“You were not intended for a military life, were you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I was brought up to be the Earl of Riverdale after my father. When I lost the title and all that went with it, I reacted with all the maturity of a bitterly disappointed twenty-year-old and got myself very drunk. I went and took the king’s shilling from a recruiting sergeant and prepared to go to war as a private soldier. I was furiously annoyed when my guardian, now my brother-in-law, found me, persuaded the sergeant to take the shilling back—notan easy thing to do—and purchased a commission for me instead. When I did go off to war, it was as an infantry officer.”
“Was it dreadful?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
“You do not like to talk about it,” she said.
His hand was still on top of hers in her lap. She was as aware of it as he was, he knew. Her own hand was very still and a bit stiff. He curled his fingers around it into her palm. He continued to look into her face but did not answer what had not really been a question.
“How did you come to marry your husband?” he asked. “Was he a clergyman at your church?”
“He was a curate at the time, though not at our church,” she said. “But he was intended for far greater things. He had been groomed from birth for an ecclesiastical career and he gave himself to the life wholeheartedly. He was dedicated and ambitious. He was also full of genuine zeal and faith and energy. And terribly handsome. He was at university with my brother James. They remained friends afterward, and he came on a visit when I was twenty. I am not sure if he was brought there as a potential suitor for me. There had been a few others over the previous two or three years, all carefully selected. My father was a bit dubious about the lowliness of Isaiah’s position at the time, but of course he was the son of an earl and actually the brother and heir of the current one, and it was clear he was destined eventually for a position in the upper echelons of the church hierarchy. It did not matter to me anyway. I fell headlong in love with him. We were married two months after we met.”
“It must have been a terrible blow to you to lose him so young,” he said. A master understatement. How could it not have been?I fell headlong in love with him.
She half smiled and changed the subject. “The tea has grown cold,” she said.
She was as reluctant to talk about her marriage and its tragic ending as he was to talk about his military career, then. That was fair.
“Lydia.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers. “Shall we take things slowly? Or even— Would you rather end it now? It is quite all right if you would.”
“Is it what you wish?” she asked.
He ought to say yes and get out of here. But … He did not really want to. Not yet. He did not generally consider himself to be lonely—and quite possibly would not think so now if he had not recently spent a month and a half surrounded by family members who were anything but lonely, dash it all.
“I would suggest we get to know each other,” he said, “and make decisions about our future relationship as they become necessary.Ifthey become necessary.”
Her cheeks flushed again as she gazed back at him. “I think,” she said, “it would always be wrong.”
“To be friends?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “To be … lovers.”
“Shall we try friendship instead, then?” he asked. “There is no hurry to take it further than that, is there? Tell me, who chops your wood?”
She looked at him in blank mystification. “I do,” she said.
“Let me come tomorrow,” he said, “and chop a load for you.”
“But that would lay an obligation upon me,” she said.
Ah. Her need for independence.
“You may do something for me in return, then,” he said, turning his head to look at the bag beside her chair. “I assume you are a knitter. You may knit me a scarf. The only one I own is very nearly threadbare.”
Her eyes filled with sudden laughter. “When summer is coming?” she said.
“A British summer,” he reminded her. “Will you? Or is that an unequal favor? Will it lay too heavy a returning obligation upon me? I would provide the wool, of course.”
“Black?” she asked. “Gray? AndIwould supply the wool. I daresay you would not know what to choose that would not rub your neck raw.”
“How about scarlet?” he suggested. “Or yellow?” He tipped his head toward the bag. “Whatisthat, by the way?”
She laughed. A delightful sound that did something to his stomach. “It is Timmy’s sunshine,” she said.
“Of course it is,” he said. “I am sorry I asked.”
