“Sing for me,” he said quietly when she had finished.
“I know nothing,” she said just as quietly, her eyes on the keyboard.
“Sing for me,” he said again. “Please?”
He did not expect that she would, and he would not raise his voice so that someone else would urge her to grant his request.
She sang something he had never heard before. In a language he had never heard before. Something sweet and haunting and sad—like her eyes.
“Ah,” Mr. Jenkins said when she had finished. He had got to his feet and strolled across the room toward them. “There is nothing more designed to reduce one to tears than a Welsh folk song. Your pronunciation is improving, Miss Buchanan.”
“Thanks to your tuition, sir,” she said, smiling.
Obviously the recital was at an end. Mr. Jenkins strolled across to one of the tables to watch the game in progress, and Katherine got to her feet and folded the music on the stand. He would have to think of something else.
“The owner of Ty Mawr has some interesting collections,” he said. “Hundreds of seashells, each one apparently different from every other. And spoons. Ornamental wooden spoons.”
“Welsh love spoons,” Martha Worsley said. “I had heard of the collection, my lord, but I have never seen it.”
He had not been looking for a chaperon, but perhaps it was as well.
“Then perhaps you and Miss Buchanan would care to step into the library to see them, ma’am,” he said.
This time she could not avoid taking his arm. He offered one to each lady, and her aunt took one without hesitation. Katherine’s arm was light on his. And trembling quite noticeably. And it burned into him like a branding iron.
Lord, how he had dreamed of her touch, both waking and sleeping, for five years. He had allowed her to become an obsession with him. His life would have been more comfortable if he could have forgotten her.
They looked dutifully at the shells, Miss Martha Worsley exclaiming at their beauty.
“I have never been fond of the seaside,” he said. “I always thought a seashell was a seashell. I thought they were like peas in a pod, I suppose. These are exquisite and all quite unique.”
“Yes,” the aunt said. “I have picked up many in my years here, my lord. I have a workbox inlaid with them, and I never tire of looking at them. I do not know how anyone looking at seashells could doubt the existence of God.”
It was a statement that ought to have been funny but was not.
“And the spoons,” he said, turning to them. “They are all skillfully carved and all, like the shells, unique. You called them Welsh love spoons, ma’am?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “They are quite a tradition in Wales. Hetty and I went to see an exhibition of them in Swansea a few years ago—it was just before you came to us, Kate, dear. I believe the tradition started with young men carving plain spoons to hang about their young ladies’ necks. And then gradually the spoons grew in size and were decorated in various ways. Each type of design symbolizes something, but I cannot remember what. An expert would be able to tell you the message each of these love spoons conveys, my lord.”
But she did not spend long looking at them. She shuddered rather elaborately after a few minutes.
“I left my shawl in the drawing room,” she said, “and it is rather chilly in here. If you will forgive me, my lord, I will go back to join the others. But do not let me rush you.”
She smiled and almost hurried from the room in order to make her point. Miss Martha Worsley, he thought, was a matchmaker and was trying to secure the happiness of her niece.
“I will return too,” Katherine said, her first words since they had left the drawing room. “It is chilly in here.”
“No,” he said. “Let us not disappoint your aunt by hurrying back to the drawing room on her heels.”
She bit her lip.
“I wanted the chance to tell you how beautiful you look this evening,” he said.
She looked unhappily into his eyes.
“You were always very pretty,” he said, “when you were all frills and flounces and ringlets. You had the prettiness of a young girl. Now you have the beauty of a woman.”
“You do not need to say all this,” she said.
