A Certain Magic (22 page)

She laughed. “I usually arrive at eight o’clock rather than seven,” she said.

“Glad I am to hear that, too,” he said. “Though even the thought of being out of my bed by eight gives me the shudders.”

“Then you must have changed,” she said. “I can recall numerous occasions when you dragged Web off shooting even before the crack of dawn.”

“Ah, he said. “My salad days. I like your friends, by the way, Allie. Solid citizens, all.”

“Do I detect a tone of sarcasm? “ she asked. “There is nothing wrong with being a solid citizen, Piers.”

“Maligned again,” he said, taking her hand in his. “No, I was not being sarcastic, my suspicious friend. Sometimes I can be serious, you know. I like them. Mrs. Potter is your particular friend? I am glad. She has a gleam of mischief in her eyes. The octogenarian fancies you. Did you know that?”

“Sir Harold?” she said. “He is a dear. He enjoys flirting with me and any other unattached lady he sets eyes on. He does not set eyes on many, as he rarely goes out these days. I call on him and Miss Dean at least once a week. She leads a rather lonely life.”

His hand removed itself unobtrusively from hers. They rode the rest of the way to Sidney Place in silence.

“I will see you in the morning, Allie?” he asked as he helped her down from the carriage. “You do not mind? You would not prefer that I take myself off back to London?”

“No,” she said. “If you wish to stay, Piers, then I am quite happy. Good night.”

She squeezed his hand, which she had taken when descending the steps of his carriage, released it, and turned to the door of her house, which her housekeeper was holding open for her.

“Good night, Allie,” he said.

***

Piers had slept well. Despite the fact that he was up and walking briskly about the streets of Bath by seven o’clock, he had slept well. More deeply and dreamlessly than he had slept since the night he had stayed with Alice.

He had been careful the evening before to reestablish their friendship. He had kept conversation between them light; he had stayed away from her at the Potters’ house, busying himself with making himself agreeable to her friends. On the whole, he had done rather well, he thought, despite the few slips.

The thing was that they really were friends, that he really was comfortable with her once he started to talk to her. And it always seemed the most comfortable thing in the world to take her hand in his when he was beside her. He had done it often in London, he could recall. He would have to be careful of that. It must not happen again. 

But on the whole he was pleased. He did not think either she or anyone else would have realized how everything that was himself had been focused on her last evening, aware of her, wanting her, loving her. And feeling the irrepressible guilt at his own selfishness.

But he had put that guilt, finally to rest last night before he lay down to sleep. She had been cheerful and contented all evening. The only time she had shown discomfort was when he had made that ghastly teasing statement about being her tempter. She had been happy with her friends, happy to have him there. But not especially happy to be with him. She would have been as content without him, among her other friends.

He was nothing to her beyond a friend. He was that. There was no doubt about the fact that she was dearly fond of him. But nothing more than that. Despite what had happened between them, his presence did not distress her. He would not be harming her by staying for a few days. If he had had any doubt, her tone of quiet assurance as she had said good night to him the evening before had finally convinced him.

He would be harming no one by staying. Not her and not Cassandra. He was not having any sort of affair with Allie. Once he was married to Cassandra, he would probably never see Allie again. And even if he did, there would be no question of his being unfaithful. If there was one value he believed in more than any other, it was fidelity in marriage. Even his love for Allie would be ruthlessly suppressed once he had vowed to love and cherish Cassandra.

There were just these few days when he would content himself with being a friend. He would feel no guilt. Indeed, doubtless he would be doing Allie good by staying. She would remember him as a friend. The memory of what they had become for one brief night would be displaced by what they had always been to each other.

He was the only one who would suffer. And even that was questionable. How could be suffer from spending a last few days with the woman he loved more dearly than life itself?

And so he allowed himself the great selfishness, and made it greater by not forcing himself to stay away from her the next day. After talking with her and her friends for a few minutes in the Pump Room, he drew her away to stroll about the room with him.

“After all, Allie,” he said, “this is what is done, is it not? One cannot come to Bath and not promenade in the Pump Room. When in Bath, do as the Bathians do, I say. Or is it Bathans? Or Bathonians? “

“I always say the people of Bath,” she said.

“The voice of common sense,” he said. “Do look at that lady’s face, Allie. Do you suppose she is enjoying the water?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “The more horrid it tastes, you know, and the more it makes the drinker contort his face, the more good it is doing.”

“Ah,” he said, “You should have been a man, Allie. You might have been a physician.”

“Perhaps one day,” she said, “there will be women physicians. Now, there is a thought for you.”

“I would be ailing for the rest of my days,” he said. “If she turned out to be as pretty as you, of course.”

“Perhaps we have an interesting theory here,” she said, “for the fact that women tend to suffer poor health far more than men.” 

”Ah,” he said. “Philosophy at eight in the morning, Allie? Too heavy, my dear. Now, what do you think of the yellow waistcoat on the rotund gentleman by the window? Rather loud, would you say?”

“Deafening,” she agreed

Chapter 14

PIERS stayed in Bath for three more days, days during which neither he nor Alice thought about their coming separation, days during which they thought of nothing else. They grasped at the moment with a desperate sort of determination, each outwardly calm and cheerful, each content that the other would not suffer at all at the end.

On that first morning when they came out of the Pump Room, each with the intention of returning home for breakfast, Alice invited him into the Abbey, which was right beside the old Roman baths and the Pump Room. It was her favorite place in Bath, and she wanted to have future associations of him with the church.

“My stomach may make noisy objections and get itself evicted by morning worshipers,” he said, “but the spirit is very willing, Allie. It is so many years since I have been inside that I cannot even remember what it looks like.”

It was a splendid stone structure, massive, high and cool, its large stained glass windows saving it gloriously from gloom. It was one of those churches in which one felt instantly the presence of God and in which one instinctively lowered one’s voice to a whisper even when there was no service in progress.

“Ah, yes,” he said, pausing at the end of the nave and gazing down toward the altar, “I remember now. All the power and majesty of God, and man’s insignificance.” 

They walked about the Abbey in near silence and sat down finally on two chairs close to the front. Alice remained sitting even when her companion knelt on the kneeler, his arms resting loosely over the back of the chair before him. 

She watched him and wondered how many people in his life had thought they knew him, and had taken the wit, the humor, the apparently casual attitude to life as the whole man. How many people thought Piers was a man of surface charm and little depth of character?

She loved the witty, lighthearted Piers. He was a joy to be with. But she was not sure she would have loved him as she did if that had been the whole of him. But there was this side to his character, too, which few people knew. She had seen it for as long as she had known him. Most recently she had seen it in London at the galleries they had visited together. And now here.

It was lovely to talk to Piers, to be entertained by him, to match wits with him. It was just as lovely to be silent with him, when that silence could be a mutually felt and a peaceful thing. She would never have brought him to this particular place if she had for one moment feared that he would joke about it or even talk endlessly about it. 

She could happily sit there in silence all morning, all day, she thought. But he sat up beside her again after a while and turned to smile at her. His shoulder touched hers briefly, and his right hand moved across, rested awkwardly for a few moments against the outside of his leg, and then returned to twine fingers with the other hand in his lap. His shoulder moved away from hers. 

Ah, he had grown self-conscious, she thought sadly. He had held her hand several times in London and twice the evening before, always as a spontaneous and casual gesture of affection. But he had become aware that any physical touch might be misconstrued and could be potentially dangerous. He would not touch her again.

It was something she regretted. She would have liked to rest her shoulder against his, to have her hand in his warm clasp. Not for any sensual reason. It was neither the time nor the place for that sort of craving. But merely because they were sharing the wonder and the majesty of the Abbey, and it would have felt lovely to have done so with more than just their minds. She kept her own hands clasped loosely in her lap and closed her eyes.

And Piers beside her ached for the same closeness and turned his head to smile at her again. But she was in her own world, her chin lifted, her eyes closed. Beautiful, serene, unattainable Allie.

He looked upward to the huge window above the altar and refused to let go of the sense of peace that was in him. She was unattainable, not just because she was Allie, but because he was promised to someone else. Simple facts of life both of them, unchangeable and therefore not worth fretting over.

She was with him now. That was all that mattered. And they were sharing this experience, something he could not imagine himself sharing with any other woman. Other women would prattle. She had said scarcely a word since they had entered the Abbey. She was his friend.

His soul mate. But he suppressed the thought. It could bring no peace at all, but only shatter it.

Her head was turned to him, and she was smiling when he looked at her next.

“I knew you would love it,” she said, “even without your breakfast.”

“And talking of breakfast,” he said, reaching across and squeezing her clasped hands.

“There has been no internal orchestra to disturb other worshipers, after all,” she said.

“Allie,” he said as they got to their feet and made their way down the center aisle, “what an unladylike topic of conversation. I believe my stomach has been feeling the same sort of awe as the rest of me. Would you care to take breakfast at York House with me?”

“No,” she said. “I have promised to go shopping with Andrea later this morning. And I fear it’s already getting close to later this morning.”

“Bonnets and slippers and feathers and such?!” he said. “I would not dream of trying to interfere with such important feminine business. What does one do in the afternoons? Walk up to the Crescent? I am afraid these hills may be the end of me before I return to civilization. Though how I can look about me at these buildings and imply that I think Bath uncivilized escapes my understanding at present. What can I tempt you into doing this afternoon, Allie?” He closed his eyes briefly at his choice of words.

“How about Sidney Gardens?” she said. “It is very lovely, very fashionable, and very much at the bottom of the hill.”

“Perfect,” he said. “And so is the weather. I shall call for you after luncheon?”

“Yes,” she said. “You do not need to escort me all the way home, you know, Piers. This is Bath and I am almost thirty years old.”

“Are you really?” he said. “You are remarkably well preserved for one of such advanced years, I must say, Allie. Found the fountain of eternal youth have you? And since when do you think I have lost all sense of chivalry and propriety that I would abandon you in the middle of a public street merely to scurry in pursuit of my breakfast?”

“It was just a thought” she said with a laugh. “I am used to being alone, Piers. I do not drag a maid about with me wherever I go.”

“I am not a maid,” he said. “Though the idea sets up a vastly amusing mental picture, does it not? Piers the plowman I have heard of and used my fists to defend myself against on more than one occasion at school. But Piers the maid? Would you force me to wear a mobcap?”

“With ribbons streaming down the back,” she said. “I wish I had not tried to be kind and send you home for your breakfast. You are in one of your absurd moods, I see.”

“And a feather duster?” he asked, “I could think of all sorts of interesting uses for a feather duster.”

“But maids have to be demure,” she said.

“The devil!” he said. “Do they? I have lost interest, then.”

***

An afternoon strolling in Sidney Gardens, stopping several times—to exchange civilities with Colonel and Mrs. Smithers, with Mr. Horvath and Miss Druce, with other acquaintances. An evening taking tea at the Upper Assembly Rooms with the Wainwrights and the Potters. A morning at the Pump Room again, both of them tasting the waters merely to say they had done so, and grimacing at each other, and drinking valiantly on so that neither would be put to shame by the other. A stroll up to the Crescent in the afternoon, Piers pulling at Alice’s arm and panting in great, wheezing gasps and declaring that he was sure he would not make it alive both there and back.

“But it will be all downhill on the way back,” she said soothingly. “You can run all the way, Piers.”

“And trip over my own feet very like and roll to the bottom with a broken crown like Jack,” he said.

“But think of the view from the top,” she said, laughing as he dragged more heavily than ever at her arm. “And the magnificence of the houses on the Crescent, Piers. And think of how fashionable a place it is to take a stroll and what a feather in one’s cap to be seen walking there.”