“I don’t know. I’ve never been in this situation before.”
Of course she hadn’t. Patrick smiled to himself, relishing in the fact that, for now, she was his. No man ever touched her before, and for as long as he could help it, no other man ever would. “I think it’s best we act the same as we always have. At least when we’re in the company of others. And when it is just you and I, we can behave any way we like.”
“I don’t want anyone to find out about us.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “Not for a long while, at any rate.” Patrick stopped to point out a large rock in the path so Linley wouldn’t trip over it. “Your father is bound to find out once I start showing up in random parts of the world. I don’t know how many excuses I can make for visiting Machu Picchu.”
She laughed. “Will you really come visit me?”
“I will if you want me to.”
Linley squeezed his hand very tightly and brought it up to her lips. “And I’d like to come and visit you from time to time,” she said, kissing each of his knuckles. “Surely I can manage a trip to London once or twice a year.”
“But where will we stay? You forget I sold my London house,” Patrick explained. “We cannot very well stay at your father’s cousin’s home, or at my sister’s…I suppose I could sleep at the club, but that would defeat the purpose of sleeping with you.”
“If I come to London, you are definitely not staying at your club.” Linley rummaged in her pocket with her free hand for her handkerchief. The weather was not at all warm, but beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead and at the back of her neck.
Patrick watched her dab at her skin, which was flushed dark pink. “Are you all right? Perhaps we’ve overdone it for today. You did have quite a night last night…”
“I am fine.”
They reached the top of the mountain half an hour later. She and Patrick stood on the peak, looking out across the tops of all the other mountains. Beyond their green tips, the white heads of the Himalayas cut through the otherwise endless blue sky. They were so tall and so vast that they hardly seemed real.
Amazing, really—the valley of the monastery so lush and green against the startling white of the mountains in the distance. It was as if they were two different worlds rubbing against each other. Linley and Patrick stood in silence, wondering how long it could last. How long could two opposite environments exist so closely?
Linley looked down into the valley below, but she could not see anything. The clouds shrouded the monastery, blocking it from above. It seemed to exist in a purgatory somewhere between the ground and the sky. The green and the white. Here and…where?
Seeing this had a particular impact on Patrick as well. How peaceful he felt at the top of the world. How utterly at home he seemed.
“I never imagined it would look like this,” he said. “Of course, I’ve seen pictures. But no photographs can compare.”
“Speaking of photographs,” Linley said, reaching into the small bag she carried across her shoulder. “I brought my camera.” She took the small black camera out of her bag and opened the little door at the front, which folded down to reveal the accordion-like bellow and lens. When she pointed it at the horizon, Patrick stepped out of the way.
“No,” she said. “I want you in it.”
Patrick stepped back into the frame. “How should I stand?”
Linley looked up and motioned with her hand. “Look out that way. At the mountains.” She glanced back down at the camera in her hands, holding it about chest level. When she felt she had the right shot, she pressed the shutter release button.
The shutter snapped, capturing the image of Patrick staring out at the Himalayas, his hands resting in the pockets of his trousers.
She wound the film and moved in closer, snapping another shot of him at close range.
“Let me take one of you,” Patrick said, holding out his hand for the camera.
He and Linley switched places, only this time, she faced the camera with the mountains in the background, her brown hair tousled around her face in the wind.
“Beautiful.” He took the photograph, and then closed the camera, handing it back.
They both sat down on the ground, looking out over the horizon. Their shoulders brushed, and Patrick put his arm around her. He held her for a long time before either of them spoke.
“Do you regret it,” he asked. “Do you regret last night?”
“No.”
Patrick barely waited for her to answer. “Because what’s done is done,” he continued. “And if someday you meet a man you’d like to marry, you will have to tell him about me. About this.”
“If I ever meet a man I want to marry, my lack of virginity will not change the way he feels about me,” Linley said. “He would be the sort of man who would accept me as I am.”
“A man wants to be his wife’s first.”
“But that’s not fair. Women have to accept the fact that our husbands will not be virgins on our wedding night.”