“But it is different! Think of Bradford down there, think of the walls around him, and he’s happy because on the other side of those walls is China. Think about those walls, all around him.”
He frowned. “And?”
“Look around,” she said, and waved an arm at everything around them, the house, the woods and orchards, the hills, the dead garden, the cloud-filled sky. “No walls around us,” she cried. “Are there? Are there?”
Coming quickly forward, Robert took her arms and held them, as though he were afraid she was about to fragment and was determined to hold her together in one piece through the explosion. “Listen to me,” he said urgently. “Bradford’s been the center of your life for as long as I’ve known you, and probably for a lot longer than that. But he isn’t the center anymore; he’s one small responsibility off in a corner of your life.”
Twisting back and forth, not really to get away from him but to express her agitation, she cried, “How can you say that? When I’ve got to—”
“Your life can have a new center now,” he said. “If you’re willing.”
She stopped thrashing, and looked at him.
He said, “Don’t you know I’ve just been waiting for this mess to be resolved so I could ask you to marry me?”
She did know, or at least she’d expected, she’d hoped. It was something she would have fought for. But now, the way things were now? “How could we—? You want to be buried, too?”
“It isn’t burial,” he said. “Listen to me, think straight about this. I can commute to Lancashire, at least till June, it isn’t that far. And by summer I can decide if I want to do something else. Howard’s talked to me about a book based on that Fuehrer article, that’s one possibility.”
She studied his face, and there was neither deceit nor self-sacrifice to be seen in it, only strength and gentleness. She said, “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. We can still have a life, we just have to make Eustace home base, that’s all. And that won’t be so bad, will it?”
She hesitated, still searching his face, but when he smiled she suddenly smiled back. “No,” she said. “It won’t be so bad.”