“You would be well advised to stay away from me.” He mocked her with his eyes, with his smile.
“Your friends do not fear you,” she said.
“But I do not w-wish to bed any of my friends,” he said. “Even Imogen.”
Her cheeks turned a deeper pink.
“Someone cannot be both a friend and a lover?” she asked.
“Only in a m-marital relationship where there is love,” he said.
“Is this why you warn me away from you, Lord Ponsonby?” she asked. “Not because you may turn violent but because you do not have either love or marriage in mind?”
“I w-will never have either of those to offer any woman,” he told her.
“Never?”
“Happy endings can t-turn without warning to v-very b-bad endings,” he said.
She paused at his words and looked steadily into his eyes, as if she saw something there. “Did you once believe in happy endings?” Her voice was very soft.
He felt suddenly as though he were looking at her down a long tunnel.Hadhe? It was strange that he could not remember. He must have believed in them, though, on that glittering night of the betrothal ball in London. He had abandoned his dying brother for it. For Velma.
His hands curled into tight fists on either side of him on the seat, and he saw her glance down at them.
“There is no such thing, Mrs. Keeping,” he said, spreading his fingers to curl lightly over the edge of the seat. “You know that as w-well as I.”
“I ought not to have married William, then,” she said, “because he would die? But we had five years of companionship. I do not regret marrying him.”
“Companionship.” He mocked her again. “But no p-passion.”
“I believe passion is much overrated,” she told him. “And perhaps companionship and contentment are much underrated by people who have not known them.”
“People l-like me?”
“I think,” she said, “you have known much unhappiness, Lord Ponsonby, and that it has made you cynical.Personalunhappiness unconnected with your injuries. And now you have persuaded yourself that passion is of greater importance than quiet contentment and committed love, because passion requires no real commitment but makes you feel alive when much has died in you since your life changed irrevocably.”
Good Lord! He sucked in air that did not seem to be there in any abundance and forced his hands to remain relaxed. But his temper was suddenly close to snapping.
“And I think, m-ma’am,” he retorted, “you are indulging in s-speculation upon s-something you know n-nothing of.”
“I have made you angry,” she said. “I am sorry. And you are quite right. I do not know you at all.”
It wouldnotsnap. It took a great deal to make him lose control these days. He did not enjoy watching that madman who was himself destroy his outer world because he could not sort out his inner world. It was strange how there was always an inner watcher when the madman burst into action. Who was that man?
“Well, Mrs. Keeping,” he said, looking lazily at her and lowering his voice, “we might setthatr-right anytime you w-want.”
“By...beingtogether?” she asked.
He folded his arms. “You have only to say the w-word.”
She looked down at the hands in her lap and took her time about answering. She laughed softly.
“I keep expecting to wake up,” she said, “to find this is all a bizarre dream. I do not have conversations like this. I do not spend time alone with gentlemen. I do not listen to propositions so improper that I really ought to crumple to the floor in a dead swoon.”
“But it is all happening.”
“I am twenty-six years old,” she said, “and almost three years a widow. Perhaps at some time in the future, if too much time does not pass in the meanwhile, someone else will offer for me, though I do not know who in this neighborhood. Perhaps there is marriage, even motherhood, in my future. Or perhaps not. Perhaps my life will remain as it is now until I die. Perhaps I will never know...passion, as you call it. And perhaps I will regret that when I am older. Or perhaps, if I give in to temptation, I will regretthat. We can never know, can we? We can never benefit today from the wisdom we will have gained tomorrow.”
