“Cross, Mr. Thorne?” she said. “Whyever would I be cross with you?”
“For apparently abandoning you,” he said. “It was not real abandonment, you know. I had every intention of coming back. I came as soon as I possibly could.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “You have overestimated your importance. Have you been gone somewhere? I had not noticed.”
“Had you not indeed?” he said. “I am crushed.”
He moved her and himself to one side of the avenue, where they would have to do less weaving past other couples and larger groups. There were trees on either side of the avenue, their branches almost meeting overhead in some places. It was even more picturesque than he had imagined. Not quite real. The pastel lamplight made the trees seem something other than what they were. It was no wonder these were called pleasure gardens.
“I needed to leave town on urgent business,” he said.
She had no answer to that. She opened her fan and waved it slowly before her face—quite unnecessarily. There was a cool breeze.
The rest of the party had got some way ahead of them, he could see. Her aunt would not worry about her, though. She was of age, unlike some of the other young ladies of the party.
He did not try to keep the conversation alive. He had been merely teasing her, anyway, with the banal remarks he had been making. She looked as haughty as she had on his first encounter with her. He was no longer deceived, however. At the moment, in fact, he guessed she was boiling inside. She was severely annoyed with him. Had she considered their kiss some sort of declaration? Had she expected him to follow up on it with a visit to her brother the next day, perhaps? Just so that she could refuse him?
Would she have refused?
“Mr. Thorne,” she said at last when they were halfway along the avenue. “Did you . . . assault your neighbor’s daughter?”
Ah. So that was what was bothering her, was it?
“Are you asking if I raped her?” he asked.
She turned her head away to gaze through the trees. He did not suppose that word was used often, if at all, in her hearing. She was probably blushing, though it was impossible to verify his suspicion in the colored lantern light.
“The answer is no,” he said.
“It was consensual, then?” she asked. “Was there a child?”
“There was a child,” he said. “A boy, now twelve years old. He is not mine. There was never any possibility that he might be.”
She thought that over for a minute.
“Her brother died?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The day he discovered his sister was with child. He died from a bullet in his back.”
Their steps had slowed but not quite stopped.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “He was my friend.”
“Friends kill friends,” she said, “when one of them does something to kill the friendship.”
“I had done nothing to kill ours,” he told her. “And I did not kill him.”
“But you ran away,” she said. “You even took another name to throw off any pursuit. You stayed away for thirteen years. Even now you have not revealed your identity to anyone but me—and perhaps to Sir Trevor and Lady Vickers?”
“To them, yes,” he said. “I ran away because I was a frightened boy of nineteen and I was about to be arrested for a murder I had not committed. My uncle urged me to go, and I went.”
“Does not an innocent man stay to clear his name?” she asked.
“In a work of fiction, perhaps,” he said, “when one can take comfort from the assurance that good will prevail and evil will be punished. In the real world innocent people hang as often as the guilty.”
“He is a complete and total liar, then?” she said. “Mr. Rochford, I mean.”
“I am prepared to give him the benefit of some doubt,” he said. “He was about ten years old at the time. He did not know the situation. He did not know me. He had never been to Brierley. It would be quite understandable for him to believe the story his mother and father took home with them.”
“Took home?” she said. “His parents were there at the time, then?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did they too urge you to run away?” she asked.
He thought about it. “Manley did,” he said. “His wife and my cousin Philip’s wife were comforting my aunt, who was in frail health to start with and had apparently collapsed with shock. They were all afraid I would be arrested and convicted. Manley and Philip did not believe my alibi would be credible.”
“They all believed you to be guilty, then,” she said.
“I did not speak with the women before I fled,” he said. “But the three men implied that they believed it.”
“Who was the father of the child?” she asked. “And who killed the mother’s brother and your friend? Do you know?”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
This was a bizarre conversation to be having in these magical, festive surroundings.
“But you are not going to say,” she said after a minute’s silence.
“No.”
Not yet, anyway.
He had noticed a few narrower avenues branching off the main one. Another of them was just ahead. He needed to give the two of them a chance to recover from this conversation. He had had other plans for tonight. Or other hopes, perhaps. He had never been as confident of success with Lady Jessica Archer as he had pretended to be. And it seemed he knew pathetically little about romancing.
“Come,” he said when they reached it, and he turned her and himself onto the path he had seen.
He was a bit surprised when she did not put up any resistance. He was even more surprised when he, finding that the path was narrower than he had expected and drawing her closer to his side, disengaged his arm from hers to set about her waist, and she made no protest and did not try to put more space between them.
There were fewer lamps strung from the trees in here. The path was not totally dark, but it was dim. The sounds of voices from the main avenue and of music from the rotunda seemed immediately more remote. An illusion, no doubt. He could smell the trees and the earth and foliage in here. He was more aware of nature and less of man-made magic.
“You are not afraid of me?” he asked her. It had occurred to him that she might be.
“Why would I be afraid of you, Mr. Thorne?” she asked, the sound of chill hauteur back in her voice.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you do not believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said. “But I do not want to talk any more about that tonight.”
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked her.
“Do you still intend to marry me?” she asked in return, putting emphasis upon the one word.
“I do,” he said.
“I think it had better be soon,” she said.
He was not sure for a moment that he had heard her correctly. But she had spoken clearly enough, and there were no sounds close enough to distract him.
“By special license?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “I think so. You have no idea how my family will fuss otherwise.”
“Over the fact of our marrying?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she said. “They will come around to that. They have clearly deemed you worthy of Estelle, after all. No, Mr. Thorne, they will fuss over the wedding—if they are given half a chance, that is. They will expect nothing less than a ceremony at St. George’s on Hanover Square with all the ton in attendance.”
He winced inwardly. “But do you not want to be fussed over?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “I want to be married. And I believe you need to be married.”
The conversation between them had taken a bizarre turn after all. Unless he was much mistaken, he had not even asked her to marry him yet. Had he? No formal application to her brother or her mother. No prepared speech. No bended knee. No single rose, presented in person this time.
No romance. Not really.
The path opened up ahead of them to reveal a miniature garden, with a semicircular flower bed on each side, each surrounded by a strip of grass, and each with a wooden seat behind the flowers. There were more lanterns here, all of them a pale pink. It was a little haven of unexpected loveliness. Even Gabriel recognized it as a romantic spot.
They stopped, though they did not step off the path to sit down.
“Why do you want to be married?” he asked her. “More specifically, why do you want to marry me?”
“You were right,” she said. “I felt left behind when Abby married Gil. When I went there for the christening of their baby just before Easter and then stayed for a more lengthy visit, I even felt a bit resentful, as though she had owed it to me to remain single and unhappy. I felt a little humiliated when I realized which way my thoughts were tending. I decided that when I came back here for the Season this year, I would marry at last.”
“You have legions of admirers,” he said. “Why not one of them? Why me?”
“I like them all,” she said. “I am even rather fond of most of them. Perhaps of all of them.”
“You do not like me?” he asked her. “You are not fond of me?”