Lucy winced. “Must we discuss that? Please, can’t we pretend it never happened?”
“Would you pretend the sun never rose or the moon never shone? Forgive me, I’m a bit punchy. It’s been a long few days. I had—a lot of thinking to do.”
Wouldn’t he hurry up and get to the point? Lucy found herself twisting with impatience on the grimy seat of the chair. All she wanted was to get back to the quiet of her stuffy attic room and take off her sweaty stockings and lie on her lumpy bed, where it was dark and quiet and there were no John Ravenels or Philip Schuylers, where she could close her eyes and pretend she was ten again, in her own room decorated with the mural her mother had painted.
Philip Schuyler was still speaking, in his beautiful boarding school voice, the sort of voice that Lucy had thought she wanted to have, that now, after John Ravenel’s mellifluous tones, sounded slightly nasal, slightly affected.
Not that it was affected. He spoke that way naturally. He was Philip Schuyler. “I know this is sudden,” he was saying, “but . . . marry me.”
Whatever fog she had been in, that cleared it with a vengeance. “I’m sorry,” Lucy stuttered. “I must have misheard. Did you say—?”
Philip Schuyler leaned forward. “Marry me, Lucy. This week, this year, I don’t care when. Just . . . marry me.”
Lucy stared at him. He didn’t seem drunk, not like last Wednesday, but . . . “Are you under the influence?”
“I’m not under the influence. Not that sort of influence, at any rate.” And he wasn’t. His eyes were bleary, as if he had been up all night, and his jaw showed a faint and entirely unprecedented sprinkling of gold hairs, but his voice was clear and his hand was steady. Lucy could smell coffee on him, but not the slightest betraying whiff of spirits. “Do you really think I would have to be inebriated to have the good sense to fall in love with you?”
“A penniless secretary? I’m not sure anyone would call that good sense.” Or love. How could Philip Schuyler love her? He barely knew her.
Although, Lucy realized with surprise, he knew her a great deal better than John Ravenel did. They had worked together, day by day, hour by hour, for weeks now. He knew how she liked her coffee and that she got cranky if she waited too long for her lunch.
Why was it, then, that when John Ravenel asked her to move to Charleston after three meetings, she had wanted to fling her arms around his neck and shout yes?
Unlike Philip Schuyler, he had never mentioned marriage.
“I’ve been a fool, Lucy.” Philip’s gold ring glinted in the sunlight that filtered through the grimy window. “I’ve known for a while now that I wasn’t in love with Didi. I’m not even sure I like her much. I don’t know if I’ve ever liked her. But I thought—I thought that she was the sort of woman I was meant to marry.”
“She is the sort of woman you’re meant to marry,” said Lucy. Her voice felt scraped from the back of her throat. “Someone beautiful, someone accomplished.”
“Accomplished in what? Spending her father’s money? I saw what my father’s marriage was like. Not my mother. I don’t remember my mother. Not much.” He was silent for a moment, and Lucy, despite herself, felt a pang of pity. How odd, how very odd, to be pitying Philip Schuyler. “But I do remember Prunella. She needed constant compliments, constant attendance, constant gifts. She was the center of the world and everyone was expected to revolve around her.”
“Doesn’t she still?” said Lucy.
“True. Only now there are fewer left to orbit around her. What I’m trying to say is—she was an ornament, not a partner. I could marry someone because she decorates a ballroom.” He looked up at Lucy. “Or I could marry someone like you. Someone strong. Someone sensible.”
Lucy wasn’t entirely sure that was a compliment. “You make me sound like an old pair of shoes.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Philip’s eyes crinkled ruefully. “If you’ll believe it, I was once accounted rather debonair.”
“I believe it.” If he was being honest, so could she. “I’ve been half in love with you.”
“Only half?”
Lucy struggled to put her feelings into words. “I think, to be truly in love, there has to be—some measure of understanding.”
That was what her parents, for all their virtues, had never had. Her father had admired her mother without ever truly understanding her. And her mother—her mother had relied on her father without appreciating him. There had been a gulf between them that couldn’t be bridged by all the goodwill in the world.
Philip put a hand out, not touching her, just near her. “I think we understand each other pretty well. We certainly work well together.”