“I suppose,” he said before she could speak them aloud, “that was an ill-mannered question. But you must surely have had offers. You are not a very young woman, but you are beautiful.”
He sorted through the gaucherie of his words while she continued to stare at him.
“Why areyounot married?” she asked him. “You are not a very young man.” She did not addbut you are handsome, he noticed.
He bent to pick up a stick and hurled it as far as he couldacross the lawn for Beauty to fetch. It was one of the dog’s favorite games. He took a bite of his apple. They had stopped walking, he noticed. “I am not married,” he told her, “because my wife died.”
Well, there.Thattook the wind out of her sails. She stared silently back at him for several moments.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Why should you be?” he asked. “You had no way of knowing.”
Now he was adding churlishness to a lack of basic good manners. She waited as though expecting some further explanation. He took another bite of his apple and walked on. He was not in the habit of talking about himself, least of all about his marriage. She continued walking too after glancing back, presumably to see that Harry was still asleep on the blanket.
“Contrary to what you seem to believe,” she said, “I havenothad any offers even though I am twenty-four years old. I might, I believe, have had a couple during the past few years if I had given some encouragement to two gentlemen who indicated a possible interest. Perfectly worthy gentlemen.”
“But you did not encourage them,” he said.
“No.”
He refrained from asking why. It was none of his business. And he did not need to know. He was curious, though. Was not marrying the single most important life goal for women of all classes? Did they not all consider anything above twenty a dangerous age still to be single? She was twenty-four.
“Worthiness alone is not enough,” she went on to explain. “Neither is steadiness of character, nor the means with which to provide me with a home and the comforts of life to which I am accustomed. Or even good looks andamiability. I have remained single because I have found nothing and no one to tempt me to marry.”
“Yet,” he added.
“Yet,” she conceded. “I am not afraid of being single. Iamafraid of making a marriage I would regret.”
Ah. He bent to pick up the stick, which Beauty had set at his feet before looking expectantly up at him, panting excitedly and dancing about with impatience to be gone again. He feinted once, twice, and then hurled the stick. The dog roared off in hot pursuit.
“And what,” he asked, “wouldtempt you? Love?”
They were walking close to the tree line, moving in and out of the shade provided by branches that overhung the lawn. They would make an elliptical sort of circuit about the lawn, he supposed, so as not to allow Harry out of their sight.
“I believe it may be easy enough to fall in love,” she said, “especially if the man is young and handsome and charming and vibrant of manner. I am not at all sure being in love would be a good basis for marriage, however. It would not last, I suspect, if there were not far more to sustain it.”
“And of what would thatfar moreconsist?” he asked her. This was a strange conversation to be having.
It seemed for a while that she must agree with him. She did not answer. Instead she gazed off into the trees, away from him. Then she stooped for the stick before he could and threw it in a short arc for Beauty to chase with glee. She spoke at last after looking back once more to check on her brother.
“It is sometimes easier to define what one wants in the negative rather than the positive,” she said. “I suppose at one time I expected to be married for who I was. Or rather forwhatI was. I wasLadyAbigail Westcott, daughter of an earl. I was eighteen years old, passably pretty, educated, andaccomplished in all the knowledge and skills expected of a lady. I was to have a large dowry. And I was about to be turned loose upon theton. I was to make my curtsy to Queen Charlotte and then have a grand come-out ball followed by a full Season upon what is known as the great marriage mart. I expected to attract an eligible husband, and would of course have done so. That is the way it happens in the world that was still mine at the time. Perhaps I would have been happy. Perhaps I still would be.”
“But then everything changed,” he said, “and your life was ruined.” He had thought about what had happened to their family as it had affected Harry’s life. Now he considered it from her point of view. She had been a girl on the brink of womanhood with a bright, secure future assured her.
Which only went to prove that the future was never to be taken for granted.
“On the contrary.” She was frowning, he saw. “It was almost as though I had dreamed through the first eighteen years of my life and would have continued to do so until my death if I had not been jolted awake.”
That was an unexpected way to look at the disaster of what had happened to her. Had she not lost all her hopes and dreams?
“Let me tell you what happened to my sister Camille,” she said. “She had already made her come-out. She was betrothed to a viscount. She was a very proper lady, a very strict follower of all the rules and conventions of society. She was straitlaced and rather humorless. She was my sister and I loved her, but I do not believe she was generally well liked. Her betrothed forced an abrupt end to their engagement when the truth of her birth was revealed. She had more to suffer than the rest of us, and suffer she did. But consider her now. You saw her during the past week. She isalmost unrecognizable as the Camille I remember. She is happy. She is lovable. She and Joel will probably end up with a dozen children both their own and adopted, and she will welcome each one of them with an all-embracing love. She is beautiful, but in a far different way than she was six years ago. My family still talks of what happened as the Great Catastrophe, as though the words would have to be capitalized if written down. But it was not a catastrophe for Camille. It was the best thing that ever happened to her.”
He did not take his eyes off her as she spoke with a warm sort of passion. Her cheeks had acquired a blush of color, and her eyes, large and blue, had gained depth. And he felt her perilous attraction.
“But Harry?” he said. “And you?”
They both glanced back toward the picnic site as they turned away from the trees to walk up in the direction of the stables before making their way back across the top of the lawn, just below the terrace.
