And almost didn’t want to.
Fidgeting with her glove and looking away, she grinned. “Would you care to join us, my lord?”
“It is my utmost pleasure.” He stepped between her and Lilias, offered an arm to them both, and escorted them back through the park as a trio.
Twice, she almost slithered her hand away. She didn’t know why. How silly of her. Why should she be afraid of such proximity to the first man who had ever intrigued her?
But his touch was as frightening as his eyes.
An enigma, indeed.
“William Kensley.” The name was spoken just the same as when William was a child. The eyes were the same too. Kind and steady and knowing, as if he understood all the things William could not say, just as Shelton had.
Pain gashed through him, tearing anew through fresh wounds. Wounds that still hurt. Would always hurt. Mayhap scar someday, but never go away.
“Sit down, sit down.” Lord Manigan gestured across the tall-ceilinged drawing room, where afternoon light brightened the blue lounge and chairs, a harp, a yellow-and-blue Turkish rug, and polished wooden furniture.
A fine change from the tack room.
“You must accept my apologies, dear boy, for the atrocious treatment you have endured since your arrival. I can assure you my butler and manservants shall be dealt with. Had they remembered your name from years past, this would not have happened.”
“They could not have known.” As the earl took one of the wingback chairs, William took the lounge. His limbs sank deep into the plush cushions, and the last of his energy seeped out of him. “I thank you, my lord, for seeing me.”
“Always a pleasure. How fares your aunt and cousin?”
“Well, thank you.”
“And Rosenleigh?”
“Well.”
The earl leaned forward, eyes narrowing, probing. “And you, my son?”
The question hung on silence. William swallowed hard and looked out the bowed window, where two collared doves fluttered in and out of sight. “I must find a man named Edward Gresham. My father.”
“Your father?”
“You are surprised?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “I suppose I should be, but I never quite believed the story of Constance’s husband and his death. For despite the gravestone next to hers, I myself never saw the man living or dead. But Edward …”
William glanced back at the earl’s face. The greying hair, the faint wrinkles, the square jaw and thoughtful look. “Edward what?”
“He loved your mother. I suppose a lot of us did in those days.”
“Why were they not wed?”
“Gossipmongers had it many ways. Some said she was not dainty enough for him. Others said he was not delightful enough for her.” The earl leaned back into his chair. “But for myself, I always imagined it was a matter of money. Or the threat of scandal. Perhaps both.”
“Then my father knew of me.”
“That I do not know.”
Something coursed through him. Something he didn’t understand. Like the queer detachment, the faint bitterness, when he stood before his mother’s painting and looked into a face that had left him.
But her abandonment had been without choice.
His father’s had not.
