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“Juliet,” he said, because formalities seemed ridiculous at this point.
“I’m afraid the place is very neglected,” Juliet said, sounding less calm. “I haven’t been here in years and my father would have been happy if it had fallen down.”
Ash walked over to the easel.
“You remember my mother,” she murmured, when he glanced at her. “You used to joke that she was happy to have our company.”
“I remember.” The unfinished portrait was good, and he had always thought there was
something of Juliet in the eyes and the shape of the face. “Do you ever see her? I mean, has she visited you? Once your father was dead, I wondered if she might have found the courage to return.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to,” she answered him. “No, I have not seen her since she left.”
She looked sad, and her unhappiness found an echo in him. He wondered if he could do something to bring Juliet and her mother together again, repair that relationship at least. Would she be grateful to him? Would she smile at him then like she used to?
“Would you meet with her, if it was possible?”
Juliet seemed perplexed. “Perhaps. I don’t know.” Then, taking an audible breath, as if she needed strength to say what she was about to say, “Do you ever think that perhaps they were right to send you away and marry me off? I don’t mean right, but . . . we were young, and if we had done what my mother and her Italian count did, then who knows what may have happened to us? We could have ended up in the poor house, Ash. Or playing cards for a living.”
She smiled as if the last was a joke, but Ash wasn’t deceived. He knew what she was saying to him, and it hurt. “You don’t think I could have carried it off? You think I would have abandoned you somewhere along the way, when I got bored?”
“I think you were young and under prepared for such a thing.”
He wanted to argue with her, loudly. He wanted to say that he would have done anything for her. But in his heart he felt the doubts and the questions, and he wondered if she was right. The letter from Simon, and his mother’s words, were very fresh in his mind. If he was selfish now then what was he like when he was nineteen?
“The army was a hard taskmaster,” he said instead. “I found the life difficult. My uncle thought it would be the making of me but I loathed every moment of it. I wanted to come home, and when I asked about you, I was told you had married Baron Flett.” He paused, there was more, but why should he burden her with it? In the end he shrugged and said, “I made the best of it, Juliet. I expect you did the same.”
She was watching him, seeing the emotions in his face, hearing them in his voice. He couldn’t hide them, and he didn’t want to.
She nodded slowly. “You’re honest,” she said, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. “I did wait. Even though I was married, I waited for quite some time. I would still have run off with you, if you’d come for me. But then I realized you weren’t coming.”
“Would you have run off, like your mother?” He looked astonished. “I thought that was the last thing you would have wanted once you were married! You always said how heartless she was to do such a thing, and that you would never leave like that. I just presumed—”
“Did I? Yes, I suppose I did, but it’s different when you’re in the situation yourself. Anyway, you didn’t come so I got on with things. I made a life.”
“As did I.”
There was a flash of anger in her eyes but she said no more.
He walked over to the shuttered window. The gaps allowed him to look out and he did so, finding more words.
“I did love you,” he said. “Yesterday, at the lake . . .”
“What about yesterday at the lake?”
He turned to face her then. He knew what he was thinking was ridiculous and impossible and she would laugh in his face. I wondered if I still do.
“Ash,” she said quickly, and the moment was lost. “You can’t just walk back in here and drag up the past. It’s painful, for you as well as me. I know we have to talk about it, but surely there isn’t all that much to say. We were young, we made mistakes . . . You say you loved me but I’m not even sure that’s true.”
He stepped closer, feeling the urgent need to make her understand. “I did love you, but as you pointed out, I was young. Unsure of myself, I suppose. My uncle was my guardian and I had always trusted him to guide me. All my life he had impressed upon me that Crevitch was not mine, not really, that I was a custodian for future generations. It would be inconsiderate of me, he said, to risk all of that for a girl I would not even remember in a year or two.”
Juliet went to speak, and then changed her mind. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her face was pale, but her dark eyes were bright with emotion.
“I told him I did not believe that. I loved you and wanted to marry you. He said I was still too young and that I must go into the army, that it would help me to see things more clearly. I argued with him.”
“Ash,” she murmured. She was closer now but he didn’t remember her moving. She felt her hand on his arm as they stood together in the dimly lit room.
“I asked him to give me his word that he would do his best to prevent your father from acting against you. I knew how angry he was, and that he would be thinking of your mother, and because of that he would be quite irrational. I wanted him to wait for two years, until I was able to take control of my inheritance. Uncle George swore he would do as I asked.”
