"He knew." She hugged her knees. "If he loved you as well as you say he did, then he understood too. He had lived long enough to know about the various stages of life. And I believe that for many people rebellion during youth is normal. You must not blame yourself. You never did anything to disgrace him. I am sure he must have been proud of you."

"And what makes you, at the advanced age of twenty, so wise?" he asked her, a smile on his lips and in his eyes.

"I have seen and listened to many people in those twenty years," she said. "Many different types of people. Everyone is unique, but I have discovered that there are common traits of humanity too."

"I wish I had known your mother," he said. "She was one of the indomitable women who follow the drum even after they have children. It is my good fortune, of course, that she did and that your father was so devoted to you that he kept you with him even after she was gone. They produced a very special daughter."

"Because they were very special people," she said. "I wish I had known Mama better too. I remember her, but more as a sensation than as a person. Endless comfort and security and acceptance and love. I was very fortunate to have her even as long as I did, and to have had Papa. You were fortunate to have had such a father too—one who cared even enough to let you go. He did that for you, you know. He purchased your commission and even allowed you to choose a regiment he disapproved of. I am glad for my sake that he did."

They smiled at each other.

They talked for all of an hour while the fire burned down, was rebuilt once, and burned down again. They talked without any deliberate choice of topic, a comfort and ease between them that had not been there during the past week. It was quite like old times.

Eventually their chatter gave place to longer silences, companionable at first, but inevitably more and more charged with something else. Lily was fully aware of the changing atmosphere, but she allowed it to be. Tonight she had chosen to put fear behind her, to relinquish her personal will to the unfolding pattern of her life. She allowed to be what would be.

"Lily," he said finally, still apparently relaxed in his chair, "I want to make love to you. Do you want it too?" he asked her.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Here?" he said. "On the bed in the next room? In this cottage? To erase the memory of what happened the last time we were here?"

"It is why we are here, is it not?" she answered. "To weave ourselves into the magic, to be simply ourselves again, to be together despite all that has happened and is happening. Together as we have been outside in the pool and here by the fire. And together in—in there." She nodded toward the bedroom.

"You must not be frightened," he told her. "Not at any moment. However far advanced in passion I might become, I will stop the instant you tell me to stop. Will you believe that?"

"Yes," she said. "I believe it. But I will not tell you to stop."

She knew that she would want to. Before he came inside her, she would want to stop him. Because once he was in her, she would know. She would know if her dreams of love had been as insubstantial as most dreams are. And she would know if after all he found himself repulsed by the knowledge that another man had known her since their wedding day. But she would not stop him. This—tonight, all of it—was meant to be, and she would let it be, however it turned out.

"Come, then, Lily."

He got to his feet and held out a hand for hers. She stood beside him while he banked the fire, and then took his hand again to go into the bedchamber.

Chapter 13

"I was this close to losing you forever, Lily?" he said while she ran one hand lightly over the scar that almost circled his left shoulder—the relic of the saber wound that had very nearly hacked off his arm at Talavera.

"Yes," she said, and when he lifted his head she traced the line of his facial scar with one forefinger. "War is cruel. But we both survived it."

He kissed her, merely touching his lips to hers while his hands rested on either side of her small waist, holding her a little away from his own body. She looked and felt, he thought, like a sweet innocent. He could almost imagine that it was her first time even though memory of their wedding night was strong in him. And he thought quite deliberately of the Spaniard, the partisan without a name—a name he did not want to know, though she might at some time in the future need to talk about him, and he would force himself to listen. He thought about the man and what he had done to Lily over and over again for seven months. He did not want to suppress the knowledge that she had been forced to be another man's mistress.

"It matters, does it not?" She was looking into his eyes. "That there has been someone else?"

"It matters," he said, "because it happened to you, Lily. Because you suffered it all while I was recuperating in hospital and then was here, beginning a new life or, rather, resuming the old one. It matters because you were totally blameless while I was not. It matters because I do not feel worthy of you."

She set the fingers of one hand lightly to his lips.

"The past is unchangeable," she said. "It was war. This is the present, the only element of time we will ever have in which to create new memories. Better ones."

Ah, Lily. His beautiful, wise, innocent Lily, who could see life as something so incredibly simple that it was profound. He took her hand from his lips with his own, kissed her palm, and then kissed her mouth. He wanted to restore all her lovely innocence. He wanted to restore his honor.

"I am not going to hurt you," he told her. "I am not going to use you for my pleasure and give none in return. I am going to make love to you."

"Yes," she said. "Oh, don't be afraid. I know it. It is what you did the last time."

He brought her against him, slid one arm about her shoulders, the other about her waist, parted his lips over hers, and kissed her more deeply. It was hard to go slowly. The memories of the searing passion of his wedding night were suddenly very vivid—and he had had no woman since. But she set her arms about him, arched her body against his, as she had done on that night, and opened her mouth. He pressed his tongue inside.

"It will be all right," he murmured to her awhile later, forcing his mouth away from hers and feathering kisses at her temples, along her jaw, on her chin. "It is going to be all right."

"Yes," she whispered. "Oh, yes. It is all right."

He was as fearful as she—if she was fearful. He had to make things right for her. And he would make them right. He had heard from Captain Harris by the afternoon post and would surely hear from everyone else soon. Harris had given the answers he had fully expected. The Reverend Parker-Rowe's papers had been abandoned with his body in that Portuguese pass.

He knew what the other answers would be too—what they must be.

"Come and lie down," he whispered to Lily.

He lay on the bed with her, on his side, his head propped on one hand. She gazed back at him without apparent fear. Her eyes were dreamy with desire.

"I want to come on top of you," he said. "It is how I can love you most deeply. But if my weight will make you feel trapped, if you would like it better, I will take you on top. Tell me what you want."

She turned onto her back and lifted one arm. "Come," she said. "I will not feel trapped. I am not afraid. I never was afraid of you, only of myself. I should have explained, told you that. I have always trusted you."

He knelt between her thighs, which she spread as he came over her, but he did not immediately either mount her or lower his weight onto her. He hooked her legs about his own and loved her body slowly with his hands and his mouth, leaning over her but not yet touching his body to hers. She was alive, he thought, his body exulting over her as if the reality of that fact had only just come home to him. She was warm and soft and alive, and she was on the bed with him in the valley cottage, where he had lain many times during the past year, dreaming of her, mourning her.

She was his wife and his love. She was alive.

And ready for love. He slid his hand down over the mound of dark-blond hair at the apex of her thighs. His fingers found her core and caressed her there until he could feel the heat and the slippery wetness of her desire.

"Look at me, Lily," he said, suppressing the urge simply to mount her. Even now he would not take her compliance for granted—he dared not. And she was lying very still.

She opened eyes heavy with unmistakable passion and gazed upward into his face.

"Look at me," he told her again. "I am your husband. I am going to come inside and love you and let you love me. I am not going to use you or hurt you or degrade you."

"I know," she murmured. "I know who you are."

He positioned himself carefully and pressed inward while she watched his face, unflinching. He felt her muscles clench about him and fought for control—she was soft and hot and wet. She searched his eyes with her own, but then they drifted closed and her head tipped back against the pillows and her lips parted. She was experiencing, he could not fail to see with mingled relief and desire, the beginnings of ecstasy.

It was very hard for a man to love unselfishly when desire hummed through his veins and hammered against his temples and was an agony in his groin.

He was still kneeling between her thighs, but he brought his weight down onto her now, careful to take some of it on his forearms. And he began at last to move in her, aroused by her stillness, which was nonetheless not passive, by the small, exquisite body that was unmistakably Lily's, by memory of the last time they had been together, by his long abstinence, by her return from the dead, by the steady squeaking of bedsprings that were noisy even for a single sleeper, by the sighs of pleasure that escaped her with the rhythm of thrust and withdrawal that he held steady for as long as he could.