“This is a grand estate, Lady Wanstead,” he said to her, offering his arm. “It is enough to make any man who owned it forget about returning to the rigors of life in the New World.”
It had been her one hope during the night, Christina thought, that Gerard would not forget, that he would return to Canada in the spring and having returned would never come back again.
“You will like the house too, sir,” she said. “The state apartments are rarely used, but they are glorious to gaze at. And his lordshipdoesintend to use the state dining room and the ballroom over Christmas. There is a lovely portrait gallery too for anyone interested in family histories.”
“I shall look forward to the tour,” he assured her.
But their conversation soon became more personal. He sympathized with her over her loss of a husband so recently and so young, and she asked him about his late wife. Mrs. Stewart had been a native woman with whom he had lived during his winter in the interior of the continent beyond Canada.
“Such arrangements are quite respectable, ma’am,” he explained to her, “else I would not have sullied your ears by mentioning it. There are no white women in that part of the world, you see, yet many white men live there for years at a time. Such arrangements with native women are known as country marriages. They are monogamous relationships and are frequently happy unions for both partners. Sometimes they last beyond the term of a man’s stay in the Northwest. I brought my country wife out with me and married her in Montreal. She died a year after that when I brought her here. There were diseases to which she had never been exposed.”
“I am sorry,” Christina said.
“Yes.” He smiled. “I was fond of her, ma’am, and she was good to me. I wish we had had children. I understand that you have?”
“Two daughters,” she said and mentioned their names and ages to him.
“They must have been a comfort to you,” he said, “when you lost your husband.”
“Yes,” she agreed. ‘They have been the chief source of joy in my life since their births.”
“I hope,” he said, “you will allow me the pleasure of meeting them. Colin is a bachelor and I am a childless widower, but we have a sister in Scotland who has ten children and a number of grandchildren too. I have had some experience in amusing children.”
The idea of remarriage, new to her and quite abhorrent in many ways, had persisted through the morning. And it focused itself now on the unsuspecting person of Mr. Geordie Stewart. He was a man of mature years, a kindly man, or so it seemed, and one with wealth enough if her guess was correct to offer a wife perfect security. But it seemed unpleasantly calculating to be thinking of marrying a man who had done nothing more than be courteous to her. She had been accused last night of being calculating.
But if he stayed in England, she thought—Gerard, that was—then she simply must find some way of escaping an intolerable situation. And there was only one way.
She expected that the earl would be as eager to avoid her this morning as she was to avoid him.That kiss!The memory of it, brief as it had been, so consumed her with embarrassment that her mind shied away from it altogether—and could think of nothing else. Not just the kiss, but the mortifying knowledge that she had burned for him, that her womb had throbbed with the need to feel him there. Mortifying indeed!
But seemingly he did not share her embarrassment. As soon as they had all returned to the house and most of the guests were on their way upstairs to change from their outdoor clothes, he summoned her to the library. She wished it might have been anywhere else if they must talk. She felt embarrassed just to see the room again and to remember that justtherebefore the hearth, close to the chair on which she had been sitting .. .
She crossed the room to the large oak desk, and ran her palm over the smooth top of it as if testing it for dust.
“Christina,” he said, closing the door behind him. His voice was brisk and businesslike, she noticed. “Last night I suggested that we try to do better today, that we try to be more civil to each other. It is something I still hope we can do, but it has been very clear to me that I also owe you an apology.”
She turned her head to look at him.
“You hurt me once,” he said in the same impersonal tone. “It was long ago. We were both young, very different people from what we are now. But the ignoble urge to hurt where we have been hurt is hard to resist, I have found to my chagrin. I have been trying to hurt you ever since I arrived here over a week ago.”
She could acknowledge what he said only with a brief nod—and with inner surprise at his honesty. It seemed somehow to set her at a disadvantage.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. She heard him draw breath. “And for the disrespect I showed you last night by kissing you.”
She felt heat in her cheeks and hoped that her blush was masked by the heightened color the outdoor chill must have whipped into her face.
“It was nothing,” she said, and her eyes locked on his for just a few moments too long. She lowered her gaze. What a patent and foolish lie to have uttered in the face of his honesty.
“I am a wealthy man,” he said, his voice brisk again. “When I marry, I will make a settlement on you and your daughters. Included in it will be a home of your choice and the upkeep of that home. There is no need for you to consider a marriage of your own unless it is your wish to do so.”
Despite herself—sheknewhe was trying to be conciliatory—she felt a flaring of anger.When I marry... “You are determined, then,” she said, “to consider me a heavy millstone about your neck and to keep me constantly aware of the fact. Is this sugar-coated revenge, Gerard?”
He stared at her, hard-eyed and tight-jawed.
“Before I forget—” He strode toward her so that for a moment she felt a resurgence of last evening’s blind terror. But he was looking at something on the desk rather than at her. She stepped smartly aside and he picked up a sealed letter from the top of a pile and handed it to her. “This came with the morning post. I beg your pardon, I should have handed it to you before we went outside.”
Christina did not receive many letters and looked down curiously at the one he had just given her. It was addressed in a somewhat shaky hand, as if it had been written by an elderly person. It was handwriting she had not seen in many a long year, but she recognized it instantly. And then doubted the evidence of her own eyes. Lady Milchip’s words in the drawing room last evening had planted the idea in her mind. It would be too much of a coincidence....
But a second glance at the letter confirmed her first impression. It was from her father.
