"Yeah, but they look prettier like this. They'd be boring and dull otherwise,” she said.

Thaddeus clapped his hands together. "And it would be the same with words, Winnie.” Then standing up, and looking at her, he said, “Why just write, ‘the woman was beautiful.’ Why was she beautiful? Is it the colour of her hair, her eyes? Is it her complexion?” he asked, as if studying her. “I use words to create pictures in another’s mind. I want words to work magic.”

"I never thought about words like that before,” she said, looking back at him.

Then turning his back on her, Thaddeus picked up the yogurt pot and poured its contents into the pan. He mixed it in with a wooden spoon. While stirring, he turned to face her as she sat back down at the table.

Winnie took another sip of the wine, then said, "Thaddeus, can you show me one of your books? I'd love to see one."

Thaddeus knew he had caught her imagination, and she was relaxing with the aid of the wine. He didn’t want Winnie to put up her guard again. So smiling at her, he said, “If you serve up dinner, I’ll go and see if I can’t find a copy of one of my books.”

Thaddeus left the kitchen, and Winnie placed the plates of steaming food on the table with a set of knives and forks for the both of them. She looked up to see Thaddeus standing in the doorway. In his hand he was holding a book. He passed it to her and sat down at the table.

Winnie turned the book over in her hands and read the front: Frances by Jonathan Whitby. She opened the book and thumbed delicately through the pages. She gazed over the neat rows of printed text. She looked across at Thaddeus, who was eating the food they had cooked together.

"Read me one of your poems,” she said.

“Why?” he smiled, and now he looked a little embarrassed.

Winnie didn’t feel comfortable telling him that he had a voice like silk, so she simply said, “Why not?”

Laying his knife and fork beside his plate, Thaddeus reached across and took the book of poems from her hands. He flicked through the pages with his long fingers, stopped, cleared his throat, and began to read to her.

The heart beats like Indian calls and castanets

Upon the first time our touch first met

Strange creatures danced with costumes fair

As we shook the dreams from our hair

Our laughter cast ripples into the dawn

As we smiled away our final yawn

Floating on a breeze of bliss

We stole just one last kiss

Come into these arms again

And cry a gentle sigh

Eyelashes of pure lace

Pulling cobwebs from the eye

Peeling off skins from the past

Glorifying a new self

Saddened creases about my smiles

Trying to hide myself

With the sound of Thaddeus’s voice almost seeming to float about the room, and the wine she had drank, Winnie's head began to swim.

She sat captivated by him as he continued.

Angels know your secrets

In which you trust in me

You know from where I came

As they fly from you to me

Playing with impassioned words

On a bed of rust

Swathed in your dying blankets

I've found a love to trust

Listen to the words

I write, plant, and sew

With eyes of wonder we sit and watch

As they flower so

At night we cower beneath the ancient moon

And you fear what will happen

If they come to soon

Such peace I have found inside your love

This time seems too insane

But love is like sweet mistletoe

With its beauty and its pain

Thaddeus slowly closed the book and set it down beside him. Without looking at Winnie, he picked up his knife and fork and started to eat.

Winnie felt as if she had been put under a spell. After some time, she didn’t how long, she said, “Thaddeus, that was the most beautiful poem. I’m not sure exactly what it all meant, but you were writing about how much you loved Frances.”

He looked up from his meal and met her gaze. Although he was smiling, Winnie could see his eyes had grown dull and were full of sadness.

"You must have loved Frances so much,” she whispered, and wondered if anyone would ever write a poem about her.

"Yes, I did. I was captivated by her from the very first moment I saw her. It was like I had loved her always, since time began.”

"The oil painting hanging in the hall, the one facing you, is that Frances?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, just above a whisper.

"And the others?"

Thaddeus straightened in his seat a little, his eyes growing brighter now. "The paintings of the men are my forefathers, and the women are their wives."

"The women all look very much the same. Auburn hair, green eyes, and pale skin,” she said.

A smile lingered across his lips, and he said, "All of the men in my family have been able to recognise a beautiful woman when they saw one. Besides, we are all related. It’s common for men from the same bloodline to find similar looking women attractive.”

They sat in silence. The only sound was the clacking of their knives and forks as they ate. Once she was full, Winnie pushed her plate to one side and picked up the glass of wine. She sipped from it, and then broke the silence. “You are the strangest man I have ever met.”

“Should I take that as compliment?” he asked, pushing his own plate aside.

“Take it any way you like,” she smiled.

“I’m not so strange,” he said.

As Winnie sat and tried to understand the man sitting before her, she knew there was a little part of her which envied the love that Frances and Thaddeus must have shared. She had never known anything like that. However strange she thought of him, Winnie accepted his reasons. Perhaps if she had ever known love like he had, she might have had the same difficulty coming to terms with their death. He had explained about how he afforded to live, the paintings in the hallway, and the reason why the old woman in the bookshop had never heard of him. Winnie looked at him, and couldn’t help but feel a little guilty at the distrust she had felt. She had never met anyone she could trust before. Even her friend, Ruby Little, used to steal from her. Was her lack of trust in people, Thaddeus’s fault? No, she thought. It was hers.

Thaddeus caught her staring at him and said, “What?”

“You might be strange, Thaddeus, but you’re a nice guy,” she said. “Thank you, for dinner.”

“I should be the one thanking you,” he said back.

“What for?” she asked him.

“For agreeing to stay,” he said, standing up. He took their empty plates and placed them in the sink.

Winnie turned to look at him, and she noticed that he seemed to be staring intently out of the window. She could see his reflection in the pane of glass. Winnie couldn’t be sure if it was just the way his face was reflecting back in the window, which like the others she had noticed, were covered in dirt, but he looked scared. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, getting up from the table, curious to know what it was he was staring at through the dirty windowpane.

Before she had joined him, Thaddeus had drawn the curtains over the window. He turned to face her and said, “The rain looks like it is easing and the moon is up. I think I might go outside and get some air.”

Leaving Winnie alone, Thaddeus left the kitchen.

Chapter Twenty

Winnie took the grey coat with the hood from the hook on the back of the kitchen door and left the room. She crossed the hallway to find the front door open. A chill breeze blew into the hall, bringing with it a flurry of sodden leaves. Winnie peered out into the darkness and could see that it was still raining slightly. Thaddeus was standing in front of the house, his hands by his sides. His head was tilted back and he was looking up into the half-moon that peered behind a wisp of grey cloud. The moonbeams splashed his face, as did the fine rain.

Pulling the coat tight about herself, Winnie stepped out of the house and stood next to Thaddeus. He looked at her, and seeing that she was getting wet, he gently pulled the hood up over her head. “You don’t want to get a cold,” he said over the sound of the wind that blew around the eaves of the house and between the branches of the trees. Winnie peered into the thick slices of black between their twisted trunks, and she remembered the three pale, white faces she feared she had seen before.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Thaddeus breathed.

“Say what?” Winnie asked, looking away from the tree line and sideways at Thaddeus.

“The moonlight,” he said again, staring up into the thin stream of blue light that shone from above.

“I guess,” she whispered. She looked up at the half-moon, its rays of light making her eyes sparkle. Rain ran down the length of her pale face as she wiped it away with her cold fingers.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Thaddeus asked her, fearing that she did.

“No, I’m fine,” she said.

“Good,” he smiled. Then taking a step sideways, he inched closer towards her, their hands brushing together by their sides.

Winnie felt his touch, and she wasn’t sure if it were deliberate or by chance. Either way, she didn’t move and let the back of his hand brush against hers. Then looking at him, she said, “Is everything okay?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” he asked, not looking at her but up at the moon.

“It’s just that you seemed...rattled back in the house,” she said, trying to find the right words, when really she thought he had looked scared.

“I just needed some air,” he said. “The wine went straight to my head and I’ve got some work to do tonight. I just need to be able to think straight, that’s all.”

They stood quietly together, the sound of the rain thrumming off the leaves in the trees was all she could hear. There were no voices in the wind tonight, and she laughed at herself for being so stupid. Then, glancing at Thaddeus, she could see that sadness had come over his face again. Even though she stood next to him, their hands brushing together, she couldn’t help but see how lonely he really was. What must it have been like for him, up here all alone? He’d told her that he had become a virtual recluse and she didn’t want to become the same. So tugging at his hand, she said, “Hey, how about you show me around tomorrow?”