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“You have never dressed to impress me. And most likely you realized that I would notice your choice of attire. But you opted for it anyway: You’d rather that I guessed at the preoccupation than at the nature of it.”
Then the sensations of ill omen dissipated into the ether, like so many coils of cigarette smoke. His breaths quickened. He was well acquainted with this particular strain of silence—the heat, the hunger, the coercive need to touch.
He clasped his hands behind his back. “You did not write for three months and you think I would be amenable to perform such services at your beck and call?” She scoffed. “You did not write for three months. And you think I would be mollified with anything less than such services at my beck and call?” He couldn’t help but smile.
He looked back at her, at the fulcrum of his life. She was not wrong. Nothing had changed. Except him.
He glanced out of the carriage, at the cottage they were rapidly approaching, golden light spilling from every window. “Yes, I am. I am in love with her.”
He had a very clear memory of the day she told him to write her. It was the summer of the Roman villa ruins. She had blackmailed him into kissing her—and afterward had visited the ruins as she pleased, with him by and large ignoring her. Or, rather, he had not spoken to her, but had furtively observed the utterly incomprehensible girl.
She exhaled. “Tell me what has happened since I left—I assume you didn’t come just to sleep with me.” He stepped even closer. “And you would be wrong about that.”
She lifted her hand and hesitated for a moment—as if she expected to be brushed aside—before she reached across and touched the back of her hand to his jawline. “I know I’ve said this, but you shouldn’t have come.” “I know. I’ve lost my mind.”
For a moment her mind went blank—and then she knew exactly what she wanted to say. “I have my sisters to think of, and you your children. But if—if someday the conditions should be conducive, would you like for all of us to go away together? Spain, Majorca, Egypt, the Levant? By the time we reach India, it will probably be unbearably hot in the plains, but the hill stations should still be pleasant.” He gazed at her, as if he couldn’t be sure he’d heard her correctly. And then a smile slowly spread across his face. “Yes,” he said. “I would like that.”
