“Enough of me and my petty miseries,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “What of you? Why exactly are you staying in such a remote corner of England with your sister? It seems a very retired sort of life for a gentleman of your age.”
“My age?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Your face has known suffering,” she said, feeling the heat of a flush in her cheeks. “You could be any age between twenty-five and thirty-five. Or even—”
“I am twenty-nine,” he said. “Beatrice needed a few more weeks at home to recover from her indisposition over the winter, but it was necessary for Gramley to go up to London to take his seat in the House of Lords. Their boys are away at school. I had nothing better to do with my time, so I came here to keep her company.”
“Lady Gramley is fortunate to have such an attentive brother,” she said.
“You are not so fortunate in your brother?” he asked. “Your half brother?”
“John is a clergyman and has the charge of a busy parish and of a wife and three children,” she told him. “And he was opposed to our father marrying my mother.”
“Why?” he asked. “Just because she was not his mother?”
“At least partly for that reason, I am sure,” she said. “His mother had been much respected and beloved by all her neighbors.”
He was looking closely at her. “And your mother was not?”
She ought to just say yes or no and leave it at that.
“My mother was an actress when my father met her in London,” she said. “She was also the daughter of a Welshman and a Gypsy. It was not a combination designed to endear her to her stepson. Or to the more genteel of my father’s neighbors, especially when she was so much younger than he and so beautiful and vibrant.”
“Ah,” he said and regarded her in silence for a few moments while she waited for him to continue. This was the moment, perhaps, when he would recover his manners and take a hasty leave—or as hasty as he was able without making his distaste too obvious. “That would explain your vividly dark coloring. I have wondered where the foreign blood came from. It comes from your Gypsy grandmother.”
“It is not really foreign blood, though, is it?” she said. “There have been Gypsies in Britain for generations. But there has not been much intermarriage and they have kept their distinctive looks.”
He regarded her quietly again, but there was a slight smile on his face. She could not decipher its meaning.
“Is she still living?” he asked. “Your grandmother, I mean? Or your grandfather?”
“My grandmother left to return to her own people when my mother was an infant,” she said. “I know nothing of my grandfather except his nationality. My mother left Wales at the age of seventeen and never went back. She almost never talked about her past. Perhaps she would have done if she had lived longer.”
Silence stretched between them again.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you feel the need to leave now, Sir Benedict?”
“Because I am compromising your virtue?” he asked. “Or because you are half Gypsy and may compromise mine?”
“One quarter,” she said testily. “I am one quarter Gypsy.”
“Ah, well, I am reassured, then,” he said. “One half might have been difficult to overlook.”
She looked sharply at him. His face was sober, but there was laughter in his eyes.
“Has it dogged you through your life?” he asked. “The fact that you have Gypsy blood, that is? And it is impossible for you to hide it. It may be only one quarter of your heritage, but it accounts for almost the whole of your looks.”
She lifted her chin and said nothing.
“All your very beautiful looks,” he added. “I am sorry. I have embarrassed you on an issue about which you seem sensitive. Yes, Mrs. McKay, I do feel the need to take my leave. But for propriety’s sake. Your propriety.”
She had been feeling uncomfortable with him and irritated that he had somehow persuaded her to reveal such private aspects of her life. How did he do that? Was it just that she was unaccustomed to having social dealings with anyone? But she was not ready yet to be alone.
“Why did you want to see me?” she asked him. “It is what you admitted a few minutes ago—that you came to see me.”
“I did not expect to find you here alone,” he protested.
“But you did. And you stayed.”
“I did,” he agreed. He lifted a hand to rub a finger along the side of his nose. “I certainly did not want to see you last week. I had wronged you horribly and I hated having to come to make my apology. I did not much want to see you two days ago, but since I was the one to suggest that you call on Beatrice, it would have seemed mean to sneak away on my horse and have you find no one home at all.”
“You saw me coming, then?” she asked him. “You were returning from your ride?”
“I was just setting out, actually,” he said. “And, yes, I saw you. And I enjoyed our conversation in the garden. I suppose I have been starved for female company, entirely by my own fault, and you seemed a safe companion.”
“Safe?”
“You are a widow and only partway through your mourning period.” He grimaced. “I apologize. I am making a mess of this. I am not interested in any flirtation. I am not in search of a wife. I—”
“And if you were,” she said, “you would be searching in the wrong place. I am not in the market for a husband.”