“Can I sleep on it?” she asked him. He was grateful she hadn’t turned him down.
“Of course. We can decide tomorrow.” She liked the way the word “we” sounded coming from him. He left her outside her room then, and when she went in, Andy’s photograph caught her eye in her suitcase. She looked at it, wondering what Andy would tell her to do. Reach for it and try one more time, or do what she had with him, and not take a chance on something they both knew could never work? But this time, she thought, it could. She and William existed in similar worlds and had much more in common. She sat down on her bed, thinking about it, and reached for the phone. He picked it up immediately.
“Let’s go back to Big Sur tomorrow. But I’ve got to get back to New York this weekend.”
“I’ll drive you to the airport myself. I promise. And you’ll still be a virgin.” She laughed when he said it.
“Thank you, William, for giving me the time I need to figure it out.”
“You’ll always have the time you need, Maddie,” he said solemnly. “Although I can’t promise your virginity will be safe forever.” She didn’t want it to be, even now, but she didn’t want to lose her head over him. The truth was she knew she already had.
Chapter 13
They dropped off her rented car before they left the city. The drive to Big Sur from San Francisco was relaxed and easy. They took the coast road for the last part of it, the scenery was rugged and majestic, and then they watched the fog roll in. It gave everything a cozy, intimate feeling as they chatted on every subject. She found she could talk to him about anything, their marriages, their children, their childhoods, their work. They had both lived self-imposed solitary lives for years. He hadn’t dated anyone in a while. He said it was too much work spending the evening with women he never wanted to see again. He’d rather stay home and do research for a book, which he admitted was pure laziness. He had tried internet dating a few times and thought it was ridiculous and potentially dangerous. She had come to similar conclusions years before, and eventually stopped making any effort to meet someone, and avoided it in fact. She had come to think of herself as untouchable, and then undesirable, with the excuse that she was too old, which he scoffed at. They both knew people older than they were who had met and fallen in love, but they had convinced themselves it would never happen to them.
“Why did you come to America when you got divorced instead of staying in England?” She was curious about it. He was still so British in so many ways.
“I was escaping. I didn’t want to run into Prudence in London or watch her date all my friends. I got a chance to write the script for a historical documentary in L.A., and I leapt at it, and then I stayed. Los Angeles seemed too artificial and distracting, so I slowly moved north, first to Santa Barbara, and then I came here. It suited me at the time. I became something of a recluse for a while, and it got comfortable. That’s not necessarily a good thing. You lock yourself in a room, and after a while you forget where the door is, and eventually you don’t care. I’ve thought of going back to London a few times, but Theo is away at school now, and I like my life here. I don’t want to go back to all the people I knew growing up, who want to know why I never married again and can’t find a woman I care about. I’m constantly having to explain things there, and justify what I’m doing, when I go back for a visit. It’s a clean slate for me here. I never thought I’d stay this long, but now I like it. People do what they want in the States, far more than they do in England. The people I know in London are leading their parents’ lives, with less money and less style. I don’t have to prove anything here or lead a life I don’t want. And if I were there, I’d be fighting with Prudence over Theo all the time. I’d want to see a lot more of him than she’d like or agree to. It’s probably easier for him with me here too. He loves coming to visit. We do fun things together in the summer, and I take him skiing over Christmas.”
“I’ve never liked the British system of sending children, boys mostly, to boarding school so early. I’ve known Englishmen who were sent away at seven, and one at five, although I think that was unusual.”
“I don’t like it either,” William agreed. “They think it makes men of us. It just makes us neurotic and awkward with women, and we cover it up with good manners and tradition. I hated boarding school for ten years, and then I didn’t want to leave. My parents were strangers to me. I don’t want that to happen with Theo. I think I know him pretty well. I’d love to bring him here to school, to live with me. Prudence will never let that happen. I keep hoping she’ll remarry, but no one is as foolish as I was. She’s run through all my friends by now, and she goes out with some fairly dreadful people. She was dating the drummer in a punk rock band the last time I saw her. I’m glad Theo is away at school. He doesn’t need to see all that, although he’s quite insightful about her, and more forgiving than I am. He says she hasn’t grown up yet, which is about right. And I doubt she ever will. Her parents spoiled her rotten, and then I finished the job. Theo is more grown up at ten than she is at thirty-five. I married a child. The foolishness of men,” he said with a wry look. “She was twenty-three when I married her. I was forty-seven, a damn fool thing to do, but I thought I’d best get married before I got any older. I was an old man to her, and rapidly became an old fool in her eyes. I was an opportunity, not a husband.”
It made Maddie think of Jacques and his flock of young girls, but William was very different and a much more serious person. He had substance and a foundation Jacques didn’t. Jacques was going to play all his life. Maddie found William sexier and more attractive because he was intelligent too. She wanted to read one of his books, although he warned her it would be slow going. His last book was eight hundred pages long, about the last kings of France before the Revolution, and where they went wrong.
When they got to Big Sur, he told her there was a small quaint bed and breakfast just down the road from him, or he could take her back to the Post Ranch Inn. He didn’t try to convince her to stay with him, which she had been afraid he would. He had taken her at her word. She was determined not to get carried away on a wave of passion she’d regret later. She didn’t trust herself to stay at his cottage, and he didn’t suggest it, although he would have loved her to.
“The bed and breakfast will be fine,” she said, and he took her there and paid for the room.
“You’re my guest this time,” he said simply. “Your virginal reputation is secure.”
They drove half a mile to his cottage then, and entered through a white gate under an arch of trees. The house was completely hidden from the road and sat perched on a cliff with a spectacular view of the ocean. The entire living room was windows, with comfortable old leather club chairs and couches that looked very English. There were books everywhere, and the kind of friendly disorder men make when they live alone. The house was full of eclectic objects from his travels and some of the contents of his house in England before he moved. The term “cottage” was a modest description of it, it was bigger than she had expected. His bedroom was upstairs, and a guest room, which he didn’t offer to show her, and there was a big country kitchen with a dining table, similar to hers at the firehouse. They were both hungry and he made an omelet and a salad. They sat down to eat, looking at the view.