“More stubborn than brave,” he said. “I was the youngest of three brothers, the quiet, sensitive one among two vigorous, boisterous siblings. I wanted to prove something when I insisted that my father buy my commission. Sometimes we get more than we wish for, Miss Jewell. I was indeed given the chance to prove something and I did-but at rather a high cost.”

“They must be proud of you,” she said. “Your family.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“But you did not stay with them?” she asked him.

“Families are wonderful institutions,” he said. “I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that.”

She opened her hand to reveal the shells again, and he reached over to take them from her and set them carefully in a pocket of his coat.

“Do you have a family?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Ah, then you know what I mean,” he said.

“I have not seen any of them for more than ten years,” she told him.

Had she not said her son was nine years old? There was clearly a connection.

“They rejected you?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “They forgave me.”

There was a silence between them while a pair of gulls cried loudly overhead and then landed on the rocks not far away and pecked at something they found there.

“Forgave?” he asked softly.

“I was with child,” she said, “but I was unmarried. I was a fallen woman, Mr. Butler. And an embarrassment, at the very least.” She was clasping her raised knees now and gazing off at the horizon.

To her family? Their own embarrassment meant more to them than she did?

“But they must have wanted you to come home if they had forgiven you,” he said. “Surely?”

“They have never once mentioned David in any of the letters they have written,” she said. “Presumably they understand that if ever I were to go home he would go with me. They have never extended an invitation.”

“And you have not thought of going anyway?” he asked. “Perhaps one does not need an invitation to go home. Perhaps they would be pleased if you took the initiative.”

“I have no wish to go there,” she said. “It is no longer home. That is just a habit of language. Miss Martin’s school is home.”

No. A workplace, no matter how pleasant, could never be home. Glandwr was not his. He doubted the school was hers. Like him, she had no home of her own. But at least he had hopes of acquiring one and the wherewithal to do so.

“What happened?” He almost reached across to set his hand on her arm, but he stopped himself just in time. She certainly would not appreciate his touch.

“I was governess to Lady Prudence Moore at Penhallow in Cornwall,” she said. “She was the sweetest, sunniest-natured young child anyone could hope to meet-living in the body of a growing girl. Her brother was doing his best to-to interfere with her, and I knew there was no point in appealing to the marquess, her father, who lived in a world of his own, or to her mother, who doted on her son and hated her daughter for being simple-minded. Her sisters were powerless though they loved her. And Joshua-the present marquess, her cousin-was living in the village some distance away and came only once a week to visit Prue. I lured Albert away from her. I wanted desperately to save her. I thought I could deal with him myself. But I could not.”

For a few moments she rested her forehead against her knees and stopped talking-though really she did not need to say any more.

“David was the result,” she said, lifting her head. “I wish…oh, I wish he had not come of such ugliness.”

Again he wanted to touch her but did not.

“I will say what you said to me,” he said. “You are incredibly brave.”

“Just foolish,” she said. “Just one of numerous women who believe they can reason with such men and change them. Some women even marry them believing that. I was saved from that fate at least.”

And yet, Sydnam realized, if the bounder had married her, her son would now be Marquess of Hallmere, and she would be the widowed marchioness, someone of considerable social significance and wealth.

“But the child was saved,” he said. “Lady Prudence Moore, I mean.”

She smiled rather wanly out to sea. “She married a fisherman a few years ago,” she said, “and has two sturdy sons. She writes me sometimes, helped by her sister. She writes with impeccable correctness in a large, childish hand. And if there is a type of happiness that is prolonged, Mr. Butler, then she is living it.”

“Because of you,” he said.

She got abruptly to her feet and brushed sand off her skirt. He got up too, but his preoccupation with her painful story had made him careless. His right knee gave out from under him and he had to twist sharply in order to use his left arm to save himself from falling. It was an awkward, undignified moment that embarrassed him. And even as he straightened up he was aware of the hand she had stretched out to steady him-though she had not actually touched him.

They gazed into each other’s eyes, uncomfortably close together.

“Clumsy of me,” he said.

She lowered her hand to her side.

“When I decided to climb up here,” she said, “I did not think…” Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

“I am glad you did not,” he said quickly. “We are both maimed, Miss Jewell. But we both know the importance of refusing to live as cripples.”

She did something then that took him so much by surprise that he stood rooted to the spot, high on the rocks that divided the beaches, one foot slightly above the level of the other. She lifted her hand again and set her fingertips against his left cheek.

“We have both learned to see to the very heart of pain, Mr. Butler,” she said. “And so we have both changed-for the better, I believe. We are not cripples. We are survivors.”

She seemed to realize then what she had done, and even in the shade provided by the brim of her bonnet he could see her flush as she removed her hand hastily and rather jerkily.

“Has there been any man since-since Moore?” he asked her.

She shook her head quickly.

“No,” she said. And then after a brief pause, “Has there been any woman since your…I cannot call it an accident, can I?”

“No,” he said. “None.”

Awareness of their long, lonely celibacy pulsed between them, though neither of them put it into words. How could they? They were still virtually strangers to each other-and a man and a woman.

The embarrassment of their shared awareness of such an intimate thing took her suddenly and she turned and scrambled upward again until she stood on the crest of the rocks and looked over to the other side, one hand shading her eyes. He stood where he was for a few moments before going after her.

It was impossible to hide from himself the knowledge that there had been some revulsion in her hasty withdrawal of her hand from his cheek.

He must not even begin to think that because she was as lonely-and as sexually deprived-as he they could therefore…

He could never subject any woman to that.

And perhaps she was too damaged to have anything to offer another man.

He climbed up after her and stood beside her, not too close.

“It is awe-inspiring,” she said, gazing along the length of the main beach on which they had strolled the day before. And yet he sensed that she spoke the words that seemed appropriate to the view rather than ones that were deep-felt.

“It is,” he agreed. He had always wished he had two eyes with which to see it. But one was better than none.

The tide was almost fully out. Already it would be possible to walk about the end of the outcropping of rock on which they stood. They could have avoided the climb if they had waited.

“We can go down to the beach or back the way we came,” he said, “or we can climb to our right and get back up onto the cliff top that way. It is not a difficult climb. The choice is yours.”

When she looked at him this time, her eyes focused somewhere on a level with his chin rather than into his eye.

“It must be getting late,” she said, her voice cheerful-and impersonal. “I suppose we ought to go back by the quickest route. I have been totally unaware of passing time. I have enjoyed this afternoon very much, Mr. Butler. Thank you.”

Something irretrievable had gone from an afternoon that had seemed magical to him in many ways.

They had come too close to each other in the sharing of their stories. For a moment perhaps they had both mistaken a friendly sympathy for a physical closeness-until she had touched him and realized the impossibility of it all. And until she had touched him and he had realized how very wounded she was, how impossible it was for him to take her on emotionally even if he had been offered the chance.

He turned without another word and led the way to the cliff top and then along the footpath to the main driveway just below the cottage. They did very little talking on the way.

“I’ll walk up to the house with you,” he said when they drew level with the cottage.

“Oh, there is no need,” she assured him. “You would have to walk all the way back again.”

They stopped and looked politely and cheerfully at each other, like two strangers who had talked for a while but had nothing left to say and were eager to exchange good-byes and go their separate ways.

And really, that was all they were-strangers.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I have enjoyed the afternoon. I hope you enjoy the rest of your month here. I will not say good-bye. I daresay we will see each other again before you return to Bath.”