‘Really?’ He gave her an interested look. ‘Do they live in London?’
‘No. Cornwall,’ she replied awkwardly as she realised she was being rude again. ‘I thought I would go down by train later this afternoon.’
‘That’s quite a way.’ Marcus nodded. ‘I could drive you there, if you would like?’
‘Why on earth would you want to—? No,’ she amended hastily, not even wanting to give him that particular opening. He was far too curious about her private life already, without trying to wheedle his way into meeting her parents; she could hardly accept such an offer from him without inviting him to stay the weekend too. Something she had absolutely no intention of doing! ‘It’s much quicker by train,’ she dismissed, deliberately turning away to look out of the side window.
‘So, no dinner this evening? Either in London or Cornwall,’ he persisted.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she answered with a breeziness she didn’t feel.
‘What do your parents do in Cornwall?’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do…?’
‘As in work.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘My mother looks after the house—cottage, really,’ she amended. ‘And my father paints.’ She wished she had never mentioned her parents. And she wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t seemed like the ideal way of getting out of his dinner invitation without being rude.
‘As in walls or canvases?’
‘Marcus, I really don’t think this is a line of questioning we should be pursuing.’ She straightened uncomfortably in her seat.
‘Line of questioning? Pursuing?’ Marcus was incredulous. ‘You sound like a lawyer defending her client. I was only showing an interest, Kit.’
‘I know you were.’ She sighed, her cheeks blushing warmly. ‘I just—canvases. My father paints canvases,’ she explained reluctantly.
‘Really?’ Marcus raised dark brows. ‘Do I know him? Is he famous?’
‘Would you expect him to be living in a cottage in Cornwall if he was!’ Kit responded, knowing that she wasn’t being strictly honest. There was plenty of money now for her parents to move to a larger, more comfortable home; they just preferred to stay at the cottage where they had lived since they had first married. ‘I believe my father is what is usually known as a starving artist.’
‘But not in a garret?’ Marcus returned lightly.
‘No.’ She laughed, relaxing slightly. ‘But the cottage is certainly—rustic.’ She remembered that, until a few years ago, the cottage hadn’t even had running water, her mother having to get water from a well in the garden until they had had the main water supply connected.
‘Sounds wonderful.’ Marcus smiled.
‘It sounds it,’ Kit conceded. ‘And actually it is. If you don’t mind roughing it a bit.’ She had enjoyed a completely carefree childhood amongst the rugged hills of Cornwall, roaming for miles; it was what had given her her love of walking.
‘I’m ashamed to say I’ve never tried,’ Marcus admitted.
Was he still trying to persuade her into allowing him to drive her to Cornwall?
What would her parents make of him? Her father, she knew, would find him the complete antithesis of himself, but somehow she still had a feeling that he would like the younger man. As for her mother—she would just be pleased to see Kit with a man, her hints of wishing to be a grandmother having increased during the last year or so.
Which was a very good reason for not giving into Marcus’s persuasive tone.
The last thing she needed was her parents thinking she was actually involved with Marcus!
‘I’m sorry.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘The cottage is simply too small to accommodate all four of us.’
‘We could share,’ he suggested.
‘I said my father is an artist—not that he’s an advocate of—Well, the fact that he married my mother within weeks of meeting her should tell you something about him,’ she amended awkwardly; her parents were far from being prudes, would probably accept the idea if she brought a man home for the weekend. It was Kit who had a problem with it!
Marcus gave an appreciative nod. ‘It tells me he’s an astute man. They have obviously been married for some time, so I presume it’s a happy marriage?’
‘Very,’ Kit confirmed unhesitantly.
‘Then that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?’
She gave him a searching look. ‘Is it?’ Somehow it had never actually occurred to her, in light of his own brief relationships with women, that Marcus believed in love and marriage…
‘Of course. Look at Desmond,’ he reminded her. ‘He made two serious errors in his first marriages, and now he’s in love with and married to a woman thirty years his junior. He’s making a bit of a mess of it at the moment, I grant you, but I have complete confidence in him seeing, before it’s too late, what an idiot he’s being.’
‘Did you tell him as much?’ Kit chuckled.
‘Of course,’ he confirmed unrepentantly. ‘He is being an idiot. Second to actually finding the woman you love, having a child with that woman has to be the most wonderful experience of any man’s life. Wouldn’t you say?’
She would, yes. But she wouldn’t have thought that Marcus would say so, too…
He gave her a glance, noting her thoughtful expression. ‘You just didn’t think I would say so, too, did you?’ he guessed shrewdly.
Kit glared at him. ‘Well, you hardly give the impression that marriage and a family are high on your list of priorities!’
‘You have to meet the right woman to even begin to think in that vein.’
And he expected to find that ‘right woman’ by going out with women like Andrea Revel? Somehow Kit didn’t think so.
But if Marcus did, who was she, a complete outsider, to say otherwise? Even if she did love him to distraction!
‘I suppose so,’ she conceded noncommittally. ‘I had rather a disturbed night’s sleep, would you mind if I had a little nap now?’
‘Just as the conversation was getting interesting…’ he murmured speculatively.
‘Maybe to you,’ she shot back, settling down comfortably in her seat. ‘It’s a matter of complete indifference to me.’
‘Of course it is.’
Kit turned sharply at what she felt was a completely patronizing tone. ‘Not every woman wants to get married and have children, you know,’ she snapped.
‘You do,’ he insisted softly.
She gave him a frustrated glare. ‘Maybe,’ she finally accepted tersely. ‘But if Mike Reynolds is an example of what men are like, then I would rather not bother, thank you!’
‘He isn’t,’ Marcus assured her. ‘At least, I hope he isn’t!’ he added frowningly. ‘You don’t think I’m like Mike Reynolds, do you?’
This conversation had taken an extremely strange turn as far as Kit was concerned—one she would rather not pursue!
‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she responded airily.
‘I bet you haven’t,’ he returned, obviously not at all happy with the conversation himself now.
Kit closed her eyes, a little smile playing about her lips, as her last vision of Marcus was a most disgruntled expression as he struggled with the concept