He nodded. "She loved roses especially. Roses and iris, and lavender, too."
The roses were everywhere, massed and rambling. Spears of iris leaves showed here and there; the lavender needed clipping.
Reaching the bench, Amanda sat. She waited until he sat beside her-they both looked up at the house. "What happened?"
His hesitation suggested he hadn't expected any question quite so bold. Then, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, he linked his fingers, and told her. Related how, when the villagers had come storming up to the house, herding him with them, to tell their story and demand justice be done, his father had accepted their tale without question. "The only thing he said to me was: 'How could you?'"
His gaze remained on his interlaced fingers. "It never entered his head that I might not have committed the deed. In exculpation, I have to admit I was known to have an ungovernable temper."
"You don't seem to have one now."
"No. That's one thing dealing with the Indians teaches you-there's no point having a temper.
"The whole family was here-uncles, aunts, cousins. It was the usual Easter gathering my father loved to preside over. I think it was the ultimate sin in his eyes that I should do such a thing at such a time, in front of the entire family. Few of them approved of me either, so… for the good of the family, they decided to bundle me off that very night."
Amanda quelled a shiver. Being disowned by one's family, thrown out and cut off-banished. Without justice, without recourse. For herself, she couldn't even conceive of it; the very thought made her heart ache for him.
She asked the question she most wanted to know, "Your mother?"
"Ah-Mama. She of them all understood my temper-temperament, nature, what would you. It was the same as hers." Raising his head, he looked across the garden, his eyes narrowed, seeing the past. "She wasn't sure. She knew I could have done it, but… she, like the others, didn't believe me when I swore I hadn't. If she had believed…"
When he continued, his voice had hardened, "What's done is done and the past is behind us."
The change threw his earlier tone into contrast, revealing the underlying truth. "You loved them, didn't you?"
He didn't look at her but at the house. "Yes." After a moment, he added, "Both of them."
He said nothing more but she could now see the whole clearly. Earlier, she'd returned their purloined bedding to the countess's boudoir. That room had been an education into his background, yet the earl's room, beyond it, also held echoes of the character traits that lived in him.
His gaze on the house, he stirred. "When we're married, we won't live here."
No if, but or maybe. Qualification rose instinctively to her tongue, yet she left it unsaid. Fate had taken a hand; they were here, in a deserted house without even a housekeeper to lend them countenance. The time for games was past. The time for decisions was nigh. Although uncertainty lingered, she drew an even breath. "Whyever not?"
He glanced at her.
She studied the house. "It needs refurbishing-well, perhaps more than that, and I haven't seen all of it yet, still…" Tilting her head, she considered the mellow stone, the steeply pitched roof. "It has potential-all the right bits and pieces-it just needs people to bring it alive. The structure's impressive-stately on the one hand, charming on the other. I like the windows and the layout of the rooms, and…" She hesitated, then impulsively gestured, arms wide. "It simply fits. This is a magnificent area, and the house is somehow set in, an integral part of the whole. It belongs."
His gaze on her face, Martin leaned against the seat's iron back. "I thought you were a Londoner, born and bred?"
"I've lived most of my life there-my parents' house is there-but my uncles and aunts and cousins have houses all over the country. I've spent years in the countryside, in various places, but…" Rising, she walked a few steps and stopped, looking south over the vista of the valley. "I've never seen a place as fabulously beautiful-no, that's not the right word-dramatic as this. I could stand here and stare for hours, and never grow bored."
Her voice faded as the view drew her in. Martin knew how mesmerizing the play of cloud shadows over nature's patchwork could be. It hadn't occurred to him that it would speak to her, too, or that her affinity for the dramatic would extend to this wild and rugged landscape.
The landscape of his birth. The wild, wide spaces were as much a part of him as his sensual nature-this, as nowhere else in his travels had ever been, was his home.
Home.
He'd turned his back on it, thought he'd shut it out from his life and would never return-never again fall prey to the siren-song of the wind whistling over the crags, to the wrenchingly majestic beauty of the peaks.
Home.
Rising, he stood beside Amanda, thrust his hands in his pockets, felt the wind ruffle his hair. As if in gentle benediction, as if welcoming a prodigal son, hopefully wiser and more experienced, back to the hearth.
Home.
As he stood beside her, its aura rolled over him, the memories of the good times that he'd pushed out of his mind along with the bad. The sounds of his childhood-the bright laughter, the chatter, running footsteps, shrill voices-the neverending happiness. Childhood giving way to the awkwardness of youth, a time that had been so rich with experience, with the thrill of discovery, the deepening of knowledge.
Then had come the break; it had shattered his world and sent all the good spiralling away like autumn leaves. Leaves he hadn't known how to catch.