Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Sixteen

“Amy,” Tristan said softly as he bent over her. It was night and the only light was from the moon outside his bedroom window. They were in the hallway, just outside his door. Amy was curled on the floor, a blanket over her, a small pillow under her head.

“Come on,” he said gently. “Get up now.”

When Amy didn’t move, he picked her up in his arms. He took a step toward the stairs, as though he meant to carry her to her own room downstairs, but instead, he looked up and down the dark hall, then carried her into his room. He put her into his bed, where she snuggled down into the warm covers and kept sleeping.

But she didn’t stay asleep. Within seconds, she awoke with a start and sat up. She was fully dressed. “You should have left me there,” she said as she watched Tristan light a candle at the far end of the room.

“I cannot leave you out there in the hallway like a piece of baggage. I have told you over and over not to sleep there.”

“I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t but—”

“You had the dream again,” he said.

Amy nodded as she flung back the covers and got out of bed. “Come on, get back in here. You must be freezing.” He was wearing a long white nightshirt and his feet were bare.

“What about you?” he asked. “You were in the hall on the floor, with just a blanket over you. Do you know what woke me? Your shivering was making the door rattle.”

Amy smiled as she held the covers back. “Better that than that you never wake up.”

Tristan climbed back in the bed, then held out his hand to her in invitation.

“Please don’t ask me again,” she said, her voice low and near to tears.

“I hope that someday I will break you down and you’ll come to me.”

“I have—”

“Do not say it again!” he said loudly. “I know! You have a husband. You have two children. I know everything there is to know about them. I could pick your children out of a room full of brats.”

She was standing at the side of the bed, smiling at him. “I can’t,” she said. “I really can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Stephen. He wouldn’t do this to me.”

“You are mad if you think that a man would spend over a year with another woman and not bed her.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I have to live with myself.” She glanced out the window. “I think it’s safe to leave you now.”

Tristan threw back his head for a moment in despair. “Safe! What do I care about safe? I loved a woman who was taken from me, and now you…”

“Tristan,” she whispered, “you don’t love me.”

“Do you think not?”

Amy could feel tears growing in her eyes. How could she love two men? She didn’t know, but she did. And one of them was here with her now. He wanted her, had been begging her to join him in bed for months now, but she didn’t because she was in love with—and being faithful to—a man who hadn’t been born yet.

“I cannot,” she said. “Please don’t ask me.”

“Ask you what?” he said. “Ask you to marry me and be my wife? Is that what I should not ask you? This man you say you love, where is he? Why is he not here with you?” He put up his hand when she started to speak. “I know. You say he is in your America. But I do not think he is. Sometimes I think he does not exist.”

The truth of what he was saying showed on her face. “I can’t marry you,” she repeated for the hundredth time. “We’ve talked about this. I’m the kitchen help and you’re an earl. We would have no friends, no society. You would give away everything if you were to marry me.”

“What do I care for society?” he said. “I have hardly left this place for years. I need only Beth and my uncle. But Beth will leave me soon for some man who will not be worth her, as no man is, and God will soon take my uncle.” He looked at her with great, pleading eyes. “I need you, Amy. You are the only woman who has made me feel life again. I have nothing else but you.”

Amy felt herself being drawn to him. She tried to think of Stephen and the boys. She tried to remember happiness with them, but the months of this life with Tristan kept shoving the modern memories aside.

S

he hadn’t told Faith and Zoë the truth about her and Tristan because she didn’t want them to know how close she’d become to him. This morning, when Amy had opened her eyes and found herself in the barn, she knew that Faith and Zoë were confused, even dazed, but Amy wasn’t. It was as though she’d arrived home after months away. She knew the man standing in front of them (second assistant gardener) and she knew the way to the house. The way to Tristan, is what she really thought.