Page 38 of Faceless

He smiled in the dark. She had heard everything he said and was choosing not to take any of it up, and was letting him know she had chosen, and was doing it by declining to speak about anything larger than her cutlery. It was the most like herself she had sounded all evening.

He straightened. He moved around the table and took the chair across from her — not beside her. He had thought about this too. She should have the table between them, a known distance, something she could feel.

In the quiet, he could hear her — the small shift of her weight against the chair, the faint clink of her fork on the plate, the catch of cloth as her elbow brushed the table and she adjusted for it. He was listening for her breath. He had been listening for it since he straightened away from her shoulder, pitched his ear towards any change in the rhythm that would tell him whether she was easing.

Her fork came down on the plate with a clatter that was louder than the ones before it. He heard her go still, heard the short breath she drew and let out, and then she spoke.

“You said…”

She stopped. He waited.

“I suppose you did not say I may ask any questions I liked. But I am going to ask them, and I assume you will not object.”

He did not at once answer. She had been in this house less than an hour. She had been his wife for less than half that. She was sitting three feet from him, shaking under a borrowed blanket, and she was already testing the boundaries of the thing. He would have expected no less of her.

“Ask whatever you wish.”

“What rooms do I have the use of?”

“The entire house. All but the upper floor. The solar above this room, south-facing. The library on the second floor — three walls, floor to ceiling. There is an upper floor that is mine alone. The door from the stairwell will always be locked. You will not encounter me there, and I will not be anywhere else in the house during daylight hours. You have my word on that.”

“And by night?”

“By night — I had hoped, if it is agreeable to you, that we might take supper together here. In this room. It is yours. It is private. It can be dark. And it has a lock, which you may employ at any time. I will not challenge it.”

“You… you are telling me I may lock you out?”

“I am telling you that you may. Tonight, or any night. Without explanation.”

She swallowed so hard, he heard her throat working. “But that… That is not what I was led to expect.”

“Would you prefer that I did not respect your privacy?”

She made a garbled sort of half-snort, and he heard her picking up her wine-glass rather than answering. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its held-back edge.

“Will… will you tell me about the library?”

She was trying to be herself — already, before her hands had warmed, before she had half a glass of wine in her. A lesser woman would be silent and quaking still. He loved her more in that stumble than he had thought himself capable of loving a person he could not touch.

He had known this would be near the first of her questions. He had arranged the library for her over the last two weeks, half of them spent not knowing whether she would come. He had the whole of it by heart.

“Three walls, floor to ceiling. South-facing, so the light is on the books most of the day. The fourth wall is a bank of windows that looks towards the sea — there is a window seat along it, deep enough to lie down in if one wished. Two chairs, one by the fire and one by the south window. A writing desk under the east window with paper and ink that are yours. I have not filled the shelves. The top is bare. I thought you might like to choose what goes there. More books can be ordered, if you wish.”

“I will require my own supply of candles in my rooms. I assume the existing… arrangement… applies only to our shared company?”

“Your rooms are entirely your own. You may have as many candles as you wish and light the chamber like a ballroom when I leave. I believe there is already a good stock laid in for you.”

“And I may write to my sister?”

“At any time. As often as you wish. Mrs MacLeod will see the letters sent.”

“Daily?”

“If you write daily, it will go daily.”

He heard her breath change. He knew what that word meant to her. What her sister meant to her, because her presence here was the proof of it.

“I may have visitors?”