He sat back in his chair, not a particularly wise move, since it pressed his damp shirt against his back. He drummed his fingers on the chair arms. “I never quarrel with anyone,” he said, “especially women. What is it about you?”
“I do not worship and adore you,” she said.
He sighed. “I am lonely, Lady Barclay,” he said.
Yes, what was it about her? What the devil was it?
“I think perhaps bored would be a more appropriate word,” she said.
She was quite right.
“You presume to know me, then?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, drew breath, and—interestingly—flushed.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Why are you lonely? Is it just that you are far from your family and friends? Are there many of them?”
“Family?” he said. “Hordes. All of whom love me, and all of whom I love in return. And friends? Another horde, most of them friendly acquaintances, a few closer than that. I am, as one of my cousins informed me on my birthday recently, the most fortunate of men. I have everything.”
“Except?” she said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“What do you not have, Lord Hardford?” she asked. “For no one has everything, you know, or even nearly everything.”
“Well, that is a relief to know.” He grinned at her. “There is still something for which to live, then?”
“You do that very well,” she said.
“What?”
“Giving the impression that there is nothing to you but . . . charm,” she said.
“Ah, but you must not disappoint me, Lady Barclay, and become the typical female,” he said. “You must not assume that somewhere inside me there is a heart.”
His stomach turned a complete somersault then. She smiled back at him—lips, eyes, the whole face.
“Oh, I would never make that foolish assumption,” she said. “Why are you lonely?”
She was not going to leave it alone, was she? Why had he used that stupid word when he had meant simply that he was bored?
She asked another question before he could answer. “What is one thing you have done in your lifetime that made you proud of yourself?” she asked. “There must be something.”
“Must there?”
“Yes.” She waited.
“I did rather well at Oxford,” he said sheepishly.
She raised her eyebrows. “Did you?”
Well, that had surprised her and she looked skeptical. Suddenly he felt stung. “A double first,” he said. “In the classics.”
She stared at him. “I suppose,” she said, “you really are reading that volume of Pope’s poetry.”
“You have been checking on me, have you?” he said. “Did you expect something from the Minerva press? Yes, I really have been forced to sink as low as to read poetry—in English—while I rusticate in Cornwall.”
“Why are you lonely?” she asked yet again.
“Perhaps,” he said, “or probably it is the need for sex, Lady Barclay. I have not had any for a while. I have been lamentably celibate.”
If he had expected any sign of shock, he was disappointed. She only nodded slowly. “I will not press the issue,” she said. “You do not want to answer my question. Perhaps you cannot. Perhaps you do not know why you are lonely.”
“Are you?” he asked her.
“Lonely?” she said. “Not often. Alone, yes. Solitary, yes. I choose those states as often as I can, though I will not allow myself to become a recluse. We all need other people. I am no exception to that rule.”
“I suppose,” he said, “you have been celibate for the past eight years. Do you miss sex? Do you long for it?”
Where the devil was all this coming from? If someone would just please be obliging enough to pinch him, he would gladly awake—but only after hearing her answer. She still did not appear shocked or offended or embarrassed. She was looking very directly back into his eyes. Good Lord, if she was thirty, she had not had sex since she was twenty-two. It was an awfully large chunk of her youthful years.
“Yes,” she surprised him by saying. “Yes, I miss it. I choose not to long for it.” She looked down at her hands, which were clasped loosely in her lap. “Chose,” she said softly, changing the verb tense of what she had said and in the process changing the meaning too.
A piece of coal shifted in the hearth, sending sparks up the chimney and making Percy aware of a huge tension in the room. He still had no idea why he had come here, but he had certainly not expected any of this. This was not conversation. Nor was it flirtation. It was . . . What the deuce was it?
“I think,” he said, “I came to Cornwall in the hope of finding myself, though I did not realize that until this moment. I came because I needed to step away from my life and discover if from the age of thirty on I can find some new and worthwhile purpose to it. But my old life is about to catch up with me again in the form of unknown numbers of my family, led by my mother. I love them and I resent them, Lady Barclay. May I seek refuge here occasionally?”
What an asinine question to ask. She had moved here to get away from him. And he had been happy to see her go.
The cat awoke and stretched, its paws spread out before it, its back arched. It jumped to the floor, padded over to the love seat, and leaped onto Lady Barclay’s lap, where it curled up and addressed itself to sleep again to recover from its exertions. Percy watched her hand smooth over the cat’s back. She had slender fingers with well-manicured nails.