Page 89 of Faceless

She poured for him first, then for herself. “May I ask you something?”

“You may ask me anything. I will answer what I can.”

“Was there ever anyone… before me? Someone it was serious with?”

The quiet that followed was the kind in which he was deciding what kind of answer to give her.

“You are asking,” he said, “whether I have done this before.”

“I am not asking that at all.”

“Whether I am practised. Whether you were, in some sense, one among several.”

“I said I am not asking that.”

“You are asking that,” and she could hear the smile in it. “You are asking it with very great care not to sound as though you are asking it.”

“I am asking,” Elizabeth said with great dignity, “whether there was a person you cared for. Previously. That is an entirely respectable enquiry.”

“It is,” he agreed. “It is also the politer version of the question you actually have.”

She was going to say something cutting and did not, because he was right — and also because his hand had moved from her knee to a more distracting location, and she was having some difficulty marshalling her indignation.

“Well?”

“Well,” he agreed, pleasantly.

“I am waiting.”

“I know. You are rather fetching when you are impatient.”

She turned towards him in the dark. “George.”

“Before I answer that — you are asking two questions, I think. The second is the easier.”

“And the first?”

“Whether I have been with a woman before.”

Heat rose in her face, and she was glad of the dark.

“When we were together, the first time and the second, you wondered how I knew things about you that you did not know yourself. I would rather answer that than make you ask it.” His thumb slid down along her inner thigh back to her knee. “I have not been with a woman before you. Not once.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“And so would most, who knew my… who knew the sorts of opportunities I might have had. But I also watched a man I knew die of the French pox. He was someone my father trusted, his son was my own age, so I knew him well. I watched that man suffer for years before I understood the cause. And then I watched him lose his mind, and his body rot away until he could not abide his own misery a day longer and shot himself.”

Elizabeth gasped. “Does that… truly happen?”

“More than is politely spoken of. And so, by the time I came of age, I had resolved not to attend the sort of houses where one might have learned in the practical way, for I found the… the risks far outweighed the reward.

“Also, I was grieving my mother at a time when my college fellows were inviting… company to their rooms, and then raising a tender young sister at a time when I would have had resources and leisure to indulge in more ‘respectable’ liaisons. Having experienced all that, I could not bring myself to participate.”

“Then…” She chewed her lip. “How, ah… how did you know… with your hands…?”

“Men talk. At school, at university, at any club one ever sat down in. As a young man, I read books in my father’s library that were not strictly meant for me, and later acquired several more which, I regret to say, had few redeeming qualities. I had a great deal of theory and no practice at all. But it was little matter…” There was a hint of a smile in his voice. “You left me a detailed map to follow.”

“What? I did no such thing.”