Cursing the low priority the English gave to bathrooms in old country houses, she lurked by her door, waiting. Surely even Rowland McGuire must have finished bathing by now?

The whistling had given way to operatic snatches. Rowland sang “La donna è mobile” with gusto, out of tune. Lindsay waited until the various arias had ended; she heard the bathroom door open at last. She counted to ten, then darted out.

She collided with a half-naked Rowland, and reeled back. Six feet five inches of tanned muscle blocked her path. Rowland’s wild hair was wet and black and tamed and sleek. It dripped water onto his powerful shoulders; water ran down his muscled chest. He was wearing a white towel around his waist, and nothing else.

“Do you have to parade around like Tarzan?” Lindsay snapped, trying to avert her eyes from biceps, pectorals, and narrow waist and hips. “You’re half naked.”

“Ah, you object to the towel? I’ll remove it, if you prefer.”

His hands dropped to his waist. From the attic came the stuttering burst of ray-gun fire. Lindsay fled. She dived into the bathroom, slammed the door, and bolted it. She was standing in thick fog; she swore at the steaming billowy air, paddled her way forward blindly, then stopped. He’d had the grace, she noted, to clean the tub, but like all men when bathing, had left the room half flooded and the towels in a sodden heap.

She sat down by the vast iron monster of a bathtub, and stared at its clawed feet. The room smelled deliciously of Rowland’s aftershave. Its scent made Lindsay feel angry, nostalgic—and weak.

Chapter 5

ROWLAND WAS NOT GOOD at cocktail parties, which he disliked. He was not gifted at small talk, and he did not suffer fools gladly. Deficient in these necessary requirements, he avoided such occasions whenever possible, and when trapped, as now, preferred to retreat to the edge.

He talked briefly to an Oxford don, and to a painter who lived in the next village, both of whom he had met before and liked. The don, a close friend of Rowland’s former Oxford tutor, sought to persuade him, as he had done before, that he was wasting his abilities and his honors degree, and should return to academic life.

“Too cloistered,” Rowland said.

“Scholarship can be narrow, I grant you,” replied the don, who was elderly, and an authority on Wittgenstein. “The corollary is that it’s deep.”

“Even so. I like journalism. It suits me. Wrongs can be righted.”

“Often?”

“Sometimes. Besides, I like a patchwork life.”

“Do you still climb?” the don asked, and when Rowland said that yes, he still did, the old man’s face lit up. They talked mountains for a while, most enjoyably, and rock types, and the Cairngorms and the Skye Ridge. Then Charlotte came up, and led the old man away, and Rowland was able to shift a few paces backward toward the bookshelves. There, for a while, he was left in blessed peace.