Chapter Fifteen #3
“Not a rake, certainly,” he said with an answering grin. “But tight-lipped. You never have anything to tell me when I return from London. You just let me natter on indefinitely about things of little substance.”
“Because there is nothing that happens in Northampton,” she said, striking the keys and producing a discordant sound that made him wince. “And I like to listen to you talk, besides. What was I to tell you to rival your own stories? That Mr. Jenkins’ sow was safely delivered of seven piglets?”
Elliot nudged her shoulder with his. “You never told me,” he said, his voice lowering, “when Will Thompson came to call upon you. I found that out from Devon’s housekeeper.”
“Billy? The butcher’s boy?” Kate asked incredulously. “Why should I have mentioned it?”
“Because I would have liked to know that someone was courting you. From you, and not from the housekeeper.”
Kate shifted uncomfortably, feeling remarkably chastened despite the mild tone he’d employed. “But it wasn’t important,” she said feebly, somehow defensive. “I never even entertained him.”
“Hm.” Elliot’s fingers drifted over hers once more as he picked out a descending scale across the keys, and the brief brush of them seared her skin. “Why not?”
“Because—because—” Because she hadn’t wanted him.
She hadn’t wanted any of the village boys.
“I wasn’t interested,” she concluded lamely.
They had grown up alongside her, and any one of them would have been a suitable match, but she had never felt anything for any of them but friendship.
They hadn’t made her heart beat faster, hadn’t elicited any of the feelings that the romantic novels she’d so often filched from Longthorpe Manor’s library had suggested she had been meant to.
The very idea of waltzing in the moonlight with any of them was laughable.
Besides, she had let even the faintest thought of marriage go so long ago that it hadn’t even occurred to her that Billy had been attempting to court her until he had made it painfully, embarrassingly obvious.
Instead she had watched everyone else court, marry, begin families of their own.
Probably there had been opportunities for her.
Men she might have encouraged in their regard, if she had so desired.
But she had never had the time to spare for such things, never found herself tempted by any of the men in the village.
Only now, with Elliot’s hip pressed against her own, sitting so close that she could smell the lingering traces of his shaving soap clinging to his skin, did she wonder what might have been different if Elliot had been just one of those village boys.
Would she have found some interest in marriage then, had he not been born so far above her station?
He had always been destined, by his very birth, to go places that she could not follow, and she had always known that the most he could ever offer her was his friendship.
These peculiar what ifs had never plagued her before, when she had so rarely had the time to consider them.
But just lately they had begun to scrawl themselves across her mind with increasing frequency, her thoughts—which she had never allowed to be idle for very long—suddenly strewn all over with them. With him.
“Well,” Elliot said idly, as a sigh drifted free of his lungs, “that makes two of us, then.”
For a single, terrible moment, Kate was struck with the fanciful and horrifying notion that he had somehow peered straight into her brain to judge the wretched jumble of her thoughts. “I beg your pardon?”
“I wasn’t interested,” he said, the slightest of pinches creasing his brow.
“Alas, I now found myself several years behind my peers in certain matters.” His lips twitched into a half-smile.
“Do you know,” he said, “I recall a number of occasions in which I was obliged to make excuses for Richard so that he might steal a few private moments with Rebecca before they were wed. I have been a facilitator of a great many illicit kisses, but as I never took advantage of any similar such opportunity, I suppose I shall be a great disappointment to my eventual wife in that regard.”
A few private moments Richard and Rebecca had had to steal in secret, while she and Elliot had another quarter of an hour, perhaps, entirely to themselves.
No excuses to be made to anyone; no risk of public ruin or scandal.
Kate swiped her tongue across her lips, settling her hands in her lap.
“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “It can’t be much different than the pianoforte, can it? It’s never too late to learn.”
“The pianoforte,” Elliot said on a light laugh, “requires a great deal of practice to master. Tell me, Katie, with whom am I meant to practice kissing?”
Kate’s fingers knitted in her lap, clammy palms squished together.
Her pulse thundered in her ears, and she swallowed once—hard.
Probably it was a mistake, a misstep of catastrophic proportions.
But the tight clench of her jaw eased nonetheless, and she heard herself utter, “You could practice with me.”