Page 63 of Private Arrangements
She colored. “That much I've surmised, believe me, from later events. But it still behooves me to apologize for my original deceit.”
Tea arrived amid much pomp and ceremony. Mrs. Rowland took both sugar and cream, the little finger of her right hand held just slightly extended, a delicate curl like a petal of oriental chrysanthemum.
“As much as I approve of your acknowledgment concerning this ‘original deceit,' it's your subsequent tale that concerns me more,” he said, ignoring his tea and watching her stir hers with a languid, creamy daintiness. “Would you apologize for that too?”
“Only if it were a blatant fabrication.”
In his distraction he took a sip of tea. He still disliked it. “Do you mean to tell me it wasn't a blatant fabrication?”
She went on stirring her tea. “After much thoughtful reflection, I've decided that I don't know anymore.”
He cursed his curiosity. And his lack of tact. A more circumspect man would not have asked the question and would not have to deal with the wide-open vista of her answer.
“Perhaps you could help me decide,” she said. “I'd like to know you better.”
I'm not a young woman anymore. So I've decided against a young woman's wiles in favor of a more direct approach.That, at least, was no fabrication. “What would you like to know?”
“Many things. But, most pressingly, how and why did you come to be the person you are today? I find it an intriguing mystery.”
His heart thudded. “No mystery there. I almost died.”
But she wasn't so easily satisfied. “My daughter almost died at age sixteen. That experience only made her more of what she already was, not a different person altogether—which you, by all accounts, have become.”
She raised her teacup and let it hover just below her lips, her wrist as steady as the pound sterling. “My instincts tell me that I cannot understand you until I know the story behind your transformation. And that your story is more than a man's brush with death. Am I wrong?”
He considered a variety of answers and rejected them all. Having enjoyed the privilege of bluntness his entire life, he was ill-suited to suddenly take up prevarication.
“No,” he said.
The teacup continued to linger in the vicinity of her chin, a shield almost, a disguise too, to hide her dangerous perspicacity behind a bit of glazed fine bone china painted with ivy and roses. “If I may be so forward, was there a woman?”
He didn'tneedto answer her question. But then, he didn't need to invite her to tea either. He didn't know his plans any more than she did hers, possibly a lot less.
“Yes, there was a woman,” he answered. “And a man.”
Her features froze in momentary shock. Carefully, she set down her teacup. Presumably the stability of her wrist was no match for the excitement of her rather salacious imagination.
“Goodness gracious,” she mumbled.
He laughed a little, with rue. “Would that it were that kind of uncomplicated sordidness.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You have probably heard about the hunting incident. I was shot, bled profusely, was put into surgery for six hours, and barely survived,” he said. “But you are right. That in itself had no more life-changing effect on me than a hangover or a bad case of indigestion.”
A week after Langford was out of danger, Francis Elliot, the man who'd shot him, came to see him. Elliot had been a classmate at Eton, the one whose house in the next county Langford had frequently visited when he was home on holiday. Over the years, their once-close friendship had gradually cooled, and they saw relatively little of each other, Langford living fast and footloose, Elliot settling down to be the staid, responsible, unimaginative landowner in the mold of his forefathers.
That particular morning, Langford, highly peevish from both pain and ennui, had lambasted Elliot on his shoddy marksmanship and slandered his manhood in general. Elliot held his tongue until Langford ran out of pejoratives—no easy feat, as Langford, trained to be a man of letters, possessed a near-infinite supply of belittling words.
Then, for the first time in his life, Langford heard Elliot shout.
“It turned out that the man who shot me did so deliberately, though he hadn't meant to almost kill me. That was the result of nerves and bad aim—because I'd seduced his wife.”
Mrs. Rowland had lifted a cucumber sandwich. She went still. He'd shocked her without even getting to the worst part of it.
“I had no idea what he was talking about. I'd never met his wife as far as I was concerned, until I remembered, very vaguely, an encounter at a masked ball given by another friend of mine six months previously. There'd been a woman, a young matron with a forlorn air about her.
“What had been an evening's diversion for me, nothing more, had precipitated a domestic crisis for my friend. He loved his wife. They were going through a difficult phase, but he loved her. Loved her deeply, passionately, if also awkwardly and inarticulately.”
