His face shuttered and she thought he wouldn’t reply at all, but then he said, “I had space and time enough.”
She knew she should let the subject drop, but she needed to understand. “When your life calms, you’ll return to brandy again?”
“Oh, for a calm life! I believe we discussed your unseemly interest in my affairs.”
“I’d be concerned over anyone who was wasting their talents as you seem to be.”
“Any talents I have are being used in your service at the moment, Lady Ariana. There, your interest should stop.”
It should have, but a madness had taken grip of her. “Why is it to no purpose?” she demanded. “We mightnot suit, but you rejected the idea of a match so absolutely. Am I so repulsive a person?”
“God, no! If you must have it, I will marry no one. It is nothing to do with you.”
His words hurt, but for the most part Ariana was puzzled. “You don’t feel a duty to your line?”
“Can you never let anything go?”
“Not when it’s important. Why?”
“It’s obvious, you harridan. I won’t kill another woman!”
Ariana stepped back, in part in shock but also in fledgling horror. He’d murdered someone? A wife? It made no sense.
He was staring at her. “You don’t know, do you?”
She shook her head.
“How, I can’t imagine. My wife died in childbed, three years ago.”
Ariana abruptly sat in one of the upright chairs by the library table. “I didn’t know you’d married.”
“Have you lived in a hermitage?”
“No, but I’ve never been interested in gossip. It’s late to offer commiserations, but I do.”
“I doubt you can truly share my misery. There would be no purpose to my marrying other than to fill a nursery, as they put it—as you command your brother to do—and I will not do that.”
Things began to fall into place. “That’s why you sold your house. It happened there.” She didn’t wait for a response. “That’s why you don’t want your sister to marry.”
“She probably will in time, but I won’t encourage her to it.”
“You’d forbid all childbearing if you could?” He didn’t answer, probably because he had no answer, butyes, he probably would if he could. It was all too tangled for Ariana to cope with at the moment, but she remembered Norris.
“My brother has fallen in love with your sister.”
“Then he’ll have to wait.”
Ariana wanted to argue the urgency, but now that seemed a minor matter.
“I’ve finally silenced you,” he said with wry humor. “Truly, I didn’t know that you didn’t know. That might have made me rough with you at times.”
But Ariana was thinking about those times. “That first night, in this room, you made an approach to me.”
“One of the perils of drink. I never said my willpower was perfect.”
“The more reason not to drink.”
“Which I remember, most of the time. We should consider plans—”
