Lisa just wished she’d realized all this before tonight. She never would have slept with him and known what she would be giving up by marrying another if it came to that.

“Shall I read to you?” Charles asked. “Or will you read to me?”

Lisa dragged her eyes from where they’d wandered to Robert and smiled faintly at the question. “Why do we not take turns? You can begin and I shall take over after a couple of pages.”

“Very well,” Charles said agreeably and settled back with the book he’d brought for her. Opening to the first page, he began to read aloud and Lisa found her gaze drifting back to Robert again. He sat under a tree at the opposite side of the clearing, glaring at them coldly.

He’d been glaring at her ever since the start of this outing. It seemed he wasn’t taking her refusal to marry him well. She supposed it wasn’t what he’d expected after her years of adoration. Lisa suspected that if she’d given him the opportunity, he would have dragged her off to a corner this morning to try to demand she marry him. However, she hadn’t given him the chance. She’d remained in her room all morning, taking breakfast there to avoid him, and had only come below when one of the maids had come to tell her that Lord Findlay had arrived to take her on their picnic.

Charles had been waiting at the front door with a glaring Robert looming nearby when she’d descended the stairs. Lisa had ignored Robert, smiled at Lord Findlay and allowed him to usher her out to his carriage. She hadn’t been at all surprised when Robert had followed them out and mounted his horse. The animal that had been waiting for him, saddled and ready for him to accompany them.

Lisa had done her best to ignore him since then, but it was difficult when she could feel his fury burning into the back of her head with every passing moment. He was angry that she’d refused his proposal, that she hadn’t spoken to him today as promised, and no doubt that she was on this picnic with Findlay. But she didn’t know what else to do. She could not marry him, would not marry him the way things stood, and talking to him about it would not change things. As for this picnic, she had agreed to it before the attack at Pembroke’s outing and everything that had followed. It would have been rude to refuse at this late date.

“Perhaps you can carry on from here.”

Lisa glanced back to Lord Findlay and accepted the book he was holding out, then glanced blankly over the two pages. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said and wasn’t sure where he’d left off or where she should begin.