"No," Anna said. She got up out of her chair so fast it rocked. She went to him and took both his rough hands. "No, Stepan, you do not understand. Those words were not a curse. They were a message. The captain was asking his brother to forgive him. He was saying that he was sorry. He was saying that he had written to him every day in his heart. And he was telling him to open the windows of this house again, as their mother used to on the first fine day of spring. You brought him his brother back. That is why he could not stay in the room."
Stepan searched her face, and she could not tell whether he believed her. He only pressed her hands, let them go, said he was tired, and went slowly away up the stairs.
Anna took a cloak from the hall and a lantern from the caretaker, and went out after her husband.
She found him on the path above the river mouth, where the land ended and the rocks went down to the sea. He was standing bareheaded in the rain, with his coat soaked black, looking at the water. She came and stood beside him with the lantern, and for a while neither of them spoke.
"He crawled out on the ice," the Duke said at last. His voice was raw. "Everybody told him not to. Of course he did. Of course he did. And I've spent a year and a half believing he went to the far end of that war to be as far away from me as he could get. That he died there hating me." He laughed—a terrible, short sound. "He was sorry. He was the one who said he was sorry. I sent him out of that house, and he spent his last breath apologizing to me for going."
"Yes," said Anna. "He did."
"I cannot bear it."
"You will bear it," she said. She lifted the lantern so that she could see his face, with the rain running off the hood of her cloak. "Because it is the best news you have ever had. You wanted to know whether he forgave you. He did better than forgive you: he asked you to forgive him. And a man who does not speak a word of English carried it here for you in his mouth, across the whole of Europe, so that you could hear it in your brother's own language. Do not waste it, Lawrence. Do not stand out here in the rain and turn it into another thing to be ashamed of."
It was the first time she had called him by his name. She heard it go out into the dark between them; she saw him hear it.
He looked at her for a long time. Then he put his arms around her—cloak and lantern and all—and held her against him hard, with his wet face against her hair. She put her free arm around him and held on.