But it was also a moment of solitudein her presence—a rare, precious encounter he was reluctant to quit just yet. While in the United States, he’d always wondered what it would have been like to have just one day more with her.
That day was here. Now.
So he removed his glove and pushed the gate open.
Startled, she jumped to her feet at the noise.
“I am sorry for interrupting,” he said.
She quickly reestablished her composure. “You’re not.”
“Mrs.Hargrave said she saw someone past the garden, and I’m only making sure all is well.”
“I should have let someone know I was coming out here.” She motioned to a grave marker, a fresh gray one next to one that was much more weathered. “I’d not yet seen my father’s gravestone. I was paying a visit.”
He stepped closer to read the inscription. “When did he die?”
“About two and a half years ago.”
He caught the tinge of sadness reflected in her voice, and he stooped to lift a small stick that had fallen near the stone and tossed it toward the moor. “I know you respected him.”
“I did. Although I know he and your family did not exactly see eye to eye.”
Anthony nodded in agreement. “No, they did not.”
They stood in silence, as if to allow the restorative moorland winds to brush away the tension that circumstances had constructed and to serve as a balm to heal the wounds time could not.
She broke the silence and looked toward him. “It is such a shame that your uncle and my father were so against one another.”
He sobered. Who knows what could have happened if they’d never fought over land boundaries? If they’d ever come to some sort of understanding, he and Charlotte might have had a different story. “I fear saying they were merely ‘against one another’ might be an understatement. It’s hard to say which one was more stubborn.”
Reticence again descended, and the wind, with its persistence and patience, urged them to continue, as if the moor itself were eager for their reconciliation—to restore a union so natural it felt like part of nature itself.
“Do you ever miss it here?” she asked suddenly.
He shifted his gaze out to the grassy expanse. “I do think of it from time to time. The mill and the land were left to me after Uncle Robert’s death, and I do intend to return to it one day, but...”
His voice faded away as he found it difficult to succinctly explain his opinions on the matter.
“It’s uncanny, isn’t it,” she mused, “how we both made a decision that took us away from this place, but it never really let go of us? It’s pulling us back to it.”
Us.
Such a small word, but a powerful one.
He’d just told her in the parlor that he would not bring up the day they had parted. And he wouldn’t. But he’d not promised not to make inquiries about her and her past. “May I ask you something?”
She arched her delicate brows and hesitated, as if preparing to decline, but then softened.
“How did you come to beMrs.Roland Prior?”
Her topaz eyes grew wide, almost indignant.
It was likely a topic she did not wish to discuss. It was a private matter, and the day he left he’d given up his right to know such things. But he would never know if he did not inquire after it. And he desperately wanted to know.
At first he thought she’d refuse to answer, but then she spoke. “Actually it was quite a simple arrangement. My father’s health was failing, and he was desperate to see all aspects of his life settled. At the time he’d been in talks with the Prior Mill about working together to cut costs by selling all the wool for our tenants together. Roland was often a guest at Hollythorne House, and he took an interest in me. He and my father worked out an agreement, and we were married shortly after that.”
“It was a marriage of convenience then?” he asked with a strange hope that she would affirm it.
