Slightly Married by Mary Balogh

left hand and raised his right.
    Even though she was wearing gloves, there seemed something very intimate about holding his hand—clinging to it actually—for such a long time. But until they were close to the bottom she would not for the life of her have relinquished his support. He was a very solid man to lean upon, she thought. Solid and dependable. For a long time she had prided herself upon her ability to stand alone, to depend upon no one but herself. Almost everyone who was closest to her now depended upon her.
    He took her next to Westminster Abbey, which she did not like quite as well as St. Paul's, though she found the sense of history there almost overwhelming.
    “Can you believe,” she asked, standing in the middle of the nave and looking about her in some awe, “that every monarch since William the Conqueror has been crowned here?”
    “Except for Edward V,” he said. “And most of them are buried here too. I took ghoulish pleasure in that fact the first time I came here as a boy.”
    “Did you come to London often?” she asked.
    “Not really.” He led the way onward toward the altar. “Our parents always preferred to keep us at Lindsey Hall. We liked it better there too. We were a wild lot. Still are, I suppose.”
    “Are you older or younger than your brothers and sisters?” she asked. She knew almost nothing about him, she realized. Yet he was her
husband
.
    “I am second to Bewcastle,” he explained. “Then there are Rannulf, Freyja, Alleyne, and Morgan. Our mother was a voracious reader, especially of history. She chose our rather outlandish names.”
    “Are you a close family?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “I have not even been home for three years,” he said. “I quarreled with Bewcastle on that occasion and left sooner than I had intended. But that was nothing new.”
    His manner was not encouraging and he offered no further information. Eve returned her attention to the abbey. How odd, she thought, to be married to a stranger. And to a man who would remain forever a stranger.
    He drove her past St. James's Palace and past Carlton House, where the Prince of Wales lived. He drove her through Hyde Park, which was far vaster than she had expected, far more like a piece of the countryside than a park in the middle of the largest city in the world. He kept to the quieter paths, avoiding the crowd of vehicles and horses she could see occasionally in the distance.
    “We can go to the Tower of London if you wish,” he said when they reached Hyde Park Corner. “There is a menagerie there that you may enjoy seeing since you seem to be fond of animals. Or we can go for ices.”
    “I am not sure I would like to see animals caged up,” she said. “I would want to set them all free.”
    “The citizens of London would be thrilled at the prospect of encountering a lion or tiger around every corner,” he said. “Your heart is bleeding again.”
    She laughed. “Ices?” she said, just realizing the other option he had offered. “I have heard about them but never thought to taste one.
May
we?”
    And so he took her to Gunter's, where she enjoyed the indescribable luxury of eating her very first ice.
    “Does London live up to your expectations?” he asked.
    “Oh, yes,” she assured him. “I wish I had a week here.” She flushed and bit her lip when she realized how like an eager, naive child she must sound. “I am also longing to be home again, of course.”
    She had feared that they would spend the afternoon in near silence, awkward, even morose with each other. It had not been like that after all. He was not a talkative man or an obviously amiable one. But he had a gentleman's manners and did his part, as she did, in making sure that conversation flowed between them.
    “Is it possible,” she asked when they had finished their ices, “to find a shop where I may purchase gifts for the children? It would be so exciting for them to have something from London.”
    “For the orphans?”