The sand was becoming damp and spongy. The pressure of her shoes and his Hessians was making wet indentations. Finally they came to the first trickle of the receding tide and they stopped. He set his arm about her again.

"Now if I had all my strength back," he said, "I might pick you up and carry you in and make you pay me all sorts of forfeits to persuade me not to drop you."

She giggled-what a joyful sound it was. He realized that he had not heard it in a long while. His illness must have saddened her for a few years even before he went to Italy. "And if you think that is going to make me say I am glad you do not have your strength back, sir," she said, "you are very mistaken."

"What?" he said. "You would not mind being dropped into the ocean?''

"Of course I would." She giggled again. "But it would not happen. I would pay all the forfeits."

"Would you?" He drew her a little closer. "That is something I must keep in mind. I shall put it to the test- sooner than you realize."

She was crying then, noisily and unexpectedly, and hiding her face against his chest. He set his arms about her and rested his cheek against the flowers on her bonnet. This must be very bewildering for her, and rather frightening. She must expect that he would have a relapse at any moment.

"John," she said eventually, choking back her tears. "Oh, do forgive me. What a goose you will think me. It is just that I never expected-Oh, I-I don't know what it is I am trying to say."

"You expected to come here to nurse a dying man with all the gentleness of your love," he said. "You did not expect to be teased and threatened. And you did not expect to get your shoes wet in the tide."

She lifted a wet and reddened and very beautiful face to him and smiled. "How good God is," she said. "How very, very good."

He tried to imagine Allison saying just those words. But he did not want to think about Allison, and he pushed guilt back out of his conscious mind.

"Yes," he said, and kissed her. His body, he realized after a mere few seconds, was already beginning to respond weakly to the desires of his emotions.

He handed her his handkerchief after a couple of minutes and she dried her eyes and blew her nose. He started coughing at almost the same moment, as a gust of salt air caught his throat. It was just a harmless cough, over in a moment. But he noticed the quickly veiled terror in her eyes and then the gentle tenderness that had been there when he opened his own eyes two days ago to find her instead of Allison on the bed with him.

"Nothing," he said. "Look, it is over. No blood."

She smiled at him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him again.

"But," he said reluctantly, "if I am not going to have to demand that you sling me over your shoulder and carry me back to the house after all, Adèle, we had better make our way back there. At a very sedate pace. You may even persuade me to lie down for half an hour or so when we get there, provided you will lie down at my side."

"You know I will," she said, taking his hand. "You know that is why I married you, John. To be always at your side. You cannot know how happy it makes me just to be there. All my life I lived for the times when you were home and when you would come to play with the others. I tried not to cling and I tried not to be demanding or to be a nuisance-"

He squeezed her hand. "You never did and you never were," he said. "You were always the joy in my life, Adèle."

"Oh." She sounded breathless. "What a lovely thing to say."

"Our house," he said, looking up the beach to the manor in the distance. "Our Cartref. Shall we stay here forever, my love? Forget to go back to England? Live here and love here together, close to all that matters in life? Shall we bring up our children here?"

"Yes," she said softly. "Oh, yes, John. Let us do that."

Beneath the brim of her bonnet he could see her face. He could see the soft, joyous, wistful dream in it.

And we did it, too, he told her silently. We lived happily ever after here.


******************

She tried to hold on to the cold reality of her sanity. She tried to tell herself that a man who had had consumption in such an advanced stage, a man who had appeared so very close to death just a week ago, could not recover his full health. Miracles did not happen in the mundane times of the early nineteenth century.

Soon this last burst of strength and vigor would go and he would go-out into the beyond that did not frighten him, into the kingdom of love where she would follow him one day. When the time came, she must let him go and be grateful for this precious and wonderful and unexpected week.

In many ways it would be harder to let him go after this week. She had glimpsed the joy of married life this week, as she had never expected to do, and she knew that the bleakness that would come after would be almost unbearable for a long, long time.

But she knew, too, that she would be grateful, that she would live on the memories of this week for the rest of her life.

She tried to be sane and sensible. She tried to keep herself steeled inside just as she had been from the moment she first saw him after his return from Italy. She tried to keep herself prepared, to guard herself from total collapse when it was over.

But it was difficult to do. She felt almost as if after their wedding, after their departure for Wales, they had traveled into a new and different world, a magic, wonderful world where miracles happened, where love was to be loved and life to be lived, where death was not to be feared, where death was not imminent, anyway.

It was not just hope she felt as the days passed and his health showed every sign of recovering. It was knowledge, certainty. It was faith.

And so faith warred with sanity in her mind. And faith was winning.

Every day he was stronger. Every day he ate a little more heartily. He was still very thin, but some of the gauntness, the skeletal look, had gone. There was a suggestion of healthy color to his flesh. Every day he walked a little faster and a little farther. Every day he talked a little more and laughed a little more and teased a little more.

On the last day of the week they walked all the way up the hill-though they stopped several times to look down at the view and recover their breath-to me village. They were greeted with vociferous Welsh cheer at the tavern, where they stopped for lemonade. She knew that word would quickly spread that Viscount Cordell was not lying at home dying but was up and about and apparently recuperating from a long illness. She knew that they would now have callers and invitations. The tavern keeper had already mentioned an assembly that was to be held soon in the rooms above the tavern.

John had said they would be there and would lead the first waltz. Absurd man.

The thought of waltzing with him had made the tears spring to her eyes and she had had to blink and fumble in her reticule and wonder aloud if it was an insect that had flown into her eye and set it to watering.

The walk back down the hill had been less strenuous than the climb. But he had been tired enough to lie down-with her at his side-when they returned home. But only for half an hour. He seemed unwilling to lie down for longer during the daytime.

Yes, faith was overcoming sanity. She had almost relaxed totally into it. She had almost stopped doubting and fearing. He was getting better. It was not just a respite. The disease had gone.

It was with a sick lurching of the stomach, then, that she awoke one night to me sound of his coughing. She sat up sharply. He was standing beside the bed, holding back the bedclothes on his side of the bed.

"I woke you," he said. "And in the worst possible way. I just had to get up for a minute. The cough was nothing. But I know it puts terror into your soul every time you hear it. Forgive me."

She knew he was right. The few coughs she had heard from him in the last week were different. They were not the deep, racking, gurgling coughs she had heard too many times during the journey from England. They were symptoms of nothing. They were merely coughs.

She lay back down and turned onto her side as he climbed back into bed. Life had been so very joyous for the past week that it was difficult to pick out one single thing that made her happier than any other. But perhaps it was this. This lying beside him in bed, feeling the warmth of his body next to hers, hearing his breathing. This knowing that she was his wife and had the right to lie here. She was glad she had lain in his bed the very night of their wedding and every night since. She had not asked permission to lie there. She had wanted to be near when he needed her. It was why she had married him.

He had never told her to go away, to lie in her own bed. She would never go away unless he asked her to. Yes, this was the greatest joy. She smiled when he turned his head toward her, though they could not see each other very clearly in the darkness.

"I disturbed you," he said. "You were sleeping so peacefully."

"I am happy," she said. "You cannot know how happy I am, John."

He turned onto his side too, and slid one arm beneath her head. With the other he drew her closer so that her body was against his. He felt less angular and fragile man he had felt in the nights after their wedding, when she had held him in her arms.

"Are you?" he said. "Are you, love?"

She lifted her head hopefully. She loved his kisses. Especially when she was lying down and her knees were not so badly affected.

He smiled at her and kissed her. She experimented. Instead of waiting for him to prod with his tongue through the seam of her lips, she parted them for him. And when she discovered the pleasure of moist flesh caressing moist flesh, she opened her mouth. His tongue came sliding hard and deep inside and she was very glad indeed that she was lying down. She would have disgraced herself utterly by crumpling into a heap on the ground.

And then she felt alarm and pulled her head back sharply. One of her hands shot up to touch his forehead.

"John," she said. She could hear her voice shaking. "You are fevered. You should have told me."

His chuckle seemed to mock her terror. "My love," he said. "My own little innocent. I am the big bad wolf in your bed, I am afraid."

She understood instantly. She lowered her hand and was glad of the darkness. She felt mortified.

"Adèle," he said, "you married me to nurse me to my death. I know you love me, sweetheart. I know, too, that you did not expect this ever to be a normal marriage, a consummated marriage. Perhaps you never wanted it to be. And if you still do not, I will respect your wishes. I will be forever grateful for the selfless love you showed in marrying me. But if you do not want it, you are going to have to remove yourself from my bed now or sooner-and stay away. You do understand me, do you not?"

She felt such a deep stabbing of longing that she did not believe she would be able to speak if she tried. But she did try.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Or I can move to another room," he said. "There is no reason why it should be you, is there, merely because this is called the master bedchamber?''

"Don't go," she said, clutching his nightshirt. "Stay with me. Make me your wife. Oh, please, John, make me your wife."

She was frantic with need then. She had expected to die a maid. She had thought about it and accepted it as a consequence of her devotion to him. She would never marry again after he had gone. She had decided that and had never felt any doubt that it was a decision she would never want to revoke. There could never be anyone else after John. Never.

And now-there was to be John?

When his mouth came back to hers, she opened her own eagerly and waited for what was to happen. She knew-even the cold reason in her knew-that it was going to be the very happiest night in her whole life.


******************

He had woken up wanting her-and knowing that he was now strong enough to have her. But the matter was not as simple as merely reaching for her and taking her. He was not quite sure he had the right. Was he really her husband? In body certainly he was and in mind he half was-more than half. As the days went by he found himself thinking more and more as the Regency John. But the other one- the twentieth-century John Chandler-was still there. Which one was he, exactly? Which one would he be for the rest of his life?

He had just become engaged to Allison. He had had a number of women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight, but he had committed himself to fidelity when he had agreed to marry Allison. Was it right to sleep now with Adèle?