you saw Sunne Park, you’d know that it’s a marvelous place to be a child.”
She didn’t know what she was asking. He could tell her—what? That she stood at the start of a path into a wood. There were terrible things in that wood: wolves and monsters and beloved, bright-eyed children. She would skip down the path anyway, picking flowers and singing. Stay out of the wood, he wanted to say. It looks nice, but it isn’t. It’s full of things that will destroy you, like wolves and monsters and beloved, bright-eyed children. But he could scream and yell and she would never listen.
Naive, optimistic fool that she was. They shared a kiss and a secret and she thought it changed things. Last night changed nothing. So he understood her better now, perceived the edge of worry underlying her smiles, saw that her pigheadedness was actually a breathtakingly fierce protectiveness, that she was trying so hard to be good when part of her longed to misbehave. Even knowing that, in the end, changed nothing.
She was a disruption, and this Bolderwood nonsense was a disruption, but they were small disruptions, and once he got back to his busy life in Birmingham, everything would go on as peacefully as it had before.
“Why don’t you get a cat?” he said.
“You already gave me a cat.”
“Then get a hobby. Something to keep you occupied.”
“I run the estate and household at Sunne Park.”
Sunne Park was, reportedly, a marvelous place to be a child. She would go back to that marvelous place and lavish all her affection on a child and never give him a second thought. And he would go back to his life in Birmingham, where he had no need of her at all, because there he had his work, which was all he had had for years now, and all he ever needed.
“Then you have no time for children too,” he pointed out.
“Why are you so averse to having children?”
“Because they’re troublesome.”
“Then you needn’t trouble yourself with them.”
Her tone was sharper now. She was braver with him than she had been, or maybe she simply cared less, showing more of the true self that lay behind her polite, restrained facade.
“I will need your assistance with conception,” she said swiftly, in a flat, tight voice. “The rest I can manage on my own. Our separate lives can continue as they were and your life need not change. You needn’t even learn their names if that’s too much trouble for you.”
“Their names? So I’m to be your stud, am I? Your stallion.”
“You can be involved if you want. Or not, as you want. But you…I don’t know what you want.”
I want to be wanted. I want to know I’ll never again lose what I love. I want Samuel back, and I could have a hundred thousand children and that will never happen.
“I want everything to go back to normal,” he said.
He turned and caught his own ghostly reflection in the window. He looked past it to the dock, to the three children. The girl had dark hair and rosy cheeks. The coloring they might expect if they had a daughter.
Cassandra joined him at the window. He studied her reflection in the glass; how beautiful she was, how warm her skin, how soft her body. It would be so easy, to pull her into his arms, kiss her breathless, touch his tongue to every inch of her, give her everything she wanted and more.
“What are their names?” she said.
“The girl is Sarah.” His voice was hoarse so he cleared his throat to continue. “Miss Sampson says she is a mathematics prodigy. The tall boy is John and he writes perfect sentences. The red-headed boy is Martin. He wants to build a machine that can fly.”
“You would be a good father,” she said.
He didn’t want to hurt her, but she was hurting him, and she didn’t even know it. She assumed he had no children with Rachel and he never corrected her. If any of the London staff knew, they would never think to mention it, and Newell seemed harmless but he had the discretion of a spy. Joshua could tell her, but then she would become sympathetic and annoying and it wouldn’t change a thing. And the longer he didn’t tell her, the more impossible it was, and anyway, he needed to hold on to the memory. If he brought his memory out into the light, it would crumble into dust and he would lose that