Foolish Heart
"Why do you still come here?"
He looks up swiftly, his dark eyes seeking out hers, with a look on his face that is faintly startled and faintly offended, but Lina does not flinch, not this time. The bitterness has been building for years now, by imperceptible degrees; now that it has begun to flow out of her, she could not hold it back if she wanted to. "Why?"
"Why not?" he says lightly, smiling. Never easy to get a rise out of him; chastisement evaporates from him like raindrops from the hot street outside.
"Answer my question, my lord, if you would." Lina is very calm. Something inside her is shaking uncontrollably.
He studies her. "To see you. To see Brendan. You knew that."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"What do you want with me or with Brendan?" The words burn her tongue like acid; she must get them out, she is afraid to swallow them. "One more bastard and his mother--"
"Lina--"
"Surely a drain on your variable finances, surely an embarrassment, aren't we? A girl too stupid to keep herself childless, much less out of your arms, must be a terribly poor substitute for my lady's dazzling company--"
"Stop it." He is on his feet now. So is she.
"Do you only come here to keep me quiet? Is that it? The poor little fool, keep her contented and out of the way, keep her placid, that's the decent thing to do! Sleep with her to save the expense of a whore--"
"Lina!"
"--or the trouble of seducing someone else, pat the boy on the head and tell him how he's grown, and then go on your way! Keep them both happy and out of your way!"
"Be still!"
"I will not be still!"
"What do you want from me?" he shouts at her, and Lina is still then. She realizes, belatedly, that the mask has dropped; she has pierced, hurt, won. She is looking at the boy who kissed her under the arbor five years ago. Part of her is remorseful; and part of her is terrified that she will end up on the street with the child, with nowhere to go-- and part of her is thinking, quite calmly, Oh, you foolish man.
This man of thirty-five with his youthful face, standing in her house which is his house, dressed in the slightly overdramatic, vividly colored style of his friends, some of whom are half his age. This honest and intelligent and thoughtful man, who is doing his best to disappear amid a generation of lesser men. This man who has lived his life in the midst of such a tangle of intrigues that it never occurs to him to be straightforward.
"I don't know," she says to him, quite mildly. "Perhaps you had better go."
"Lina..."
Lina shakes her head. "Don't. Please-- don't, right now."
He stands there for a moment, looking at her uncertainly, as though she suddenly matters very much. Then he shrugs a little; crosses the room, takes her hand and kisses it. "Good night." As if nothing has happened, as if she matters not at all.
"Good night," she says, and watches him leave.
Oh, you foolish man. You want everyone to think you have no heart at all. Don't you know that I know better?