‘Mr Linton? Mr Linton, you have to remove that damp towel.’
‘W-what?’
Blinking, I sat up straight. The world seemed very fuzzy again. There was a man standing in front of me… White shirt, black waistcoat and bow tie… stone-faced… Mr Ambrose! Mr Ambrose with a fresh towel!
‘Here. Take this.’ He handed the towel to me.
‘But you said to wait,’ I protested.
‘You have been waiting. Sleeping, to be exact. But five minutes is long enough. My office is no home for passing drunkards.’
He unwound the damp towel from my head, and I, luckily able to find my head again, began to rub vigorously.
‘I said pat your hair dry,’ he reminded me. ‘Pat. Gently. Not rub like you want to rip it out of your head.’
‘Why don't you go write a brochure on hair care?’ I grumbled. ‘I can dry my hair however I want, thank you very much.’
After a few minutes, I let the towel sink with a sigh.
‘I can’t get it really dry with this,’ I complained. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a hairbrush, would you?’
He was standing at the dark window by now, looking out over the lights of the city. He didn’t turn around at my question.
‘Why on earth would I possess such a useless item? Use your fingers. That’s perfectly good enough.’
Why was he suddenly being so antagonistic? He had been so nice just a minute ago, saving me from strangling myself, and even nicer before that, in the shower… and now? Now he was cold as stone again, and staring away from me. I didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand him.
‘I liked you better in your hunting costume,’ I grumbled.
‘What did you say?’
‘Forget it.’
I did my best to dry my hair with fingers and towel. Beside me, the piggy had switched to the inner jacket pockets, still searching for truffles.
‘Try the upper left one,’ I whispered to it. ‘Take his wallet and you can buy all the truffles you’ve ever dreamed of.’
The piggy squeaked excitedly and proceeded to take my advice. I leaned back in the chair with a contented sigh, imagining how it would find Mr Ambrose’s wallet and sneak off with all his money to buy truffles in Brussels. Suddenly, my hair felt much drier, and I myself better in a general way, though my feet were still a bit cold.
I sneaked a peek at Mr Ambrose, to see if he had taken notice of the piggy’s activities. But he was still standing at the dark window, his back to the room, looking out over the city. In the distance, beyond the glass, one could just see the lights glowing at the docks. Work went on there, even through the night.
‘Mr Linton?’
Exasperated, I tapped on the armrest of the chair. ‘You still persist in calling me that? Even after what you’ve seen?’
Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I could have sworn his ears turned a tiny bit red. So, this creature of stone actually had some blood in him.
‘Especially after all I’ve seen, Mr Linton.’ His voice was as frosty as the heart of an iceberg. ‘Not,’ he added immediately, ‘that I actually saw anything. I turned away and closed my eyes very quickly. I saw nothing at all.’
‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘Mr Linton!’
He started to turn - then thought better of it and folded his arms in front of his chest. So I folded my arms in front of my chest, too, in defiance. And for the sake of gender equality, of course. Peeking at him out of the corner of my eye, I saw he was still glaring out of the window, trying to freeze the city of London with his gaze alone. I didn’t have a window to stare through belligerently, so I had to make do with the wall, but my stare was nevertheless a match for his.
For a while we just remained like this, glaring in angry silence. Finally, he spoke again:
‘I wanted to ask you something, Mr Linton.’
‘Well, why didn’t you?’
‘You distracted me.’
‘I’m quite skilled at that,’ I admitted.
‘Yes, you are.’
‘So ask now.’
There was another moment of silence. Then, abruptly:
‘Why do you do it, Mr Linton? Why work for me? Why insist on doing work that is meant for men? You saw that it is dangerous. If you didn’t believe me before, you cannot doubt it after tonight. Why do you do it?’
It was the first time he had asked me this question - outright, without cold disdain, sounding as if he really were interested in hearing the answer. For a moment, I considered giving a smart reply like ‘because of the cheerful working atmosphere at your office’ or ‘because I like gun fights’, but… I was feeling strangely drowsy and unprotected, robbed of my usual defensive layers of sarcasm against the masculine world. The truth slipped out of my mouth before I could help it.
‘I want to be free.’
He whirled around, and I jerked in surprise. I had not expected my simple statement to get such a reaction. His eyes were like shards of dark ice.
‘That is it? That is all? You are free. England is a free country. Nobody can hold you against your will!’
I wanted to laugh out loud. But the subject really wasn’t anything to laugh about.
‘Once I’m married, my husband can,’ I hissed. Anger was rising inside me, burning away the tiredness that had clouded my mind. What did he know of freedom? What did any man know? They took for granted what women could never have. ‘I must work to make a living. The only other choice is to give myself to a so-called “eligible” man, Mr. Ambrose, Sir. For life.’
In three steps he was around the desk and in front of me.
‘And would that be so detestable? To belong to a man?’
I shot up to face him, not knowing where the energy came from. I was bone-crushingly tired. But I suddenly ran on anger now, and I always had a good supply of that at hand. My mouth tightened, the tired smile disappearing. Woozy or not, tired or not, seeing little piggies or not, I had an absolutely clear opinion on that one particular question.
‘I’d rather die!’
A muscle in his beautiful, mask-like face twitched.
‘Even if the man… harboured feelings for you?’
At that, the yellow piggy stopped searching for truffles and started snickering. I wanted to throw something at it, but didn’t see any ammunition in the vicinity.
‘And how likely is that?’ I scoffed.
For a moment he just stood there. His jaw moved; he looked like he wanted to say something. But then, why didn’t he? Instead, he just stood there in silence.
Finally, he said in his most icy voice: ‘How should I know? I am certainly no expert on bridegroom choice. Still, it would seem a safer option to marry than to do what you are doing.’
‘Life is not about living the safer option,’ I told him sleepily. ‘Life is about living a life worth living.’
‘You won’t get to live a life worth living, or any life, if you go on like this!’ Grabbing my upper arms, he pushed me backwards until my back slammed into the wall. ‘Don’t you understand, Mr Linton? You could have died out there tonight! Died!’
And he shook me, as if he could get his point across by treating me like a salt shaker. All it did was make me angrier! All right, I admit it also made me feel the hardness of his body grinding and bumping against mine, but I tried my best to ignore that and focus on the being angry part.
I remembered another time not long ago when we had stood like this, pressed close together, my anger boiling like a volcano in me, his freezing cold in him. I remembered what it had felt like to feel every line of his sinuous, statuesque body pressed against me. Statuesque - that was normally a word you used only for women, if you wanted to say they were tall and graceful. But as I felt him now, I knew it described him perfectly. It described the hardness of his muscles. It described the lack of motion on his face. It even described his taciturn and stony manner. Like a statue. Statuesque.