“Interesting,” his wife said, and he hoped that he was imagining the hint of reproach in her voice.
Talbot helped her with baiting the hook and casting the rod, touching her perhaps just a little more than necessary in the process.
“Will Mrs. Clark prepare our fish?” she asked after a while.
“If you manage to catch anything, she will,” he teased her. “Hold your rod like I showed you.”
“You should be giving me advice instead of teasing me,” she replied in the same tone.
“Perhaps you could sing to the fish and attract it to us that way, being the siren that you are.”
“Don’t you know my singing has driven a music teacher away? I can’t imagine it would do anything different to fish.”
“Did that really happen?” he asked, incredulous.
“Almost,” she smiled, “I wasn’t that bad at singing, but the teacher gave up on trying to teach me to play.”
“I play well enough for both of us,” he replied frankly, and Elizabeth laughed.
“I shall very much like to hear you play,” she admitted.
“Very well, tonight, after dinner,” he said and turned to look at her.
Elizabeth sat next to him with her eyes closed and her face turned to the sky. Thanks to the bonnet being gone, he was able to discover that her brown hair had been hiding a glint of auburn inside it. Her cheeks were rosy from the exercise and the sun. Her gloves lay on the grass next to her. She was smiling at the idea of hearing him play.
I love her,he realised. The discovery was sudden, unexpected, andterrifying. But there simply was no other word orexplanation for this blooming feeling in his chest that now slowly bled into the rest of his body. He leaned over and gently kissed her lips. Elizabeth opened her eyes in surprise and then gave him a delighted smile.
They ended up talking so much and so frequently that every single fish in the pond knew to stay away from them. Neither was unhappy about their empty rods. Instead, they discovered an abundance of woodland strawberries nearby and Elizabeth enthusiastically embarked on her first foraging adventure.
“I cannot wait to write home about all this!”
“You’ve truly never picked strawberries before?” he asked as he speared the strawberries he had picked for her with a blade of wild rye, like his father had done for him when he was a boy.
“Where in London would I have gotten the chance to do that?” she asked, laughing at his incredulity.
Talbot tilted his head, thinking.
“There must have been a meadow or a park somewhere in the city for you to run around as a young girl.”
“What kind of birds are those?” She abruptly stood and walked over to a tree.
It was clear to Talbot that she was avoiding the topic, so he decided to let it rest for the time being.
“Some kind of tit, I believe,” he stood as well and joined her by the tree, making sure to brush his body against her back.
*
That night in the library, she urged him to play for her, going as far as sitting on the piano bench next to him. Her body radiatedexcitement like it did whenever they discovered something new together.
“Do you know what you want to play?” Elizabeth asked him as he looked over the music sheets.
“Yes,” he replied without looking up, “Concerto 21 by Mozart, specifically, the second movement.”
“Is it a difficult piece?”
“Not for me, no.”
Elizabeth laughed, and he finally looked up. Her eyes were shining and alight with joy, and her delicate dimples looked like little parentheses for her pink, soft lips.
