Pursuing Lord Pascal (Dashing Widows 4)

Her lips lengthened in disapproval. “Not yet. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

He pulled his team up on a grassy bank, set the brake, and leaped down. At their arrival, ducks and geese on the pond took noisy flight. “You really want to know?”

“I really want to know.”

He came around the horses’ heads and helped her down. “Very well.”

“Go on,” she said, and because he’d behaved all afternoon—something she had no right to resent—she let him tuck her hand into the crook of his arm. His warmth seeped into her, inevitably reminding her of kissing him last night. How contrary was she to want that again, when she was the one who forbade physical contact?

“No brothers and sisters.” He started along the earthen path beside the water, matching his long stride to her shorter one. The fine weather meant the ground underfoot was mercifully dry. “My mother was a great beauty, but an inconstant wife. She soon decided Northumberland was too dull to be borne and fled back to London, while my father, who was a countryman at heart, stayed at home with his sheep.”

“Sheep can be wonderful company,” Amy said, as she sifted what he said.

She was curious. His mother’s desertion didn’t seem to anger him. Instead, he spoke with fond tolerance, as if he knew she couldn’t help herself. Very mature, but Amy couldn’t imagine he’d felt that way as a child.

“So I discovered. I rattled around the chilly manor house with Papa, until I went to Harrow at eight, forsaking my ovine chums.”

He spoke wryly, but this time, she wasn’t fooled. “It must have been lonely.”

Self-derision flattened his lips. “School was full of decent chaps. I was fine, once I got there.”

She frowned. Did this mean that he loathed country life? If he did, he’d never be content with her. “What about your mother? What happened to her?”

“When she realized her son was almost as pretty as she was, she allowed me to come to London a few weeks a year. That was always great fun. But Papa didn’t want his heir exposed to the feckless crowd my mother ran with.”

Still moving at his side, Amy stared blindly across the pond to the trees beyond. Silly to grieve over that bleak, loveless childhood. Pascal had been torn between parents who were clearly a poor match.

Amy had already noted his complex relationship with his extraordinary looks. That ambivalence must have started when his mother used her son as a prop to her vanity. “What was your father like?”

“A good man. Much older than my mother. You’ve probably gathered it wasn’t a harmonious union. They had little in common.”

“Except you.” Their quiet conversation had persuaded the birds it was safe to return to the ponds.

“Except me. He was kind in his fashion, although he had no real idea how to manage a child. I think we were both relieved when I went away to school. He died when I was twelve.” The soft thud of Pascal’s boots created a gentle counterpoint to this sad history.

“I can guess Harrow wasn’t altogether easy.” In wordless comfort, Amy squeezed his arm. Two brothers and numerous Nash cousins gave her an idea of what little savages boys could be. “You’ve forbidden any mention of your appearance, but I imagine a beautiful blond boy had trouble with bullies.”

When he slowed to a stop, she slid her hand free and turned to face him. They stood near a reed bed where a warbler sang for a mate. The sweet music rang out across the cool spring air.

Pascal sent her an unreadable look. “I had the odd fight. I needed toughening up.”

Amy didn’t comment on what she knew must be a rank understatement. She was too busy trying to hide her appalled reaction to the revelations about his barren family life. He’d loathe her pity.

He looked like he had everything the world could give. Yet he’d lacked something as basic as a mother’s love. He might still be a stranger, but his pain tore a jagged crack in her heart.

“Is your mother still alive?” It was an effort to steady her voice.

“She died fifteen years ago when her lover’s yacht went down off the Isle of Wight.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “She wasn’t made for old age.”

Not for the first time, the perfection of his features operated as a mask concealing the real man. “That seems…cold.”

His lips turned down, as he took her arm again and walked on. “When I was a child, I adored her and clamored for her attention. After I came home from London, I’d cry for a week. But she lost interest in me, once I stopped being small and appealing. Gangly, pimply adolescents tried her patience—and she abhorred people knowing she had a son approaching manhood. By the end, we were strangers.”

He spoke carelessly, but by now, Amy knew better than to trust his pretended indifference. The vibrating tension in the arm under her fingers indicated that the hurt still cut deep.