up a pebble. He sent it skipping over the water. Four skips. It wasn’t bad.
I called out, “My record is six skips.”
He tried with three more pebbles, but he only got five skips on one of them As
he walked back to me, he tossed a pebble from one hand to the other. “You could
be lying, of course. Six jumps? You will have to prove that.”
“Certainly,” I said.
He didn’t sit. He just stood over me and stared down at me, tossing that damned
pebble. He was quiet for a very long time. Finally, he said, and it seemed to me
that he still didn’t want to talk, that his words were being dragged out of him
against his will, “You want to know the truth of things? That first evening when
you walked into the drawing room, my uncle at your side, his wedding ring on
your finger, I just stared at you, refusing to believe that it was you. How
could it be? I had left you, a very young woman, back in London. What the hell
would you be doing with my uncle? Then George heard me and tore across the
drawing room to jump on me. No, I didn’t want to believe it was you, but since
it was, then I didn’t want to believe that you had actually married my damned
uncle. I still wake up sometimes during the night, and I will think for a couple
of seconds that it isn’t true, that you did not marry him, that you are still in
London, waiting for me to come back. But of course you’re here, and you’re his
damned wife.
“I was shot once, in those dry scrubby hills just outside of Lisbon during a
fight with a band of guerrillas. I will tell you that the pain I felt seeing you
here as my uncle’s wife, was greater than the pain from that bullet in my leg.
“I knew I couldn’t remain here and keep my hands off you. Oh, yes, I know you’re
terrified of me, of any man, I suspect, and perhaps you’ll tell me one day why
this is so. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to touch you, kiss you, teach you
that you didn’t have to be afraid of me, ever. I would never hurt you, you see,
and whatever happened to you in the past, I would make you forget it. But, of
course, I couldn’t do that. You are my uncle’s wife.
“I knew I had to leave. I simply couldn’t remain here and be near you, but not
have you. I would know, day after day, that you were my uncle’s wife, not mine.
But then the old woman attacked you with one of my knives, taken right out of my
own damned collection. Everything changed. I couldn’t leave, not with you in
danger.”
He was big and dark, and he looked more dangerous in this moment than a raging
dark storm gathering speed as it roiled over the horizon. He never looked away
from me. What I hated most was the pain I felt in him.
“God, how I wish you’d never come here.”
I wasn’t afraid, not at all. I was something else, something I now realized that
I had felt with him that very first time I had seen him with George and he’d
laughed and teased me, but then I’d been me and whipped it all up and made it a
part of the deadening fear. But fear had nothing to do with it, and I knew it. I
just didn’t know if I could accept it, if I could even bring myself to come to
understand it.
“You wanted me?” And I knew exactly what that meant, I felt it deep inside me,
and I savored it and held it close and waited for him to answer.
“You sound incredulous. Are you so very blind to what you are? Oh, yes, from the
moment you came after George that first time I saw you in Hyde Park, I wanted
you. The look on your face, the outrage, the utter betrayal, that George wanted
me more than he wanted you. I knew in that instant that you were the only woman