It was not the first time during the conversation that the rector’s wife had elevated him to the status of a duke, the marquess thought irrelevantly. He was ashamed of his impulsive suggestion. She had made herself quite clear this morning. But he had been planning this visit for five years, dreaming about it, pinning all his hopes for his future happiness on it. He could not give up so easily.
“I promised to help you sort the linen, Aunt Martha,” she said hastily, still not addressing herself directly to him.
“Oh, nonsense, dear,” her aunt said, sounding as breathless and eager as Lady Katherine had sounded trapped. “That can wait for another time. Do take a walk with his lordship.”
Miss Worsley looked as if she were about to suggest sending a maid along as chaperon. He hoped she would not. But she said nothing. Perhaps she had remembered that her niece was no longer a girl.
“It is very kind of you, my lord,” was all she said.
“I shall fetch a cloak.” Lady Katherine got to her feet abruptly and hurried from the room.
“Dear Kate does not have many chances to walk out,” Miss Martha Worsley said.
“And such a lovely young lady,” Mrs. Morris added.
And then she was back again, wearing the same cloak she had worn during the morning, bonnetless, as she also had been earlier. And she was still not looking at him.
“I will not be long,” she told her aunts. “Good day to you, Mrs. Morris.”
She preceded him from the room and from the house.
She would not take his arm, though he offered it, and it must appear strange to her aunts if they were watching from the house that she did not.
“No,” she said. He thought she was about to add the words “thank you,” but she changed her mind and closed her mouth.
The wind whipped about them, forcing him to hold his hat on. He removed it before they had gone far. Did the wind always blow so strongly here? he wondered.
“Will you lead the way toward the Llewellyn farm?” he asked. He did not even try to tackle the Welsh “ll” sound.
“If you wish,” she said, swinging to her left, away from the sea toward a narrow track heavily hindered with wild ferns and hardly meriting the name of lane.
He could see that it led quite sharply upward, as did the road by which he had traveled the day before. The whole land swept upward toward the plateau of the peninsula. The only flatness was the wide, curved stretch of the beach, surely five miles long.
She walked with a rather long, swinging stride, he noticed. It was graceful, if not quite ladylike. He did not think she had walked thus five years ago. Then she had walked with small steps, as if she had no particular destination in mind.
He realized that she was not going to initiate any conversation with him.
“It is bleak here,” he said “Miles and miles of nothing. And hills to climb in almost any direction one cares to take. And wind. I suppose it is inevitable so close to the sea. It must be an unappealing place to live.”
“There you are wrong,” she said. “It is the most beautiful place on earth to live.”
He looked at her face in profile beside him. She sounded as if she were disagreeing with him, not simply for the sake of being disagreeable but because she meant what she said. Could anyone find this place beautiful? Ty Mawr was pleasantly situated, and there was a certain picturesque quality about the village. There was a stark beauty about the whole area, he supposed. But as a place in which to live out one’s life?
“But lonely?” he asked.
“No. Not to me.”
Her answer was delivered perhaps a little too swiftly. A lone seagull flew overhead as she spoke, causing her to look up. Its cry was mournful.
“If you are lonely,” she said, “you should go back to London. It is almost the time of the Season. You will find all the company you could want there. You will find no one to your liking here.”
“No,” he said, “not all the company I could want. And there is someone to my liking here.”
“I will have none of you,” she said. “I made myself clear on that point this morning. You are wasting your time here.”
She still had not looked at him, he noticed. She was looking straight ahead and she was walking rather fast, her cloak brushing aside the ferns, although the gradient was steep and she was breathless.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But it is mine to waste. I intend to stay for a while.”
