Vergilius had never asked Penelope for anything, and she had tried not to impose on him either. He was a busy man, with even more responsibilities than she’d realized. He was putting enough money and property into her hands that she could maintain her dignity and her charitable contributions, as well as a pleasant if retiring lifestyle.
That dignity hung by a slender thread braided of determination, selfishness, and—this astonished her—gratitude.
“What are you asking me, Penelope?” Vergilius stood beside her, and Penelope was as aware of him as if she were a new bride, or a wife whose husband was soon to march off to battle.
“I am asking you for a farewell to treasure. A send-off, a fond remembrance.” Penelope fumbled for those words, because she truly had no coherent answer. She had missed Vergilius for so long, the Vergilius she’d loved and respected and liked.
Of all places, she’d found him here, where she’d found him once before.
“You are sure?” he asked, his tone giving away nothing.
“We tried, Vergilius. We tried, and tried, and tried. Are we to have no reward for all that effort save some stilted meetings with stilted lawyers? When I run into you five years from now on some busy London street, may I not have one sweet, private memory to share with you as we nod and pass without speaking?”
“You might have one more regret too, Penelope.”
She rounded on him, abruptly out of patience with the tactful negotiator he’d become. “What of you, my lord? In the past nine years, have you never once been tempted to tap on my bedroom door? For old times’ sake, for a lark, in a moment of weakness, for any reason at all? We knew such pleasure before the heartache got the better of us. I want that again, if only for one night.”
Vergilius looked out to sea, and in the utter impassivity of his expression, Penelope saw one final, grand, implacable rejection. That it should come from him was fitting, when she’d been the one to give up on the marriage.
“You ask much, Penelope.”
I wish I had asked much years ago. “It’s the wrong time for me to conceive, if that’s what concerns you.”
He slanted her a puzzled glance. “And if you did conceive?”
“I suppose we’d have to remain married, but I won’t conceive. My courses are predictable.” And every month, they still made her unhappy. How much unhappier would she be as a woman who had abandoned her vows?
“This week has been…” Vergilius took her hand. “I was delighted to find you here. I saw an opportunity to bring everything right between us at last. I would be gallant and attentive and flirt my boots off, not that I know how to do that. You would fall into my lap, grateful and pleased to finally have harmony restored between us.”
She slipped her arms around his waist. “Vergilius, I am sorry.”
He held her loosely. “We are both sorry until we’re sick with it, but that, as you say, does not change the past. When you told me you were leaving me, my first thought was, ‘What took you so long?’ I know it’s been hard for me, and doubtless harder for you. My next reaction to your decision was simply to redouble my efforts to court you back into love with me. I leave tomorrow, and we must conclude that my efforts to woo you were in vain.”
“Not entirely in vain, certainly.”
“Right, we have made our final arrangements, as it were, and I do take some satisfaction from having kept the lawyers out of it thus far.”
“But I’m asking too much when I invite you to stay with me tonight?”
His embrace changed, no longer the comforting passive stance couples indulged in that had little of the erotic about it. For the first time in years, Penelope felt from her spouse not merely a husband’s touch, but a lover’s.
“I fear,” he said, “that much of what we regret is because we did not ask enough from each other. Enough honesty, enough trust, enough determination, enough ingenuity. If you want me in your bed tonight, Penelope, then in your bed, I shall be.”
A weight of self-judgment, loneliness, something, fell from Penelope’s heart. Truly, Vergilius understood the situation and had, like Penelope, reached a place of acceptance. That was sad, but it was necessary if either of them were to know peace and contentment going forward.
“I will return to the inn and order us some supper,” Vergilius said. “I will also pack for my departure in the morning, then I will join you for supper, and we shall all the pleasures prove.”
He’d used that phrase once before, as they’d bounced and kissed and cuddled their way along the king’s highway on their wedding journey. Penelope had wondered what a quaint little inn by the sea could possibly offer that was worth all that bother.
“I’ll see you in an hour or so,” she said, stepping back, “and lest the obvious go unsaid, thank you, Vergilius, for everything.”
A ghost of a smile touched his eyes. “And thank you, Penelope. For everything.” He bowed, gathered up his hat and coat, and left Penelope standing by the window, counting the minutes and wondering what in the name of holy matrimony she’d got herself into.
Gill would not try to trap Penelope with a child, of that much he was certain.
Over the past days, the longer he’d listened to her recount the sheer misery she’d endured with Mama and Bella taking turns disrespecting her authority, invading her household, and imposing patently stupid advice on her, the more he’d realized that Penelope’s depths of self-restraint rivaled the ocean itself.
Equally bad advice had come to Gill from Tommie, old married man that he’d claimed to be at barely twenty. Papa’s friends had been similarly backward in their suggestions for how to deal with a bereaved wife, and Gill—regret piled upon woe placed atop self-recrimination—had listened to them.
He did not dress for dinner, but instead donned the riding attire he’d wear in the morning, a reminder of where this final interlude with Penelope would end. He also did not question his motives for agreeing to her proposition.
For selfish reasons, for stupid reasons, for no reasons at all, he wanted to be what she’d asked him to be—her lover—if only for one night.
The meal was simple—cold ham-and-cheese sandwiches, apple tarts, a bottle of Merlot. Gill appropriated the hamper from the porter when he met that good soul on the path under the elms.
“And her ladyship will want breakfast brought over, as usual,” Gill said. “Leave it outside the door, for she might not rise with the sun.”
The porter winked and trotted back to the inn. Gill had already settled up both his account and Penelope’s, because it was still his privilege to see to her financial needs. Three months hence…
He knocked on the cottage door, which opened almost immediately. Penelope was in an old morning gown, a shawl about her shoulders. She looked tired, dear, and determined as she stepped back to let him into the cottage.
“Do we fortify ourselves with sustenance first,” Gill asked, “or fortify ourselves with pleasure and eat later?”
If he’d shocked his wife, the only sign was a slight raising of her brows. “I suppose the wine should breathe.”
Gill set the hamper on the kitchen table. “Merlot typically breathes for less than an hour, Penelope. I have missed you for nine years, and I will not be rushed once we are in the bedroom.”