“Why will you not let me finish anything I am trying to say?” she asked.
“Because,” he said, “you are still not sure I do not regret our marriage deep down, are you? And I suppose I am still not sure you do not. I suppose I ought to have told you something long ago. But at first I did not want you to pity me or feel obligated to me, and after that I convinced myself that the words were not necessary. Men do tend to do that, you know, Anne. We do not find it easy to spill our feelings in words. But I do love you. I always have, I think. And I know I always will.”
“Sydnam.” Tears sprang to her eyes. The tip of her nose was growing rosy, he noticed. “Oh, Sydnam, I do love you. I love you so very, very much.”
He leaned forward, rubbed his nose against hers, and kissed her. She wound her arms about his neck and kissed him back.
“You always have?” She tipped back her head and laughed at him. “Right from the start?”
“I thought,” he said, “that you had stepped out of the night into my dreams. But then you turned and fled.”
“Oh, Sydnam.” She tightened her grip about his neck again. “Oh, my love.”
“And I have in my pocket something that always lives on my person,” he said, “and may convince you that I have always loved you. If you even remember it, that is-or them, since there are more than one.”
She stepped back and watched curiously as he drew a handkerchief out of the inner pocket of his greatcoat and flicked open the folds with his thumb to reveal a little cluster of seashells within. He would, he thought, feel foolish if she did not remember.
She touched one forefinger to them.
“You kept them,” she said. “Oh, Sydnam, you have kept them all this time.”
“Foolish, was it not?” He smiled at her.
But a shout distracted them as he flicked the corners of the handkerchief in place and put it back into his pocket.
“Mama, look!” David called from the middle of the meadow. “Look, Papa, I have caught one.”
But even as they looked the indignant sheep pulled free and ambled away to resume the serious business of cropping grass and clover. David, laughing gleefully, went chasing after it.
Sydnam wrapped his arm about Anne’s waist and drew her back against him. He spread his hand over her abdomen and hid his face against the side of her neck as she tipped back her head onto his shoulder. He felt almost dizzy.
“He called you Papa,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
He raised his head and looked around him at his home. All of it-the house and stables, the garden, the meadow, the circling trees, the boy chasing sheep, the woman in his arms. And he felt the future beneath his fingers in the slight rounding of his wife’s womb.
“Are we mad,” he asked her, “standing out here in the cold like this when a warm house awaits us?”
“Utterly mad.” She turned her head to smile at him and kiss his lips. “Take me home, Sydnam.”
“We are home, love,” he said, releasing her in order to take her hand in his. “We are always home. But I’ll take you to the house. I want to see if the morning room looks like sunshine.”
“And if the hall looks more cheerful without the browns,” she said.
They half ran down the slight slope in the direction of the house. They were also laughing. Their fingers were laced together.