“Oh,” she said, frowning, “tall, dark, handsome—all the old clichés.”
“And is he a cliché?” he asked.
“No.” She was still frowning. “I thought he was at first, Vincent. But not now that I know him better. No one is less of a cliché. He is . . . oh, no matter. Did he go quietly?”
She felt as though there were a leaden weight at the bottom of her stomach as she imagined his carriage driving away from Penderris. Actually, it had been there since the night of his birthday ball, that cold, heavy weight. Would it never go away?
“He is in the salon with the other men,” he said. “He wants to see you. He demanded that one of us come and tell you so. But then he added a please.”
Her lips quirked into a smile again, though she felt nearer to tears than laughter.
“Tell him no,” she said. “And add thank you, if you will.”
“We all expected him to come, you know,” he said. “We were all agreed upon it the night before last after you went to bed. There was no point in laying wagers. We were all on the same side. And Sophie agreed with me, and the other ladies did too. We have all been expecting him to come.”
There was nothing to say into the pause that followed.
“He is terribly upset,” Vincent told her.
“I thought he was belligerent,” she said.
“Precisely,” he said. “But there was nothing to be belligerent about, you see, Imogen. George went outside to greet him like a courteous host, and we all behaved with the greatest civility.”
She could just imagine them all lined up in the hall, not realizing how formidable they could look when they were standing between someone and what that someone wanted.
Poor Percy! He had done nothing to deserve any of this.
“I will send him away if you wish,” Vincent said. “I believe he will go even though he told us he would not budge until he saw you. He is a gentleman and will not continue to pester you if your answer is no. But I think you ought to see him.”
“It is hopeless, Vincent,” she said.
“Then tell him so.”
She drew a deep, audible breath and let it out. Vincent, she noticed irrelevantly, needed a haircut. His fair, wavy hair almost touched his shoulders. But when had he ever not needed a haircut? And why should it be cut? It made him look like an angel. His wide blue eyes only enhanced that impression.
“Send him here,” she said.
He got to his feet, and his dog stood beside him. But he hesitated. “We never ever offer one another unsolicited advice, Imogen, do we?” he said.
“No, we do not,” she said firmly, and he turned away. “But consider your advice solicited. What do you wish to say?”
He turned back. “I believe,” he said gently, “we all have a perfect right to make ourselves unhappy if that is what we freely choose. But I am not sure we have the right to allow our own unhappiness to cause someone else’s. The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.”
And he left without another word. That was advice? She was not even sure what he had been trying to say. Except that it made perfect sense while she waited and pondered his words. Are we not all responsible just for our own selves? she thought. Why should we be responsible for anyone else? Would that not be just meddling interference?
The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.
And she remembered her relatively minor decision to dance again at the village assemblies.
She heard more footsteps. Firm, booted feet this time. Belligerent feet, perhaps. Again she did not turn her head. He stopped a short distance away. He did not sit down.
“Imogen,” he said softly.
She clasped her hands in her lap, lacing her fingers. She touched the tips of her thumbs together.
“You do not play fair,” he said.
“I am not involved in any game with you, Percy,” she said. “I cannot play either fairly or unfairly if I do not play at all.”
“You told me a story,” he said, “and left a hole in it so large and gaping that it would have made a crater in any highway wide enough to stretch right across the road. When I begged you to tell me the rest of it, you offered me a pebble with which to fill that great hole.”
“What I told you was a pebble?” She looked at him for the first time, anger sparking. She was shocked at what she saw. It was not quite a week since they’d last met, but his face looked drawn and pale with smudges beneath both eyes that suggested lack of sleep. The eyes themselves were fathomless.
The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.