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“I myself never walk in the rain, and particularly never sit down on wet benches,” she said, plumping herself onto a wrought-iron bench shining with water. She laughed up at him and he sat down beside her.

The rain was merely sprinkling now, rolling down his neck in an unconvincing, yet cold, manner.

“When my mother died,” Isidore said, “I was so afraid that I couldn’t breathe correctly.”

He stopped thinking about how cold his bottom felt and curled his hands around her fingers instead. They were small and warm.

“I used to lie awake at night and think that my breath was filling the room, so there wouldn’t be any air left for me to breathe.”

Simeon thought of saying the obvious, that her fear didn’t make sense, but choked it back. Isidore was not a person who appreciated the obvious. “When did that feeling go away?” he asked instead.

“I finally told my aunt.”

“And she was able to reassure you?”

“No. She couldn’t convince me that I wasn’t right.” He turned to see her smiling up at him, her lips soft and ruby-colored, like a flower on the banks of the Ganges River.

“Ah,” he said hopelessly, falling into that longing state that gripped him around Isidore. She was right in her initial assessment of his sanity. He’d waited too long to sleep with a woman, and now he’d lost his wits.

“My point is that I am not very good at changing my mind,” Isidore said. “I am trying to tell you…”

“How did you get over it?” he asked abruptly. “Was that happening when you were brought here to live, to this house?”

She nodded. “I really was a little crazed. I used to lie in bed and hold my breath, hoping to save enough so that I wouldn’t die before morning.”

He dropped her hand and put an arm around her. “Isidore.”

She sighed and put her head on his shoulder. He smelled flowers and that other thing: Essence of Isidore.

“What did your aunt say?”

“She told me to sing. She said that singing actually created air, that when you filled your lungs and let it out in song, the air in the room expanded.” She looked up at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me that the whole idea is deranged?”

He kissed the end of her nose. It was a small, straight nose. A very beautiful nose. He was aware of a feeling in the back of his head that said that lust for a woman’s nose was probably the beginning of a long list of absurdities. “No.”

She put her head back on his shoulder and he tightened his arm. “I sang and sang. Your mother found it particularly difficult when I sang at the table. But you see, I had to sing because every time that I felt a tightening that meant there wasn’t air enough in a room…” Her voice trailed off. “I know it’s crazy.”

“I never grieved for my father,” Simeon said. “I don’t think I really believed in his death until I came back here, and found the estate as it is.”

“You must be very angry at him.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“I am angry at myself,” he said. “Obviously he was losing his mind, and I never came home to find out. Had I been in England, I would have realized. I would have known.”

“You couldn’t have done anything, though,” Isidore said. “I saw your father at the opera four years ago. He was perfectly sane.”

“To all appearances, perhaps,” Simeon said, rather bitterly.

“And in his own mind. What could you have said to him? Father, I think you’re mad; why don’t I pay the bills?”

Simeon thought about that. Then he thought about how cold his bottom was and pulled Isidore to her feet. She twisted about to look at her backside.

“You’re wet,” he said, and then shocked himself. He put a hand directly on her wet skirts. “And cold.”

She was wearing petticoats under her skirts, of course. And some sort of apparatus that kept her skirts billowing out at the sides. Her skirts were all wet, though, and they collapsed against her skin. He could feel a round, warm curve of flesh under his palm.

With a groan, he put both hands there and pulled him against her, taking her mouth.

“What—” she said, startled, but he took the word away from her, kissed her until she was pressed against him, arms around his neck.