Sin Read Free Page B

said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI will admit I was a little … surprised. Shocked even. Though Maria is thrilled. Maria always adored Elizabeth.”
    â€œShocked? Why shocked?”
    â€œWell,” she went on. “They decided to marry within a month of Hubert coming to London. Then the wedding was so … soon … after that.”
    â€œElizabeth wanted a summer wedding. There seemed no point in waiting until next summer,” I replied.
    I disliked Charlotte Baathus. Whereas Hubert was handsome, she had the common prettiness of the pale-blue-eyes-and-rosy-lips kind. She had a soft, rather breathless way of speaking her almost accentless English.
    â€œCharlotte,” I said. “I wasn’t at all shocked by the speed of the announcement. They are ”—the word came again— “profoundly, in love.”
    â€œOh, yes,” she said. I saw that she did not like the idea. To a trained observer like myself, it takes the merest tightening of the muscles round the mouth to show the meanness of the soul.
    I kissed Charlotte briefly. I hoped the kiss confused her, coming so soon after my tiny victory. I enjoyed the slight tension of her arm muscles, as I held them before the predatory swoop of my lips, which was impossible for her to escape.
    I walked away, and found another group of contented witnesses to Elizabeth’s and Hubert’s joy. I agreed wholeheartedly with excessive tributes to her beauty. I listened to some friends of Elizabeth, describing with seeming honesty her endless kindness to them. And I thought of how their sudden decision to marry had turned my plan into something much more interesting, more dangerous and more difficult.
    With soft smiles, I approached a hopeful Dominick. And I marvelled again at what a secret thing the human heart is, and the human mind. A merciful protection for us all. For who would survive a journey round the mind of another?
    No one in the world—no one knew my thoughts. God? I wondered idly. Did God know? Or knowing, care?

SEVEN
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    A mathematician in love does not approach his beloved with a scientific analysis of the laws of probability of relationships. Particularly a mathematician whose love is not returned.
    But perhaps there is a scientific law here after all. Does the love of the lover expand or contract in direct relation to the love returned or withheld? Who can fail to believe that the intensity of one’s adoration, if further developed, will not elicit a response? “If there is love in this heart,” the saying goes, “then there is love in that heart. For one hand claps not without the other.” How seductive. And how wrong. For why trap what is already trapped? It is only in flight that we know the freedom of the bird.
    These were my idle thoughts on a walk with Dominick after the wedding. Thoughts concealed by my soft smile at his protestations, and expectations. For Dominick had developed the habit of expectation.
    And this being a light, feather-soft day, and our being hidden on the other side of the lake, his attempts at seduction were successful. His expectations were fulfilled.
    My decision. I allowed. I deigned. It was essential with Dominick to keep a distance. I knew it, he did not. I watched through shuttered eyes his disintegration. And into the after-minutes, while his body reassembled itself, I dreamed a little dream of Elizabeth and Hubert. Their conjunction—in holy matrimony. And again I felt no pain. Dominick whispered words of marriage again into my closed heart. With a sigh of irritation I left my thoughts. I planted doubt, and then its cruel cousin hope, in his heart. But not rejection. I had chosen to lay down my head on the quilted heart of a hosta, crushing it. I felt no guilt. Nature, after all, has never loved us back.
    We two walked back to Lexington, its guests now gone. A liar and her lad, with his clever, modish face. His straw-coloured hair endlessly flopping into his