Ultimately, however, it wasn’t her decision to make. She could hardly stay at Arthur’s house and she couldn’t ride off with his horse either. Which meant that she had no choice but to go with him. Just as he knew she didn’t.
‘We’ll ride over the Moors.’ He didn’t as much as turn his head to make sure she was following. ‘The weather’s fine and it’s a quicker route.’
That was one consolation, she supposed, picking up her reins again. She preferred the Moors to the coastal road. The wildness of the terrain made her feel closer to the elements, more a part of nature itself, where appearances didn’t matter. There were also fewer people up on the tops and those few were more preoccupied with their work than with staring at her.
They rode steadily up the hillside on to a brown-and-purple plateau of heather and gorse interspersed with patches of cottongrass, tiny white flowers that gave the incongruous impression of snowdrifts in the middle of summer. Arthur rode ahead until the trail widened and then moved over to let her ride alongside, although he still didn’t speak.
That was another difference about him, she realised. The old Arthur would have made polite conversation, would have mentioned the lovely weather they were having at least, but the new version seemed to prefer stoical silence. Oddly enough, however, she didn’t feel uncomfortable with it. They seemed to be breaking all the rules of polite behaviour today, but somehow it felt refreshing and natural. Liberating even, with just the calls of a few seagulls and curlews gliding overhead to disturb the peace. The evening sun gave her a sense of well-being, too, warming her face through her veil as she tipped her head back and drew in a deep breath.
‘Oh!’ She glanced sideways for a moment and then came to an abrupt halt. The view behind and below them was magnificent, as if she were looking at three different landscapes at once: heathland, farmland and sea all merging seamlessly into one harmonious whole. There had to be a hundred different colours before her. ‘I should come up here more often. It’s breathtaking.’
‘It is.’ She heard him stop a few paces ahead, though when he spoke his voice sounded grave. ‘It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful place anywhere in the world, but I remember being desperate to escape. Even when I came back, I only wanted to leave again.’
She tore her gaze away from the scenery and looked towards him in surprise. The sun was dipping towards the horizon now and in the gloaming light his eyes seemed to shine like amber jewels, blending in with the heathland around them, though they looked oddly expressionless, too. His manner and tone were jarring. He was talking about the nine months when he’d been away, she realised, when everyone had thought that he’d drowned, but his words made it sound as if he’d left on purpose, as if what had happened to him hadn’t been an accident, as if he’d never wanted to come back. But why would he have wanted to leave, especially when he’d been engaged, albeit in secret, to Lydia? What could have made him so desperate?
‘Escape?’ She tried to keep her tone casual. ‘I heard that you lost your memory when you fell off your sailing boat and were picked up by a whaling vessel.’
‘Indeed?’ His expression didn’t change. ‘That sounds exciting, but I’m afraid it’s wrong in almost every respect. I didn’t fall off anything, I didn’t lose my memory and I rather like whales.’
‘Oh.’ There were so many implications to the statement that she could only focus on the last and most obvious one. ‘You mean you’ve seen a whale?’
‘Yes, to the north of Scotland, but they’re no danger to us and I’ve too much respect for the sea than to hurt one of its most noble creatures.’
‘I’d love to see one. I found a seal colony once, further down the coast towards Robin Hood’s Bay. The whole beach was full of mothers and pups.’
‘Ah.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘Seals I’m not so fond of.’
‘Why not? They’re adorable.’
‘They also bite through fishing nets, which need to be sewn back together by hand. It’s time-consuming, tedious and extremely pungent.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I was picked up by a vessel when I went overboard, only it wasn’t a whaler, just a fishing boat from Aberdeen.’
‘Oh.’ She felt a murmur of disquiet. Went overboard. He’d spoken the words plainly enough, though he’d already denied having fallen. In which case...had he jumped? But, no, her mind shied away from that idea, surely he couldn’t have.
‘They took me on as a deckhand.’
‘Meaning you worked on deck?’
‘As the title implies.’
‘But...’ she drew her brows together ‘...you’re a viscount.’
‘True, but even viscounts have hands they can work with. When they’re allowed to, that is. Believe it or not, I enjoyed the experience.’
‘Enjoyed?’ she echoed incredulously. How could he speak so calmly about it when she—they, she quickly corrected herself—had all been so worried? ‘But we all thought you were dead! Then when you came back, we thought you must have been picked up by a whaler and carried north to the Arctic. That was the only possible explanation for why you were gone for so long.’
‘Press-ganging?’ He lifted an eyebrow, but she ignored the sarcasm, spurring her horse a few steps closer to confront him.
‘If you were picked up by a fishing boat, then why didn’t you come home straight away?’
‘I just told you.’ The eyebrow lowered again, joining its companion in a heavy, black line as his expression seemed to harden. ‘I told you I didn’t want to come home. I wanted to be lost at sea for a while.’
‘So you deliberately abandoned your ship to join the crew of a fishing boat?’
‘Something like that.’
‘What about Lydia? You were engaged. Why didn’t you want to come back to her?’
‘I had a feeling she’d be all right. And she was, wasn’t she?’
Frances felt a momentary misgiving. There was a taunting edge to his voice, almost as if he knew the truth about Lydia’s other flirtations and was daring her to contradict him. But she had to. For the sake of sisterly loyalty, she had to.
‘She mourned for you.’
‘Yet it took her less than a week to engage herself to another man.’
‘Ye-es.’ She winced inwardly. There was no denying that part, though she’d hoped he hadn’t known about it. ‘But that doesn’t mean she didn’t care.’
‘Doesn’t it? Would you forget a man so quickly, Miss Webster? Presuming you truly loved him in the first place, that is?’
‘No.’ She found herself averting her gaze despite the presence of her veil between them. ‘But Lydia isn’t someone who can be on her own.’
‘So I noticed. In fact, it was just about the last thing I noticed before I left.’
‘What?’ Her eyes shot back to his face. ‘You mean you knew about John Baird?’
His lips twisted into something resembling a sneer. ‘Not Baird, no. The man I saw her with was much younger.’
‘Oh, yes, how silly of me, I meant...’
‘Don’t