Page 132 of A Modest Independence

“And why have you stayed on here?” Jenny pressed him. “You seem well enough now, yet you’ve chosen to live here among strangers rather than go back to your own home. Your own people.”

“Have you seen the ridge?” Giles asked abruptly. “Really seen it?”

“Yes, but—”

Giles rose from his chair. “Come for a walk with me.”

Jenny looked at Tom.

“Come,” Giles said again, making the word a command. “You can be without your solicitor for ten minutes.”

Tom stood. “Go ahead, if you like. I’ll wait here with the servants.”

She gave him a reluctant nod. “Very well.”

Tom watched them go. Watched the way Jenny walked at Lord Castleton’s side, holding herself with such dignity and rigid self-restraint. Her eyes were still red from crying, her brows still knit with worry. As they exited the bungalow, he saw her take Giles’s arm in the same way she’d often taken his.

A jolt of bitter jealousy speared through him.

“Well,” Ahmad said, coming to stand beside him, “what are we going to do now?”

Jenny stood atop the ridge next to Giles, her gaze drifting over the snowy mountain range in the distance. The air was crisp and cool, biting at her face and throat. She twisted her cashmere shawl more firmly about her shoulders. “It is beautiful here.”

“The most beautiful place in the world.”

“But it isn’t your home. It’s not where you belong.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me, Jenny.”

Jenny inwardly winced. It had been a long time since she’d been in company with Giles alone. Long enough to forget how easily he could flay her with a careless word or humiliate her with one of his aristocratic looks.

At one time, such humiliations had been a daily occurrence.

When she’d been fresh up from the country, an unpolished vicar’s daughter experiencing her first taste of life in town, how often had he made her feel as if she were something less than the society ladies with whom he regularly associated? How often had he ignored her very presence when she was in the room with Helena, treating her as if she were no more than a piece of furniture?

She’d forgotten how it felt. How it hurt.

“I know enough to recognize that you’re being selfish by remaining here. Worse than selfish. Had you cared one jot about your sister, you’d have—”

“You presume to lecture me about my sister?”

“Someone must do so. And as I’m already here—”

“You haven’t changed, have you? Always trying to manage other people’s affairs.” He ran a hand over his hair. “If you must know, I didn’t come home precisely because I do love my sister. I wouldn’t wish my presence on her. Not in the state I was in then.”

“She loves you. She wouldn’t have minded if you were hurt.”

“It wasn’t my injuries.” He cast an absent glance at his empty sleeve. “Though this has taken some getting used to.”

“If not your injuries, then what? What good reason could you possibly have for letting us think what we did?”

“It may not qualify as a good reason, but I—” He broke off. “You know what became of my mother. You know Helena and I have a sadness in us. A melancholy that threatens whenever we let down our guard.”

Jenny did know. The sadness had nearly consumed Helena when she first received word that her brother was dead. She’d wept inconsolably, long past the time her uncle believed suitable for mourning.

“Mine has become worse over the years.” Giles stared out at the mountains, his mouth set in a hard line. “When first I came here, I was subject to it in the worst way. You can’t imagine what it’s like for a fellow. This encroaching sorrow. And I had no earthly reason to be sad. Anyone would say I had the world on a platter. It was mine for the taking. And yet…some mornings, I could barely summon the strength to rise from my bed.”

“I understand the climate sometimes affects people—”