The year after that he was ill.

Dreams-which she had never expected to become reality-had given way to despair. She would not be able to bear a world without John in it.

And then the dream had become a different one. One that had come achingly true just a few weeks ago. It had been such a narrow dream. She had not asked for much. She had been more grateful than she had ever been able to put into words for what she had been given. She had not been greedy.

Now the dream had expanded again like a glorious explosion of light, and she was happy beyond thought. And afraid.

The disease had gone. There seemed no doubt about it now. Although he had not seen a physician and she did not suggest it to him, she knew that he was getting better. She knew it no longer just with faith but with certainty. Every day he was stronger. Although he was still very thin, he was noticeably putting on weight and acquiring a healthy color. There were no more fevers and no more coughed blood. His eyes no longer looked on death but on life.

They walked now every day on the beach, sometimes almost briskly. They climbed the hills, pausing for breath as much for her sake as for his. They talked and read and wrote letters to their numerous brothers and sisters and to her mama and papa. They even argued-usually about the wisdom and comfort of leaving windows open. Those arguments always ended the same way. If she was chilly, he always said, grabbing her, she would just have to submit to being warmed-but not by closing the windows.

They made love so often-by night and by day-that sometimes her cheeks could become flushed just thinking about it and wondering if it was normal and proper. She decided that if it was not, she did not care for normality or propriety. On the few occasions when she hinted that he should not exhaust himself, he would laugh and tell her that she could cuddle him afterward as she had done that first time.

Making love, she had discovered, was a process that was taking a very long time to learn. Every time there was something new and something different. He was surely the best teacher in the world, though he claimed sometimes- she did not know how it could be-that he was also a pupil, that she was teaching him dimensions of the art he had never dreamed of before.

Making love, she had decided, was the most wonderful bonding experience imaginable. She could not understand how any two people could do those things when they were not married or even particularly devoted to each other. She could not imagine the pleasure being divorced from the love and the commitment and the union of hearts and souls.

As she had expected after their walk to Awelfa, they soon had company. People for miles around with any claim to gentility left their cards and returned for tea and conversation. The calls had to be returned. They issued a few invitations to dinner and cards. They accepted a few similar invitations. The dance at the assembly rooms above the tavern in the village was approaching and John seemed determined that they would go-and dance.

Adèle was more happy than she had known it was possible to be. She had had a month of married life when she had expected a few days, a week or two at most, of nursing a dying man.

But reaction was beginning to set in. Happiness had always been something to dream of, not something to be lived. She began to be afraid of happiness. What if, after all, he was merely going through a respite in his illness? What if there should be a sudden relapse and death? Could she bear it now that she had let down her defenses, now that she had tasted what life with him could be?

It was a fear she tried to ignore. If it was to be so, there was nothing she could do to prevent it merely by worrying about it. And surely if she did not live to the fullest now, she would forever regret it should she be left alone and grieving for the rest of her life.

Other fears were more nebulous, but they nibbled away at the edges of her happiness with equal relentlessness. He would tire of Cartref soon despite what he had said when he first began to recover. The house was small by the standards of his main home. There were not many families of his own social standing in the area. They were far from any social center. They had been in Wales for a month. He was going to be bored soon and restless. John had always been restless. And now, day by day, his energy was returning.

She feared that when they returned to England she would lose him. She had nothing with which to hold him except her love and her devotion to him. They had never been quite enough. She knew that in the normal course of events, if he had not been ill, he never would have thought of her in terms of marriage. He would tire of her. She had no doubt that he would always be kind to her, that he would always feel an affection for her, that he would always guard her from hurt. But she could picture how their life would develop. She would live in the country. He would join her there for a few weeks several times a year. For the rest of the time he would live in London or some other fashionable center. He would have mistresses, whom she would know about, though no one would ever tell her and he would protect her carefully from ever finding out.

They would tell each other and themselves that the arrangement suited them both.

She did not believe she would be able to accept such a life after this month of living and of loving. But she would have to accept it. She would have no choice.

She dressed for the assembly with a mingling of excitement and wariness. She had always loved dances, except perhaps the few ton balls she had attended in London with her great-aunt. And yet she feared that John would find this one unsatisfying and would begin to have a hankering to return to his old life.

She was wearing her wedding dress of silver gauze over white satin, with the pearls John had given her as a wedding present. She fingered them dreamily as her maid put the finishing touches to her hair. She remembered how she had felt when he had given them to her-the one and only gift she would ever receive from him. She had realized how she would prize them for the rest of her life.

There was a tap on her dressing room door and he stepped inside and held the door open to allow her maid to leave.

"Ah," he said, his eyes wandering over her after he had closed the door again. "Your wedding clothes, Adèle." He frowned for a moment. “Was I really that sick? It is almost hard to remember already. I thought you must be a harbinger of the angels who I hoped would soon be meeting me on the other side."

She bit her lip and felt the tears spring to her eyes.

"The pearls look good on you," he said. "Your 'something new' for your wedding." He smiled and stepped close enough to lift her left hand. He looked down at her rings. "And your something old and something blue." He frowned again, then, and paused for a while, thinking. "I have said that before-just recently."

"You said it the day before our wedding, when you put it on my finger," she said.

He continued to frown for a moment longer and then shook his head and smiled. "Yes, of course," he said. "And it was the something borrowed, too-yours for life and then to return to the family treasures."

He raised her hand and kissed the ring, and then turned her hand over to kiss her palm and her wrist.

"Did I tell you on our wedding day how beautiful you were?" he asked.

The tears were back again. "You were very ill," she said, "and using all your energy to try not to look it."

"I shall tell you now, then," he said, setting his fingertips against her cheek and bending to touch his lips to hers. "You are the most beautiful woman in the world, Adèle- in your wedding gown and without it." He grinned at her, looking quite like the old handsome John. "Especially without it."

She blushed. It seemed rather foolish to her that she could still blush at such words after two weeks of continual and quite uninhibited intimacies.

"I like making you do that," he said. "Are you planning to get up from that stool tonight, or shall I have the horses and the carriage returned to the stables? Horses and carriage-a slow and quaint method of travel, but very romantic."

She stood and picked up her shawl and fan. “That was a strange thing to say," she said. "Quaint?"

"Yes, it was strange, was it not?" he said, rubbing two fingers from the bridge of his nose to his hairline and back, and frowning once more. "I have been having strange dreams. I do not know what I was thinking. Are you ready?"

"Yes." She smiled at him. He was dressed in blue and silver and white. He had not yet, of course, regained his former splendid physique. Perhaps it would be months before that happened. But even so he looked splendidly handsome to her. "John, you look-gorgeous."

"Thank you, ma'am." He chuckled and made her an elegant bow as he offered his arm. "A gorgeous cadaver, perhaps. But gaining flesh at a steady rate. My valet has hopes of having to squeeze me into my clothes rather as into a second skin before too many months have passed. He despises being able to slide me into them with such ease."

She laughed and took his arm. She was going to put fear behind her, she decided. For now at least there were health and happiness to be celebrated. And an assembly to be enjoyed. And it seemed-it was-so ungrateful to be afraid.

He was going to waltz with her. She had never waltzed before, though she had learned the dance and had watched it being performed. And she had dreamed…

Tonight he was going to waltz with her.


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

He thought of Allison during the carriage journey to Awelfa. While he did so, he held Adèle's hand in both of his and played with her ring, twisting it with a forefinger and thumb.

How could he have forgotten even for a moment when it was he had spoken those words last? He had spoken them to Allison as he put the ring on her finger. He could remember it clearly now-though he could also remember saying the same words to Adèle the day before their wedding-God, he had been feeling ill.

He had to concentrate very hard to remember Allison's face. He knew she was tall and slender and elegant and blond. But he could not quite bring her face into focus. He thought of his car as the carriage lurched rather uncomfortably over the far from smooth track-calling it a romantic mode of travel had not been altogether accurate. All he could remember for the moment was that his car was red. He could not for the life of him remember what make or model it was. Allison had once accused him, half seriously, of loving his car more than he loved her. Yet he could not recall even the make of the car? Or her face?

He looked at Adèle, quiet and apparently relaxed beside him, though he knew that she was bubbling with suppressed excitement at the prospect of the assembly. He thought back on her as a child and as a girl and found the memories clear and detailed and filled with emotion. He had always adored her. He had not even realized that fully until now. His father had warned him against falling in love with her. His father had been more ambitious for his eldest son. And it was true that he had had wild oats to sow and had sown them with great energy and enthusiasm. But surely he had always known that there was only Adèle.

Or perhaps it was only his near-death experience that had shown him how precious love is, how unimportant in this life are anything and everything else but love.

Only Adèle mattered.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. "A penny for them," he said.

She looked up with luminous eyes, which she was trying to keep quiet and dignified. He knew her so well. He knew her thoughts. Adèle had always been a part of himself, the uncompleted part of himself until he had married her and united his body and his heart with hers.

"I have never waltzed," she said. "Perhaps I will disgrace you."

He smiled slowly at her. "You dance beautifully," he said.

"You have never seen me dance," she said. "We have never danced together."

"We have," he said quietly. He wished the carriage were not dark inside. He wanted to see her blush. "We move together perfectly. We always share the same perfect rhythm."

She looked at him blankly for a moment. And then he saw comprehension light her eyes. "John," she whispered. "Oh, for shame."

He lowered his head and kissed her. "As I thought," he said. "I cannot see the blushes. But your cheeks feel fiery hot."

"For shame," she said again. "Where are your manners, sir?"

But he knew she was pleased. She always called him "sir" when she was pleased.