‘Oh, whole heaps of cousins on my mother and father’s side. A few aunts and uncles too, scattered across Ireland and England. What about you?’
‘There are cousins on my father’s side, I believe, but none who would acknowledge us. When he married Mama they disowned him, and on her side—she eloped, and so her family disowned her too. My Uncle Daniel, my Aunt Kate’s husband, is Mama’s brother and so my closest relative.’
‘The mysterious absent uncle who rarely writes?’ Aidan asked, steering her through a set of gateposts into the woodland park.
‘The same. He is an explorer, and spends all his time abroad. Exploring.’ Estelle made a face. ‘To be honest, I’ve never quite understood what exactly that entails.’
‘Haven’t you asked him?’
‘I’ve never had the opportunity. He married Aunt Kate when his father died, about twelve years ago, which was a couple of years before she took us in.’
‘You mean he’s never been back since?’
‘The whole point of their marriage was to allow him to remain abroad. It is an arrangement that has suited them both very well, I assure you. Aunt Kate’s father was the estate manager for many years, so she was ideally placed to take on Elmswood Manor, and Uncle Daniel never wanted the responsibility.’
‘Good grief. Do you mean that your uncle and aunt have spent their entire married life living apart?’
‘They have, and what’s more have been very content doing so. For my part, I think Aunt Kate and Uncle Daniel did a very sensible thing.’
Aidan caught the hand she had withdrawn from his arm. ‘I didn’t mean to imply any criticism, I’m sorry. I assumed—you see for me, the only reason to marry would be to have a family.’
‘Actually,’ Estelle said, wondering at the shadow that crossed his countenance, ‘I happen to agree with you that it is the best reason, but that is not to say it is the only one.’
‘You’re right.’ Aidan was himself again. Perhaps she had imagined it. ‘Your aunt sounds like a very practical woman.’
‘And the kindest, most loving—and in fact, she has always said that we three are the children she never had. She is only related to us by marriage, yet she took us in when none of our own relatives were in the least bit interested in our fate.’
‘And you quite rightly won’t have a word said against her. I’m sorry.’ Looking down, seeing her eyes awash with tears, Aidan cursed. ‘I’ve made you cry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
Casting a glance along the deserted pathway, he pulled her to one side before producing a large handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. Half-laughing, she tried to bat him away. The handkerchief fluttered towards the ground and as she stumbled trying to catch it, Aidan caught her, righting her with a hand on each shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Perfectly.’
As he never wore gloves, she could feel the heat of his skin through the flimsy muslin of her summer gown. Her smile faltered as she met his eyes, and her heart skipped a beat, then began to beat far too fast. She closed her eyes. He kissed the teardrops from her lashes and she sighed. He whispered her name, and she opened her eyes, seeing the question in his, and she lifted her face.
Their lips met hesitantly. His short beard was surprisingly soft. He tasted of wine. His lips were warm on hers, and her heart was beating wildly. Anticipation and excitement edged with slight panic, for she had no idea what to do next.
As if he sensed this, he pulled her closer, sliding one arm around her waist, pressing little kisses to her bottom lip. She sighed, her apprehension evaporating, a liquid heat pooling in her tummy as he slid his other hand up her back, caressing the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, teasing her lips apart with butterfly kisses, then moulding his mouth to hers, moving his lips gently. She followed his lead. As their kiss deepened, her body melted of its own accord against his. She clutched at his shoulder for balance, and beneath her lids, the world turned a flaming red.
When it ended, she gazed at him, dazed. Aidan’s eyes were heavy, gazing at her in the same stunned way. There was a hint of auburn in his beard at the corner of his mouth she hadn’t noticed before. She touched it, wonderingly, and he pressed his mouth to her open palm, and she caught her breath again, and it hung in the balance for a few seconds, the possibility of a second kiss, which she would have offered freely, before he smiled lopsidedly at her, setting her free from the circle of his arms.
And then they walked on, not quite as before, but in accord, because there was nothing to be said, passing a pyramid-shaped building which proved to be an ice house, and on, until the trees gave way to a piazza dominated by a fountain, surprisingly deserted. They sat on a bench in the shade, close enough for their bodies to touch, though they kept their gaze on the tinkling fountain. The park was silent, even the birds made drowsy and muted by the heat.
‘I didn’t think I was that sort of person,’ Estelle said dreamily. ‘The kind who kisses at the drop of a hat.’
Aidan gave a huff of laughter. ‘The drop of a handkerchief, to be more precise. Ironically, until I met you, I thought I was no longer that sort of person. It just goes to show how resilient nature is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ He reached for her hand. ‘You do know, Estelle, that if we were in England—or Ireland—it would be quite wrong for me to kiss you.’
‘I kissed you back.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean. You may be well travelled, but you’re an innocent.’
‘Not so innocent that I can’t recognise that you have behaved like the honourable man I know you are, Aidan. Other men would have leapt at the offer of a second kiss, and probably pressed for a great deal more, whether it was offered or not. Not,’ she added hastily, seeing his horrified expression, ‘that I have been subjected to that, but there have been times when it could have become an issue, had I been a little less vigilant.’ She sighed, fiddling with the strings of her bonnet. ‘So please stop apologising. We agreed, didn’t we, that we would make our own rules?’
‘We did.’
Later, alone in her pension, realising she’d turned a page in her book without taking in a single word of what she’d read, Estelle cast her history of the Medicis aside. Today had been a revelation. Who would have thought that kissing could be so utterly delightful? Or more specifically, who would have thought that she could find kissing so utterly delightful? She had always found the idea of it frightening, a stormy expression of the unsavoury cocktail of hate and love which her parents felt for each other. And her actual experience, until she had kissed Aidan, had been distasteful. But kissing Aidan!
Jumping out of bed, she threw open the window to gaze out on to the piazza below. Kissing Aidan was like nothing she had ever imagined. For the first time, she understood how Phoebe’s passion for the arrogant but charismatic Frenchman could have flared. When she discovered that her twin had taken Solignac as a lover, she had been shocked to the core—not, as Phoebe assumed, because she had behaved scandalously, but because she claimed to be passionately in love. This, Estelle had always assumed, was the one emotion all three sisters were quite immune to, and happily so, given the appalling example of their parents’ tempestuous and ultimately miserable marriage. But Phoebe, thank goodness, had been cured of her passion for that French enfant terrible, and now that she’d got him well and truly out of her system, she had made a very sensible marriage much like Aunt Kate’s, which allowed her to concentrate on her true passion, for her restaurant.
Aidan,