She raised her eyebrows but kept her eyes on the avenue ahead, while all around them revelers moved at different paces and in both directions, talking, laughing, calling ahead or behind to others. The music was still quite audible.
“Cross, Mr. Thorne?” she said. “Whyever would I be cross with you?”
“For apparently abandoning you,” he said. “It was not real abandonment, you know. I had every intention of coming back. I came as soon as I possibly could.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “You have overestimated your importance. Have you been gone somewhere? I had not noticed.”
“Had you not indeed?” he said. “I am crushed.”
He moved her and himself to one side of the avenue, where they would have to do less weaving past other couples and larger groups. There were trees on either side of the avenue, their branches almost meeting overhead in some places. It was even more picturesque than he had imagined. Not quite real. The pastel lamplight made the trees seem something other than what they were. It was no wonder these were called pleasure gardens.
“I needed to leave town on urgent business,” he said.
She had no answer to that. She opened her fan and waved it slowly before her face—quite unnecessarily. There was a cool breeze.
The rest of the party had got some way ahead of them, he could see. Her aunt would not worry about her, though. She was of age, unlike some of the other young ladies of the party.
He did not try to keep the conversation alive. He had been merely teasing her, anyway, with the banal remarks he had been making. She looked as haughty as she had on his first encounter with her. He was no longer deceived, however. At the moment, in fact, he guessed she was boiling inside. She was severely annoyed with him. Had she considered their kiss some sort of declaration? Had she expected him to follow up on it with a visit to her brother the next day, perhaps? Just so that she could refuse him?
Would she have refused?
“Mr. Thorne,” she said at last when they were halfway along the avenue. “Did you . . . assault your neighbor’s daughter?”
Ah. So that was what was bothering her, was it?
“Are you asking if I raped her?” he asked.
She turned her head away to gaze through the trees. He did not suppose that word was used often, if at all, in her hearing. She was probably blushing, though it was impossible to verify his suspicion in the colored lantern light.
“The answer is no,” he said.
“It was consensual, then?” she asked. “Was there a child?”
“There was a child,” he said. “A boy, now twelve years old. He is not mine. There was never any possibility that he might be.”
She thought that over for a minute.
“Her brother died?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The day he discovered his sister was with child. He died from a bullet in his back.”
Their steps had slowed but not quite stopped.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “He was my friend.”
“Friends kill friends,” she said, “when one of them does something to kill the friendship.”
“I had done nothing to kill ours,” he told her. “And I did not kill him.”
“But you ran away,” she said. “You even took another name to throw off any pursuit. You stayed away for thirteen years. Even now you have not revealed your identity to anyone but me—and perhaps to Sir Trevor and Lady Vickers?”
“To them, yes,” he said. “I ran away because I was a frightened boy of nineteen and I was about to be arrested for a murder I had not committed. My uncle urged me to go, and I went.”
“Does not an innocent man stay to clear his name?” she asked.
“In a work of fiction, perhaps,” he said, “when one can take comfort from the assurance that good will prevail and evil will be punished. In the real world innocent people hang as often as the guilty.”
“He is a complete and total liar, then?” she said. “Mr. Rochford, I mean.”
“I am prepared to give him the benefit of some doubt,” he said. “He was about ten years old at the time. He did not know the situation. He did not know me. He had never been to Brierley. It would be quite understandable for him to believe the story his mother and father took