“What... what utter rot,” she muttered.
He sat quietly. He studied her profile, turned stubbornly away from him.
What did he feel? A thousand things, pelting him lightly like leaves in a storm. He had not expected this at all, and the knot in his stomach told him he hadn’t any idea what to do about it.
“Let me guess,” he mused. “Since you fell into the pond, and then he tried to fish you out, and then he fell in, and you kicked—”
“Forever,” she said bluntly. “Or, more specifically, two years.”
He took this in.
Blew out a breath.
“Something’s unclear to me. Why thedevilare we in the mess we’re in?”
She hiked her chin a little. Took a breath, and then another, and released it in a sigh. “Well you see, the trouble is... and I’m certain this will come as agreatshock to you... it seems he is not in love with me.”
He frowned, faintly recalling the man’s white face, the way his smile had frozen into somethinglike a rictus at the word “fiancé,” his luminous pleasure at the very sight of Lillias, though this seemed a reasonable reaction to how she looked in that rose-colored dress tonight. She was a gift to the sense of sight.
“How did you come to that conclusion? Did he outright tell you that?”
This seemed stunningly unlikely based on what he’d just witnessed. But men were often stupider than they appeared.
She sighed. The squared shoulders slumped again.
“A few months ago, at another picnic at Heatherfield... he said his parents felt it was time to get married now that Lady Harriette was of age. Apparently it’s a long, happy family tradition for the Bankhams and Dervalls to marry, when possible. And apparently it was decided practically from birth. It was absolutely the first I’d heard of it, and our families have been friends for nearly a lifetime.”
“And he said this with no apparent sign of... er... inner torment?” Hugh felt ridiculous saying it aloud. He was struggling altogether with the scenario now unfolding.
“He said it...” She cleared her throat. “It was as though he were commenting on the weather. Perhaps he saw it as part of the natural sequence of life events, like coming into his majority. In that case, why would he mention it? He might as well mention that he was breathing. He said I would meet Harriette at the Landover Ball.”
How she must havesufferedin anticipation of this ball. Hugh thought again of her stillness inthe parlor, the absorption, her restless distraction. Her grief over the destruction of all her drawings of Heatherfield.
She’d been wretched. He’d half sensed it. And yet.
And despite himself, his gut went cold. He was sardonically amused at himself that the notion of the woman he was engaged to marry suffering over the man she loved should arouse any kind of sympathy or a sense of protectiveness. But there it was.
He looked at her, currently refusing to look at him, at her long throat and the elegant straight nose and the stubborn chin aloft and those soft, soft lips and thought it inconceivable that a man could look at her and not be assailed by something powerful, whether it was emotional or physical.
“I willneverunderstand the aristocracy,” he said, almost to himself. “What did you say to him at the time?”
“There wasn’t an opportunity to say anything at all. What do you imagine I would have said or done? Thrown myself upon his feet? If he’s known me his entire life and a proposal hadn’t entered his head, what’s to be done?”
He was struggling to absorb this. “It must have been a terrible shock for you,” he said almost gently. He was absorbing something of a terrible shock of his own.
She didn’t reply. He could hear her breathing. Hard breaths, as if through pain.
“Does anyone else know? Your family?”
“You’re the first I’ve told. I don’t think it crossed their minds, either. I just . . . and this might sound ridiculous . . . I should hate for them to suffer onmy behalf. And then there’s the pesky thing called pride.”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” he said carefully, after a moment. “And I, believe it or not, understand what you mean.”
She turned her head then to look at him as if she’d detected an echo of something in his words. A hint of something she could not decipher.
“You’re careful of your own,” she said. “Ofallof your feelings.”
He made a little sound. She did rather see him clearly, and had from the very first. He didn’t know why this observation should surprise him. Nor did he know why he didn’t mind it.
