He’d learned all of those skills years ago.
But as he held Penelope in the shadowy bedroom where they’d first fallen in love, his grief was as vast as the ocean. They had both tried so hard for so long. He could not ask Penelope to keep trying now.
“It wasn’t like this before,” Penelope murmured.
“It wasn’t,” Gill replied, kissing her brow and needing desperately to avoid a discussion of the differences between honeymoon lovemaking and farewell lovemaking. “Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
Penelope was allowing him to change the subject, to call an intermission to the pleasure and the pain. They ate companionably in the kitchen, Penelope wearing nothing but Gill’s old dressing gown. He decided that this would be his favorite memory of her, eating sandwiches by candlelight, looking well loved and tired.
“You will wake me before you go?” Penelope asked.
“I will love you before I go,” Gill replied, offering her a smile and a wink.
She smiled back, though neither one of them was quite able to make those smiles merry. Penelope had spoken the truth when she’d said the lovemaking had never been like this. Never been this intense, this honest, this emotional.
This sad and wonderful.
When they’d finished eating and tidied up, Gill wrapped himself around Penelope beneath the covers, determined to stay awake, a feat he managed for five entire minutes. His last thought before drifting off was that the lovemaking had never been like this before, and it would never be like this—like anything—ever again.
Sneaking away from Vergilius back in London had felt wrong, and as Penelope drowsed beside him, she understood why. Giving up on her marriage was the lesser of two pains—another nine years like the last nine would be unbearable—but she had failed to acknowledge precisely what she was giving up on.
She’d dodged that bit of honesty with herself, and this week with her husband had held her accountable.
Vergilius was, if anything, a more impressive man than he’d been ten years ago. He had grown into his title and now wielded it for the benefit of others. He was stalwart in the face of family members who took his generosity for granted. He was kind, humble, hardworking, and entirely deserving of a second chance with another woman.
He was also breathtakingly desirable.
If-onlys multiplied in Penelope’s head, and her dreams were troubled. She woke at one point in darkness to find herself alone in bed, and in her panic to locate her husband, she banged her elbow and barked her shin.
She finally caught sight of him, wandering alone in the moonlight down along the shore. The sight was so dear and sad Penelope nearly shouted at him to come back to the cottage and back to bed.
Back to her. He’d said he would not leave her without waking her, so she instead waited on the terrace, swaddled in blankets, until he turned his steps in the direction of the path.
She had learned too well how to wait for him, more’s the pity.
When Gill again wrapped himself around her beneath the covers, she feigned sleep, though she was in truth exhausted. She let the rise and fall of his breathing soothe her back into dreams, and when she awoke, faint light seeped through the curtains.
Gill was still abed with her, and she could tell he was awake even before she opened her eyes. The awful hour of parting had arrived, as it must.
“You said you’d love me before you leave,” she whispered.
Vergilius could have put her off with vague excuses meant to be kind. Instead, he loved her in silent splendor, rising above her and looking directly into her eyes as passion ignited. Penelope tried to hold his gaze, to return his regard, but as the yearning crested higher, so did heartache. When the end came, she closed her eyes and clung as she had longed to cling for so many years.
Gill held her gently, then withdrew and spent on her belly. He dealt with the mess and did Penelope the great kindness of curling up beside her and tucking her close.
“You will stay here for the next week?” he asked.
“I will.” She’d need to. “I’ll send word to Patchwork Cottage to expect me and give the staff some warning before I descend. You’re for London?”
“London and the solicitors. I will send the traveling coach for your journey to the cottage. I will also boot Mama and Bella from the town house. Mama can stay with friends if she must bide in Town, and as for Bella…”
“Be not merely firm, Vergilius, be ruthless. Bella cannot be allowed to destroy your peace as she has so often tried to destroy mine. Give her an inch, and she will have appointed herself your hostess by Friday.”
Vergilius shuddered. “Tommie married somebody very like our mother. Will you help me to dress?”
“Of course.” A wife often valeted her husband, and he served as her lady’s maid. Penelope tried to view passing Vergilius his sleeve buttons, tying his cravat, and straightening his watch chain as final mementos of a lovely week, but those small acts mostly just made her sad.
Sadder.
He was leaving because she’d asked him to leave. She needed him to leave.
When he was dressed, had downed two cups of tea, and tarried over the last of the apple tarts, there was nothing more to say or do that would not be a blatant delay of the inevitable. Penelope belted her old dressing gown more tightly about her middle and accompanied Vergilius to the door.
“Thank you for this week,” she said. “And for last night.”
He drew her into his arms, and she went willingly. “Last night was magnificent, Penelope, as you are magnificent. Let me know when you are settled at the cottage. There will be agreements to sign, affidavits, and so forth. All tedious, but we’ll get through it.”
They would. Now, when it was too late, she and Gill had developed sufficient trust and shared purpose to weather the impending storm. She walked with him to the door, the flagstones of the floor cold through the thin soles of her slippers. Vergilius donned his hat and coat, then dipped his head to kiss her cheek.
“Platitudes would be blasphemous,” he said, pausing just outside the front door, “but silence won’t do either. Promise me again you will let me know if you need anything. Don’t go through the lawyers. Just drop me a note and be blunt. I will worry about you, and I will…”
Penelope nodded, crossing the threshold to take his hand. “Miss you. I will miss you as well, Vergilius.” She hugged him, all of her fears welling up into one great big ball of sorrow lodged in her throat. What did he fear? What nightmares haunted him? Too late to ask that now.
“Will you write back?” she murmured, breathing him in, memorizing his wondrous male shape. “I always wondered why you never wrote back to me, Vergilius. I know you were busy, but… I should not ask.”
Penelope’s husband stared down at her in the predawn gloom. “Write back to you?”
“All those years ago, when you had to be at the Hall, and I was still too unwell from childbed to travel from Town. I wrote to you, and my letters went unanswered.”
He looked at her as if he had no clue what she was going on about.
“Never mind,” Penelope said. “I should not have asked, and you must be going.”
He studied her, then he kissed her again, this time on the mouth. “Be well, Penelope, and if you can, be happy. Perhaps I did not answer your letters for the same reason you did not answer mine.”