Mary Balogh - The constant heart

She had wanted to forget Christopher. Once she had convinced herself that he had meant it when he said that he would never return, she had resolutely set herself to forgetting him. The self-discipline that she had built up during her childhood and youth as her father's daughter had aided her outwardly. She had not crumbled, and no one-not even Papa-had known the size of the battle raging within. But finally she had won that battle, too, though never perhaps quite to the extent she would have liked. Occasionally she would think to herself with some satisfaction that she had now forgotten Christopher. But she would immediately realize that the very thought proved her wrong.

She had had to concentrate on the negative side of his character that she had known only at the last, the side that she had never even suspected. She had always known, of course, that he was not perfect. Her earliest memories of him were of a mischievous plague of a boy, whose greatest delight seemed to be to tease the prim, rather shy daughter of the vicar. She could remember him at church, sitting with his family in the second pew, behind her and her mother. She had wom her hair in long braids as a child, and she had liked to toss the braids over the back of the seat, where they would not dig into her back. One Sunday morning she had been forced to sit through most of her father's lengthy sermon with her head tilted back at an unnatural angle while Christopher's knee had kept her braid held firmly against the back of the pew. She had been released finally, she remembered, a moment after hearing the sound of a swift slap immediately behind her.

And then there had been the time when Mrs. Sinclair had been visiting at the parsonage and the children had wandered outside. She remembered sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard, finally too terrified either to get down or to turn her head as Christopher stood in front of her, very seriously and sincerely describing the ghosts that came out of the graves at midnight. For many nights after that she had awoken Mama with her screams as she struggled out of some nightmare.

Rebecca was very thankful to peel off her remaining clothes when the water finally arrived and to climb into the bathtub and soak in the lukewarm suds. It had been just such a day when she had finally realized that both she and Christopher were growing up. She had always hero-worshiped him to a certain extent. He had always been a tall boy for his age and slim and-to her child's eyes- very handsome with his dark, straight hair and blue eyes. She could even remember the time when she was about twelve years old and had started to fantasize about his rescuing her from terrible dangers: fire-breathing dragons, vicious highwaymen, treacherous quicksand. He had always been mounted on a white stallion in those fantasies and he had always had a black cloak streaming behind him. And the fantasies had always ended at the moment of rescue.

The time she was thinking of was the summer when she was fourteen and he seventeen. The annual village fair had lasted the whole day and was ending in fast and furious fun as everyone danced on the village green. Rebecca, for the first time, had been allowed to stay up until eleven o'clock, but finally Mama had instructed her to go home to bed. The whole village was alight. There was no need for anyone to acompany her. But Christopher had fallen into step beside her, chatting in his amiable way as he walked her home. By that stage of their lives they had become firm friends.

They had taken a shortcut through the churchyard on the way to the parsonage and Christopher had tried to revive her old fear of the graves there. But she had tossed her head, which was feeling very grown up with its hair pinned up for the first time, and thrown him a look of contempt.

"Pooh, Christopher Sinclair," she had said, "you cannot scare me with such tales any longer. I am grown up now."

"Are you, though, Becky?" he had said, looking sidelong at her. "I'll wager you aren't."

"I bet I am," she had retorted, turning belligerently toward him and placing her hands on her hips. "I am too a woman grown. I am allowed to wear my hair up and I have been allowed to stay up until eleven o'clock."

"I'll wager you don't know how to kiss, though, Becky," he had teased. "You aren't a woman until you know how to kiss."

She had been very thankful for the darkness that hid her hot flush of shock and embarrassment. "Nonsense, Christopher Sinclair," she had said with all the bored sophistication of a fourteen-year-old. "Of course I know how to kiss."

"You will have to prove it then," he had jeered.

She had kept her hands on her hips, lifted her chin defiantly, puckered her lips, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she saw his face approaching.

If she really had known how to kiss, it would have been glaringly obvious to her that he certainly did not. But she had assumed that that bruising, grinding pressure of lips and teeth against lips and teeth was how it was supposed to be done. She never did ask herself whether she had liked it or not. When she had stopped running and had the door of the parsonage safely between herself and any possible pursuit by Christopher, she had been too deeply in love with him to consider anything more than the fact that he had kissed her, and she had proved to him that she was indeed a woman.

She had loved him mindlessly, passionately, for the following five years, until he had told her that he was going away and never coming back. And even beyond that she had loved him, painfully and against her will, until she had finally forced herself to forget. Or to tell herself that she had forgotten.

Rebecca slid down in the bathtub until her whole body was submerged to the neck. She put her head back against the metal rim and closed her eyes. The cool water felt very good. She could feel all her muscles relaxing. Perhaps her headache would not develop after all. It was pointless to pursue these memories of Christopher now. It was all ancient history. He was clearly a very different man now from the one she had loved as a girl and very young woman.

Two days later, Rebecca was again walking home from a day at the school. The weather was still hot, though clouds had moved across the sky since she had left home that morning so that at least she did not have the glare of the sun to contend with.

She was not feeling cheerful. She and Philip had come very close to quarreling during the morning. It was not his day for teaching, but he had spent half an hour with her before luncheon.

She had been listening to the boys reading aloud. The performance was not an inspired one, but most of the pupils had managed to stumble their way through the words on the page. However, there was one boy who had not. There was scarcely a word he could recognize, and even Rebecca's promptings and encouragement to sound the words out syllable by syllable did not help. Philip had walked over to stand silently behind the boy, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression stern. The boy, feeling the vicar's presence there, had become nervous and confused. His stammerings had become totally incomprehensible.

And finally Philip had lost his temper. He had scolded the boy for inattention, for lack of effort, for stupidity, and for truancy. He had finally berated the lad with bitter sarcasm for his dirty fingernails and uncombed hair. A few minutes later Rebecca had given the boys a break and stood silently at her desk while they filed out, far more subdued than usual.

"They are incredibly ungrateful!" Philip had exploded after the last one had left the building. "Do they not care? Do they not realize what an opportunity is being presented them? I am bitterly disillusioned."

"Philip," Rebecca had said gently, "most of the boys have made marked progress. If you consider the fact that a mere few months ago they could not even distinguish one letter from another, you would realize the truth of what I say. But you must have noticed that Cyril cannot learn as fast as the others. He knows the letters, but he cannot put them together to create words."