that aloud? To him?
“Well, yes,” she began. “But?—”
The church door opened. A group of people entered, their voices echoing off the stone.
Sebastian cast a fleeting glance toward them. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, then changed his mind and stepped away from her.
Of course.
They were not supposed to know each other. They were supposed to be strangers in public. He couldn’t be associated with someone like her.
They’d agreed to that, and she’d thought it a fine solution.
Yet, somehow, it hurt to see him step away from her like that, as if being seen with her was an embarrassment. A bitter taste entered her mouth.
He gave her a curt nod and turned away.
Viola pulled her shawl tighter and remained sitting a while longer, with bowed head.
“You see, George, things did not at all turn out the way I expected them to. If I could do it all over again, I would…I would…”
What would she do exactly?
Love him more?
Love him less?
