Page 64 of The Language of Love

“Five.”

“And you came half-way around the world—alone?”

He nodded, his expression closed and distant. “Are your parents still alive?”

“No, my father died ten years ago and my mother seven.”

“Were you close to them?”

“I was close to my father, but not my mother. She was… different.”

“Different how?”

“Beautiful, stylish, sought after. She knew how to dress and behave in a way that drew people to her. She…” Annis stopped and shook her head.

“She what?” he urged.

“She did not like books, reading, or language. She was so different from my father that I often wonder how they ever—” Annis realized where her conversation had led her and stopped.

“Made you?”

Annis saw, out of the corner of her eye, that he was smiling. “He was so bookish, and she was so… not. I rarely saw her after my father’s death and she remarried a year later and had a new life.”

“You have half-brothers and sisters?”

“No, the man she married already had a grown family and did not want another. Neither did my mother. To be honest, I don’t think she wanted her first family.” She bit her lip. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is unkind.”

“Was it the truth?”

“Yes, but—”

“I would rather you always tell me the truth, Annis.”

Coming from him, that was an ironic request.

“Always?” she asked, giving him an arch look.

“Yes.”

“But sometimes the truth can be so… uncomfortable,” she said, staring into his eyes and hoping for something. His confidence?

His mouth twisted into a strange smile. And… was he blushing?

“Yes,” he agreed. “It can be uncomfortable.”

Well, he would know, wouldn’t he?

***

You bloody bounder. What a hypocrite you are asking her to always tell the truth when you’re living a lie.

Henry ignored the accusation.

Instead, he unstrapped the heavy picnic basket from the back of the curricle and carried it to the spot Annis had picked out.