I know I’m responsible, his eyes said, but what can I do? My feet simply won’t behave!
Why did that wistful expression of his tug at her heart? Why did she long to hold those clumsy hands, long to try to ease the burden that rested on those stooped shoulders?
“I am another man’s wife,” she reminded herself. “Samah’s wife.”
They had loved each other, she supposed. She’d borne him children, they must have . . . once.
But she remembered the image Alfred had conjured for her, an image of two people loving each other fiercely, passionately, because this night was all they had, because all they had was each other. No, she realized sadly. She’d never truly loved.
She felt no pain inside her, no ache, nothing. Only spacious, large emptiness, defined by cool, straight lines, supported by upright columns. What furniture existed was neat, orderly, occasionally shifting position, but never actually rearranged. Until those too-large feet and those wistful, searching eyes and those clumsy hands blundered into her and threw everything into wild disarray.
“Samah would say that it is a mothering instinct, that since I am past my childbearing years, I have the need to mother something. Odd, but I can’t remember mothering my own child.
I suppose I did. I suppose I must have. All I seem to remember is wandering about this empty house, dusting the furniture.”
Her feelings for Alfred weren’t motherly, however. Orla remembered his awkward hands, his timid caresses, and blushed hotly. No, not motherly at all.
“What is there about him?” she wondered aloud.
Certainly nothing visible on the surface: balding head, stooped shoulders, feet that seemed intent on carrying their owner to disaster, mild blue eyes, shabby mensch clothes that he refused to change. Orla thought of Samah: strong, self-possessed, powerful. Yet Samah had never made her feel compassion, never made her cry for someone else’s sorrow, never made her love someone for the sake of loving.
“There is a power in Alfred,” Orla told the straight and uncaring furniture. “A power that is all the more powerful because he is not aware of it. If you accused him of it, in fact”—she smiled fondly—”he would get that bewildered, astonished look on his face and stammer and stutter and . . . I’m falling in love with him. This is impossible. I’m falling in love with him.”
And he’s falling in love with you.
“No,” she protested, but her protest was soft and her smile did not fade.
Sartan did not fall in love with other people’s spouses. Sartan remained faithful to their marriage vows. This love was hopeless and could come only to grief. Orla knew this. She knew she would have to remove the smiles and tears from her being, straighten it up, return it to its straight lines and empty dustiness. But for a short time, for this one moment, she could recall the warmth of his hand gently stroking her skin, she could cry in his arms for another woman’s baby, she could feel.
It occurred to her that she’d been away from him an interminable length of time.
“He’ll think I’m angry at him,” she realized, remorseful, remembering how she’d stalked off the terrace. “I must have hurt him. I’ll go explain and . . . and then I’ll tell him that he has to leave this house. It won’t be wise for us to see each other anymore, except on Council business. I can manage that. Yes, I can definitely manage that.”
But her heart was beating far too rapidly for comfort, and she was forced to repeat a calming mantra before she was relaxed enough to look firm and resolved. She smoothed her hair and wiped away any lingering traces of tears, tried a cool, calm smile on her face, studied herself anxiously in a mirror to see if the smile looked as strained and borrowed as it felt.
Then she had to pause to try to think how to bring the subject into conversation.
“Alfred, I know you love me . . .”
No, that sounded conceited.
“Alfred, I love you . . .”
No, that would certainly never do! After another moment’s reflection, she decided that it would be best to be swift and merciless, like one of those horrid mensch surgeons, chopping off a diseased limb.