It ought to have been the perfect end to the perfect day-and the perfect holiday.

A bend in the road sent her swaying sideways, and her arm pressed against Sydnam’s. She looked up at him as she set some distance between them again. She gazed at the left side of his face, which was impossibly handsome, though truth to tell she no longer found the right side ugly. As she had told him earlier, it was simply part of him.

“I hope the weather remains good for your journey,” he said.

“Yes.” They were back to talking about the weather, were they?

By this time tomorrow she would be far away from Glandwr.

Panic grabbed at her stomach.

She did not look away from him. She knew that in the days to come, until memory started to recede, as it inevitably would, she would desperately try to remember him as he looked at this moment-and that she would just as desperately try to assure herself that what had happened between them had felt as beautiful as her mind told her it had been.

But above all else they were friends, she thought, and friendship was a very dear thing.

She ought not to have offered herself to Sydnam this afternoon. It had been a terrible mistake. Loneliness and compassion and even sexual need had not been enough. And she still could not bring herself to try to explain to him. That, she believed, could only make matters worse. Besides, neither of them had said anything about its not having been quite perfect. Perhaps for him it had been.

She had refused his marriage proposal, she reminded herself. She had refused a man whom she liked and respected and admired and a man moreover who was able to support her in comfort-she, who had thought no man would ever again offer her marriage. Why had she said no?

If you wish, Anne, we will marry.

Kind words, kindly and dutifully spoken-because they had lain together.

He did not wish to marry her.

And she could not marry him even if he did-or any man. She was still too deeply wounded by the past. Any approach to intimacy sent her scurrying into her mind, where she was safe from her emotions.

She could not impose a frigid iceberg of a body on Sydnam, who deserved so much more.

Friendship would not be sufficient to offer. Only love might be-but she did not know what love was, not sexual, marital love, at least. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered what Lady Rosthorn had said one morning out on the cliffs.

…the real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.

But she did not trust love. Love had let her down at every turn-in the persons of her mother, Henry Arnold, her father, her sister. And her love for her pupil, Prue Moore, had led to disaster. Love had caused her nothing but pain. She was afraid to love Sydnam or to be loved by him. It was as well that there was no real question of love between them.

“Anne,” Sydnam said softly, restoring her wandering mind to the present, “perhaps by tomorrow morning you will have different thoughts. Shall I ask you again before you leave?”

“No,” she said. And looking ahead, she could see the village approaching. “It has been a lovely afternoon, Sydnam, has it not? Let us just remember it and be grateful for it.”

Bottle it up, cage it up, hide it away with all its imperfections and lost possibilities.

“It has been pleasant,” he agreed.

But you must promise, please, Anne, to let me know without delay if you find after your return to Bath that you are with child. And you must promise to allow me to marry you if you are.

She smiled as they entered the village and he greeted an elderly villager who was sitting on an old chair outside the door of his cottage, smoking a pipe.

“You spoke in Welsh,” she said as they drove on.

“I did.” He turned his head to grin at her. “I wished him a good afternoon-prynhawn da-and asked how he did and how his daughter and son-in-law did. Are you impressed?”

“Vastly,” she said.

They laughed.

It struck her then that she would miss more than just him. She would miss this place. She would miss Wales. It did not surprise her at all that it had become home to him, that he intended to spend the rest of his life here.

She envied him.

Perhaps if…

No. No, she would not even think of that.

But ah, she would miss him. And how she wished suddenly that they could go back to Ty Gwyn and set right what had gone wrong there. But there was only the future left-almost none of it that they would share. And that little bit would be an agony. She wished she could click her fingers and find herself two weeks farther on in her life, the pain of tomorrow’s departure well in the past.

She turned her head to gaze at his profile again, to imprint it upon her memory.

Sydnam drove the gig straight back to the stables. The others had not yet returned from their excursion, a groom told them.

And so instead of walking the short distance to the house and taking their leave of each other within the next few minutes, they strolled away from the house, and their steps took them without conscious volition in the direction of the hill they had climbed the night of the country dancing. They climbed it again now and stood on the top, looking out over the sea, which was a deep blue in the late afternoon light, while the land was bathed in the golden glow of a sun that was beginning to sink in the direction of the western horizon.

They were standing a couple of feet apart, two friendly strangers who just happened to have lain together an hour or so ago.

It had been a mistake, but they had no more time together in which to regret it.

He heard her swallow. He heard the gurgle in her throat. And he knew that though she had cringed from the intimacy of sex with him, she liked him, she would find leaving him difficult. She was his friend-it was gift enough.

“I will miss you,” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice, though steady, was higher pitched than usual. “I did not want to come, you know. It seemed horribly presumptuous to come only on an invitation from Lady Hallmere. As the carriage approached Glandwr, I would have done anything in the world to be going back to Bath. But now I find it hard to leave.”

She did not have to leave. She could stay here with him for the rest of her life. But he did not say so aloud. He knew the impossibility of it. And she had made her decision back at Ty Gwyn. She had said no.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you will come back another year.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

But they both knew she would not. They both knew that once she left tomorrow they would never see each other again.

And if it was true that they were just friends, that it was merely loneliness that had brought and held them together, it would not matter that they would never see each other again. Not really. They would quickly forget and resume the normal course of their lives.

But he knew he would not forget.

Losing Anne Jewell was going to be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of his life.

He reached for her hand, and her fingers curled about his and clung tightly.

“I have enjoyed knowing you, Anne Jewell,” he said.

“And I you, Sydnam Butler.”

He turned his head to look at her and they both smiled.

Perhaps there was a possibility…Perhaps if she were given time to…

But she pulled her hand abruptly away from his even as he opened his mouth to speak and pointed in the direction of the house and driveway.

“Here they come,” she cried. “I must be there when David arrives. I have been away from him all day. Oh, I do hope he has come to no harm.”

A line of carriages was making its way up the driveway.

“Go,” he said. “You can be there on the terrace waiting for him by the time he arrives.”