XVI The First Hour #2
“I should like you to have callers. I was told you are of a gregarious disposition, which pleased me to hear. I would not ask you to shut yourself up with only a man you cannot see for company. Auchengray has been long closed, and the village and the country around us will be curious, and they ought to be permitted to come and be curious, and to go home satisfied that they have met the lady of the house.”
“And what of the laird? Will they not be curious? Have any of them met you?”
“No. Angus has informed them that I am deeply bereaved. That explanation will do for the present. But you need be under no such restriction. I should like you to go down into the village whenever you wish. Take the carriage or walk if the weather allows it. Visit whom you please. Make the acquaintance you find agreeable.”
He stopped. What he said next was harder.
“But company from London, from your family… not yet.”
“Not even my eldest sister? She is discreet, and I —”
“Write to her as freely as you wish. Tell her anything you would like to tell her. But she cannot come here. I am sorry for it.” That was what it was, and he could not take it back, and did not try to.
He heard a sniff, as if she were drawing up her courage and pushing the matter of her wants away to settle for her needs. “Very well. I wish to walk outside at whatever hour I please. Including before dawn.”
“The coast path is unlit, and the cliffs are—”
“I am not without sense.”
“I did not suggest you were. I suggest only that the ground is uneven and a lantern would be wise.”
“I will take a lantern. Is there anything further you wish to restrict, or may I consider the matter settled?”
He smiled in the dark. She could not see it, which was the whole of the situation in miniature — him sitting across a table from her with everything he was unable to say scattered between them like furniture she could not see either, and she was calling the matter arranged, and nothing in this room was arranged at all.
“The matter is settled.”
“Excellent. I also want a dog.”
“A—”
“A dog. A large one, preferably. If I am to walk the headland before dawn with a lantern, I should like some company that does not require conversation.”
“I will see what can be arranged.”
“I shall take that as a yes.”
“It is not quite a yes.”
“It is close enough.” The tone in her voice had altered — there was something in it that had not been there before. “You find this amusing?”
“I find—” He caught himself. “I find your demands carefully considered.”
“I am establishing terms while you are inclined to grant them. You seemed reasonable, and I thought I ought to make use of it before you reconsidered.”
The laugh escaped. Low, brief — not all of it caught, because there was too much in his chest to catch it all.
She was here, she was his in name and law, she was mistress of his house, asking him for a dog to walk the headland with before dawn.
She was already making the place hers. She was already asking him for the small things that might make her happy. His heart went past what it could hold.
Across the table, her fork stopped against the plate. “You are laughing.”
“I beg your pardon.” He had almost nothing left to beg pardon with. His whisper was still low, still controlled, and the effort was more than he had spent on anything in three months.
“No… who are you?” The question came fast and intent.
Egad, she had caught something, and now would not drop it.
“I gave you my name,” he whispered cautiously.
“Yes, but who are you? You have been very careful and not unkind, and now you are laughing. Have we ever… I beg you would excuse me, but we have not met, have we?”
If she could have seen him, she would have noted that he could not have met her eyes if his very soul depended on it. “No. Never.”
“No. Of course not. I only heard you laugh, and I find I cannot — what kind of man—” She stopped herself. “Forgive me. You are not quite what I expected.”
He knew exactly what she had heard. One unguarded moment, and she was already at the edge of him, not knowing what she was reaching for. She could not know — could not know and be safe — and keeping her safe was the one thing he could still offer her without qualification. He pulled himself back.
“I am a man who had perhaps been alone too long,” he said, “and who found, in the circumstances, that your demands were a considerable relief. Forgive me if I unsettled you.”
She was quiet. He could hear her hand moving on the table.
“Laughter is perhaps the last thing a person should apologise for,” she said at last. “I only wanted to know where it was coming from.”
“And yet, I will apologise. That this must be — it is not convenient, I know. It is—”
“I am hungry,” she said. “I have not eaten properly since Aberdeen.”
“Then eat.”
She did. He could hear her — the fork against the plate, the tearing of bread, the sounds of someone who had been holding her hunger at arm’s length for days and had finally been given leave to stop. He ate a little himself, though he was not hungry. He mostly listened.
He was afraid to speak. Not from shyness, not from want of things to say — there were too many things to say, and every one of them was wrong in a different way.
He could give himself away with a question.
A passing reference to Hertfordshire, to Rosings, to any of the dozen things he knew about her that a stranger could not know.
He kept his mouth shut and listened to her eat.
Eventually, the sounds slowed.
“You are very quiet,” she said.