Alistair was silhouetted in the doorway, a lonely figure, while about him the girls went about their business, incurious of this stranger.
“Alistair!”
Her voice was louder than she’d meant. He turned, startled, an
d had to catch his balance. She couldn’t see his face against the light, but a few steps more and she could. There was something in his eyes, almost . . . could it be hope? But a moment later the wariness returned and he waited for her to reach him.
“It was my father, wasn’t it?” She hardly noticed the girls had all stopped and were staring at the two of them. “He persuaded you to write that wretched letter?”
He looked as if he might deny it, as if he might keep up the pretence, but then he sighed. His voice was matter of fact. “He didn’t have to persuade me, Clarissa. I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“Right for whom?” she retorted, and to her horror her voice cracked.
He lifted his arms and let them drop. “I’m crippled. What use would I be to you? I didn’t want a nurse, I wanted a wife, and I knew you would feel obliged to marry me just so that you could look after me. What sort of life would that have been for you? For me? We’d have ended up resenting each other.”
She shook her head and tears were dripping, running like rain, and she couldn’t seem to stop them. Pain lanced through his expression and suddenly he was the Alistair she remembered all those years ago.
“Oh my love,” he said in a hoarse voice. “My dear love.”
She was in his arms. Right there, in the middle of the Debenham Finishing School for Young Ladies. Alistair was holding her tight and she didn’t want him ever to stop.
They seemed to be incapable of doing more than clinging together.
Luckily that was when Annie came to order the girls back to their lessons, and suggested, with a twinkle and a tear in her eye that the two of them should go to the parlour where there was more privacy. Tea was brought, and some of the special cake Clarissa saved for important parents, like dukes. Alistair sat beside her and held her hand.
“I loved you with all my heart,” he said, “and that was why I did what I did.”
She shook her head at him. “You broke my heart.”
He sighed. “I’ve made a mess of it then?”
That made her smile through her tears. She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and then she took a sip of her tea to revive her.
“But looking about me,” he went on, “I see a great success. You have done a marvellous job, Clarissa, and I know from Meredith how much she loves it here. Don’t tell me you regret any of this because I won’t believe you.”
She gave him a sideways look. “All right, I won’t then. No, I don’t regret it; of course I don’t, I just . . . I am sad at how we allowed someone to manipulate us out of the happiness we might have had.”
He lifted her fingers and kissed them.
“Do you think . . .” she began and then shook her head. “Cake?” she offered him the plate.
He grinned, and she saw he was still essentially the same after all. “Is this a moment for cake, do you think?”
“I will have you know that this is our very best cake. Only dukes and earls are allowed to eat this cake and sometimes even earls don’t get it.”
He laughed at the thought of cake being served according to social ranking.
“Then I am privileged indeed,” he teased, but he didn’t take a slice. He was watching her with such warmth in his eyes she felt weak and dizzy.
“Alistair.”
“Is it permissible to kiss you, Miss Debenham?” he asked.
“Why? Do you want to kiss me?”
“Oh I do, very much.”
He kissed her and she thought it might be different from her memory, but it was even better. As soon as she was enclosed in his strength that sense came back to her, of wanting to burrow into his chest and stay there forever. He might be older, but so was she. They might have lived separate lives, but he had always been in her heart, and she in his.