‘Because beautiful things always make us sad,’ she replied, closing her eyes and nestling her head against his.
‘Why?’
‘Because we can’t hold onto them forever.’
‘No, they’re transient, like a rainbow or a sunset. Nothing beautiful lasts. Or perhaps because they remind us of where we come from and our spirits long to return,’ he whispered.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Do you believe in God?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘So do I. Do you believe in Fate?’
‘Yes.’
‘I believe that God created us for each other. I believe that Fate brought me to the Argentine for you.’ Audrey laughed softly. ‘I knew it the moment I saw you. It was like lightning. Sudden and unexpected. I thought about you while you were away. I thought about you every moment of the day. My heart ached for you. I don’t know why, but I feel you’re the only person here who understands me. The only person I can be myself with. With everyone else I’m someone different. I had a lot of time to think, Audrey, while you were in Uruguay. I wondered whether you were looking up at the same sky and thinking of me. I tried to ignore my feelings, hoped they’d go away, but they only got worse. I had only met you once and yet, your face stayed with me. As if it was meant for me. I tried to ignore it, after all your father is my boss and I’m not the sort of man he would appreciate courting his daughter.’
‘I know,’ she sighed sadly. ‘You’re too impulsive for your own good.’
‘I couldn’t ignore my heart, Audrey. I tried to. But I couldn’t,’ he explained. ‘When we talked that evening in your garden, I knew you understood me. When we played the same music today, that confirmed it. You do understand me, don’t you, Audrey?’
‘I do understand you, Louis,’ she repeated quietly, knowing how much it meant to him to be understood.
‘You don’t realize how alike we are. You dream impossible dreams and your heart is too big for your body. Oh, Audrey, your heart is as big as the ocean and mine is as big as the sky, I thank God that I’ve found someone with a heart big enough to accommodate mine.’
Audrey swallowed as her emotions caught in her throat. ‘You say such beautiful things,’ she whispered.
‘Because with you I feel such beautiful things. With you the music in my head no longer torments me because I’m creating every tune for you.’
‘I was frightened at first. You scared me. The intense look in your eyes, your boldness, your impulsiveness and yet, now you don’t scare me at all. I want to wrap my arms around you and take care of you. You’re like a rare beast, a beautiful rare beast of the forest and I want to nurture you and love you and look after you.’
‘Now you’re saying the most beautiful things,’ he said and tears glistened in his eyes because no one had ever cared about him before. His parents had always been ashamed of him because he was different, but Audrey loved him for his differences. He felt like a little boat in a rough sea finally drifting into port. With Audrey the real world felt a safe place to inhabit.
As the music from the party reached them, dancing on the air with the scents of the pine trees and damp grass, Louis held her close and moved in time to it. ‘Oh, Audrey, how have I lived so many years without you?’ He took her face in his hands, paler and even more lovely in the silver light of the moon, and softly kissed her forehead, her eyes and then finally her lips. She knew it was wrong to kiss him so soon but she didn’t care. She shut her eyes and allowed him to kiss her the way lovers kissed in her novels, the way Emma Letton was kissed beneath the sycamore tree. She didn’t feel nervous, she just felt an exquisite sadness, the type of sadness that comes when one is faced with something of great beauty. She wrapped her arms around him and followed her senses like that afternoon on the piano and all the while she was holding him the tune he had composed for her replayed itself again and again, hypnotizing her with a strange magic that vibrated between the notes, casting an indelible score on her mind.
Chapter 5
It was five in the morning when Audrey and Isla crept across the shadows in the hallway. Dawn was singeing the horizon and illuminating the sky that only moments ago had been dark and impenetrable. Audrey had floated back, her body still swaying to the music that had been carried across the lawns from the party by a warm, sugar-scented breeze. Overcome by the beauty of the fragile morning light that cast the streets and houses in a pale amber glow and filled once again with that sweet melancholy, Audrey’s spirit brimmed with love. She wasn’t tired. She could have waltzed all night, out there among the clicking crickets and watchful plane trees, who like sturdy sentinels had hidden their forbidden dance behind the leafy screens of their branches. There he had kissed her. Now she felt different, as if that kiss had opened her eyes to a more beautiful world. Looking about her everything was more defined, more brilliant and she wanted to embrace the God that had given her Louis.