Page 40 of Faceless

If she could have seen him, she would have noted that he could not have met her eyes if his very soul depended on it. “No. Never.”

“No. Of course not. I only heard you laugh, and I find I cannot — what kind of man—” She stopped herself. “Forgive me. You are not quite what I expected.”

He knew exactly what she had heard. One unguarded moment, and she was already at the edge of him, not knowing what she was reaching for. She could not know — could not know and be safe — and keeping her safe was the one thing he could still offer her without qualification. He pulled himself back.

“I am a man who had perhaps been alone too long,” he said, “and who found, in the circumstances, that your demands were a considerable relief. Forgive me if I unsettled you.”

She was quiet. He could hear her hand moving on the table.

“Laughter is perhaps the last thing a person should apologise for,” she said at last. “I only wanted to know where it was coming from.”

“And yet, I will apologise. That this must be — it is not convenient, I know. It is—”

“I am hungry,” she said. “I have not eaten properly since Aberdeen.”

“Then eat.”

She did. He could hear her — the fork against the plate, the tearing of bread, the sounds of someone who had been holding her hunger at arm’s length for days and had finally been given leave to stop. He ate a little himself, though he was not hungry. He mostly listened.

He was afraid to speak. Not from shyness, not from want of things to say — there were too many things to say, and every one of them was wrong in a different way. He could give himself away with a question. A passing reference to Hertfordshire, to Rosings, to any of the dozen things he knew about her that a stranger could not know. He kept his mouth shut and listened to her eat.

Eventually, the sounds slowed.

“You are very quiet,” she said.

“I did not wish to disturb you.”

“You are also invisible. I am beginning to wonder whether I am dining with a ghost. Or my own delusions.”

“I am still here.”

“That is exactly what a ghost would say.” She picked up her wine. “Or a delusion.”

“I assure you, I am neither.”

“Very well.” He heard her set the glass down. “Then you will not object to a question.”

“Of course not.”

“Why me? Why me, and not some other woman in want of a marriage? You could have sent that solicitor anywhere. I was as encumbered as a woman could possibly be, and you settled no little sum to secure my hand. A perfect stranger! What is it you want from this arrangement?”

He had prepared an answer for this question, prepared it again, taken it apart, and rebuilt it, and the answer he had arrived at was the true one.

“Company,” he said. “Someone to talk to.”

“You… you arranged a proxy marriage in Scotland to a woman you had never met because you wanted company.”

“Yes.”

“And I am to believe—” She stopped. He heard the wine glass lift again. “You will forgive me, but you are a reclusive man, plainly. You will not be seen. You conduct your affairs through a solicitor. You could not be troubled to make the usual acquaintance of a woman before marrying her. Such a man, in my experience, does not go to this considerable trouble merely because he wants someone to talk to.” The wine glass came down. “Such a man must want—”

She stopped.

The silence was different now. He could hear it — her breath, a fraction faster. The hard swallow as she finished her wine.

“Put out your hand,” he said.

Then came the sound of her palm sliding across the cloth towards him. He reached, found her fingers, and closed his over them.