He clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat. He wasnotgoing to allow an uncomfortable silence to descend upon them again.
“I forgot to ask when I spoke with you earlier,” he said, “if you had spoken with Miss Bains and Miss Wood yet.”
“I have,” she said, “and, as you suspected, they were ecstatic. They can scarcely wait for tomorrow to come so that they can present themselves for interviews. They paid not the slightest attention to my warnings. They showed me, in fact, that my teachings have been altogether successful. They can think for themselves and make their own decisions. I should be ecstatic too.”
He chuckled even as Miss Hunt tittered lightly at something McLeith had said. The two of them were walking faster than he and Miss Martin.
“You will go with them to the interviews?” he asked.
“No.” She sighed. “No, Lord Attingsborough. A teacher—just like a mother—must learn when to let her charges go to make their own way in the world. I would never abandon any of my charity girls, but neither would I keep them in leading strings all their lives. Though I was prepared to do just that this morning, was I not?”
The other two had moved far enough ahead by now that he could speak without fear of being overheard.
“Didyou need rescuing just now?” he asked.
“Oh, not really,” she said. “I did not last evening either, but then there was the shock of seeing him so suddenly after so many years.”
“You parted on bad terms?” he asked.
“We parted on the best of terms.” They had stepped onto one of the paved paths through the parterre gardens and slowed their steps by unspoken consent until they stopped walking altogether. “We were betrothed. Oh, unofficially, it is true—he was eighteen and I was seventeen. But we were in love, as perhaps only the very young can be. He was going to come back for me.”
“But he never did.” He looked down at her, trying to see the romantic girl she must have been and imagining by what slow stages she had grown into the severe, disciplined woman she was today—most of the time anyway.
“No,” she said. “He never came. But that is all very ancient history. We were children. And how we can exaggerate or even distort events in memory! He remembers only that we grew up with the closeness of brother and sister, and he is quite right. We were friends and playmates for years before we imagined ourselves in love. Perhaps I have exaggerated those events and emotions in my memory. However it is, I have no reason to avoid him now.”
And yet, he thought, McLeith had ruined her life. She had never married. Though who was he to make that judgment? She had done good things with her life instead. And perhaps a marriage to McLeith would not have turned out half so well for her.
“Haveyouever been in love, Lord Attingsborough?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Once. A long time ago.”
She looked steadily at him.
“But it did not work out?” she asked. “Shedid not loveyou?”
“I believe she did,” he said. “Indeed, I know she did. But I would not marry her. I had other commitments. Finally she must have understood. She married someone else and now has three children and is—I hope—living happily ever after.”
Beautiful, sweet-natured Barbara. He no longer loved her, though he felt a residual tenderness whenever he set eyes upon her, which was often enough since they moved in much the same circles. And sometimes, even now, he thought he caught a look of wounded puzzlement in her eyes when she looked at him. He had never given her a reason for his apparently cooled ardor. He still did not know if he ought to have. But how could he have explained the advent of Lizzie in his life?
“Other commitments?” Miss Martin asked. “More important than love?”
“Nothingis more important than love,” he said. “But there are different kinds and degrees of love, and sometimes there are conflicts and one has to choose the greater love—or the greater obligation. If one is fortunate, they are one and the same.”
“And were they in your case?” she asked, frowning.
“Oh, yes,” he said.
She looked around suddenly at the gardens and the milling guests as if she had forgotten where she was.
“I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I am keeping you from tea. I really am not hungry. I believe I will go to the rose arbor. I have not seen it yet.”
It was his chance for escape. But he found he no longer wished to get away from her.
“I will come with you if I may,” he said.
“But is your place not with Miss Hunt?” she asked him.
“Should it be?” He raised his eyebrows and leaned a little closer to her.
