Toby looked around at the white linen tables. “Where? At Bellinis?”
“No dahling,here.” Maisy waved a manicured hand through the air. “This place, this…world.”
“How day drunk are you?”
“Not at all! Well, a little.” Maisy sighed. “Perhaps I’ve had too much liquor, and it’s turned me melancholy, but thishasbeen on my mind for a little while, dahling.”
“What has?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the sense that perhaps I haven’t served you well this last little while.”
Toby frowned. “You don’t think I’m holding my end up?”
“Oh no, dahling! I think you’re a positively gorgeous little shark, but when you talk about work, or your house or anything that isn’t little Tabitha DaSilva, I get the feeling, well, it just seems to me that you’re not as happy as I’d like you to be…”
“I don’t?—”
“Before you say anything, let me get this off my chest.” She took a small sip of vodka. “I know you didn’t always like how things were before you came into money, dahling, but such a large part of that was being trapped in that ghastly house with your ghastly parents. And I know you wanted to become Prince Charming and win your princess, but sometimes it seems to me that turning you into this man took you away from the people and places you loved.”
Toby sat, trying to process what Maisy was getting at. As much as he wanted to reassure her that everything was fine, that he’d chosen to do this, and he appreciated all her help, she had a point. He hadn’t really settled into his beachside home, and as much as he got on with the guys at Prestige Management, it wasn’t as satisfying as it had been working for Scott. And when he’d seen that video of Sam, Tabby, and Noah, it had pulled at him, that old world where everyone had liked him, regardless of his awkwardness and the fact he never had two cents to rub together.
“I get what you’re saying,” he told Maisy. “But change is good, right? Growth is good?”
“Sometimes, dahling. Sometimes it’s cancer.” Maisy downed the last of her drink. “I’m sorry, I’m more than a little morose today. I’m positively downcast.”
“Is there something specific that’s wrong?”
“No. Though I suppose having little Mopsy last night reminded me that when she’s not there, I am… alone most of the time.”
Toby put a hand over Maisy’s bejewelled one. “I’m sorry to hear…”
She pulled her palm out from under his and swatted him. “Oh, stop that. I’m not dying.”
“Fine, you’re not dying. Althoughyoucould try dating, you know?”
She shuddered. “I couldn’t think of anything worse. Three divorces are enough, dahling.”
“You don’t have to get married! You could just… you know?”
She fixed him with a beady eye. “Know what?”
Toby felt heat climbing his neck. “I… uh...”
“And there you go, squirming again…” her smile faded slightly. “All I’m saying is I don’t want you to feel isolated. I know what that’s like, and it robs your mental health so slowly you don’t know it’s being stolen.”
Toby wondered if it was safe to ask what she meant. Maisy was pretty closed off about her past. She dropped hints occasionally, but mostly, she talked as though she was born a thirty-year-old woman in the nineties. He decided to risk it. “When did you start feeling isolated?”
She tapped a finger against an empty vodka glass. “You know I’m from Oxford, dahling?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you don’t know that when I was twenty, I married Bruno Collins, moved to Australia and lost all my friends. Bruno was so sure we’d have children right away that he wouldn’t let me work. Then wedidn’thave children, and he started sleeping with his PA because he’s a very boring, unimaginative man. Then it was over, and I was alone in a new country with no career to speak of.”
“Oh, Mais…”
“Not a great disaster,” she said lightly. “Especially since I was remarried within a year, but still, no children. And I did… I was very much hoping to become a mother.”
The back of Toby’s nose filled with pressure. He wanted to say how sorry he was, but he knew that wasn’t what Maisy needed and would probably make her feel worse.
