He patted his dog’s head and gazed at her. Captain turned his head to pant in his face. His breath was not exactly sweet.
He watched Lady Estelle swallow. “I ought not to have said that,” she said. “It was insensitive. You were not as fortunate as we were.”
“My father was ailing for several months before his death,” he said. “I do not believe he ever asked for me or tried to send word to me.”
“Would there have been any way for him to contact you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“How did you hear of his passing, then?” she asked.
“My aunt and uncle knew where to send letters,” he said. “Though it was often weeks or months before I got them.”
“Mr.and Mrs.Sharpe?” she said.
He nodded. “They wrote me of his death.”
She clasped her arms about her legs and lowered her head until her forehead touched her knees. “Is that where the worst of your pain is?” she asked him.
It was not perfectly clear what she meant bythat.But he understood her to mean the fact that his father had apparently stuck by the decision he had made that day when he banished his only son. Even when he was dying he had stuck by it. There had been no olive branch, no offer of reconciliation.
It was a pain so deep that he never,everthought of it. It would, he knew, be unbearable if he allowed it to intrude upon his conscious mind and take up residence there.
“You are mistaken, Lady Estelle,” he said. “That was all a very long time ago. There is no pain.” He set his head back against the stone wall. The sound of the waterfall somehow sealed them in here as though the rest of theworld no longer existed. “I suppose I am neglecting my guests. Is it teatime? Past teatime?”
“I have no idea,” she said, lifting her head. “But I believe everyone can fend for themselves. And Maria is probably back at the house to see to it that no one starves.”
He got to his feet anyway, careful not to straighten up and bang his head on the low rocks above it. He held out both hands to help her up. She looked at them before setting her own in them. Hers were slim, long-fingered, smooth-skinned. A lady’s hands, half lost in his own. Hands that aroused his masculine protective instincts, though she did not strike him as the sort of woman who craved or even welcomed male protection. She was no one’s typical image of a helpless female. Generalizations were useless things anyway. Not many people fit into them once one scratched the outer surface they presented to the world and took a good look at the person within.
She raised her eyes to his, her eyebrows slightly arched upward, as though to ask him why he was holding her hands if he was not intending to help her get to her feet. Why indeed? But their faces were suddenly uncomfortably close.
“You did not tell me if I was forgiven,” he said. “For kissing you,” he added when her brows rose a little higher.
“Did I not?” she said. “You were. You are.”
“I regret,” he said, “that I was so gauche. And so impetuous. Such a blockhead. I went about it all wrong.”
“The kiss?” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“That too,” he said. “But I was referring to my proposal of marriage. I have always despised bended knee and rosebuds and poetic speeches and hand over heart. But there is surely a large range of possible behaviors between that and‘I wish you would marry me.’I believe those were my verywords, or something similar. I am glad you had the good sense to refuse me.”
“Are you?” she said. “Then we are in perfect agreement.” But there was a thread of amusement in her voice.
“Watch your head.” He drew her to her feet and released his hold on her hands. Captain was on his feet too, eager to return to the outdoors.
“The blanket and cushions?” she said as he stepped out and turned to offer her a hand back down to the level bank beside the bridge.
“I will put them away later,” he told her.
“Why not now?” she asked, and bent to pick up two cushions after tying the ribbons of her bonnet and linking them over her arm.
They put everything away neatly inside the boathouse. After Justin shut the door securely behind them, he turned and saw Estelle standing a few feet away, between him and the bridge, in full sunlight. Her pale blue dress was the exact color of the sky. She was looking directly at him, that inner smile lighting her face. And... oh, God.
He took a step closer.
“I want you,” he said.
Fourteen
