Love was a precarious business. Far better to write about it, she figured, than live it. She was too old for children now and too intolerant to live with someone. She might find a man with children of his own, God forbid, and have a stepdaughter like Alba. Secretly she felt some sympathy for the Buffalo. Alba was a handful and a self-centered one at that. She hoped Fitzroy would be able to control his tender heart. He deserved better than Alba. What he needs is a sure thing, she thought. A woman of substance who’ll look after him, not an Alba who only thinks of herself.
Fitz escorted Alba to her boat. He wished it was the other end of the Embankment, so they could walk together in the drizzle and talk. There were so many things he wanted to ask her. Her arrogance was beguiling but it was her fragility that attracted him. He wanted to be her knight in shining armor. He wanted to be different from all the others. He wanted to be the one she held on to.
When they reached her door she turned to him and smiled, not her usual charming grin but the sad smile of a lonely little girl. “Will you stay?” she asked. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Fitz was about to embrace her, kiss those plummy lips, and assure her that he would stay forever if she wanted, but he felt an insistent pull at his gut that he could not ignore. If he stayed he’d just be like all the others.
“I can’t,” he replied.
Alba’s eyes widened. No one had ever declined such an offer.
“Just to sleep,” she explained, wondering why she of all people was being reduced to begging in such a humiliating fashion.
“I’ve an early appointment in the morning and my briefcase is at home. I’m sorry,” he said lamely, also remembering Sprout shut up in the kitchen. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he added when her lips pursed in fury.
“Well, good night then,” she stated, coldly flinging him a withering look before disappearing inside her boat and locking the door behind her.
Fitz walked back onto the Embankment and tried to remember where he had parked his car. He felt miserable. She had opened up to him on Viv’s deck. They had been intimate. Now they had parted as strangers. He longed to return and knock on her door and rehearsed the lines he would say. “I’ve had second thoughts…I’ve changed my mind…I’m a fool to have put my work before you…I want to share your bed and your life…I love you madly…” He was drunk and emotional and couldn’t find his car.
The evening had started off with such promise, he thought unhappily. She probably wouldn’t want him to pose as her boyfriend now that he had turned her down in such an ungallant manner. He felt cold and dizzy and still couldn’t find his car. He usually parked it just around the corner, there on that yellow line. He strode up and down in bewilderment, scanning the streets in the hope that it might magically appear. Finally, after a good while standing in the same spot, staring blankly into the road, he hailed a cab. He couldn’t face walking home.
He flopped onto the leather seat and threw his head back. “Clarendon Mews, please,” he stated. The cabbie started the meter and pulled out into the road.
“You’re a bit wet,” he said, hopeful of a conversation. It had been a long night.
“I don’t care,” Fitz mumbled. “I’d do anything for her.”
“Ah, a lady friend,” said the cabbie with a knowing nod. He was used to the broken-hearted unloading their troubles on his back seat.
“The power they have to break us. One glance, one bat of the eyes, and we’re pulp. Pulp. That’s what I feel like, a bit of pulp.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself, gov. She’s not worth it.”
“Oh, but she is,” Fitz sighed melodramatically. The cab swung to the left and Fitz swung with it, his head rolling loosely on the back seat like a melon. “She’s not just anyone. She’s different from all the others.”
“That’s what they all say.” The cabbie chuckled. “I thought that about my missus. Now I can see that she nags me same as everyone else’s missus. Whoever invented love had a wicked sense of humor. The trouble is, by the time the scales fall from your eyes it’s too late, you’re married and she’s on your back whining about the rotten lot she’s been given. If it wasn’t for that trick of love no man would walk down the aisle. Bloody con, that’s what I say and I fell for it, like a right sucker.”
“You don’t understand. This is Alba Arbuckle I’m talking about.”
“Nice name, Alba.”
“It’s Italian.”