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His smile was her reward. “I was hoping to find you out here, too.”

If she relaxed a mite then, it was a mistake, for he said, “I have reflected since we parted yesternight, and I have several questions.”

The prospect of an interrogation made her wary. Questions were different from the patient listening he had provided last night. But what could she do but submit? Well, she could leave. But she wouldn’t. “All right. I may not have several answers for you, but go ahead.”

“One: Why was ruination your first plan when you were in search of a means of rebuffing Mr. Hill?”

Goodness, he was getting right into it.

“And, two, a related question: If you truly believed that the man was not going to take no for an answer, that you needed to make yourself ineligible by deeds and not mere words, would the obvious solution not to have been to marry someone else? Someone less … distasteful?”

“Allow me to answer both questions with one of my own: Where, pray tell, would I have found someone else to marry?” Diantha didn’t wait for a response, for it was a rhetorical question. “But even if I could have, I wouldn’t have. My sister chose marriage as an escape from a dire situation, and I observed, in close quarters, the consequences of that choice.”

He simply said, “Yes.”

So even though he was interrogating her this evening, he was still deploying his brand of intent, patient listening. Making room for her to speak. Conveying that he was genuinely interested in what she had to say.

She cast her mind back to those early years in Mr. Hill’s house. “I will add that even if things had been different, if my sister had been happily married, I still would have accepted the offer from Lady Harcourt. I wouldn’t have wanted to feel like a third wheel.” She huffed a mirthless laugh. “If I am going to be an outsider, I prefer to be paid for such.

“Mind you, my sister would not have seen the situation the same way I did. She would not have wanted me to leave, had the circumstances been less fraught. As it stood, she encouraged me to.”

“You speak as if you and your sister are close. Were close. My apologies.”

“No apology is needed. I like thinking of my sister in the present tense. I used to talk to her. After she was gone, I mean.”

“But you don’t anymore?”

“No. I did talk to her grave that time I went on holiday to Barbury. But talking to her in the course of daily life started to seem rather too foolish. But I do sometimes feel as though she is with me. Which is also foolish.”

“Not foolish, I think. Human.”

She paused before asking the question she wanted to ask. But why? They were sitting in the dark, sharing secrets, for the second night in a row—at least she was properly clothed this time. “Do you feel that way about your brothers?” She did not have a grasp on the nature of his relationship with his brothers. His mother clearly favored them, but did he hold them responsible for that?

It did occur to her that there was no reason she ought to have a grasp on his relationship with his brothers. It occurred to her to wonder why she cared.

He didn’t answer for a long time, and she would have thought she’d overstepped, but again, if whispering outside by a fire with no one else nearby wasn’t already overstepping, what was?

“The truth of it, Miss Brown,” he finally said, “is that I wish my brothers were alive not because I miss them, though I do, in an abstract sort of way, but because if they were, I wouldn’t be earl.”

“You don’t want to be earl.” It was a surprising notion, yet not.

“I don’t want to be earl.” Then, like a comet through the dark—not that there were any comets here—a peal of laughter. True mirthful laughter, not the bitter huff one might expect to be associated with such an assertion.

“I’ve never said that aloud, Miss Brown. I’ve hardly even allowed myself to think it. But yes, all things considered, I’d rather not be the earl of anything, much less my father’s estate.”

“Is there any consolation in the notion that were you not earl, you wouldn’t have a seat in Lords? You are very devoted to that work.”

“I am. But a sense of devotion to one’s work need not arise from enjoyment, as I think we established last night.”

“Indeed.”

“Although I don’t know that the alternative, a life in the Church, would have been terribly different. You have been questioning me, these recent days, and on the evening of … the obelisk, about my arrested career path. Whatever I do or do not think, or believe, about God, that life would also have been built on a foundation of duty.”

“The idea doesn’t appeal?”

“To be honest, and this is another thing I’ve never said aloud, no, a life in the Church did not particularly appeal, in and of itself.”

“Then why were you going to do it?”