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“From all I have heard, he would have relished the comparison. He was the exception to the Pendrennon rule of avoiding politics. He haunted Queen Elizabeth’s court, looking for ways to please her.”
“I wonder what he tried,” said Sarah. Their eyes met. For some reason, she thought of searing kisses. A flush heated her cheeks. She swallowed. “He was made an earl for his efforts?”
Kenver nodded, his gaze holding hers. “We were mere barons before him.”
“Mere,” Sarah echoed. They had rather different views of rank.
He showed her the line of earls since the first, men in the finest dress of their eras, sometimes with wives and children posed around them. And in one case a horse. “Here we come to the present,” he finished.
They had reached the other end of the gallery. Sarah looked up at a portrait of four people. She recognized a much younger Kenver and his more youthful parents. “How beautiful your mother looks,” she said. Lady Trestan was smiling, too, an expression Sarah hadn’t yet observed.
“She was admired.”
“And the girl is just like her. Do you have an older sister? I didn’t know.” How could she know so little about her new husband?
“Much older, yes. Twelve years.”
“Twelve!”
Kenver nodded. “I think… No one has said precisely. Some infants died between us. I believe three.”
“How terrible.” Sarah felt her first twinge of sympathy for her new in-laws. “What is your sister’s name? She is married?”
“Tamara. Yes, married.”
Sarah wondered at his stilted tone. “Does she live far away?”
“Quite far away. I believe.”
Sarah couldn’t understand his stiff attitude. “That makes it difficult to visit, I suppose.”
“We don’t. There was a…falling-out.”
“About what?” Sarah worried that she was prying. But she was joining this family. And she was curious.
“I’m not certain,” said Kenver. “I was very young when she left.”
“Well, but…”
“My parents do not mention her. You shouldn’t… They don’t care to hear her name.”
“Don’t…” Sarah’s voice trailed off in astonishment. How could anyone feel that way about their own child? Had Tamara committed some dreadful crime? Looking at the girl’s face in the portrait, Sarah doubted that. Appearances could be deceptive, of course, but the icy reception Sarah had received at Poldene made her tend to champion Tamara over Kenver’s parents.
“Does your family really go back to the Anglo-Saxons?” Kenver asked.
It was a clear signal not to probe the mystery about his sister. Sarah gave in, without giving up. “Well, my great-grandfather looked into all the old records, and he said so.”
“You aren’t sure?”
“It seemed to me that he made some…unwarranted leaps of logic.”
“Because you have gone over the documents yourself.”
Did he look fond? Sarah thought he might. The idea warmed her through and through. “Well…”
“Of course you did. So your great-grandfather was a neck-or-nothing historian?”
Sarah laughed, enjoying the phrase. “Yes. And I don’t think he made all his jumps. But the Morans have lived here for a long time.”
