“I will take your word for it,” she said. “I have no interest in the distant past. I am here now. It is a beautiful day, and I want to enjoy everything as it is.”
“Very well,” he said, briefly covering her hand on his arm.
He had kissed her, surrounded by carved wood and vast sky and green expanses below. It had not been their first kiss, but it was the first one that could be prolonged. He had told her, his mouth against hers, that he loved her. And she had told him after he had kissed her that she loved him.
They were words he had not spoken to any other woman. He had grown up fast after Matilda and had abandoned such immature, sentimental drivel.
Her mouth now, he saw when he glanced at her face, was set in a prim line.
“We will enjoy everything as it is now, then,” he said. “Were you driven to near insanity on the journey here?”
He was startled by her sudden smile and the twinkle in her eye as she looked back at him.
“Not at all,” she said. “What a delight young people are, Charles.”
“Giggling?” he said. “And chattering?”
“Well,” she said, “I giggled and chattered right along with them.” She looked self-conscious suddenly and turned her head away, hiding her face behind the brim of her bonnet. “Why not? It seemed the best form of self-defense.”
Matilda! Ah, Matilda. What had her parents done to her? Or was that unfair? If Barbara or Jane had wanted to marry a young man as wild as he had been at the age of twenty, would he have given his consent? He knew he would not. But would he also have forbidden them all future contact with that young man? Would they have obeyed him without question if he had?
Ought he to have waited? If he had given up his wild ways and approached her the following year, would he have been able to persuade her to change her mind? And her father his? And her mother hers?
“Whydid you not marry, Matilda?” he asked.
Her head turned sharply back toward him. “I neverwantedto,” she said.
“You wanted to marry me,” he reminded her.
“I was young,” she said. “And foolish.”
Even now, ridiculously, it stung.
“You never loved anyone else?” he asked her.
“No.” She frowned.
“Was it that you never wanted to marry?” he asked her. “Or was it that you never found a man to love?”
“Enough,” she said. “Please, Charles, enough.”
And he was a bit horrified to see that her eyes were rather bright, but not from the sunshine or the pleasure of the outing.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Forgive me.”
“And why should you care?” she asked him. “You fathered asonvery soon after. And there were other women. Many of them. One could not help hearing about them. And you married a few years later and had children and grandchildren, all the while acquiring an ever worsening reputation as a rake among other things. Much you lovedme, Charles. I will be forever thankful that my mother and father talked sense into me. My life as it has been isfarbetter than it would have been if I had married you.”
Every word felt like a blow. And every word was true. Except four of them, spoken with biting sarcasm—much you loved me.Literally they were true, but she had not meant them literally.
Hehadloved her, but he had proved it in the worst possible way, by going completely to pieces after she would have nothing more to do with him. He could not even blame immaturity. His unsavory reputation had been well deserved for years and years.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
“We have arrived at the pagoda,” she said, and she smiled brightly at the young people, who had stopped walking and stood in a group to admire it from the outside.
“There are ten stories,” Miss Keithley said. “I counted them.”
“Impressive, Dorothea,” her brother said. “You can count that high.”
