From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 65)

My darling sculptress is proving to be satisfyingly creative away from her normal sphere of operations. I’ve observed this phenomenon before, that those employed in the arts carry their creativity through to whatever it is they are doing, and I was not disappointed. In intimate moments that braying harsh laugh of hers becomes seductively soft and breathy. She has also been remarkably good natured about Jack digging up her flowerbeds while we disport ourselves. I have promised to send her a gardener (I will assure myself that he is good, but neither young nor handsome - there is no point in offering her temptation).

However, Celeste has avowed her decision to marry again, and will not be talked from it. I have pointed out the many freedoms she has, but the good lady wishes to travel. I mentioned there have been several remarkable British women who have travelled alone all over the global. Celeste replied, more accurately, that these women were remarkable because they were odd and thought, at best, eccentric. She wishes to pass her days without any such strictures being applied to her. For a liberated widow and lover, she is, in some ways, rather strait-laced.

Still, a husband will be an inconvenience to our affair, but not, I consider, an unsurmountable obstacle. She is clear sighted enough not to consider me a suitor. Although I travel widely, I could rarely take her with me, besides, she tells me she enjoys the best of me when I am returned from work abroad. She went as far as to say she suspects that, in-between my work sorties, I am probably a rather grumpy sort. She bases this opinion, it transpired, on her professional opinion of my face - on which she traced, with tender gentleness, the lines I had formed around my eyes, mouth and, especially, across my forehead when I frown or growl (growl is her word, not mine - as far as I am aware, I speak the King’s English and do not indulge in bestial intonation).

She backed up this opinion with a description of my taciturn nature when I first posed nude for her. But I jolly well think any gentleman standing starkers in front of a lady, when bedroom-related activity is not on the cards, is bound to be at a loss for words.