The Silver Pigs

XXXVI

She must have felt me flinch.

"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed. She should have stormed off. We could have left it there. I really would not have minded; her gesture had been civilized enough.

The damned woman did not know what to do.

"I am so sorry"

"Never apologize!" I heard my own voice grate. Since Sosia died, I had shrunk into myself. I could not deal with women any more. "Nothing new, lady! Rich piece of brisket looking for thick gravy gladiators get this all the time! If that was what I wanted you'd have known long before now!"

She ought to have turned into her room at once. She just stood there looking anxious.

"Oh for heavens sake!" I cried irritably. "Stop looking at me like that!" Her great tired eyes were lakes of misery.

For two hours I had been speculating how it would feel to kiss her. So I did. Completely exasperated, I stepped up to the doorway then gripped her with my elbows, while my two hands spread either side of her bone-white face. It was over quite quickly, so lacking in enjoyment it must have been the emptiest gesture of my life.

She wrenched away. She was shaking with cold from the garden. Her whole face was cold, and her eyelashes still wet from when she wept. I had kissed her; yet I still did not know what it was really like.

I have known men who will tell you rough handling is what such women want. They are fools. She was distraught. To be perfectly honest, I was distraught myself.

Helena might have dealt with the situation but I allowed her no time. It was me who stormed off.

I did go back. What do you take me for?

I walked down that dark corridor as discreetly as a servant with some message he had forgotten to deliver before. I tapped at her door my special knock: three quick successive little knuckle raps. We had never made a formal arrangment, it just developed as my sign. Normally she came at once to let me in.

I knocked again. I tried the latch, knowing it would not budge (I had shown her myself how to wedge a latch when she was staying at an inn.) I leaned my forehead against the wood and spoke her full name quietly. She would not reply.

By now I grasped that she had supposed we had at last reached some kind of understanding. She had offered me a truce, which I in my stupidity could not even recognize, let alone accept. She was as generous as I was crass. I would have liked a chance to tell her I was sorry. She would not, or could not, give me the chance.

The time came when to wait there any longer would subject her to scandal. She had hired me to protect her from that. The only thing I could do for her was to walk away.