The dog had nodded off to sleep and was snoring slightly. It looked like a large white pompon on her slipper. Some chaperon.
“It is by no means inevitable,” he told her. If he were to press matters now and they ended up in bed together, they might be forever sorry. They would be, surely. They would find it impossible to face each other tomorrow and forever after. They were just not ready, if they ever would be. “I can drink my tea and go on my way, and we can forget the whole thing.”
She attempted to raise her cup from the saucer, but her hand was shaking. She set it back and put both cup and saucer on the table beside the tray.
Harry drew a slow breath. “We do not even know each other, do we?” he said. “Though we have been acquainted for several years. I suppose you know some basic facts about me. And I know that you were the wife of the Reverend Isaiah Tavernor and are now his widow. I have heard that you are the daughter of a gentleman of some substance. That is all I know, though. Perhaps before we make any decision neither of us seems quite ready to make we ought to learn more about each other and find out if we can be in any way comfortable together. If we can like each other at the very least. Tell me about yourself. Or is that too broad a request? Tell me who you were before your marriage.”
She sat back against one of the bright cushions and spread her hands in her lap again. They were bare except for the narrow gold band of her wedding ring. Her fingernails were short and neatly kept.
“I was Lydia Winterbourne,” she said. “My father is indeed a gentleman of property and fortune. He likes people to know that his grandfather was a viscount. I have three brothers, two older than I, one younger. The eldest was married two years ago. I have met my sister-in-law only once, at their wedding. Isaiah took me. My mother died when I was eight. She never fully recovered from giving birth to my youngest brother. My father has never remarried.”
“It must have been hard,” he said, “growing up as the only female in a house full of men. Or was it not hard at all? Were you the much adored treasure in their midst?”
She thought about it. “Both,” she said. “I was loved, even adored, to use your word, and sheltered from all harm. From the wicked world of men, that is. My father and James and William, my elder brothers, were all united in agreeing that it was very wicked indeed. I loved them dearly in return—I still do—and appreciated both their undoubted affection and their determination to keep me from all harm. Sometimes, though, especially as I grew older, I found it all more than a bit irksome and longed to break free.”
Hence the fact that she coveted her freedom now?
“You did not think of returning to your father’s home after your husband’s passing, then?” he asked her.
“Oh, they wanted me to go,” she told him. “All of them. My father and James came here for the funeral, as did Isaiah’s brother, and then accompanied me to his burial. Perhaps you remember?”
“I was away from home at the time, I regret to say,” he told her. “I was visiting my grandmother and her sister, my great-aunt, who lives with her. She—my great-aunt, that is—was ailing at the time and my grandmother was very much afraid she would not recover. I stayed until she rallied and began to get better.”
“They fussed and blustered and bullied, all three of them,” she said. “Though the word bullied is a bit unfair, for they had my best interests at heart, or what they thought were my best interests. I could not go back to my father’s house, though. I simply could not. And though my brother-in-law has always been kind, both he and his wife are nevertheless virtual strangers to me. It was good of them to offer me a home, but there was never any question of my accepting.”
“You do not like being looked after?” he asked her.
She gave the question some thought, and it seemed to Harry that perhaps this was characteristic of her, not to chatter on about anything and everything but first to consider what she wished to say. Though she had spoken without due consideration just over a week ago, had she not?
“I do,” she said. “Of course I do. Who does not like being cared for? But only if it is a reciprocal thing. Only if I can care for you as much as you care for me.” She darted him a pained glance. “I ought to have used the pronoun one instead of you and me. I was not speaking specifically—”
“I understood your meaning.” He reached out and covered one of her hands with his. His awareness of her became instantly more physical. It was a warm, soft, very feminine hand. “And I know how you feel. I can recall the time when I was brought home from the convalescent home in Paris—by my brother-in-law, my cousin, and my best friend, a fellow officer—still as weak as a newborn kitten and wholly unable to look after myself. My family descended upon me en masse and proceeded to fuss. You would not remember. It happened a short while before you came here with your husband. I appreciated their concern and also resented it—not, as I thought at the time, because I wanted to be left alone, but because they made me feel even more helpless than I already was. There was nothing I could do for them, you see.”
“You must have been very badly wounded at the Battle of Waterloo,” she said, “if you were still almost incapacitated two years later.”
“I was,” he said curtly. “There were times when I almost wished I had been killed outright, but those times were rare. Life is always precious. And my mother and sisters, my grandmothers too, would have been devastated by grief if they had lost me.”
“You were not intended for a military life, were you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I was brought up to be the Earl of Riverdale after my father. When I lost the title and all that went with it, I reacted with all the maturity of a bitterly disappointed twenty-year-old and got myself very drunk. I went and took the king’s shilling from a recruiting sergeant and prepared to go to war as a private soldier. I was furiously annoyed when my guardian, now my brother-in-law, found me, persuaded the sergeant to take the shilling back—not an easy thing to do—and purchased a commission for me instead. When I did go off to war, it was as an infantry officer.”
“Was it dreadful?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
“You do not like to talk about it,” she said.
His hand was still on top of hers in her lap. She was as aware of it as he was, he knew. Her own hand was very still and a bit stiff. He curled his fingers around it into her palm. He continued to look into her face but did not answer what had not really been a question.
“How did you come to marry your husband?” he asked. “Was he a clergyman at your church?”
“He was a curate at the time, though not at our church,” she said. “But he was intended for far greater things. He had been groomed from birth for an ecclesiastical career and he gave himself to the life wholeheartedly. He was dedicated and ambitious. He was also full of genuine zeal and faith and energy. And terribly handsome. He was at university with my brother James. They remained friends afterward, and he came on a visit when I was twenty. I am not sure if he was brought there as a potential suitor for me. There had been a few others over the previous two or three years, all carefully selected. My father was a bit dubious about the lowliness of Isaiah’s position at the time, but of course he was the son of an earl and actually the brother and heir of the current one, and it was clear he was destined eventually for a position in the upper echelons of the church hierarchy. It did not matter to me anyway. I fell headlong in love with him. We were married two months after we met.”