“A family situation?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes.”
In the distance, perhaps a little closer than before, there was a sudden burst of laughter. He was not going to explain, Jessica realized after a few moments of silence. He looked beyond her along the causeway.
“Shall we continue?” he suggested, and she turned to walk onward.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I began my questions in the wrong place, Mr. Thorne. You were nineteen when you ran off to America as the result of some falling-out with your family. What was your life before that? Tell me about yourself. And tell me why the heir to property and fortune would run away and stay away. Was it your father who died recently?”
“My uncle,” he said.
They had left the lakes behind before either of them spoke again. He had answered only the last of her questions. She should know better than to ask more than one and expect to have them all answered.
Lawns of high-scythed grass rippled in the breeze to either side of them. An impression of slightly tamed wildness had been aimed at, and it had succeeded. There was another, smaller lake ahead to the left and a line of trees beyond the lawn on the right that hid the Queen’s Ride from view. It was an idyllic place in which to stroll. With anyone else she might have found her surroundings wonderfully relaxing. But there was still a mystery surrounding this man, and she needed to have it explained. Good heavens, he wanted tomarryher.
“Start at the beginning,” she said. “Tell me about your first nineteen years, Mr. Thorne.”
“I lived with my father until I was nine years old,” he told her. “My mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter when I was two. I have no conscious memories of her. My father was always inclined to be sickly. He was a clergyman, devoted to his books and his parishioners. And to me. He was far less devoted to his health. There was very little money, but I was unaware of being poor. I was never hungry and I was always adequately clothed. I had a happy enough early boyhood. He taught me all a boy should learn at a young age and gave me a lasting love of books. He died after neglecting a chill he had taken from visiting an ailing parishioner in a distant cottage during a rainstorm. After, I was taken to live with his elder brother, an uncle I had never met before he turned up for the funeral. I lived with him for the next ten years.”
“Just him?” she asked.
“And my aunt too,” he said. “All four of their children were considerably older than I. One of their daughters was already married and living some distance away. The other two married soon after I went there and also moved away. Then it was just my uncle and aunt and their son. And my aunt’s sister.”
“You had some companionship, then,” she said. “Were you close to your cousin, your uncle’s son?”
“No,” he said. “He was ten years older than I.”
“Was,”she said. “What happened to him? I assume this is the uncle who has recently died and left you property and fortune. Your cousin must have predeceased him, then?”
“By one day,” he said. “There was an outbreak of typhus. My aunt died too.”
“Oh,” she said. “I am so terribly sorry. You really had no expectation of inheriting, then, did you? But if your cousin was ten years older than you, he must have been in his forties when he died recently.”
“He had no sons,” he said.
This was thefamily situationthat had forced him to come home, then? But he did not offer further explanation, and she did not ask. He was not wearing mourning. But despite the family falling-out that had sent him running off to America, he must surely be feeling some pain at such a sweeping loss. She had intruded enough upon his privacy, however. It was not, after all, as though she intended to marry him.
Yet she had vowed to herself that she would marrysomeonethis year. Mr. Rochford, perhaps? He would be a good match for her. And he was young, perhaps even younger than she. He was handsome and personable.
Or perhaps after all she would marry no one. Now that it had come to the point, she found that it was not easy to make a rational, purely practical choice when she would be stuck with it for the rest of her life. As all women were when they married.
Could Mr. Thorne offer something more attractive? But what?
They had paused to look at the smaller pond a short distance from the path, but they walked on after nodding to a group of six people, who were in a merry mood and acknowledged them with smiles and greetings and comments upon the loveliness of the weather. It must have been their laughter Jessica had heard several times in the last half hour. The group continued on its way toward the Pen Ponds.
There were many other questions she could ask. What exactly had happened to cause him to run away and stay away? Had he had any contact with his family since? But if not, how had he discovered recently, thirteen years after leaving, that his uncle and aunt and cousin had all died, leaving him to inherit property and fortune? Why did he feel it necessary to marry? And why her in particular?
“It must have been distressing for you when you heard about your loss,” she said.
“I did not wish any of them dead,” he said. “I did not want to return.”
There was something a bit chilling about his response. It was as though he had grieved not for his three dead relatives but only for the obligation their passing had put upon him to return. The trouble with questions, of course, was that the answers merely aroused more.
“Perhaps,” she suggested when they came to a fork in the path, “we should make our way back to the curricle.” The sun had dipped behind a rather large cloud and the air had cooled as a result.
They turned onto a path that would eventually circle back to where he had left the curricle. It wound through trees, with an occasional glimpse of the lakes.
“Why have you not married before now, Mr. Thorne?” she asked him. “By my estimation you must be thirty-two.”
