They paused at the midpoint of the causeway to watch a couple of swans glide gracefully, leaving V-shaped ripples behind them, across one of the ponds.
“How do they move like that without making any apparent effort?” she mused aloud.
“All the effort goes on beneath the surface of the water,” he replied, “leaving the impression above of effortless grace.”
They had been virtually silent since leaving the curricle. So much for her promise to interrogate him. Or to interview him, to use his own word. As though she were seriously considering his . . . his what? He had not actually asked her to marry him, had he? Rather, he had told her he was going to. What an insufferable man. What on earth was she doing walking with him like this and gazing at the lake and talking about swans? Avery would have made short work of him long ago if he had heard any part of what Mr. Thorne had said to her.
She did not need Avery’s intervention.
Oh, she was feeling thoroughly out of sorts.
There were not many other people in the park. At the moment there was no one at all in sight, though several times she had heard the sound of distant laughter. It was hard to know exactly from which direction it came.
She wished he was not standing quite so close. Yet when she half turned her head in his direction as though to caution him to keep his distance, she could see that there was at least a foot and a half of space between them. And a sudden thought popped into her mind, as though from nowhere.
Was this how Abby had felt when she met Gil? Or how Cousin Elizabeth had felt when she met Colin, even though she was nine years older than he? Was this—oh goodness—was this how Aunt Matilda had felt when she met Viscount Dirkson, or, rather, when she met him again?
Jessica recalled a day spent at Kew Gardens two years ago with a party of other young people, chaperoned, oddly enough, by Aunt Matilda and Viscount Dirkson. Two of the younger gentlemen had been Jessica’s cousins, but two had not. One of those had been Mr. Adrian Sawyer, the viscount’s son. He was a good-looking young man. She had liked him then and still did. But there had been nothing between them except mutual amiability on that occasion and since then.
Had it been different for Aunt Matilda on that day? She and Viscount Dirkson, Jessica remembered, had stayed at the top of the pagoda for a while after the rest of them had clattered down the winding stairs and gone off to see one of the temple follies. Jessica had not thought much of it at the time, but not long after Aunt Matilda had shocked the family to its core by announcing that she was going to marry Viscount Dirkson.
Was this how she had felt at Kew? This . . . this awareness?
Abby had not liked Gil when she first met him. Jessica could remember that. Yet soon after . . .
Enough.
“What were you doing in America, Mr. Thorne?” she asked.
“Getting rich,” he said.
Money. Always money with him. He behaved like a cit even if he was not one. He continued unprompted.
“Partly through sheer chance and largely through hard work,” he said. “A kinsman of mine owned a prosperous import-and-export business. He employed me as a lowly clerk until I proved that I was worthy of greater responsibility. He was a widower without children of his own. When he died at far too young an age in an accident, he left everything to me. In the years after his death I managed to grow the business and become even wealthier.”
“What happened to the business when you returned to England?” she asked.
“My right-hand man was also a trusted friend,” he told her. “I offered him a partnership and left him in charge. I feel confident that everything will continue to prosper under his management.”
She had not been entirely wrong in her first impression of him, then. He was a businessman. A prosperous one, apparently. He was also a British gentleman.
“Why did you go to America?” she asked.
“For adventure?” he said. But he phrased his answer as a question, suggesting that that had not been his real reason.
She turned to glance at him and had to prevent herself from taking a step backward when she saw that he was looking very directly at her. She always found his eyes disconcerting. They were dark and intense and did not waver when she looked back into them. They were blue at their heart, she saw, but a deep navy blue on their outer edges.
“Why did you go?” she asked again, frowning.
“Let us say I had a falling-out with my family,” he said. “It is a common enough reason to send a young man scurrying off to seek adventure and fortune. I was nineteen.”
Her mind inevitably did the calculation. He had been away for thirteen years. He was thirty-two, then. Seven years older than she.
“And you did indeed find fortune,” she said. “Where? America is a rather large place.”
“Boston,” he said.
“Why did you come back?” she asked. “If you had a prosperous business, why did you not stay to run it yourself? After thirteen years, America must have seemed almost as much like home as England. You more or less said as much two evenings ago.”
“You are quite right,” he said. “I was happy there.”
“Then why return to England?” she asked again. This must not be just a brief visit. He wanted to marry her. He would hardly do so merely to take her back to America with him. There must be plenty of single young ladies there. And his American acquaintances were unlikely to be impressed by the daughter of a duke. Why should they?
“An inheritance brought me back,” he said, and his expression grew strangely hard. “And a family situation that necessitated my being here in person.”
“An inheritance,” she said. “In the form of property? And fortune?”
“Both,” he said curtly. “I am doubly wealthy, Lady Jessica. One might say I am the most fortunate of men.”
“A family situation?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes.”
In the distance, perhaps a little closer than before, there was a sudden burst of laughter. He was not going to explain, Jessica realized after a few moments of silence. He looked beyond her along the causeway.
“Shall we continue?” he suggested, and she turned to walk onward.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I began my questions in the wrong place, Mr. Thorne. You were nineteen when you ran off to America as the result of some falling-out with your family. What was your life before that? Tell me about yourself. And tell me why the heir to property and fortune would run away and stay away. Was it your father who died recently?”
“My uncle,” he said.
They had left the lakes behind before either of them spoke again. He had answered only the last of her questions. She should know better than to ask more than one and expect to have them all answered.
Lawns of high-scythed grass rippled in the breeze to either side of them. An impression of slightly tamed wildness had been aimed at, and it had succeeded. There was another, smaller lake ahead to the left and a line of trees beyond the lawn on the right that hid the Queen’s Ride from view. It was an idyllic place in which to stroll. With anyone else she might have found her surroundings wonderfully relaxing. But there was still a mystery surrounding this man, and she needed to have it explained. Good heavens, he wanted to marry her.
“Start at the beginning,” she said. “Tell me about your first nineteen years, Mr. Thorne.”
“I lived with my father until I was nine years old,” he told her. “My mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter when I was two. I have no conscious memories of her. My father was always inclined to be sickly. He was a clergyman, devoted to his books and his parishioners. And to me. He was far less devoted to his health. There was very little money, but I was unaware of being poor. I was never hungry and I was always adequately clothed. I had a happy enough early boyhood. He taught me all a boy should learn at a young age and gave me a lasting love of books. He died after neglecting a chill he had taken from visiting an ailing parishioner in a distant cottage during a rainstorm. After, I was taken to live with his elder brother, an uncle I had never met before he turned up for the funeral. I lived with him for the next ten years.”
“Just him?” she asked.
“And my aunt too,” he said. “All four of their children were considerably older than I. One of their daughters was already married and living some distance away. The other two married soon after I went there and also moved away. Then it was just my uncle and aunt and their son. And my aunt’s sister.”
“You had some companionship, then,” she said. “Were you close to your cousin, your uncle’s son?”
“No,” he said. “He was ten years older than I.”
“Was,” she said. “What happened to him? I assume this is the uncle who has recently died and left you property and fortune. Your cousin must have predeceased him, then?”
“By one day,” he said. “There was an outbreak of typhus. My aunt died too.”
“Oh,” she said. “I am so terribly sorry. You really had no expectation of inheriting, then, did you? But if your cousin was ten years older than you, he must have been in his forties when he died recently.”
“He had no sons,” he said.
This was the family situation that had forced him to come home, then? But he did not offer further explanation, and she did not ask. He was not wearing mourning. But despite the family falling-out that had sent him running off to America, he must surely be feeling some pain at such a sweeping loss. She had intruded enough upon his privacy, however. It was not, after all, as though she intended to marry him.