He waited for her to finish, watching her carefully. Then he spoke softly, as though hesitant. ‘I must tell you, little one, although I think you know already, I am not what you might call a good man.’ She began to remonstrate but he did not let her interrupt. ‘My work over many years has led me into dark places. My contempt for mankind has made that easy. I’ve never taken pleasure in killing, but nor have I ever regretted it. Yet too much association with the dark can leave a man discovering the same shadows within himself. I have killed too often, and those shadows are part of me now.’
This time she interrupted. ‘For a man who hates to answer questions, this is different. Why are you saying such things?’
‘Truth can prove an uncomfortable foundation. But I use lies as a tool, not as a cloak, and I have never chosen to lie to myself. So, I would tell you the truth.’
He frowned and suddenly Tyballis thought she knew. Her skin prickled and all the sleepy warmth fled. The sounds of the rain beat heavier and a whistle of wind blew down the chimney, belching out smoke. The fire’s warmth no longer reached her and Andrew’s naked body became suddenly ice. She whispered, ‘So, you’re warning me. And that’s why you’re sending me away from this house. And telling me you’re not a good person, as if I won’t be losing anything worth having. Because you’re leaving me.’
He stared at her in surprise, then answered slowly, ‘No, my love. I am asking you to marry me.’
The pause stretched. His words made no sense to her. Very small-voiced, she said, ‘Marry? You don’t … do you think you have to? That you owe me?’
Andrew shifted uneasily back, moving a little further from her against the heaped pillows. He said, as if the truth of his explanation concerned him, ‘Perhaps, in part. But in fact I rarely feel obliged, or hold myself to duty. Do you believe duty has a place between us? My life has always been urgent with secrets. Personal needs have rarely absorbed me, not through virtue but through focus. That same narrow vision also enabled me to ignore the needs of others. Except with you.’
‘The duke,’ she murmured.
‘When I met him,’ Andrew said, ‘my life was all empty space. The duke filled a void I had no other way of filling. With you, it is entirely different.’
Tyballis scrambled abruptly to face him, sitting with her back to the guttering fire, the great embroidered eiderdown wrapped around her knees. The palliasse beneath the mattress creaked. ‘I’m not different,’ she said, frowning at him. ‘I’m just the woman you lie with. Before me there was Elizabeth. And before her – I expect there was always someone. You say you never thought about your own personal needs, but this is filling your needs, isn’t it? And that’s all I am to you.’
‘I’ve fulfilled those desires when convenient. But I never before thought of using the word love.’
‘I’m struggling to understand you.’ She was trying to read his face but his eyes were cold black through the dissipating swirls of smoke. ‘I’m struggling to understand why you ask me to marry you,’ she said, ‘when a wife is surely the very, very last thing you want.’
Andrew sighed. ‘Desire. Love.’
‘Desire doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’ll sleep with you anyway, if you want me to. But I can’t marry you, beloved. I couldn’t – not to do – that – to you.’
Her words seemed swallowed by thickening smoke, tasting sooty as the rain pelted down outside. Andrew barely moved, though his fingers snapped to his palms and his knuckles tightened. This time the pause was imperceptible. He said, ‘How wise, my love. No doubt I should make as bad a husband as I do a man of trust. One day you will find better. You would certainly be safer with your Constable Webb.’
Tyballis blinked. ‘How do you know about?’
‘I am who I am, my sweet.’ Andrew closed his eyes. ‘Which is why I have brought you too often into danger. And why you will be better off without me.’
Her belly seemed full of stones and she swallowed back tears. Again she tried to read his expression. It occurred to her that his voice had changed, and his face had changed, and now he was speaking to her as he spoke to others, devoid of warmth. Something – some hope, the comfort of trusting intimacy – had left him. Then she realised something else she had not expected. In sudden panic her words tumbled over each other. ‘You understand – why I said – and you know what I mean, don’t you? Please tell me you understand. Even if I’m not sure I do. That is, you always understand me and see through me and know best. So, you know you don’t want to marry me, and you know that I know. Say you know.’
His large-boned face, the heavy twist of his nose and hooded eyes all seemed to soften and he watched her with a gentle sympathy. ‘At the moment, my love, I seem to understand very little. But I know you’d be most unwise to accept me. You have made your choice, but I must also make mine. So, even without the commitment of marriage, will you stay with me, little one – for at least as long as it brings you comfort?’
He was leaning back now against the headboard and the pillows, one leg bent and his knee supporting his wrist. His naked body was patterned in a flickering flush of rosy reflections. His shins were badly marked, great black swirls of bruising from Jon’s wooden-soled boots. Earlier that evening, as Tyballis had lain in Andrew’s arms before making love, she had kissed his legs, and cried. Now she sat and glared at him. ‘You’re refusing to understand me,’ she accused him.
For a moment he said nothing. Then, very slowly, he began to smile. The smile started in the little tuck at the corners of his mouth, then stretched outwards, and flicked up into his eyes. Where they had been cold and black, expression suddenly danced again. He gazed at her a moment in clearing perplexity and said, ‘Am I to believe, little one, that you turned me down for my sake?’
‘Of course,’ she said crossly. ‘Why else would I? Like you said, the duke fills up your life. You don’t have time for anything else except tumbling into bed when you – well, with those desires you talked about. And I keep getting into trouble and you keep having to rescue me, which must get very irritating.’ She drew a deep breath before rushing on. ‘I love you so very much and I want you so very much, but after Borin I’d so very much like a husband who sat beside me in the evenings, and just held my hand, and kissed my cheek and said sweet things. To walk in the sun together sometimes, just for idle pleasure, and talk about what to make for dinner, and what’s fresh in the market. So, I’d always want what you wouldn’t want, and I’d get in your way.’
Andrew’s amusement settled into a contented patience across his face. ‘As it happens, despite my concerns for your safety, I thoroughly enjoy rescuing you, my love, and would miss it if life became too tame.’ He relaxed, and regarded her fondly. ‘But I have not the faintest idea what may be fresh in the market,’ he told her. ‘And as for what to make for dinner, perhaps we should leave such matters to the cook.’
‘What cook?’
‘The one I intend to employ in the new house.’
Confusion made her cross. ‘What house, Drew?’
His smile had deepened. ‘The house of Lord Leays, my love.’
‘You’re not making any sense,’ she told him. ‘That’s where we live now.’
Andrew shook his head. ‘No, little one, not this house. This dilapidated ruin once belonged to my father, but he is not the Lord Leays I refer to.’
Increasingly puzzled, Tyballis insisted, ‘I don’t know which lord you’re talking about, Drew. And I love this horrid old house and all its strange rambling passages, and the bits that fall down, and the places all full of holes. I even love the dust. It’s where I found myself, and then friends, and then you, and fell in love. Crosby’s is so much more beautiful, but it’s intimidating and it’s not ours. Here, I’m at home. I belong.’