“Are you not already in?” she said. “But where do you wish to go? Upstairs? The sitting room?”
It ought to have been obvious. It was almost half past midnight and they were new lovers.
“The sitting room,” he said. “But no tea, thank you. I have drunk enough of the stuff since the arrival of my family to sail away on. Even poor Wenzel was plied with it twice this evening.”
She picked up the lamp so that he could set his outdoor things on the chair and led the way into the sitting room. Was hemad? Or going senile? It was the middle of the night, there was a wide, comfortable bed upstairs, she was willing to welcome him into it and intoher,she looked as delicious as the cake and the icing and the cream filling all in one despite the fact that she had not titivated herself or perhaps because of it—and he had chosen thesitting roominstead?
“I am surprised he did not stayhereinstead of calling on us,” he said.
“Mr. Wenzel? With Tilly and Elizabeth, you mean?” she asked. “He never does. Nor does Sir Matthew when it is his turn to bring them. We like to discuss our books just among ourselves.”
“Areadingclub?” he said.
“We have been meeting monthly for the past three years,” she explained as she set down the lamp on the mantel and reached for the poker. But it was already in his hand, and she sat down on the love seat while he stirred the coals and put on a few more. The animals had settled comfortably close to the heat. “We all read the same book or set of poems or essays and then discuss them over tea and biscuits or cake. We enjoy that one evening of the month immensely.”
“And what was it tonight?” he asked as he straightened up.
“Just one poem, though a longish one,” she said. “William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.’ Have you read it? One of my friends, one of my fellow Survivors, lives in Wales, though his home is on the western side of it rather than in the Wye valley in the east. I went there with George last year for his wedding.”
“George?” That was notjealousyflaring in him, was it?
“Duke of Stanbrook, owner of Penderris Hall,” she explained. “A sort of cousin though a closer relationship than yours and mine. He is another of the Survivors.”
“The one whose wife jumped off a cliff?”
“Yes,” she said.
He wished he had not remembered that particular detail. The man had also lost a son to the wars and must be as old as the hills. Percy tried to remember him from the House of Lords but without any success. Perhaps he would recognize him if he saw him.
He eyed the empty chair beside the fire and went to sit on the love seat. He turned and scooped her up and set her on his lap with her feet on the seat beside them. She was on the tall side, but she wriggled downward—heaven help him—until she was snuggled against him, the side of her head on his shoulder. She inhaled audibly.
“I love the way you smell,” she said. “It is always the same.”
“Mingled liberally with sweat on two recent occasions,” he said.
“Yes.” She laughed softly.
“And I love the sound of your laughter,” he said. And if he had met her for the first time today, he realized, or even yesterday, it would not even have occurred to him to think of her as the marble lady. He wondered if she was falling in love with him, or if it was just the sex.
It wasnotjust the sex, though, was it? If it were, then they would be upstairs now, naked on her bed, going at it.
For a moment he felt almost dizzy with alarm. That was what they really ought to be doing.
“I am not much given to laughing,” she said.
“And that,” he said, “is why your laughter is so precious. No, correct that. It would be just as precious if you laughed frequently. You used to?”
She inhaled and exhaled, but she had not tensed up, he noticed.
“In another lifetime,” she said. “I like your friends.”
“They do not have two brain cells between them to rub together,” he said fondly.
“Oh, but of course they do,” she said. “I might have said that of you if I had seen you only with them. Sometimes we need friends with whom we can simply be silly. Silliness can be... healing.”
“Are you ever silly with your friends?” he asked her.
“Yes, sometimes.” He could feel her smiling against the side of his neck. “Friendship is a very, very precious thing, Percy.”
