"Unhappy?" he said scornfully."With all those admirers?"
"I was unhappy," she said. "You are not still angry with me?"
"Listen to that rain!" he said, spreading his hand firmly over the back of her head while another flash of lightning was succeeded almost immediately by a loud crash of thunder. ''We are going to be stuck here for an hour at least. We had better sit down."
"The ground is awfully hard," she said, as he took her down with him, and tucked her against his side, his cloak still wrapped around them both. He had his back set against a wall.
He leaned across her, one arm about her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, and lifted her across to sit on his lap. He cradled her head against his shoulder.
"You realize you will have to marry me after this?" he said.
"Oh, no," she said, trying to lift her head. But he held it where it was with a firm hand. "No, that is not so. You need not do it. And if you do, I shall refuse."
"Am I the reason you were unhappy?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear.
"It doesn't matter," she said.
"It matters." He teased her earlobe with his lips. "Was it me, Angela?"
"You are always so cross," she said. "I have been longing and longing to come here now that I am all grown up. I wanted to impress you. But you are always angry with me."
"I'm not angry now," he said before finding her mouth again and making full use of it for another minute.
"I thought I would never be eighteen," she said. "I dreaded all the time that Claudia would write to say you had married someone else. And then we came here. And you were cross with me. And you were in love with Mrs. Ingram."
"With Diana?" he said. "Do you have no sense at all? She is my sister-in-law. She was Teddy's wife."
"You don't love her?"
"No, of course I don't love her," he said scornfully."Only as a sister.Not as I love you."
There was a silence rather longer than that necessitated by another crash of thunder.
"Well mere!" he said. "Now what have you made me say? You would probably exasperate me every day of my life. And I would doubtless be jealous of every man who set eyes on you. And you would probably be always telling me that I am angry with you when I am not angry at all but only afraid of losing you. I'm not near good-looking enough for you. My nose is too big. And my hair will never lie flat. And I'm not bright as Clarence is and as Teddy was. And . . ." He blew air out of puffed cheeks
as lightning flashed and thunder rolled. "Will you marry me?"
She had somehow burrowed her face against his neck. Her breath tickled him as she talked. "I always think of you as a knight in splendid armor riding home from battle," she said, "and stopping at the end of the causeway to look up to the battlements where I have been watching for you for many weary months.Four weary years, in fact.You will always be my splendid knight."
"What a silly little female you are," he said. "I have never heard anything so corkbrained in my whole life."
"Yes, Ernest."
"Yes?"
"Yes, I will marry you."
"You will?"
"Yes."
"Well," Lord Crensford said, managing to wiggle her head out from beneath his chin so that he could kiss her again, "and so you should say yes. You have got yourself into a dreadfully compromising situation here, you know.And all through your own foolishness.I don't suppose you stopped for one minute to think about it before you came, did you? Oh, no, act first, think later seems to be your motto."
"Don't be angry with me," she said, one arm venturing out from the warm shelter of the cloak to wrap itself around his neck. "Don't be angry with me, Ernest. I love you."
"And so you should," he said gruffly before finally claiming his kiss. "I don't marry females who don't love me."
16
