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Her lips curved with wry humor. “That you were spawned fully formed as Satan’s minion.”
With every second, her tension seeped away. She reached up to grab a dangling leaf. This time when her arm brushed his, she hardly jumped at all.
Even through his shirtsleeve, her heat seared. Desire surged. Still he bit back the impulse to seize her.
Not yet. . .
He release
d a soft gust of laughter, not at all offended. “I was a child like any other.”
“I doubt that.” She slipped her crop under her arm and absently tore at the leaf, scattering the fragments on the path at her feet. “I’ve always considered you a lone wolf. Now I discover you have a bevy of brothers and sisters.”
He shrugged. If she wanted, he was willing to talk about his background. He knew this seemingly harmless discussion allayed her lingering fears.
“I am a lone wolf. It was the only way I kept sane in that chaos. From my father’s three marriages, I have six legitimate siblings. My mother whelped two bastards to different lovers before she died in a carriage accident when I was eight. My father acknowledged another five bastards of his own. There were rumors of more. In the local village, the family coloring certainly proliferates. My first stepmother brought two sons to the marriage and my second stepmother brought three girls. Keddon Hall is a barn, big enough to billet an army, but the Challoners en masse threaten to burst it at the seams. It was a relief to leave for Eton and escape the pandemonium.”
She paused to stare at him with an odd expression. Not the familiar suspicion. And unfortunately not the melting surrender he connived to see.
A kind of hard, speculative curiosity.
He too stopped so his horse’s nose nudged him in the shoulder. “What?”
“You speak of your family like strangers.”
He shrugged. “With such a crowd, it was like living in a menagerie. Most of them are strangers.”
Most. Not all. Which was why he was here now.
The reminder provided a fillip to his determination for revenge. He berated himself for allowing Antonia to divert him. But when he met her vividly interested gaze, the admonition faded to a distant whisper.
“Where are they now?”
“My father was careless where he sired children, but once he had them, he saw the girls were dowered and the boys found suitable employment. The youngest children are still in school. My other sisters, mostly, are married. A few brothers went into the army, some into the church, some into the law.”
“Do you see them often?”
“Some of them.” He paused. “Sometimes. You’ll be shocked they all ended up respectable members of society. I’m definitely the family black sheep, if you discount my parents.”
She laughed, the sound too warm and enchanting for his comfort. “I am shocked.”
“What about you?” He didn’t need to feign his curiosity. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
The ease drained from her manner. Again he had the odd perception that his question trespassed on private sorrow. He braced for her to tell him to mind his own business, but eventually she answered. “I have nobody.”
“An orphan?”
It made sense, especially if she was a woman of good family who had come down in the world. Increasingly that’s what he believed she must be.
Her lips tightened and she stared straight ahead as she preceded him, leading her horse. The silence bristled with unspoken regret.
“I have . . . had a brother.”
He couldn’t see her face, but her tone’s flatness indicated longstanding pain. He caught up with her. “Older or younger?”
“Three years older.” Thick underbrush forced her to veer closer. Again he resisted the urge to grab her.
They emerged from the bushes onto the bank of a sparkling stream. Antonia stopped and faced him. He couldn’t mistake her strain, however hard she strove to hide it.
