And then to find out that the reason I felt like that-like you were some part of me I'd lost and never even knew I was missing until I saw you -that the reason was that I thought that you were the lady from that night, six years ago. it felt like some sort of cosmic joke realizing you're not, well maybe you're..... but you don't remember because you lost your memories_,,
He stood up then, with a sort of violent suddenness, and crossed the room to the window. He looked lost, as lost as he had been standing over Jocelyn, the family's maid corpse, many years ago. Now, he was lost in thought, the mark on her thighs? Only his betrothed was supposed to have that mark of an overlapping circle...
"Sir?" Diana said, alarmed, and when he didn't answer, she scrambled to her feet and went to him, laying her hand on his arm. He continued staring out the window; their reflections in the glass were nearly transparent-ghostly outlines of a tall boy and a smaller girl, her hand clamped anxiously on his sleeve. "What's wrong?"
"I shouldn't have told you like that," he said, not looking at her. "I'm sorry. That was probably a lot to take in. You looked so … shocked." The tension underlying his voice was a live wire.
"I was," she said. "I've spent the past few days wondering if you hated me. And then I saw you tonight and I was pretty sure you did, thanks for all that you have done for me!."
"Hated you?" he echoed, looking bewildered. He reached out then and touched her face, lightly, just the tips of his fingers against her skin. "I told you I couldn't sleep. I feel so restless these days...."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Mark-"
"I don't mean it like that," he said. "I won't touch you, not if you don't want me to. I know it's wrong-God, it's all kinds of wrong-but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life." There was desperation in his voice. "It's just this one night. In the grand scheme of things, how much can one night matter?"
Because think how we'll feel in the morning. Think how much worse it will be pretending that we don't mean anything to each other in front of everyone else after we've spent the night together, even if all we do is sleep. It's like having just a little bit of a drug-it only makes you want more.
But that was why he had told her what he had, she realized. Because it wasn't true, not for him; there was nothing that could make it worse, just as there was nothing that could make it better. What he felt was as final as a life sentence, and could she really say it was so different for her? And even if she hoped it might be, even if she hoped she might someday be persuaded by time or reason or gradual attrition not to feel this way anymore, it didn't matter. There was nothing she had ever wanted in her life more than she wanted this night with Mark.
"Close the curtains, then, before you come to bed," she said. "I can't sleep with this much light in the room and also don't worry much, your mum is safe..." Diana tried to assure Mark as she felt he might be worried Low key for him. But who would thought was still alive? 'Guess, I don't really know him that welll...' Diana thought.
The look that washed over his face was pure incredulity. He really hadn't expected her to say yes, Diana realized in surprise, and a moment later he had caught her and hugged her to him, his face buried in her still-messy-from-sleep hair. "Diana …"
" You can join me.... Come to bed," she said softly. "It's late." She drew away from him and returned to the bed, crawling up onto it and drawing the covers up to her waist. Somehow, looking at him like this, she could almost imagine that things were different, that it was many years from now and they'd been together so long that they'd done this a hundred times, that every night belonged to them, and not just this one.
She propped her chin on her hands and watched him as he reached to jerk the curtains shut and then unzipped his white jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He was wearing a pale gray T-shirt underneath. He unlaced his boots and stepped out of them as he came toward the bed, and he stretched out very carefully beside Diana. Lying on his back, he turned his head to look at her. A very little light filtered into the room past the edge of the curtains, just enough for her to see the outline of his face and the bright gleam of his eyes.
"The mark on your thigh?," he said. "Is it a birthmark?" He then asked.
"Yes! Why?" He had obviously seen the Mark.
'Nothing! Goodnight!' Mark responded.
His hands lay flat on either side of him, his arms at his sides. He seemed barely to be breathing; she wasn't sure she was breathing herself. She slid her own hand across the bedsheet, just far enough that their fingers touched-so lightly that she would probably hardly have been aware of it had she been touching anyone but Mark; as it was, the nerve endings in her fingertips prickled softly, as if she were holding them over a low flame. She felt him tense beside her and then relax. He had shut his eyes, and his lashes cast fine shadows against the curve of his cheekbones. His mouth curled into a smile as if he sensed her watching him, and she wondered how he would look in the morning, with his hair messed and sleep circles under his eyes. Despite everything, the thought gave her a jolt of happiness.
She laced her fingers through his. "Good night," she whispered, and her hand clasped in Mark's as if they were children in a fairy tale, she fell asleep beside him in the dark.