Every evening, in fact, and often he stayed and talked to her for hours. Some nights he seemed bent on teasing her until Vivian wanted to scream and throw things at him, which appeared to amuse him to no end. Some nights he asked her opinions of things she had never considered a man would think important, and listened to her with every appearance of attention. Some nights he told her stories about his youth and family in which his role was less than noble. She was hard put not to laugh when he told her about the time he cut all the roses in the garden and was chased into the lake by an irate gardener. She did laugh when he related how his younger sister, at the time a small child, smeared his face with her mother’s rouge in retaliation for his eating the last of the currant buns. “I’d no idea they were promised to her,” he protested with a wounded air as Vivian laughed. “And I was utterly famished.” “You wicked knave,” she said, picturing him with streaks of red across his face, and finding it very entertaining and strangely endearing.
