“Oh, Kate, dear,” Aunt Martha said, “they are such lovely blue eyes. There is not even a suggestion of gray in them as there is so often in eyes that are called blue. They are as blue as the sky on a summer’s day.”
Aunt Hetty leaned across from her chair and patted Kate’s hand. “You look rather as if you had been dragged through a hedge backward, Kate,” she said. “You had better go upstairs and comb your hair. And you had better ask yourself if a man without feelings pursues a young lady who behaved so foolishly even five years after her refusal of his offer and across the full width of the country.”
“Oh, Kate,” Aunt Martha said, “I do believe he must love you. But do go and comb your hair, dear. It looks as if the birds have taken to nesting in it.”
Kate fled upstairs to comb her hair.
It soon became known for miles around that Ty Mawr had a tenant at last and that he was none other than an English marquess—a young and handsome and single gentleman. But if interest fluttered in a few female bosoms, it quickly died again. It became common knowledge almost immediately that he had an eye for Miss Kate Buchanan, niece of the Misses Worsley of Rhos. It was hardly surprising. She was young and lovely and she was after all a lady, was she not? Lady Katherine Buchanan. Her father was an English earl.
The church at Rhos was fuller than usual for morning service the Sunday after the marquess’s arrival. The rector was gratified. He had rather thought his sermon the week before had been superior. Word of it must have spread. And this morning’s sermon was even better.
The Marquess of Ashendon nodded courteously at the end of the service to the few acquaintances he had made and shook hands with the rector at the door and commended him on his sermon. Then he bowed to the Misses Worsley and their niece as they left the church and asked if he might walk Miss Buchanan home.
The congregation, spilling out of the church and gathering in small groups outside for the obligatory half hour of gossip before returning home for their Sunday dinners, nodded significantly at one another. Some of them smiled indulgently at the couple walking away from them, side by side, though she had not taken his arm.
Obviously a courtship was in the making. They made a handsome couple, Mr. Llewellyn remarked to Miss Martha Worsley.
She knew now that he was not going to go away. She had made herself clear enough to him. She had even insulted him and spoken deliberately to hurt him. But he had not gone away. And just like the last time, he had trapped her into walking with him by asking her in the company of others, when it would have seemed ill-mannered to have refused.
Why was he still pursuing her?
Aunt Martha thought he loved her. Even the less romantic Aunt Hetty thought that his coming now after five years was evidence of the constancy of his feelings. And yet she herself had accused him of having no feelings. She had always believed he had none.
And yet he had come after her and Lieutenant Hastings. And he had come all the way here. And had stayed here.
It took them only a few minutes to walk the short distance to her aunts’ cottage. They said nothing during those minutes.
“Thank you,” she said. “I am sorry to have brought you out of your way.” She turned to go inside the house, relieved to be leaving him.
“Don’t go in yet,” he said.
She looked at him in surprise. He had said nothing all the way from the church.
“I am going to invite your aunts and a few other people to dinner tomorrow evening,” he said. “You will come too?”
“No,” she said.
“Then I will settle them to something after dinner,” he said, leaning slightly toward her, “cards perhaps, if they all play, and come to fetch you.”
Her eyes widened in amazement. “But why?” she asked him. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I am not convinced,” he said, “that you will not have me.”
“How many ways are there of saying no?” she asked him. “Have I missed any?”
“When I mentioned your womanly needs,” he said, “and your need for children, there were tears in your eyes.”
“It was the wind,” she lied, mortified. She had hoped he had not noticed those tears.
“I can satisfy your needs,” he said. “You were very well satisfied that once.”
“Oh, how dare you.” She closed her eyes.
“I can give you children,” he said.
She opened her eyes again and looked at him. And she remembered something she had long forgotten and had denied to herself even at the time. She remembered that along with the knee-weakening relief at finding she was not with child by him five years ago there had been the bizarre, incomprehensible stabbing of disappointment.
“What would you have done,” he asked, almost as if he could read her mind, “if you had been with child? Would you have come back to me?”
