Patrick blinked at the man.
“You do,” the lama insisted. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“Alright. Tell me.” Patrick figured it was worth trying. For years, he’d been looking for something, but still hadn’t found it. He wasn’t about to assume he ended up in a Himalayan monastery for nothing.
The lama shook his head. “I cannot. You must discover.”
“How?”
“So many things cloud the mind.” The lama waved his hands in the air around his head. “Push away, and listen only to inside self. No money. No possessions. No pride. They not important. Happiness important. Compassion important.”
Patrick nodded. “What else?”
“What else?” the lama asked, shocked. “No what else! That it!”
“You are telling me that the purpose of my life is to be happy?”
“Not just your life. All life.”
“But how do I know what will make me happy?” Patrick asked. “I’ve been searching for almost twenty-eight years, and I still haven’t found it.”
The lama laughed. “What is twenty-eight year? Some search entire lifetime and never find happiness.” He pointed a long, skinny brown finger at Patrick. “You meditate every day, and maybe your own heart and own mind show you what you search for.”
***
Patrick walked out onto the courtyard, contemplating everything the lama told him. Meditation. Happiness. The purpose of his life. It all sounded too incredible to be true. How could this one little man, locked away for his lifetime in a monastery on the side of a mountain hidden from the entire world, know the key to finding the purpose of Patrick Wolford, Marquess of Kyre’s life?
But who was Patrick to even question him? After looking for almost twenty-eight years, he was still no closer to finding the purpose of his life than when he first started. Sure, on paper the purpose of his life was to create heirs and manage his estates, but that did not bring him happiness. He was pleased to care for his tenants, and, despite his numerous claims otherwise, did not actually intend to let the family titles go extinct. He was content to live out the rest of his days in Kyre.
But happy?
Not bloody likely.
Patrick found a quiet spot in the courtyard overlooking the valley and the waterfall that tumbled down the mountainside. He sat down, crossed his legs, and folded his hands in his lap. The lama told him to close his eyes, clear away all the things that clouded his mind, and then listen. Listen. Listen…
“What are you doing?”
He jerked open his eyes to find Linley standing over him.
“I’m meditating.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Meditating? Why?”
Patrick sighed. “To discover the purpose of my life.”
“Oh…” She cocked her head in the other direction. “Is it working?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me try,” Linley said, flopping down beside him.
“Alright,” he said. “Close your eyes and try to clear your mind.”
She did as he told her, and for a long time she was silent. “Now what?”
“The lama says if you do it every day, eventually you will learn to block out all the unimportant things in your life—like money, and pride, and worldly goods—and then you can see what will bring you happiness.”
Linley tried. God bless her, she really did. It just would not work. “I can’t clear my head. All these things keep flying around in there.”
“Well, I suppose no one gets it on the first try.”
“But I cannot ever seem to clear my head,” she confessed. “Especially when you are around.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know what I mean. My thoughts are so muddled. It’s as if my mind and my body are going in two completely different directions all at once. And no matter what I try to tell myself…no matter how hard I reason with common sense…well, the thing is…” She paused and took a breath to steady herself. “I feel I would like to be more than friends with you.”
“Haven’t we gone through this before?” Patrick asked. “I seem to remember the conversation did not go so well.”
She shook her head. “This time I’m not talking about kisses in an upstairs corridor.”
He blinked down at her, speechless.
“I know we can never have a future together,” Linley continued. “But I thought since you like me, and I like you, and we are both here together without much else to do, we could take our friendship a step further.”
“Are you saying you want to sleep with me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Linley, I am flattered, but you don’t really want to sleep with me. What you are experiencing is natural,” he told her. “I’m the first man you have been around that you don’t consider family. Of course you would feel drawn to me. But that doesn’t mean we should act upon those feelings.”