Page 28 of Pursuing Lord Pascal
His silence spoke volumes, and eventually she sighed. “Well, perhaps a little.”
“Things with Wilfred didn’t improve?”
She looked less hunted. “We did marvelous work on his herd.”
He folded his arms. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“Can you blame me?” A flush marked her cheeks. Through her awkward recital, her color had come and gone. Pascal admired her bravery in telling him even as much as she did. He could see it was an ordeal.
“No. But I need to know who you are.”
A line appeared between her marked brown eyebrows. “That’s a powerful thing for a man to say to a woman. I hope you mean it.”
“I do.” It was a vow, whether she acknowledged it or not.
Around them, the day drew to a close. Rooks cawed monotonously from the trees behind him, and the starlings flew in to set up their twilight racket.
She sighed and stiffened her back, gathering courage to finish the story. “His attentions weren’t…onerous. And when his health began to fail, we had other things to worry about.”
Sadder and sadder. “That must have been difficult.”
“It was.” Her relief at shifting the discussion away from the bedroom was palpable. “I was very fond of Wilfred. He taught me a lot.”
“And of course you still had your cattle.”
“Don’t mock me,” she snapped, ripping her hand from under his.
“I’m not.” Pascal desperately wanted to kiss her. No, he desperately wanted to whisk her away to Richmond’s best inn, haul her into a room, and show her the joy two people could create out of lust and liking.
But he’d promised to behave, damn it. Although after hearing about her marriage, he took a kinder view of this enforced courtship. She deserved a wooing. Hell, she deserved a lover patient enough to persuade her into surrender. Then patient enough to show her just what she’d missed.
She rose, and he flinched when he saw her brush away a surreptitious tear.
“I’m sorry. I’ve stirred unhappy memories.” He stood, too, but she extended a hand to deter his approach.
“I’m fine.” Emotion thickened her voice.
“I don’t regret asking you about Wilfred,” he said softly. “But I regret upsetting you.”
She fumbled in the pocket of her figure-hugging green pelisse and produced a white lace handkerchief. “I couldn’t let you think my marriage was a disaster.”
As far as he could tell, it hadn’t been much else, but Pascal had the wisdom to keep that opinion to himself. “Wilfred was clearly a good man.”
Which was true, too. A fumbling dunderhead when it came to his wife, but that wasn’t the full measure of the fellow.
As reward for his discretion, he received a grateful, if shaky smile. “He was.”
She’d mourned Mowbray, if only as a colleague. However unworthy the thought, Pascal was grateful she’d never loved before.
Did that mean he wanted her to love him?
Shock held him transfixed as he examined the question. Over the years, many women had professed to love him, starting with his flighty mother. A few at least must have meant it. The mawkish emotion had always proven a poisonous gift, laced with demands and tears, and the inevitable acrimony when the woman realized Pascal was incapable of loving her back.
But when he imagined Amy Mowbray loving him, that trapped, suffocated feeling was absent.
How…unexpected.
He extended his hand. “We should go back. As it is, it will be dark when we return.”
