“Why?” he asked. “Oh, yes, I know we started this conversation before, but it did not progress very far. I asked your age, I recall, but you would not give it, and who can blame you? It is impolite to ask such a question of a lady. I am guessing you are about my age. I celebrated my thirtieth birthday two days before I set out for Cornwall.”
“There is no shame in being thirty,” she said, “even for a woman.”
Which, he supposed, provided him with his answer.
“In my experience,” he said, “there is a marked difference between men and women when it comes to matrimony. Women want it, full stop; men want it or at least will tolerate it in their own good time.”
“And will you tolerate it in your good time?” she asked.
Hector was standing before him, panting and gazing upward with his bulging, ever-hopeful eyes. That dog was not going to be pretty even when it had fattened up. The stick lay on the sand between them. Percy bent to pick it up and hurl it again.
“Probably,” he said. “There is the succession to secure and all that since there appears to be an alarming dearth of possible heirs at present. How long has your husband been gone?”
“More than eight years,” she said, turning to walk onward.
She had probably told him that before too. “So you were about twenty-two,” he said.
“According to your calculations,” she said, “I suppose I was.”
“And how long were you married?” he asked.
“Almost four years.”
“Eight years have not been a long enough time in which to heal?” he asked. “Twice as long as you were married?” He was genuinely puzzled. He could not imagine a love quite so enduring or a pain quite so intense. He did not particularly want to imagine it either.
She stopped again and turned to look out to sea. “Some things do not heal,” she said. “Ever.”
He could not leave it alone. “Is there not some . . . indiscipline?” he asked. “Some self-indulgence? Have not other people suffered widowhood and got over it? Is there not a point at which continuing to suffer becomes . . . almost ostentatious? Worn like a badge of honor to set you above other, ordinary mortals whose sufferings cannot possibly match your own?”
He was being markedly offensive. And with each added word he was making things worse. He was almost angry with her. But why? Because he had once kissed her for all of two seconds and could not seem to put the kiss out of his mind? Because she had once laughed at something he said but had not laughed since? Because she was the one woman out of the legions he had known who was quite impervious to his charms?
He was beginning not to like himself a great deal.
He ought to have apologized, but was silent instead. Hector was panting at his feet again, and once more was sent in pursuit of the stick. Where did such a skeletal creature find the energy?
“Have you seen me on any occasion display open suffering, Lord Hardford?” she asked, her eyes on the incoming waves—they were definitely incoming. “If you have, I beg you to inform me so that I may make the necessary adjustments to my behavior.” She waited for an answer.
“You have shown none, of course,” he admitted. “But one cannot help wondering when one meets a young and beautiful woman who has clothed herself in marble what lies within. And one cannot help guessing that it must be suffering.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “there is nothing. Perhaps the marble is solid, or perhaps it is hollow and there is nothing but emptiness within.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “But if that is the case, where did the laughter come from two evenings ago? And the kiss? For a moment on that evening it was not just I kissing you. We were kissing each other.”
“You have the imagination of a thoroughly conceited man, Lord Hardford,” she said.
“Ah, and you have a lying tongue, Lady Barclay.”
Hector appeared to have tired himself out. He fetched the stick and plopped down at Percy’s feet. He became instantly comatose.
“If it is any consolation to you,” she said, “my total lack of interest in you has nothing to do with you personally. Without any doubt, I have never met a more handsome man than you or one more capable of charm. If I were interested in flirtation or courtship or remarriage, I might well consider setting my cap at you, though I am fully aware that doing so would be inviting certain disappointment and heartache. Fortunately, perhaps, I am not interested. Not in you and not in any other man. Not in that way. Ever. And if it offends your manly sensibilities to hear me say it, then comfort yourself with the thought that within a week I will be back living at the dower house.”
“Total lack of interest,” he said, “yet you kissed me.”
“You took me by surprise,” she said, and the words hung between them almost as though they had some significance beyond their surface meaning.
What did her self-discipline hide? Why would she not let go of it? Mourning for eight years after a four-year marriage surely was excessive and self-absorbed. But he would not pry further. She would not tell him, and if she did, he had the feeling he really, really would not want to know.
What had happened to her when she was in captivity?
“If I wear marble as an armor,” she said, breaking the strange silence, which had made him very aware of the elemental roar of the sea and the harsh, lonely cry of seagulls, “then you wear charm, Lord Hardford. A careless sort of charm. One wonders what lies behind it.”