She shook her head. But he did not offer his arm, she noticed, perhaps because she clasped her hands so determinedly behind her. She had never felt awkward with him. She felt awkward now.
“But there is also a certain feeling of satisfaction,” he said. “Lily will be happy—ifshe accepts him. But I feel little doubt that it will happen. Neither does the countess or anyone else here at Newbury for that matter. There is a certain satisfaction, Elizabeth, in the knowledge that finally I will be able to proceed with my own life.”
“When you wept at Frances’s grave last summer,” she said, “as Lily did too, you were finally able to accept that she had gone, were you not? You must have loved her very dearly.”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “A long, long time ago. I used to think of remarrying, you know, and fathering a son and bringing him up as my heir. And then I used to imagine discovering Frances’s child and my own—and finding that it was a son. I pictured the enmity and bitterness that would develop between those two brothers—both children of my own loins but only one of them able to be my heir.”
There was more beauty on the hill path than there had been in the garden. The leaves were multicolored above their heads and beneath their feet. The year was not yet quite dead.
“It is not too late, Lyndon,” she forced herself to say, her heart cold and heavy, in tune with the chill breeze that blew in their faces. “To father a son and heir, I mean. You are not so very old, after all. And you are extremely eligible. If you were to marry a young woman, you might yet have several more children. You might have a family to comfort you for Lily’s absence.”
“It is what you would advise then, my friend?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, hoping that her voice was as cool and as firm as she intended it to be.
She had always loved the way the path had been constructed to bring one above the level of the treetops at its highest point so that one suddenly had a vast view over the abbey and the park to the sea in the distance. She concentrated her mind on the beauty of her surroundings while the silence stretched between them. They had stopped walking, she realized.
“Do you consider yourself young, Elizabeth?” he asked her at last.
Something lurched inside her. She gazed ahead to the leaden gray sea, refusing to pay attention to the fact that he was unclasping her hands from her back and taking one of them in his own.
“Not young enough,” she said. “I am not young enough, Lyndon. I am six-and-thirty. I have remained single from choice, you know. I have always chosen not to marry where I cannot love. But now I am too old.”
“Do you love me?” he asked her.
He was not himself looking at the view, which seemed absurd in light of the fact that they had walked all this way in order to do so. He was turned toward her and looking at her. It was not a fair question that he had asked. Her heart pounded so hard that it threatened to rob her of breath.
“As a very dear friend,” she told him.
“Ah,” he said softly. “That is a pity, Elizabeth. I might have said the same of my feelings for you until a few months ago. But no longer. There is little point in broaching the subject of marriage with you, then? You do not love me as you would wish to love a husband?”
“Lyndon,” she whispered, “it is too late for me to bear you a son.”
“Is it?” he asked her, lifting her hand to his lips and holding it there after pulling back her glove. “But you areonlysix-and-thirty, my dear.”
He was laughing. Oh, not out loud, but there was laughter in his voice, wretched man. She tried to draw her hand away, but his own closed more tightly about it.
“Lyndon,” she pleaded, “be sensible. You owe me nothing. You owe much to your name and your position.”
“I owe something to myself,” he told her. “I owe it to myself to marry where I love, Elizabeth. I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh,” she said—and could think of nothing else to say for several moments while he turned her hand and found her bare wrist with his lips. “You will regret this in a few days’ time after everything is settled with Lily and you realize you will soon be free to do whatever you wish with your life. You will be relieved that I have said no.”
“Are you saying no, then, my dear?” He sounded suddenly sad, the laughter all gone from his voice. “Will you look at me now and tell me that it is because you do not love me and choose rather to live the rest of your life alone than with me? Into my eyes, if you please.”
She turned her head and looked at his chin—and then into his very blue eyes. Ah, could such a look be intended for her? The sort of look with which Neville regarded Lily and which she had so envied? But the Duke of Portfrey was looking unwaveringly into her eyes.
“Promise me you will never regret it.” Hope and terror all mingled together were doing painful and peculiar things to her insides. “Promise me you will not be sorry in a year’s time or two years’ time if there are no children. Promise me—”
He kissed her hard.
“I have never known you to babble nonsense before today, Elizabeth,” he said well over a minute later.
“Lyndon.” She blinked her eyes to clear her vision. Somehow her hands had found their way to his shoulders. “Oh, Lyndon, are you quite, quite s—”
He kissed her again, open-mouthed this time, and pressed his tongue past her startled lips and teeth right into her mouth. It was such a shockingly intimate embrace that she lost both her breath and her knees and was forced to lock her arms about his neck and cling for dear life. And then she kissed him back, touching his tongue with her own, sucking on it, listening with exhultation to the soft murmurs of appreciation with which he responded.
He was smiling when he lifted his head again. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I interrupted you. What were you saying?”
