My heart beat a little faster. “No,” I lied. “I doubt I ever felt like that. I have always been of too practical a bent to be swept away by my feelings.”

Thomas smiled faintly. “That is not how I recall it. ’Tis true you are a woman of great sense and practicality but you also possess strong feelings. In that we are very alike.”

Although this was only what I had been thinking a moment ago I did not want to discuss it with Thomas, least of all agree with him. Instead I signaled with my eyes for Muriel to come and take her husband away, but annoyingly, she was too busy flirting with William to pay attention. Muriel, a fairer, slimmer and gentler version of me, had always been a favorite of his. In fact I sometimes thought that had she not been betrothed to Thomas, William would have snapped her up in preference to me. I viewed them somewhat sourly for such a happy day, and prayed that Lady Leigh would soon deem it appropriate to lead the party back to the manor for the feast.

“Robert has a brilliant mind,” Thomas said, reverting, to my relief, to his previous topic. “As his uncle, I have a keen interest in his education and future. I would not want him to waste his talents.”

“You need have no fears,” I said, still short. “Robert is rich enough now to stock the finest library and thereby extend his education to his heart’s content. As for his other talents, he will require them all to learn how to run his new estates, deal with his tenants and care for the family I am sure will come, and soon. Perhaps we may even see him as a justice of the peace one day.”

“I am sure he will become a pillar of Oxfordshire society.” There was amusement in Thomas’s voice. “He is to have the manor of Chastleton, William tells me, which is rich agricultural land.”

“It is a good estate,” I agreed. “My mother-in-law wished him to have it, along with Knightstone and some others of her property and lands.”

I sensed Thomas stiffening a little as though something had startled him, yet when he replied, his tone was smooth. “Knightstone as well?” he said. “I had not realized. The late Dame Margaret had a great fondness for the place, as I recall.” He shifted. “She was an admirable woman, was she not? Pious, learned and with a great strength of faith. I found her inspiring in many ways.”

“She was a little too pious for me,” I said. My mother-in-law had been a dry fanatical stick of a woman, governed entirely by her religion. There had been no love, no humanity and no softness in her. I had not grieved for her. In fact her death the previous year had been a relief in many ways for her cold shadow had been like a permanent mourning shroud over Ashby.