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“I’m learning,” he said. “I have a great deal to learn.”

“What do you mean?” They were approaching a large hedge, from within which emerged the sounds of an orchestra tuning its instruments.

“Handel is inside,” Rees said, steering Helene toward an arch cut in the shrubbery, “likely shuddering at the sounds around him. I’m afraid that the Vauxhall Orchestra is not going to achieve fame any time soon.”

“But what did you mean by learning?” Helene persisted. “Are you thinking in a musical sense?”

“No,” he said. And showed no inclination to continue.

Helene let him seat her on a marble bench before the statue, and then said, “Honest to goodness, Rees, you must be the most frustrating conversationalist alive! What on earth did you mean by that comment?”

“Something Tom said to me.”

Rees sprawled out next to her on the bench, muscled thighs clearly outlined by snug pantaloons, his arms carelessly flung on the back of the bench. Helene quickly looked away from his legs. The very sight of them—and the memory of him standing over her in the pasture, quite unclothed—made her feel hot and prickly.

“Yes?” she said encouragingly. Unfortunately, her gaze had alit on his hands, and that made her think of the way his fingers curved around her breast, and the way he bent his head to the same place, kissing her almost—almost reverently. She shifted uneasily in her seat. It was mortifying to be looking forward to Rees’s daily bedding. That couldn’t be the case. She must be delusional.

“Well?” she snapped, suddenly irritated. “Either you’re learning or you’re not. Out with it!”

He turned to her, distinctly amused. The dimples in his cheeks had deepened and there was laughter in his eyes. Other people might have called his face expressionless, but she—

Helene took a deep breath. “Rees?” she said between clenched teeth.

“My father handily arranged his sons into two categories,” he said, dropping his head back so that he could look up into the wilderness of black tree limbs curling into the night sky above them. “I was the sinner, and Tom the saint.”

“Well, that seems fairly acute of him,” Helene said a bit snappishly.

“Yes, but I begin to think I am less of a reprobate than he believed,” Rees said. “I find it rather tedious, to tell the truth, Helene.”

“Sinning?” she asked, disbelieving.

“Yes, sinning. And I begin to think that Tom is finding the saintly life just as tedious,” Rees continued.

“Well, I certainly don’t see any sign of your finding your life tedious!” Helene said, and then wished she could take the words back. He was watching her, so she carefully examined Handel’s booted, marble toes.

“I don’t find it tedious when I’m with you,” he said suddenly.

Helene had to suppress a smile. “We hardly engage in sinning,” she pointed out.

“That’s just it,” he said, and his hand began tangling in the little wisps of hair at the back of her neck.

Helene looked straight ahead, unable to turn her neck and see his expression.

He stood up, and his tone was utterly normal, as if he hadn’t said something that turned her world upside down. “Shall we take a promenade?”

Helene rose and took his arm. They walked for a time in silence until he said, “I didn’t mean to bring our conversation to a standstill with a disconcerting revelation. Lord knows, my father was probably right.” There was something tired in his voice that made her stumble into speech.

“Do you think that—that you might, that some of your actions during our marriage might have been due…” her voice trailed off.

“No question,” he replied. “I eloped with you rather than get married in a proper fashion, in order to irritate my father although I’ve only recently come to understand this. And Helene, sometimes I think your exit in a coach and the Russian dancers who then graced the dining room table were directed to the same man.”

Helene bit her lip. “We were not happy together, and that had little to do with your father.”

“I was a bastard about it, though,” he said. “I had no idea how to talk without being insulting. No one in my family simply talked. We still don’t.”

There was something in his crooked smile that made her heart ache, so she tried to think of a light, clever thing to say. And came up empty. “Shall we turn here?” she finally asked, in desperation.

The walk into which they turned seemed much dimmer than the one they had traversed; the gaslights strung in the trees were few and far between now, and shadows stretched like sleeping beasts across the path.