“My memory is going at my advanced age, and I’ve forgotten if it’s rude to ask a woman her age.”
“Yes, it’s rude, and it’s twenty-one.”
Which is what Brundage had told him.
“I am thirty-five. If I’m remembering correctly.”
“Good heavens, youareold. Shall I raise my voice so you can hear me speak?”
He smiled at her. “My hearing is still recoveringfrom Dot’s impressive screaming, so, in answer to your question, yes.”
She laughed again and this was better. Everything was better when she laughed.
She sipped her tea.
“I’ve no illusions about memories vanishing like this”—she flicked her fingers in the air—“when one crosses an ocean.” She lifted her eyes to him again. “But do you think a place can be... too saturated... with events and associations, and so it is of no use to you anymore? As if it could not possibly hold new ones, or anything good at all?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Saturated,” he repeated. “Like a handkerchief soaked in blood?”
He witnessed these words entering her. And detonating.
Her face blanked in shock as the realization of what he must have found: a handkerchief embroidered with her name.
“I suppose so,” she said a moment later, in attempted insouciance.
But her voice was hoarse.
He idly stirred his tea and sat with the words she’d said. He knew her history: the murder of her parents, the death of her brother.
But it was Brundage who’d made herbolt. And, with, from what it seemed, the most tenuous of escape plans in place.
“I am distressed that life has been so unkind to you that you must leave an entire continent behind.” His voice was gruff.
“That is kind of you to say, Mr. Hawkes.”
“You do keep saying that,” he said somewhat amused, but also somewhat impatiently. “In truth, Ido not know if I am a kind man. And Mrs. Gallagher, you would be surprised at how difficult I am to distress.”
Something fierce and beautiful, a sort of yearning, suffused her face then. It was just as swiftly gone. “I am not certain anything about you would surprise me,” she said softly.
She sipped her tea.
“He must have been a remarkable man, your husband,” he ventured.
She eyed him warily. “Why do you say that?”
“He convinced you to spend the rest of your life with him.”
She shook her head with a little smile. “Oh, not very subtle, Mr. Hawkes. Now you are flirting. It is amusing but I feel I ought to point out that you are very bold.”
“Boldness comes with age, and the knowledge that I’ve one foot in the grave, I suppose.”
There was another silence. Aurelie wanted so badly to speak of Brundage, to outline his character, to hear Mr. Hawkes’s thoughts on the matter.
“I do not know if he was remarkable. I thought... I thought he was charming and handsome and good.”
He took this in, thoughtfully. “And was he?”
Aurelie exhaled slowly. He was deucedly clever. It was exhilarating and unnerving.