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“Shall we stroll?”
The question was rhetorical, but she nodded anyway. The night air was a relief from the hot ballroom. The chatter of the guests faded as they crossed to wide steps leading into a gravel path. Tiny lanterns hung from the branches of fruit trees in the garden, and they sparkled like fireflies in the autumn dusk.
Emeline shivered.
His hand tightened on hers. “If you’re cold, we can go back in.”
“No, I’m fine.” She glanced at his shadowed profile. “Are you?”
He gave a soft snort. “More or less. You must think me an idiot.”
“No.”
They were silent then, their steps crunching on the gravel. Emeline had thought he might try to lead her off the path into the dark, but he kept to the proper, lighted ways.
“Do you miss Daniel?” he asked, and for a moment she misunderstood him, thinking he meant her dead husband.
Then comprehension flooded her. “Yes. I keep worrying that he might be having nightmares. They sometimes trouble him, as they did his father.”
She felt him glance at her. “What was his father like?”
Emeline looked down blindly at the dark path. “He was young. Very young.” She glanced at him quickly. “You must think that a silly thing to say, but it’s true. I didn’t realize it at the time because I was young, too. He was only a boy when we married.”
“But you loved him,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Desperately.” It was almost a relief to admit it, how terribly she’d been in love with Danny. How prostrate with grief she’d been at his death.
“Did he love you?”
“Oh, yes.” She didn’t even have to think about it. Danny’s love had been easy and natural, a thing she’d taken for granted. “He said he fell in love with me at first sight. It was at a ball, like this one, and Tante Cristelle introduced us. She knew Danny’s mother.”
He nodded, not speaking.
“And he sent me flowers and took me for drives and did everything that was expected. I think our families were almost surprised when we announced the engagement. They’d forgotten that we weren’t already engaged.” Those days were golden but a little blurry now. Had she ever been that young?
“He was a good husband?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “He drank and gambled sometimes, but all men do. And he used to give me presents, pay me the loveliest compliments.”
“The marriage sounds ideal.” His voice was even.
“It was.” Was he jealous?
He stopped and faced her, and she saw it wasn’t jealousy in his eyes at all. “Then why, after an ideal, loving first marriage, do you want a loveless second one?”
She gasped, feeling as if he’d hit her. She raised her own hand, almost without realizing it, either in defense or to strike him back, but he caught her fist and pulled it aside, leaving her unshielded.
“Why, Emeline?”
“That’s none of your business.” Her voice shook no matter how hard she fought to control it.
“I think it is, my lady.”
“Someone will come,” she hissed. The path was deserted, save for themselves, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Let me go.”
“You lied to me.” He ignored her plea, pushing his face with his analytical eyes toward her. “You did love him.”
“Yes! I loved him and he died and left me.” Her breath caught on the traitorous words. “He left me all alone.”
