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‘Your brother was unhappy the first time I met him.’ She picked up another piece of toast and stared at it. ‘He only seemed to get worse every time since, but I didn’t understand why. I was upset when I heard what had happened to him, but I never thought...’ She swallowed, as if she were struggling to go on. ‘It was only when Mr Rowlinson told me about our fathers’ agreement that I realised his death hadn’t been an accident, that he’d drowned himself because of it. It was my fault in that regard.’
‘No.’ He held himself very still. She looked so anguished that he felt a powerful impulse to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. To seek comfort from her, too, he realised with a jolt, as if she might somehow alleviate his own guilt as well. What the hell?
She looked directly at him, fixing him with a defiant, overbright stare. ‘You said he knew about their agreement at the ball. That means he knew the whole time.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘So he didn’t want to marry me, did he?’
‘No.’ There was no point in lying when she already knew the truth. ‘But it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know about any of it.’
‘I wish that he’d told me. If I’d known then, perhaps we could have stood up to our fathers together.’
‘I doubt it would have made any difference. Neither of them ever listened to what any of us actually wanted.’
‘No.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I suppose not.’
‘It wasn’t personal, Miss Harper.’
‘It felt personal.’
‘He was in love with somebody else.’
‘The whole time?’ She sounded appalled. ‘But that’s awful.’
‘Even more so when you consider the woman.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Lydia Webster. Arthur mentioned her to me at the ball, but I thought it was just a passing infatuation. I should have known him better than that. Just over a year and a half ago he wrote to me, saying that they were in love but that our father refused to permit the marriage. A few months later, he wrote again, begging me to come home. A few weeks after that he went sailing. I’ve no idea what happened between him and Miss Webster, but after I came home, I took it upon myself to seek her out. Foolishly I thought she might have been upset by events.’
‘Wasn’t she?’
‘We had tea and didn’t mention his name once. She told me about her recent marriage to a lawyer from Scarborough. She got married one month after Arthur drowned. I think we can conclude she wasn’t heartbroken.’
‘But you think that was why he was depressed, because he couldn’t marry her himself? And that was why he...’
‘Drowned himself?’ He forced himself to utter the w
ords. ‘Part of the reason, yes. I prefer your method of running away, Miss Harper.’
‘He must have been desperate.’
‘Yes.’
He regarded her sombrely across the table. Arthur had been desperate, that much should have been obvious from his letter, but then so had she been—so desperate that she’d preferred to run away and be penniless rather than marry him. The realisation made him uncomfortable. He’d been so obsessed with the idea of punishing her and rebuilding the estate that he hadn’t stopped to consider her feelings, nor the possibility that she might feel guilty about Arthur’s death, too.
He started to reach a hand across the table and then pulled it back again. She wouldn’t want comfort from a man like him, only practical reassurance.
‘I promise you, Miss Harper, none of it was your fault. You and Arthur were the only innocent parties in this whole damned business.’
‘Last night you said I was indebted to you.’
‘Last night I was drunk. And wrong. There’s no debt and there’s been enough suffering because of this blasted agreement.’
Her eyes locked with his. ‘You mean you think that it’s wrong?’
‘I think it was a terrible thing to do. Even if it does work in my favour.’
She tipped her head to one side, as if she were trying to understand something. ‘But don’t you feel trapped as well? Isn’t there someone else that you’d prefer to marry?’
‘No.’ He bit back a smile. ‘I’m not exactly the marrying kind.’
