“There is no amount of time, of years, that love can’t bridge.”
“Love? Bridging? You’re not getting whimsical on me, are you, Valentine? I need one normal-acting person around here.”
“‘We will make long walks,’” she started.
It was a quote, from a letter written by Mrs. Spencer, which Win had in his desk. Several months before arriving at the Grange, he’d traveled to I Tatti, Berenson’s Italian estate, which had been donated to Harvard upon his death.
Win flattered the woman in charge of the Berenson papers into letting him make copies and so all the evidence Pru needed was in Win’s very possession. But when it came to Berenson and Mrs. Spencer and fifteen-year age gaps, it was as though Win was suddenly illiterate, unable to read.
“‘We will make long walks,’” Pru said again.
“Miss Valentine, that’s enough…”
“‘You will tell me everything. In the aftermath we will come home bringing to your comfortable armchairs that slight weariness exquisite at twilight and it will be a year before dinner is served.’”
Pru paused, hand on hip. Win fought the urge to return to his typewriter. There was something about the way she quoted the passage that made his skin feel like it was burning.
“Nothing,” she said. “You have nothing to say to that?”
“The words are lovely. Dreamy, even. But that’s all they are. Words. Now if you don’t mind, I have to create a few of my own.”
“You are maddeningly dense sometimes.”
“Pru, she married the duke.”
“Yes! I know! Because he was the duke! And it’s what she thought her mother wanted!” Pru flipped around to face the far wall, tears threatening her eyes. “She told us outright that she’d rather be with someone interesting than become yet another duchess.”
When she turned back around, Win was crooked over his desk, banging away.
“Look at me,” she said. “Look.”
“No time, luv. Gotta get this story pecked out,” he said, steadfastly maintaining his over-the-typewriter hunch. “We can chitchat about dukes and art connoisseurs later. I’m on a deadline here.”
“Stop typing and look at me,” Pru said. “If you have a single ounce of humanity in your entire godforsaken body, look at me.”
“Unfortunately I do not.”
“Win.”
Finally he removed his hands from the keys. Then he looked up.
“Can’t you admit it?” Pru said.
She stared at him with such intensity, such a mixture of power and fondness, his heart began to flounder all over the place.
“Admit what?” he said with a squeak.
“That there was some chance Mrs. Spencer loved Berenson. That she has some modicum of regret about the way she conducted her romantic life. Does that?” She pointed toward the door. “Does that seem like a woman happy with whom she’s loved?”
“I suppose it’s possible…” Win said with a small gulp. “But their age difference.”
“Enough with their ages!” she cried out. “How can you say that when you know how I feel about you?”
“How you feel about me?” Another gulp. It was growing increasingly difficult for Win to breathe. “You called me tyrannical. Is that what you’re referring to?”
He was trying for a laugh but falling short, like he so often did.
Dear God, he wanted her to say it. Win desperately wanted Pru to jump out of her reserved, smooth skin and make a passionate declaration about how much she loved him and how they’d be together, whatever it took. Screw the age difference. Sod off to visa expirations and return trips to America. They were meant to be together.
He needed her to say it because he could not.
“Is that how you’re going to be?” she asked, the disappointment like gray paint spilling across her face.
“Well, ha-ha,” Win said. “If there’s one thing you can count on with thirty-four-year-old bachelors it is their complete inability to break a pattern.”
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Say what? Miss Valentine, I really need to get back to writing.”
“Fine, you pansy. I must be a lot more damaged than I give myself credit for because for some inexplicable reason I’ve fallen for you. I don’t even care that the war is ending now instead of before and that Charlie is out of the picture. I don’t! Because I’m a horrible person.”
“You’re not horrible,” Win said in a whisper. “You’re the greatest person I’ve ever known.”
“I’m supposed to be in mourning. But somehow, in this wreck of a house, in my wreck of a life, I’ve fallen in love. I’ve fallen in love with a salty, ornery writer who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Well, that is certainly true. Laurel…”
“I’ve fallen in love with you. And it pisses me off.”
Sixty-one
BANBURY RAILWAY STATION
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001