Page 26 of Dark Tides
Johnnie rose to his feet too. “Is everything all right, Ma?” he asked in an undertone, as the two left the room. “Is anything wrong?”
His mother glanced up at him as if she would beg him for help but could find no words. “She doesn’t realize,” was all she said. “She does not understand that your grandma should not have visitors.”
“But Grandma said that they could go up?” Sarah pointed out. “And if she’s well enough to come down for dinner with us, why shouldn’t she have a visitor from the old days?”
Alinor was sitting at the table in the airy room with the glazed door open to the little balcony. Before her, on the table, was a bouquet of fresh lavender; she was stripping the violet seed heads from the stalks. She looked up as the two of them entered and Livia closed the door behind her, and stood in front of it, her hands held before her, as if she were a lady-in-waiting.
“You are staying?” Alinor asked her directly.
“As a chaperone,” the young woman replied gravely. “As it is a matter of honor.”
Alinor turned her attention to Sir James. “You’re back again?”
“I have to come again and again until you will tell me how I can be of service to you. Until I can speak openly…” He glanced at Livia and fell silent.
“I need nothing,” Alinor said steadily. “You can’t be of service to me.”
“A doctor?”
“I’ve seen doctors.”
“A specialist doctor, Italian trained…”
“My son was a specialist doctor, Italian trained,” she pointed out.
“But can I not find someone to consult?”
“I’m drowned,” she said simply. “They pulled me out; but the water’s still in my body. I’m a drowned woman, James. You’re wasting your time on a drowned woman.”
“I didn’t know,” he said miserably.
“You were there!” she exclaimed brutally. “It was you pulled me out! You know well enough.”
“Alinor, come to my house where you can breathe the clean air,” he urged her. “It’s high, near the moorland, there is a beautiful garden, I have always thought of you in my herb garden. You should have it just as you wish. You shall come as my honored guest, even if you will not accept anything more.”
In the doorway Livia froze, waiting for Alinor’s reply.
“I am a wealthy man now, my beautiful house would be yours to command. And a carriage, and a parlor all your own. Your children could come too. I would never trouble you. Everything should be as you wish.”
“I live as I wish here,” she replied steadily.
If they had been alone together James would have dropped to his knees and pressed his hot face into her lap; as it was, he clenched his hat and fought to find his voice. “Alinor, I have so much to give you,” he whispered. “My fortune, my houses—it’s a burden to me if it is not yours. And I so want… my child.”
“I’ve told you,” she said to him. “I know you’re a man in the habit of having your own way, and you royalists have won, in everything else you’ve triumphed! But in this one matter: you must fail. You didn’t want the child then, you didn’t want me then, that was your decision then—it’s too late to change it now.”
In the doorway Livia clasped her hands together, the image of a praying Madonna, and was perfectly still.
“Am I to be punished forever, for one mistake?”
“Am I?”
“We have both been punished enough!” he exclaimed. “But now I am restored, and I can restore you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need your restoration. I’m not like your king. I was not expelled from my home. I just moved from a forlorn mire to a dirty river. I’ve made my own life here, as if I sieved it from the mud of the harbor and built it from sea wrack. I didn’t think I’d live; but when I could breathe again I had lost the fear of death—the fear of anything. I can’t be destroyed, I just change. The water didn’t drown me, it flows through me. I am my own tidelands, I carry the water in my own lungs.” She paused for a breath, her hand to her throat. “You find your own life, James. I can tell you: it’s not here.”
“There is no life for me, without you, and without my child!”
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. “That was your own choice,” she said. “Freely made, and knowingly made. You did not want a child and now you have none. It’s like a spell. It was your wish. You can’t take it back, and it can’t be unsaid.”
