Page 18 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue
“Jacob preferred the company of his friends to me,” she said. “They mocked him for having married an Italian. They felt I was too different from them. But one of them had a sister. Jacob and that sister, well, his father and her father had a sort of understanding since their births. Everyone expected them to marry. Jacob always resented the pressure to marry her. I suppose I was an instrument of his rebellion.”
“Your father-in-law held this against you as well?”
“At first, until he came to know me.”
“What was it about you that he came to like and accept?”
“He said that I am better educated than most women of his class. And he liked that. But I know that many of his male associates don’t approve of their daughters being too highly educated. So, I am not sure how fair-minded he was in his assessment.”
“How did you come to be well educated?”
“Though I never met him, my own father saw to my education from a distance. He paid for the best tutors.”
“Who is your father?”
“He was a merchant back in Italy...He lived in Rome. He died when I was a baby. I never knew him.” Her voice shook, and she turned away from him.
At these signs of her discomfort with the subject, he paused. “It must have been painful to lose your father early in life.” He hugged her closer. No more questions. Not tonight.
He reached for her, pulled her close, and held her. After a few moments, she turned to him, and he drew her into a long, slow kiss.
Several nights later, Angela tossed and turned, alone in her chamber. The bed was wonderfully comfortable, and the mid-November night made her feel so cozy beneath the quilts. And she’d had two glasses of wine. But for the fourth night in a row, Angela couldn’t sleep. She had lied to Evan about her father. What upset her the most about it? Knowing that she had lied because she didn’t trust him.
At least she did not yet trust him fully enough to share something so personal and painful. Traveling so far to see her father, the Duke of Amesbury, and then being rejected by his family had been too much.
She had told Susan. Well, she told Susan about some of it. But she didn’t want anyone else to know how she had been rejected and humiliated by her father’s wife. A few months after her father-in-law had died, she’d received a letter from her natural father.
He’d said that he might be dying, though he said he didn’t trust the doctors and didn’t think they could be that accurate. But just in case he died soon, he wanted her to come to England with all due haste and to see him.
He’d sent funds. Generous funds.
And his letter had filled her with hope at the lowest time of her life.
Yet, those hopes had been crushed by his family. They said that he was too ill to risk such an emotional visit.
Her spirit had been crushed so thoroughly. Now, she just couldn’t tell Evan about it. She didn’t want to open that vault of anguish. She wanted Evan to make her feel good and to have fun with him, and to forget all the pain of her marriage, the death of her father-in-law, and her rejection here in England.
As the days passed, Angela’s sense of nagging guilt over her deception faded to the periphery of her awareness. There were so many lovely things to experience. Like today, the noon sun sparkled on the water, and the wind was barely perceptible. She snuggled her hands into her fur-lined muff and enjoyed the play of sunlight through the trees along the lake's shoreline that ran along the border of Evan’s property. Amélangeof brilliantly colored red, gold, orange, and yellow leaves clung to their branches, but many trees were already bare.
“You’re not cold, are you?” Evan asked as he rowed their little boat.
“Not too cold.”
“Do you want to return?”
“No, the weather is so lovely today. How lucky are we to have such a day?”
He grinned at her, flashing white, straight teeth against his tanned, handsome face. She knew a sense of disbelief to be here with this aristocrat. He had removed his coat, and the deep green of his waistcoat contrasted sharply with his snowy white shirt and cravat, tied into a simple knot. The casualness of his clothes made their sharing the little boat seem even more intimate.
“Somehow, I never pictured us doing all these wonderful things. I never pictured an English nobleman rowing his own boat.”
“But isn’t it romantic for a gentleman to row his ladylove around the lake so that she can view the autumn colors before they fade?” His grin broadened, and heat pooled in her lower stomach as a bit of giddiness swept over her. Was it his sensual appeal that caused those sensations?
Or was it the motion of the boat?
“It is very romantic,” she said, giving him a smile, feeling just a bit wistful. A small part of her wished that she might actually be his ‘ladylove.’
He drew his dark brows together with exaggerated effect. “Yes, I am glad you noticed how romantic I can be. I’d like to get credit for all my wooing.”
