She picked up her teacup and then, rather resolutely, set it down again. “Sensational it wouldn't be. The most sensational thing I've ever done in my life was blurting out to you that I wished to marry you. But it should come as no surprise now that I had indeed wished to marry you, more than thirty years ago.”
It was still a surprise to hear her speak of it so candidly.
“I believed I had the looks, the comportment, and your mother's approval. The only obstacles were your youth and your certain disinclination to marry a girl handpicked by your mother, but I considered neither insurmountable. When you were done with university, I'd still be of a marriageable age. And in the meanwhile I would educate myself in the classics, so as to distinguish myself from other women who would be vying for your hand.
“My plan no doubt strikes you as both arrogant and simpleminded. It was. But I believed fervently in it. In hindsight, I can see that we'd have dealt disastrously together—I'd have been dismayed by your promiscuity and you in turn repelled by my sanctimonious meddlesomeness, as my daughter has called it. But in those heady days of 1862, you were mythologically perfect and I was fixated on you.
“Needless to say, when Mr. Rowland began his courtship, I was not thrilled with his attention. I craved rank and disdained money made in sooty ways, whereas he possessed nothing but the latter. I didn't understand why my father welcomed his calls, until I did as well. Believe me, having to marry him for such a mortifying thing as my family's ruinous finances did not further endear him to me.”
There was regret in her voice. Suddenly Langford realized that the regret wasn't for him but for the long-departed Mr. Rowland. He felt an odd pulse of jealousy. “You mean to tell me your marriage eventually recovered from that grievous injury?”
“It did. But it took a long time. When I married Mr. Rowland, I decided to be a right proper martyr. While I refused to lower myself by seeking out your news or succumbing to affairs, I also refused to see him as anything other than a legal entity to whom I sacrificed my dreams for the sake of my family. Even when my sentiments finally changed, I didn't know what to do. It seemed ridiculous that I should feel something other than duty and obligation toward a man I'd called only Mr. Rowland for so many years.”
Her voice trailed off. She finally lifted the cucumber sandwich to her lips again. “We had three good years before he passed away.”
He didn't know what to say. He'd always considered happy marriages to be the stuff of fairy tales, about as likely as fire-breathing dragons in this mechanized age. He found himself ill qualified to comment on her loss.
In the silence, she ate the cucumber sandwich with great daintiness. When she was done, she shook her head and smiled wistfully. “Now I am reminded why polite society does not engage in rampant honesty. Awkward, isn't it?”
“Not so much as it is thought-provoking,” he answered. “I don't think I've had a more frank conversation in my entire life, on things that mattered.”
“And now we've nothing left to talk about except the weather,” she said wryly.
“Allow me to correct your misconception here, madam,” he said, with equal dryness. “I understand that beneath your facade of ideal femininity, you are a bluestocking who just might be learned enough to appreciate my vast erudition.”
“Oh-ho, watch that arrogance, Your Grace,” she said, grinning a little. “You might find it to be exactly the other way around. While you were out carousing nightly, I read everything that was ever jotted down during classical antiquity.”
“That may very well be. But have you an original thought on it?” he challenged.
She leaned forward slightly. He noted, with pleasure, the gleam in her eyes. “You have a few days to listen, sir?”
Chapter Twenty-five
3 July 1893
. . . picnic . . . capture . . . light . . . tree . . . shadow . . . purple . . .”
Gigi stared at Freddie's moving lips, her concentration stranded somewhere beyond the Cape of Good Hope. What was he talking about? And why was he speaking so earnestly of such incomprehensible and inconsequential things when barbarians had broken through the gate, torched the bailey, and were about to storm the keep?
They were in trouble. They were in trouble so deep and wide that the best alpinists broke down and wept halfway up and the greatest sailors turned around and headed home long before reaching the other shore.
Then she remembered. He was talking about “Afternoon in the Park,” and he was talking about it because she'd asked him to, so that they could carry on a decent conversation and that she could pretend, at least for the duration of his call, that all was well, that the smoke darkening the sky was merely the kitchen roasting a few boars for the evening feast.