‘Just a little, and smiling, too,’ she admitted and he kissed her in the soft hollow behind her ear. ‘I could not cry much, before. I was too angry.’
‘With his friend, the one he challenged?’
‘No, with Michael. I have to learn to forgive him for wanting to protect me that way.’ And with myself. If I had been a better wife this would never have happened.
‘Perhaps the need to protect our womenfolk is as deep in a man as the need to protect a child is in a woman,’ Lucian suggested. ‘I had never thought of it like that before, but it does not seem to me to be something one learns, or has impressed upon you. For me, certainly, it feels like instinct.’
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, reluctantly impressed by the comparison. ‘But the man should talk it over with the woman first. I don’t mean if there is a physical attack, it would be foolish to stand about debating when someone is brandishing a cudgel. But if it is a case of an insult, then definitely.’
‘You would let an insult pass?’
‘There are more ways of getting even than getting up before dawn and shivering in a damp field with the chance of getting killed at the end of it. A woman would apply her mind to finding a poetic form of revenge. Itching powder in a rake’s silk breeches at a Court presentation, a mouse in a spiteful gossip’s reticule…’
‘Itching powder? Remind me never to upset you.’
His breath was warm on the side of her throat. Was he going to kiss her there? She arched her neck in invitation and was rewarded by the pressure of his lips, the slight friction of stubble. Lucian was going to have to shave before dinner.
All too quickly the caress stopped. ‘What do you miss most about being married?’ he asked.
Sara thought about it for a while and he did not press her, simply held her while she lay back in his arms, watching the wildlife around the pond come out, reassured by their stillness. A dabchick bobbed across the surface, fish rose and dived, the dragonflies buzzed.
Strange that her lover should be so interested in her marriage. Most men would have wanted to ignore the subject, pretend her husband had not existed. Some would have jealously probed for a flattering comparison—was he more handsome, taller, better endowed, a better lover? But Lucian’s questions did not seem like that, more as though he was genuinely interested in her past, wanted to understand and sympathise with her loss.
‘Miss?’ she said at last. ‘I miss him, of course, as a person, because he was my friend. And I miss the companionship of marriage and being able to say what I was thinking without having to censor it in any way. I miss discussing things. I miss…missed, the lovemaking. I miss the intellectual stimulation of trying to keep up with him mentally and the community of friends we had.’
‘You were not tempted to stay there, in Cambridge?’
‘No. That would have felt like second best, somehow. Michael was why I was there and without him… No, I wanted to do something different, something for myself.’ Somewhere new to run away to while you tried to find the real you, the niggling little voice of her conscience murmured.
‘Someone is coming.’ Lucian had heard the voices raised in laughter before she had. He pushed her gently upright so she could slide along the seat and let him get both feet on the ground. ‘Heading this way, by the sound of it. Shall we make a bolt for it or be found earnestly studying pond life?’
‘Bolt. This way.’ She took him by the hand and ran round the head of the pond and into the stand of willows fringing it. ‘Now, if we make our way along the path I think we will come out by the lake, which is where they have come from.’
‘You think? Don’t you know?’
‘I did not grow up here, so I have not discovered all the secret ways that a child would have found. Yes, here we are, just behind the boathouse. Can you punt?’
‘Yes,’ Lucian said immediately, and then, with a shrug, ‘badly. I am usually well co-ordinated, but I am a shambles with a punt pole. But this is too deep, surely?’
‘There is a sunken causeway going to the island in the middle with deep water either side. It used to be a track before the lake was made larger. If we punt halfway, then I can finish my tale and no one will disturb us and yet we will be sitting out in full view in perfect respectability.’
‘You will risk us going round and round in circles?’ Lucian eyed the punt tied up to the side of the boathouse dubiously.
‘No, I will punt, you recline and look decorative.’
‘That is my line.’ But to her surprise he got in without protest and sat down, not even insisting on handing her in or untying the rope.
Sara lifted the long pole, got her balance and pushed off. The punt glided out in a straight line, much to her satisfaction, and she took them to halfway between shore and island before she jammed the pole upright in the mud and tied the rope around it.
‘You looked very elegant doing that.’ Lucian was lying back on the cushions, his hands behind his head, and she was reminded of her great-uncle’s court and how the Rajah would have himself rowed out into the great lake with its pleasure pavilion in the centre. Lucian would not look out of place here if there was a marble summer house on the island, filled with beautiful women all ready to pleasure him. She kept the thought to herself as she settled down on the cushions at her end of the punt.
‘There is no middle way, I find, with punting. Either it goes well and you look elegant or it doesn’t and then you most definitely do not! I fell in four times when Michael was teaching me.’
She could see his face now and studi
ed it for any reaction to her husband’s name, but could see none. A part of her, one she should be ashamed of, was a little piqued. Shouldn’t her lover be just a little touchy about any men who had been before him? Probably he did not care enough.
Chapter Fifteen