She cleared her throat at the sudden discomfort between them. Whenever she asked him about his past, this was what happened. It severed the tenuous connection she was trying to build. But perhaps she was going about it wrong. Perhaps she needed to give before she would receive.

“Not everyone has the green fingers, as my mother used to say,” she said. “She loved to garden and oversaw every bush and flower at my father’s country estate. It is one of the few things I remember about her, but I learned to garden because of those lovely memories of her tending, cutting and arranging flowers. She used to make us these little bouquets, one for each, with our favorite flowers in them.”

“Different favorites?” he asked.

She smiled. “Yes. She, like you, recognized the three of us were individual people, even if we did share a face.”

“She died when you were very young, didn’t she?”

She was a little surprised he knew that, since he had obviously cared little for the bride he’d chosen for purely monetary reasons. She nodded. “We were just five when we…we lost her,” she said with a sad shake of her head.

“How, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She hesitated and then said, “In childbirth. My father wanted sons, even though the difficulty of our birth made that even more dangerous, I think.”

“He pushed on anyway,” Jasper said. “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me.”

“No, he is a bulldog in all things,” Thomasina said with a sigh as she looked off into the distance with unseeing eyes.

“There is a lake just over that little hill,” he said, following her line of sight. “Would you like to walk to it? It’s private and very pretty. I liked to fish there as a boy.”

“With your brother?” she asked.

He stiffened, though he didn’t release her as they walked along the path out of the garden, through a long, flat section of grass. “Yes,” he said at last. “Solomon and I did fish together there when we were young. He taught me to fish, actually.”

“Then you were close once,” she said softly.

He cast a glance her way. “I sometimes don’t remember it after everything that happened in more recent years. But…yes. There was a time that we were close, when I was very young. He was six years older than I was, so we were leagues apart, but he could be…kind. He could also be awful, but I suppose all brothers are from time to time.”

“I never had brothers, so I don’t know about that,” she said, freeing him again from having to speak more than he wished by turning the lens of their conversation on her. “My father was obsessed with having heirs for a while but never got his wish, so I can only speak to the bond of sisters.”

“Why didn’t he marry again, after the loss of your mother, if sons who could inherit and increase the family fortune were of such importance to his grand plans?” he asked.