And finally she admitted that she was waiting for him to come and it simply would not do. She was allowing her peace and hard-won discipline to be shattered. She would go to bed, have a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow take herself firmly in hand. This would not do.
She put her crochet away and got to her feet, remembering as she did so that she had not eaten any of the biscuits she had baked or made any tea after boiling the kettle and measuring the tea leaves into the teapot. It was too late now, though. And she was neither hungry nor thirsty. She reached for the lamp, glancing at the same time at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was ten minutes past eleven.
And that was when a knock sounded at the door, causing her to jump and Blossom to open her eyes.
Imogen picked up the lamp and went to open the door. It did not occur to her to be cautious about doing so.
For a dreadful moment they just stood looking at each other, one on each side of the door’s threshold. A draft of cold air came in from outside. The lamp, lighting his face from below, made him look taller and a bit menacing, especially as he was neither smiling nor speaking. But she knew in that moment that she wanted him, that there was really no decision to make—or if there was, then she had already made it. And she knew too that it was not just that—oh, she might as well think of it as sex—that made her desire him. It was not just sex. It was . . . more than that. That was what made it a truly dreadful moment.
And then he was inside and had said that about not having come expecting to sleep with her—had he really said it aloud and not shocked her beyond words? And she had acknowledged that he had come to seek refuge and led the way into the sitting room. Hector was already seated beside the chair on which she had been sitting all evening, the chair where he always sat when he was here.
Always?
How many times had he been here? It seemed as if he had always been here, as if that chair had always waited for him when he was not, as though when she sat on it she was drawing comfort from the fact that it was his.
This combination of tiredness and a late night was playing strange and dangerous tricks with her mind.
He waited for her to seat herself on the love seat and then sat down himself. He had left his coat and hat out in the hall, she noticed. He was still unsmiling. He must have left his armor of easy charm out in the hall too.
“You must have been about to go to bed,” he said. And then he did smile—a bit ruefully. “That was not the best conversational opener, was it?”
“I am still up,” she said.
He looked about the room and at the fire, which had burned low. He got up, as she remembered his doing last time, picked up the poker to spread the coals, and then piled on more from the coal scuttle beside the hearth. He stayed on his feet, one forearm resting on the mantel. He watched the fire catch on the new coals.
“What if I had?” he asked her.
Strangely, she knew exactly what he was asking, but he elaborated anyway.
“What if I had come expecting to sleep with you?”
She considered her answer.
“Would you have tossed me out?” He turned his head to look at her over his shoulder.
She shook her head.
They gazed at each other for a few moments before he poked the fire again to give it more air and resumed his seat.
“Is it possible for people to change, Imogen?” he asked her.
She felt a little lurching of the stomach at the sound of her name on his lips—again.
“Yes,” she said.
“How?”
“Sometimes it takes a great calamity,” she said.
His eyes searched her face. “Like the loss of a spouse?”
She nodded slightly again.
“What were you like before?” he asked.
She spread her hands on her lap and pleated the fabric of her dress between her fingers—something she tended to do when her mind was agitated. She released the fabric and clasped her hands loosely in her lap.
“Full of life and energy and laughter,” she said. “Sociable, gregarious. Tomboyish as a girl—I was the despair of my mother. Not really ladylike even after I grew up. Eager to live my life to the full.”
His eyes roamed over her as if to see signs of that long-ago, long-gone girl she had been.
“Would you want to be that person again?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Have you read William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“It is impossible to recapture innocence once it has been exposed for the illusion it is,” she said.
“Illusion?” He frowned. “Why should innocence be more unreal, more untrue, than cynicism?”
“I am not cynical,” she said. “But no, I could not go back.”
“Can experience and suffering not be used to enrich one’s life rather than deaden or impoverish it?” he asked.