Sweet Agony (6 page)

One shelf has been divided into triangles. Another is crammed so full I doubt anyone could ever pull anything out of it, though, by God, I am going to try. My very bones are already itching to do it. No force on earth could prevent me, not even him telling me that as punishment for my snooping I must spend all my days in here tidying up. After all, most of me knows what he really means.

It comes over me in a great relief-filled rush, telling me all the things the letters and the open doors and the left-behind Dickens tried to. This is not my imagination. I didn’t see something that wasn’t there. If I had, he would never do this in a million years, because he has to understand what it is to me.

I
know
he understands what this is to me.

He saw me reading.

And so gave me books.

He can pretend all he wants but anyone would understand that much. He even tells me he expects some improvement when he returns in a week’s time, then begins to leave me amidst all this glorious wonder. He is going to
leave me for
a week,
as though that is going to seem like some awful punishment. But to someone like me it never could. He overplayed his hand, and now I can see.

Yet, when I thank him, he reacts almost strangely as he did before.

‘Why are you like this?’ he asks, voice so cold and faint I could almost believe I have it wrong. I say, ‘Like what?’ and brace myself for a blow. As it turns out, I was right to, just not in the way I thought. I expected a quick knife under the breastbone, bloody and brutal.

And instead I get something that swells my heart.

‘So utterly forgiving and endlessly kind,’ he says.

But here is the best part: he means it. He really and truly means it – I can see it all over his face. His expressions are usually so devoid of human feeling that any evidence of sincere emotion stands out like a stone in the middle of a field full of confetti. It takes everything I’ve got to pretend to be incredulous.

But, damn it, I do my best.

‘You think I am forgiving and kind.’

‘Yes, of course. What else could I possibly think?’

‘Judging by your reaction in the piano room: that I am an intrusive, delusional arsehole,’ I venture, still expecting him to nod and utter some dry quip.

‘Well, yes, you are that too, I imagine.’

But he refuses to give me even that much.

‘From the moment you walked up to my gate I have been nothing but a hideous nightmare to you, yet somehow you believe that you are the arsehole,’ he says, after which I have to do something. He honestly seems to think he is treating me so terribly that I should hate him – despite what I just realised and what he just did.

Does he think I don’t know what he just did?

I think he might not. I think I might have to explain.

‘I wouldn’t call you a hideous nightmare, exactly.’

‘Quite probably because you are utterly forgiving and endlessly kind.’

‘I was thinking more because you just gave me all of these books,’ I say, but I can tell he still doesn’t see it. Either that, or he believes he is extremely convincing in his cruelty. So convincing that I would carry on believing in it no matter how desperate he sounds – and he
does
sound desperate. He buries it deep beneath ten layers of sneering contempt, but I can still hear it. Somehow, I think I always could.

‘Ah, so that is the issue – you have selective hearing. I just confined you to the library that time forgot and told you to somehow tidy it up, did I not?’

‘Oh, yes, absolutely you did. But the real reason is to give me the books,’ I insist, and barely even balk at his answer. ‘That seems at best like wishful thinking,’ he says, but to my joy my confidence is undimmed. He is lying. I know he is lying. And as his edifice crumbles, so mine grows stronger.

I can even feel a smile beginning to bloom on my lips.

A teasing smile, followed by teasing words.

‘So were you going to stop me reading then?’

‘I might have done. I just might.’

‘You were going to force me not to.’

‘Yes, absolutely, I was. No question.’

‘Yank the books from my desperate hands and –’ I start, but I get no further than the gesture of clutching imaginary stories to my chest. He holds up one hand like a man about to hear that his wife has been murdered. He even closes his eyes, as though the rest is too unbearable to hear.

And his words back up that insane assessment.

They back it up
, they back it up, oh, my God, they
back it up.

‘Stop there. Damn you, stop. That is quite enough. No, I was not about to do such a despicable act. I would sooner pull out my own heart and put it on a pike. There, are you satisfied, you unbearable creature?’ he says, and all I can think is: how could I be anything but? He just confirmed what I only suspected. He confirmed it so hard that all I can say is ‘I am’, after which he just digs himself in deeper.

‘I have no idea why. It still does not explain why you remained here when I laughed as you struggled to climb a gate, and refused to show you my face, and said all manner of cruel things,’ he says, and after that it is all I can do to contain the bright burst of unmitigated joy and amusement and wonder that explodes inside me. I have to bite back a grin, because oh, my God.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my
God
, I was
right
.

‘Yes, but you do all those things to deliberately drive people away, don’t you?’ I ask, then watch with a great and glorious glee as he fights to say no. He wants to so badly that he is practically drooling at the thought. He gropes for it blindly in the dark, and when he comes up short it
maddens
him. His jaw tightens until I think I hear the bones squeak. He has to squeeze out his words.

But he does, and it is
marvellous
.

‘Even if I do, you should have left long before now.’

I mean, he did just admit it, didn’t he?

And if he did, is it all right that I sound breathless when I reply?

‘If that was really what you wanted you’re going about it all the wrong way. You should be dumb as a rock and sneer at me whenever I am the least bit smart. Never play the piano because you hear me singing or write letters to me like we live in the nineteenth century or give me a library, and always make sure you are utterly predictable in every way. Then all of this would be just like my life up till now, and I could leave without a second glance,’ I say, and oh, my God, his expression when I do. It shifts from baffled and irritated to dawning comprehension to something like resignation, all in the flicker of an eyebrow.

And I know I’m reading it right.

I know I am, because he admits it.

‘I suppose I was doomed from the start. The very idea of trying to scare you off in such a manner is utterly abhorrent to me in every way.’

‘Then it seems you are stuck with me.’

‘Much to my regret and horror,’ he says, but even that doesn’t shake me.

Nothing could now. I am invincible. I am a towering steel door. I feel as though I made it to the castle beyond the goblin city, and then
kept on going
.

‘Does the horror have anything to do with my hand on your shoulder?’

‘You simply caught me off guard. I have no problem with being touched.’

‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Completely positive, I assure you.’

‘So if I just reach forward slowly and calmly and –’ I say, hating myself for doing it but still needing to see for sure. Most of his viciousness is for effect, true. But I think it stems from more than just not wanting to be around another person. I think he genuinely hates a hand on him, so much so that he’d go much further to stop it happening. He would insult me, and scorn my happiness, and make me believe it was all nothing.

And the seven-mile step back he takes here all but confirms it.

‘All right, all right. Enough, for the love of God. Honestly, I ask you not to look and you stare so hard your eyes almost fall out of your head. I tell you to knock and you barge in. I clearly have a problem with being manhandled and you just go ahead and do it anyway.’

‘I think “manhandle” is a little steep.’

‘And I suppose the staring was just a mere glance at my hideous visage before you quickly skipped away to more agreeable sights?’ he asks, and then I have to stop in the middle of whatever I was going to say. I had something planned, because this kind of conversation is so easy with him. For some reason, despite everything, it’s always easy. I think it might even be called
flirting
, though, by God, I’m not ready to call it that yet. I shy away at the last second, that ‘moonish’ still ringing in my head.

Though I must admit it gets fainter when he says ridiculous things like that.

‘Did you just call your visage hideous?’ I ask, and even manage to half-laugh. It takes some effort, because part of me would rather he did not know how gorgeous I find him. But another part is too staggered by that admission to do anything else – and doubly so, when he adds:

‘I can scarcely think what else you might call it.’

He doesn’t sound like he’s fishing for compliments. I think the concept would be beyond him. He always speaks the plain, unvarnished truth about things, no matter how unpalatable. And I know he expects me to do the same. I know he does.

So I do.

‘I think I would probably call it beautiful. I mean, I would rather not, considering what you might think of me when I do. But there really isn’t much else I can say. It’s just a fact, like the grass is green and the sky is blue.’

‘Sometimes the grass is yellow and the sky is red.’

‘Yeah, but you’re never not beautiful. You try a lot not to be, I’ll grant you that. You put a ton of effort into being an arse and you wear some of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen on a man. Right now you have your dressing gown on over a shirt and formal trousers. The trousers seem to be about three inches too short for your legs. And though you must be at least six foot three, you spend so much time hunching and scuttling around the house like a giant spider that it makes your height irrelevant.’ He has the nerve to nod as though all that is true. Which makes it all the more of a pleasure when I finish with: ‘But the fact remains, even so. You could probably model for
Vogue
without breaking much of a sweat.’

After which there is a long, long silence, of the sort I actually
do
expect. What I struggle a little more with, however, is the expression on his face. For just a second, a flicker of something dark crosses his features. And I believe I know what the dark thing is. Everything I just said bears it out.

He is afraid. He is afraid to be attractive to someone.

And
that
is why he says what he then does.

‘I knew it. You are quite, quite mad.’

‘No more than the man who thinks his gorgeous face is hideous. Is this why you hide behind doors and make people look at other things? Are you able to see your own face in a mirror? If you are by any chance a vampire I will give you a pass on this.’

‘I am not a vampire, you ridiculous person. I am, however, aware of the strange state of my own facial features, despite any claims you might make about their supposed beauty. I mean, my eyes are almost on opposite sides of my head. I have the nose of an upper-class albatross and an upper lip that could probably slice bread. You just put the loaf in the middle and those two weird peaks do the rest.’

‘Your eyes, nose and mouth are the best things about you. Apart from maybe your opinion of Dickens, your ridiculous efforts at driving me away, your amazing home and your strange way of making it feel OK to talk like this. I should be frightened, but I rarely feel it. And when I do, it is
delicious
. Like the kind of fear I guess only important people have. The kind of fear my dull little life never offered.’ I utter the words before I even know I think them. Everything is just spewing out of me now, as it is for him.

Though he tries to put a stop to it.

‘Perhaps that is why you accept such meagre crumbs from me. Because you’ve never had anything but stale bread served dry, and have no way of appreciating anything better. Or believing you deserve it.’ He seems very satisfied with himself. He has me now, he probably imagines – but he really doesn’t.

‘Do you believe I deserve it, Mr Harcroft? Did you believe it when you opened that door for me? Did it make you secretly pleased that I wrote back with such eagerness or sang “La Vie En Rose” with all that passion or carried on liking you despite the fact that you called me ugly?’

‘I never called you ugly.’

‘You said that very quickly.’

‘Did I? It seemed slow to me, Ms Parker,’ he says, so airily I could almost think he was telling the truth. He didn’t rush to correct my assertion. He didn’t panic slightly at the idea that I could go away believing he thinks I’m ugly. It was just a trick of the light or a shift in atmospheric pressure.

Like the way he stiffens when I soften my voice.

Or looks so lost when I say: ‘I think you should call me Molly.’

I think his face almost caves in. He begins to answer me, and for a second nothing comes out. Then, when it does, the ‘yes’ he most likely wanted to say is gone. It disappears back down inside him, along with the rest of his emotions.

‘That seems like the very worst idea I can think of.’

‘I can hardly imagine why. People do it all the time.’

‘Yes, and people are generally idiots. They form attachments and have feelings, none of which is the least bit palatable to me. I would far sooner we simply continue addressing each other in a more formal manner, and not just because doing otherwise encourages a worrying surfeit of sentimentality,’ he says, then pauses as though reluctant to continue. When he does, I can see why he hesitated. ‘There is also the fact that I would rather not tell you what my Christian name actually is.’

‘Is it because you are the son of some peer of the realm?’

‘No, it’s because my name is ludicrous.’