She hurried to brush her own provocation aside. “You will find my interests very boring and feminine. I visit drapers and feast my eyes on the fabrics I cannot wear now. I stroll through warehouses and covet silk cords and laces.”
“Why not buy them now and store them until you can use them?”
“Because the anticipation is part of the fun. There is the danger it will build to a fever, however, and when I finally remove these black ensembles, I will be so reckless in my spending on a new wardrobe that Theo will have to bail me out of debt.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
She knew then that this man had learned about the size of her inheritance. Had Theo told him? Perhaps he had only heard gossip, but that would be enough.
It entered her mind that his only reason to pursue her with that stupid proposal was her fortune. As if the Duke of Stratton needed that! Although, really, who knew if he did or did not? She had not investigated him the way he had obviously investigated her, although she intended to.
Still, a man after her fortune. How predictable. How commonplace. How disappointing.
Once they were in the park she asked her own questions, while she encouraged their stroll to leave the main path so they might not be seen together.
“Would you truly not mind if the woman you proposed to had a lover before you? You keep implying as much.” She thought it a sophisticated and arch query and waited for him to avoid the meal once she set it squarely on a plate in front of him.
“You are what, twenty-four years in age? Only a fool would require innocence of a woman of that maturity.”
“What a liberal outlook you have.”
“I like to think so. I am only being a bit strict with you because I cannot risk my heir being the son of another man. I am sure you understand.”
She looked over at him, hoping to see that little smile or anything that indicated his continued references to his proposal were now a private joke. Regrettably, he appeared most serious. She decided that objecting would only dignify the ridiculous notion, so she ignored it.
Since he had coerced her into spending this time with him, he could not object to some frank questions about his life and his family, especially if he really believed they would marry. Althea was charged with investigating this man, but every bit added to the pile would help.
“Why did you leave?” she asked while they strolled through a little copse of budding trees.
“It was time to come back.”
“I did not mean why did you leave France. Why did you leave England?”
His mood altered in a snap, as if the question opened a door to the dark humor she sensed in him. “My mother did not want to remain here after my father’s death, so I took her away and ensured she was settled in Paris.”
“She wanted to go home, you mean. That is understandable.”
“She had lived here for decades. This should have been her home, not a foreign land to escape. There were those who never welcomed her, however, or allowed her to make her place here.”
“If she is happy in France now, that is what matters, isn’t it?”
“I did not say she was happy. She did not want to return to France. She just did not want to remainhere.”
His sharp tone made her stop walking. “I am sorry if I misunderstood. I was careless in my response. Of course she could not be happy to leave her home of so many years.” She swallowed the question that begged to be asked.Why did she not want to remain here?
They stood under one of the trees, in the tangle of linear shadows its branches made.
“Do you really know so little about my life?” he asked. “Did you never hear the talk about my mother? You were out before she left. Before my father died.”
She did not have to search her memory long to remember some of the talk she had heard. Her grandmother’s voice always dripped with disdain when she mentioned Stratton’sFrenchduchess. Grandmother was one of the people who suspected the worst of everything and everyone French during the war.
Others had sniffed when the Duchess of Stratton walked by at a ball, however. Clara had always assumed they envied her beauty and sought bad gossip out of spite. In truth she had not much cared what people said, however. The old war between her family and Stratton’s had left her unsympathetic to whatever slights were visited on his mother.
“I will admit, now that you speak of it, that I do know something of what she endured,” she admitted. “If that drove her away, it was not fair.”
To her surprise he took her hand and raised it to a kiss. “That alone did not do it. However, it is good of you to see how unfair it was.”
That kiss on her hand, brief though it was, created a bridge of intimacy. She felt that kiss all the way up her arm and down her body. His gaze captured hers before he kissed her hand yet again, slowly.
