“It was not difficult,” she told him. “Are you going to marry Miss Haviland?”
She could have bitten out her tongue.
“She is very beautiful,” she added, digging a deeper hole for herself and hoping her cheeks did not look as hot as they felt.
“She is,” he said. “Do you think I ought to marry her?”
“Oh,” she said. “I have no business giving an opinion on the matter. I do beg your pardon for raising it.”
“Besides,” he said, “she may not say yes, you know, even if I do ask. She has given no indication that she will.”
Except to come here with her parents.
As she had come here with hers.
And he was so gorgeous it was difficult to imagine that any woman could possibly refuse him.
Owen was gorgeous too.
“Some of the events of the fete at the end of next week will happen in here,” he said, indicating the courtyard with a sweep of his arm. “The baking and needlework contests almost certainly. Possibly the fortune-teller’s booth. Other events will happen outside on the terrace or out in the poplar alley. You may have seen it from your room in the east wing. It is where the archery contest is always set up, though there is never any competition over first place. Matthew Taylor always wins that. Everyone else competes for the honor of coming second or third behind him.”
“Your mother’s husband?” she said.
“I have no idea how he does it,” he said. “He almost never misses the very center of the target. And he shoots his arrows in such quick succession that one can hardly see his arm move from the bow to the quiver over his shoulder and back again.”
“I will enjoy seeing that,” she said.
“All the other events take place in the village,” he said. “There will be booths set up around the perimeter of the green, and children’s races and maypole dancing on the green. Among other things. And the culminating event, a grand ball, will be here in the evening. My mother used to organize the whole thing when we were growing up, and everything happened here. Those duties have now been taken over by a committee, which often boasts and sometimes complains of all the work involved.”
“You must have had an idyllic childhood,” she said. “Owen has told me a bit about his. According to Lady Stephanie he spent muchof his time tormenting her, the only sibling who was younger than he.”
“He rarely succeeded,” the colonel said, grinning again. “Steph always gave as good as she got. If she felt a large spider crawling over her face while she was asleep in her bed, it was soon inOwen’sbed and waking him with a roar of fright.”
“He has admitted that he never got the better of her,” she said, laughing.
“Has he told you about our eldest brother?” he asked her. “Ben?”
“He has mentioned him,” she said. “He was your father’s son from a connection before his marriage, but he lived here with you through most of his growing years, after his mother died.”
“A by-blow,” he said. “It meant he could not inherit when my father died even though he was older than Devlin. But he was and is a much-loved member of our family. He lives with his wife and children on the coast not far from here, overlooking the sea. They will be coming next week for the fete.”
“I was almost certainly a by-blow myself,” she said. “As was almost every other child at the orphanage. We did not have the security of a loving family. Or even an identifiable family at all in most cases.”
She frowned. She had not meant to sound defensive or self-pitying.
“I have had security in abundance since I was nine, however,” she said. “Though I must admit to having felt some envy while I was looking at your family portraits earlier. It must be wonderful to know your family history reaching back centuries and generations and to see the family likeness in some of the portraits, even the ones from two or three hundred years ago.”
“I suppose it is,” he said. “I have taken it very much for granted,that feeling of having family roots that run deep. I am sorry you do not know the feeling.”
“I have all the love and security I could possibly want,” she said. “I could not ask for better parents or brothers and sisters.”
She hesitated.
“I will have to plant my own roots,” she said. “Assuming I marry and have children, that is. It is by no means assured. I have refused the only proposal of marriage I may ever receive. But I am quite happy as I am.”
He sat back in his seat, a slight smile on his lips while his eyes roamed over her face.
But oh, it was not true. There was an endless ache of emptiness where her past and her real family ought to be. And constant denial. And guilt that she should show such ingratitude to the fates, which had cared for her far more tenderly than she could possibly have deserved. First Aunt Anna had left Bath and married the Duke of Netherby. Then Mama—known to her as Miss Westcott at the time—had announced she was leaving to marry the art teacher. Winifred had almost not dared to attach her affections to anyone. Nothing lasted. No onebelongedto her. Yet the more she tried to be good and pious so she would have friends and people who loved her, the more she seemed to repel them. She could understand it now, but at the time she could not.
