“Yes.”
“Charming.” He let the curtain fall and turned to lean against the window frame, crossing one leg over the other. His large hand swallowed the water glass. He looked so old and unnatural, standing before me in his dull uniform and polished shoes, his wide leather belt nicked and worn, the pips at his shoulder catching the light. I thought, It can’t be him, he can’t really exist in my hotel room, propped against the window like a living statue. When he was so far away, a moment ago. I was too unnerved to look at his face. Too stunned, and yet consumed by a paradoxical relief. He was safe. He was alive.
“Mrs. DeForest told me your CCS was bombed,” I said.
“Yes, we were. A week ago. Lost three patients and a nurse. Terrible scene. Pritchard had a lucky escape, however.” His mouth twitched.
“Lucky?”
“There are worse places to be hit, believe me.”
A hysterical laugh rose in my throat. I said quickly, “And you? Were you injured?”
“No. Cuts and bruises. Superficial stuff. My pretty face emerged unscathed, as you see.”
This time I did laugh.
“You see? That’s better. I’m not such a monster, am I?”
“I never thought you were a monster.”
“You looked at me as if I was, a moment ago.”
“No. I thought you were a ghost at first, not a monster.”
“My sincerest apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He looked down at the glass. Behind him, the old green damask curtains made a somber frame. “But I’m none of those things, you know. Just a man. Nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Aren’t you? Then why won’t you look at me?”
Well, how was I supposed to answer that? Because I’m afraid of myself when I look at you. I’m afraid I’ll lose my head. I’m afraid I already have.
The water trembled in my glass. I could hear another couple talking in a room nearby—he loud and bombastic, she sharp and quiet, the exact words muffled by plaster. The room was stuffy because of the curtains. I thought we should open a window, but of course we couldn’t, not unless we turned off the lamp.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said. “One thing, and I’ll go.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you like me at all, Virginia?”
“Yes! Of course I do.”
“I’m not repulsive to you? My letters. What have you done with them?”
“I destroyed them. I had to.”
He drew in a gigantic sigh. I was staring at the water in my glass, but I felt his shoulders slump. The weight of his disappointment.
“Of course,” he said. “Honorable soul that you are. But weren’t you curious? Didn’t you want to know what was inside them?”
“No. I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow myself.”
“You might have found that I’m not so fearsome as you think. Not such a terrible villain. It’s just that you’ve forced me out of my skin, to commit acts of unparalleled effrontery.”
“Do you mean this? Seeking out one woman when you’re already married to another?”
The words sounded so dreadful out loud. So harsh and vulgar and modern.
“Yes. That. I presume she’s the reason you wouldn’t read my letters? My wife?”
“How can you ask a thing like that?”
“But that’s it, isn’t it? You’re an honorable woman. An innocent woman. Incorruptible. You won’t let me plunge you into some kind of sordid, adulterous affair. Blackguard that I am.”
I shook my head.
“Ah, Virginia.”
He levered himself away from the window and walked toward me at a slow, heavy tread, until he was standing before the armchair and then kneeling, so I couldn’t help accepting his gaze. It would have been rude otherwise. His eyes, as I said, were the kind of hazel that takes different forms as the light changes. Now they looked rather green and terribly focused. I almost didn’t notice when his hand pried mine away from the glass. He set the tumbler on the table, under the lamp, and encircled my fingers with his. “Listen to me, Virginia. My marriage—my wife—it’s not what you think.”
“How can you possibly know what I think?”
“True. I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re thinking. Your telegram last winter was a masterpiece of brevity. You never replied to my letters. My entire hope existed in the knowledge that you hadn’t exactly told me to go to the devil, at least.”
“You’re married. You have a child with her.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“You can’t renounce that. I would never—”
“Of course not. My God. I don’t intend to renounce them. I shall always be Sam’s father. But you see, I can’t go on with the lie of it. I can’t pretend something is one thing, when it’s another.”
“I thought you said you cared for her.”
“Of course I care for her. She’s an old friend. But our marriage—you must understand—we weren’t in love. We never were, not the least bit. We only married because of my family.”
“Your family?”
“Yes. And little Sam.”
“Your son.”
“Don’t say it like that. If only you knew. You have to know, Virginia. I have to tell you. I can’t have you looking at me like that any longer. Thinking of me like that. It’s like death. It’s been killing me slowly for months. You’ve got no idea. I’ve hardly slept. I can’t think of anything else. Even there in the damned surgical hut in the middle of the night, the thought of you pounds in the back of my head. Your reproachful face. And I have tried to forget, believe me. I have tried to let you go. Not for my own sake, but for yours.”
I pulled my hands away, but he snatched them back.
“We’re broke, you know. My family. I expect I should tell you that, up front. We’re absolutely dead broke. Utterly skint. Not a spare shilling in the till. Mortgaged to the hilt, estate falling to pieces. The old story. My parents are mostly to blame, I suppose, though old Granddad was no slouch when it came to ruination. I’d always known the bill would come due, sooner or later, and I’d have to pay it, having had the abominable bad luck to be born a few minutes earlier than my brother—”
“You have a brother?”
“I had a brother. Twin brother. Didn’t I mention that? Samuel. He was in the regulars, one of the first regiments sent out. He lasted about three months. Went missing on patrol, presumed killed. Awful show.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes. It was rather a shock, for all of us. But the point is, I’m the eldest, the one who inherits the old pile, and I’ve known since I was a child that I must marry money.”
“And I suppose your wife . . . ?”
“Bags of it. Her father’s in shipping. My parents own a few citrus groves in Florida—an old inheritance—and that’s how they met, you know, ages and ages ago. My father-in-law’s company exports the oranges, to put it simply. What there are of them, anymore, after two generations of utter neglect. So it seemed natural, to my parents, that—”
“That you would make her fall in love with you.”
He rose without warning, dropping my hands, and patted his tunic for his cigarettes. “It wasn’t like that. She was never in love with me.”