Chapter 30
Thirty
Sebastian took a room at a hotel in Rye.
He told himself it was too late to ride back today.
He told himself he would leave in the morning.
He told himself a great many things, and all the while he thought of those ancient suits of armour guarding the stairs at his childhood home, looking like men from the outside, like great, strong men, but they were entirely hollow, filled with nothing but spiders and centuries-old bloodstains.
He’d heard her voice. Not the words, but the horror. He’d been turned away by a handsome, stocky ox of a boy. Another of her brothers had been at his shoulder, just as determined, though younger, his face and figure more delicate. He had her look. The same blue eyes.
The Viscount Cotereigh, cream of London society, heir to the Earl of Arnon, had been turned away by some parson’s children and a doughty housekeeper, her pan in her hand as though ready to sweep him back down the lane he’d come, peddler scum.
Oh yes. It amused him greatly.
He left his hotel dinner untouched, eschewed the dubious delights of the tap room, and walked through the cobbled streets of Rye, down to the wharf, skirting the filth and industry and aiming for the green fields beyond.
Was this the famed marsh, then? These sheep-dotted levels? He could have a look at it, couldn’t he, before he left? She’d never know.
The sea was far distant, a curving silver sickle. Slack water made grey pools here and there among the grassy expanse. The new defensive canal was a stark line cutting through the levels, striking away towards where Winchelsea stood on its rise, crowned with trees and church.
He frowned at the canal, finding a crossing used by farmers. It wasn’t much, was it, to hold back the French. They could land on the beaches here, have a mere mile of sheep and grass to cross and be at these towns in no time at all.
He crossed his arms, staring down at the dark water. This place had been pillaged for centuries. It was exposed. It was vulnerable. He looked again at Winchelsea, its ancient gate a ruin; he kept it at his right shoulder as he turned again for the sea.
The way wasn’t easy. Dykes and ditches crisscrossed the levels.
He found himself stuck, turned back, took the road to the harbour instead.
The river was all mud, the tide out. Birds screamed and haunted the sky—sea birds, strange to his ear.
The small harbour at the river’s mouth stank of fish and tar, a cluster of triangular white sails out in the Channel like an encampment of enemy tents.
He looked at the sea, his boots dusty and scratched by the shingle. It was grey and ceaseless, tearing at the pebbles of the shore like a rasping tongue. The wind never stopped, stinging his eyes, forcing salt onto his lips.
And yet he went back there the next day.
And the next. He walked along the shore and down to Winchelsea beach, staring across the marsh to the town on its fortress hill.
He wandered the marsh itself, getting lost, getting stuck, finding his way eventually to the ruined castle in its heart, Camber, one of Henry VIII’s attempts to defend this coast. The sea had made it futile, moving the shore.
She’d said that once, hadn’t she? At that picnic, so long ago.
She’d told him it was sad to think about ancient things, that it reminded one how short one’s life was, how futile.
How everything ends. He walked inside the ruined castle, long since open to the sky, and listened to the wind whistling through the empty windows.
Perhaps she was right. There was something sad here. An ache as old as man.
He walked out of the castle. A flock of cormorants flew overhead, heavy and dark as death. He watched them until they disappeared against the glare of sky on sea. The wind kept blowing, the sheep kept bleating. Here they’d be doing that even at the end of all days.
He followed the cormorants to the sea.
Which was where he found her.
She sat on a shingle bank, his heart’s desire, with a shawl tucked around her shoulders. Her arms clasped her knees, her chin resting there as she gazed at the sea.
At the sound of his boots on the shingle she looked up. She flinched, froze, the breeze seizing its chance to pull the end of her shawl free and string it out, a pennant streaming in the wind.
“No,” he said. “Don’t run.”
There was tension in every line of her body, a rabbit inches from its burrow. She stared at him like he was an apparition.
“I’m not a mirage,” he said, “and neither are you.”
“I…” She swallowed, though it might have been the wind which dried her throat. It was as thick as earth or water here, an element that made itself felt, both taste and scent, scouring his lungs, carving his face.
Her image seemed to quiver. But a mirage wouldn’t have chapped lips and weather-reddened cheeks and flyaway hair. A mirage wouldn’t have been so perfectly, imperfectly beautiful.
“I thought you’d gone.”
She could have said wished, she could have said worried, both might have fit into the hollow of her tone.
“I wanted to understand this place.” He couldn’t take his eyes from her. “I wanted to see…to see what you loved. And I hoped… I hoped I might meet you, just like this. Be able to talk to you.”
“Why?” She got to her feet, retucking her shawl, brushing down her skirt. The buffeting wind didn’t seem to bother her. “There is nothing to say.”
“Then why are you afraid to hear it?”
“The only thing you can possibly have to say to me is an apology.”
“And I am sorry from the depths of my heart.”
She wouldn’t look at him, kept her arms tightly wrapped around herself, focused on the sea as though her strength was anchored there.
“Well. It has been three months, I suppose. Your wife is with child, perhaps. You come seeking other diversions.”
He bit back an oath. He’d taken plenty of beatings. He was man enough to take one he deserved.
“I am not married. I’ll never marry anyone but you.”
She laughed, brittle as the flint they stood on. “So the Thornes will fall either way. To mediocrity and scorn or to bachelorhood.”
“You think I’ll be ruined if I marry you? Know that I would give up everything, if I must. But I’m not so easily defeated. Society will do as I tell it. It will do as you tell it. I know you have that power, even if you hate to use it.”
Her answer took a moment to come; a whisper dredged from somewhere deep. He could hardly hear it over the wind and the waves.
“I hate it all. I hate you.”
He fought to stay standing. To stay solid and still and keep his heart beating. Did she really think all his floggings had left him unable to be hurt?
“Why did you come?” she said. “Why can’t you let me be?”
“To wither and die? A spinster aunt?”
“I was happy.”
“Were you?”
She turned from the sea and took a step back up the shingle, away from him. He wrapped his hand around her arm before she could walk away.
“Shall I repeat the words that made you hate me? You are alive, Madelaine. You deserve to live. I force you to it, not for my sake, but for yours.”
She made a feeble effort to free herself. Don’t hurt her, her aunt had pleaded. But he would if he had to. He was cruel enough. He loved her enough. He would take the blame.
“I’m hardly the only one who wants you to put off your widow’s weeds and have a future.
Doesn’t your family? Doesn’t your aunt urge you to it?
Even that desiccated reverend who used to haunt your house.
I saw the tracts he copied out for you. Bible words about guilt and duty and a woman’s place. Damn all that. What do you want?”
She looked stonily ahead, back toward the castle and the town. There were tears on her cheeks. She dashed them away.
“Alfred—” He repeated the word as she tried to shake him off.
“Alfred wouldn’t want this. You hate me for saying it, but you know it’s true.
He would want you to live. Not to forget him.
Never to forget him. But…but to build something new around him.
Look at this place.” He gestured to the marsh, running east and west forever.
“They keep trying to defend it. They build walls and castles, and the land keeps moving, reforming itself, keeping itself free and…and stupidly vulnerable. The French could take it in a day. The sea could flood it. But it wants to be free. It wants to hurt. To feel and breathe and live…”
“I know. I know all that.”
“So if you won’t…if you won't choose me, at least choose something.”
He let go of her arm. He let her go. If she walked away then…then he would lose everything. But perhaps she might live.
“I have my work,” she said. “My family.”
“But you’re not happy. Or not…not as happy as you deserve to be.”
You’re not as happy as I long to make you.
The piping call of the redshanks came loud across the marsh. The sad laughter of the godwits.
Her chin was up, her blue gaze intent on some distant spot. Her eyes were dry, despite the stinging wind, despite everything.
She pulled her shawl tighter around her, glancing over her shoulder. “We should seek shelter.”
A black line bloomed on the horizon. She led them away from the waves.