Winston went down the great stair three at a time, in his shirt sleeves without a hat, the servants scattering before him in astonishment, for no one had seen the Duke of Foss Cliffe run since he was a boy, and he flung out through the great doors into the raw bright morning in time to see the small carriage already at the foot of the drive, already turning out onto the cliff road, already carrying her away toward the county line, and out of his life forever, exactly as he had promised on the terrace that he would let it.
He had thought in his tidy way that the great sorrows of a life announced themselves, that they came with warning, with ceremony, so that a man might arm himself. They did not. This one was a small black carriage on a gray road growing smaller. Taking with it every warm thing that had come into his house in 11 years, and it was going to be gone around the shoulder of the cliff in a matter of moments, and he had a choice to make in those moments that would decide the whole remainder of his days.
He could be the man he had built, correct, restrained, letting her go with dignity because dignity was all he had ever truly loved. Or he could be the boy he had buried, the one who laughed and danced and believed, the one Sidwell Glennville had reached down 11 years of stone to find. He had spent a lifetime choosing the first man. He was so very tired of him.
"Sidwell," it tore out of him ragged, whipped away on the sea wind, far too far to be heard. The carriage did not slow. He stood on the steps of the house that had no heart, watching the woman who had given it one drive away down the cliff road, and for one blank ringing moment 11 years of careful stone told him to let her go, that it was decent, that it was what she wished, that a gentleman did not chase a carriage down a public road in his shirt sleeves like a madman.
Then he thought of her face at the ball, steady and gray and breaking, telling him, "It does not matter what you want if you will never let yourself say it." He thought of 11 years of careful stone, and of every door he had shut, and of the cold library, and the cold bed, and the cold breakfast room that be cold again tomorrow, and every morning after for the rest of his measured, guarded, admirable, empty life. He thought of the whole county laughing behind its fans at the Duke, who did not chase carriages, and found, to his own vast surprise, that he did not care one straw for the county, that he had perhaps never truly cared, that the fear of what people thought was only the last and shabbiest brick in a fortress.
He was, as of this moment, done defending, and the Duke of Fosscliffe went to the stable, and did not wait for a groom, and threw a bridle on the first horse to hand, and rode bareback out of his own gates, and down the cliff road after her, hatless, coatless, with the whole astonished county, about to have very much more to talk of than a bargain, riding hard along the gray edge of England, with the sea below, and the wind in his teeth, chasing the one carriage in the world that mattered, ready at last, 11 years too late and just possibly not one moment too late to be a fool.
He caught them where the cliff road dipped through the [ __ ] hanger a mile below the house where the way narrowed and the driver had slowed for the turn. Winston brought the horse alongside in a scatter of gravel and a spray of the driver's oath and reached down and took the leader's bridle in his own hand and hauled the whole carriage to a plunging stop and sat there heaving for breath bareback hatless wild-haired entirely beyond the reach of dignity.
While the carriage door opened and Sidwell Glennville put her head out to see what madman had halted them, she saw him and the careful composed grief on her face broke for just an instant into pure astonishment. "Winston, what in the name of you are in your shirt sleeves? You have no coat. You are? Did you ride that horse without a saddle? Have you run mad?"
"Yes," he said. "Get down, please. Sidwell, get down and hear me. And if when I have finished you still wish to go, I will hand you back into this carriage myself and never trouble you again on my honor and my name. But I will not let you drive out of my life believing what you believe. I could not read your letter. I never found it. I was in the library the whole night. And you thought I would not be. And so it never reached me. And you have gone thinking I let you go without a word. I did not get the word. Give me the chance to say it now. Please."
Something in the raw plainness of it, the pleas from a man the whole county believed incapable of the word, reached her. She looked back once at her father, who was watching from the shadows of the carriage, with a face of dawning hope he did not trouble to hide, and at her sister beside him, with her hands pressed to her mouth. And then Sidwell gathered her skirts, and let herself down onto the road, and stood before him in the green shade of the beeches, with her chin up, and her heart in her eyes, guarding it hard.
"Say it! Say it, then," she said. "Quickly, the horses are blown, and my father should not sit in the cold."
So Winston slid down off the steaming horse and stood before her in the dust of the road. This severe and famous man with the wild hair and the bare throat and no armor left of any kind. And he said it, "I love you." He said, "That is the word I could not say across the chessboard. And I will tell you exactly why I could not. Because I made you a promise on the terrace that you owed me nothing that no obligation would ever touch you that you would walk away whole and free. And I thought, God, I thought it so nobly that if I told you I loved you while you living under my roof, while your father lay warm in my house and your sister waited on my patronage, that I would be no better than a man using your situation to buy what he wanted. I thought my silence was the honorable thing. I thought I was protecting you."