“Meditate on it,” Edmund said pleasantly. “We can talk about it at a later time.”
“Goodnight, Edmund,” Harper said.
Edmund left.
Now alone with his thoughts, Harper could only wonder.Whatwas it about her that captured his attention so conveniently? He felt different towards her than he did with the other people in his life.
And it was beginning to bother him more, and more.
“It’s not love,” he told himself as he got up from his seat, “I have no capacity for such a thing.”
CHAPTER 22
“Elias Talbot has written,” Albina said, appearing in the sitting room doorway at nine o’clock with a note in her hand. “He would like to walk this morning.”
Temperance had been in the sitting room since half past eight. She had written a letter, reorganized a shelf, and looked out the window at the garden twice. She had not been to breakfast.
Where Harper was. In her mind, she told herself that she simply was not hungry. But in reality, she was avoiding him.
She took the note from her mother's hand.
“Tell him yes,” she said.
Albina looked at her for a moment. “He will be here at ten.”
“Good,” Temperance said, and went back to her letter.
Elias arrived punctually, as he always did, and they set out from the house with Albina between them, which had not been the plan but had become the arrangement when Albina appeared in the entrance hall in her walking dress and said she fancied some air.
“How are you finding London this season?” Elias asked, as they turned onto the main path. “Better or worse than last year?”
“I didn’t come last year,” Temperance said.
“Better then, by default,” he said pleasantly.
“Something like that.”
“I find it exhausting by May,” he said. “Every year I tell myself I will leave earlier and every year I am still here in June wondering how it happened.”
“Why do you stay?” Albina asked.
“Obligation mostly,” he said. “And the food at my club, which is better than anything I have in Dorset and which I am not too proud to admit influences my decisions.” He paused. “Also my sister lives here and she would never forgive me if I left before her garden party, which she has been planning since January.”
“What is she like?” Albina asked.
“Terrifying,” Elias said, with great affection. “She has opinions about everything and she shares them whether you have asked or not. We get along very well.”
“She sounds wonderful,” Albina laughed.
“She is,” he said. “Though I would never tell her so. She does not need the encouragement.”
Temperance smiled and looked at the path ahead and let her mother carry it. Albina asked him something about Dorset and Elias turned toward her with easy warmth, and they talked about his estate and a garden he had been redesigning for two years, and Temperance walked beside them and listened and thought about very little.
They seemed to have more to talk about, which Temperance did not mind in the slightest.
“You must come and see it when it is finished,” Elias said, turning to Temperance. “Both of you. The east garden especially. I think you would find it interesting.”
“When do you think it will be finished?” Albina asked.
