Her gaze went to his. His expression was carefully neutral, unthreatening.
She took off her hat, and then handed it to him, trusting him to decide.
Was it her imagination? Or did he lean in as if to see if she’d had a nip?
“No, I have not had anything to drink,” she said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.” She shifted her weight on the seat. “I mean, I don’t blame you. I was not at my best yesterday.”
“It is behind us.”
“Truly?” she challenged.
His gaze met hers, and then he answered kindly, “Truly. We are married. We have a future. That is all that matters.”
She looked down at the ring. “It is lovely. Perfect, even. Thank you.”
“I had hoped the woman I gave it to would appreciate it.”
“She does,” Leonie dared to admit, and was rewarded with one of his rare smiles.
She hadn’t realized that he did not smile often until this moment. The expression transformed him. He was a handsome man but the smile, well, it softened the hard edges... and she remembered how he had been when they were younger, before all that had happened.
“Does your mother live at—?” She paused, once again forgetting the name of his estate, of her new home.
“Bonhomie.”
She repeated the name. “Ishallremember it.”
“My hope is that you grow very attached to it, as attached as you are to London.”
They were moving out of the city. The houses were less dense; the traffic lessened.
“I’m not that attached to London,” she confessed.
“You wanted to stay here.”
“True, but only because where else can I go?” She turned to him. “Tell me about your home.”
“Ourhome.”
Leonie wasn’t quite certain he was right. To be “our” home, she would have to like it... and she wasn’t certain of him let alone a place she had never visited. Still, she dutifully said, “Our home.”
The expression in Roman’s eyes said he knew she was pacifying him, but he launched into a wonderful description of this place called Bonhomie. He spoke of its manicured lawn, the deer park, the fields he would have turned with the new plow. It had been an old abbey until the house and the lands surrounding it were gifted to Lord Rochdale during the Reformation.
“I can see you as a Roundhead,” Leonie told him.
He laughed. “Unfortunately, I can see myself that way as well. The house has seven bedrooms.”
“Your mother and your sisters live there?”
There must have been something in her voice that caught his attention.
“On the grounds, yes,” he said slowly. “And my stepfather.”
“I did not know about your family,” she explained. On one level of her consciousness, she was asking out of curiosity and because these people would soon mean something to her. On another level, she was becoming aware of an unexplained nervousness. She thought of the hour and how she hadn’t had her usual nip... but that couldn’t be a reason for a touch of anxiety? Could it? “They were not at the wedding.”
