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"Pegasus is not ridiculous," Kate protested. "He is a very good dog."

"He is a fat, spoilt little creature, but admittedly, a very good dog. Who thinks he is a cat. And has the name of a horse."

She laughed, and Nathaniel was glad to have restored her good humour. He did not wish their walk to become a catalogue of his childhood miseries, but there were things she needed to understand if their courtship were to progress as he hoped it might.

"My parents had very particular ideas about the sort of gentleman I ought to become," he continued. "My father wanted me to take an interest in the family estates and prepare myself for a life spent attending to business, while my mother wished me to make a suitable marriage to some joyless young woman with the correct family connections. Neither of them could understand why I preferred to spend my time travelling or digging about in the ground, and they have spent years trying to persuade me to abandon it all."

"But that is your life’s work, Nathaniel! And you are so good at it. I cannot imagine why anyone would wish you to give it up."

They walked on for a little while, following the path as it curved around a stand of beech trees. Nathaniel could see the barrow in the distance now, although it was still some way off, and he found himself wondering how to approach the more difficult part of his confession. He had spent years introducing himself as Mr Nathaniel Briar, and the name had become so much a part of his life that he sometimes forgot he had any other. It had been easy enough to conceal his identity when he intended to move on after a few weeks, but he could hardly continue to court Catherine Darcy while allowing her to believe he was someone he was not.

"There is something else I ought to tell you, Cathy, and you may be cross with me when you hear it."

She looked up at once. "Good heavens, Nathaniel. What have you done?"

"Nothing dreadful, I assure you. Although I have been guilty of a little deception."

"Have you got a wife somewhere?" she asked, stopping so abruptly that he almost stumbled.

"Good God, no! Cathy, what an extraordinary question!"

"Well, you said you had deceived me, and I could not imagine what else it might be. You are not secretly married, then?"

"Certainly not! Nor am I harbouring a collection of illegitimate children, if that is to be your next inquiry."

"Of course I was not going to ask that!" she exclaimed, her cheeks turning pink. "Oh, Nathaniel, will you please tell me what you are talking about?"

He smiled and took both her hands in his. Martha studiously examined a patch of wildflowers at the side of the path.

"The truth is that Briar is not my family name. Nathaniel is indeed my Christian name, but I borrowed the surname from an ancestor because I wished to pursue my work without everyone knowing who I was."

Kate frowned. "But why should anyone make assumptions about you? Is your family so very well known?"

"My father is the Earl of Syndham, and I am his eldest son, which makes me Viscount Ashbourne, although I have spent the better part of my adult life doing my utmost to forget the fact."

Kate stopped walking and turned to look at him, her brow creased in confusion. "A viscount? You are a viscount, Nathaniel? But you seem so... decidedly not a viscount!"

"I am not sure whether I should be offended or not," he said with a laugh.

"It is just that you seem to care so little for the rules of society. It seems odd to me that you are a titled gentleman."

"Yes, well, it seems odd to me also, which I suppose is why I started using Briar as a name."

"And your father, the Earl, is he well? Do you expect to inherit the title soon? How will that affect your work?"

"My father is as healthy as an ox, thank the Lord, and so I hope it is something I shall not have to contend with for a long, long time. But at some point I shall have to face it, and my family, and decide how my life will look. And if your life is to be joined with mine, then you shall have to face it too. I cannot bear the thought of you becoming part of their world, Cathy. They are cold and cruel and everything that you are not."

"To summarise," she said, and Nathaniel wanted to laugh. Her mind could only seem to deal with difficult information through categorisation and analysis. "You are a viscount, and one day, be that in a year or twenty, you will become an earl."

"Yes, that is correct."

"And your family are unkind and quite cold."

"Also correct."

"Then the way I see it, the only thing to do is to live your life in a good and productive and useful way until the time comes when you may have to rearrange things. But just because your family are unhappy does not mean that we would have to be. A house is changed by those who make it a home. I am lucky that my home has always been filled with laughter and love, but in my father's day Pemberley was quite different. His parents were much stricter and colder, although not cruel, to my knowledge, and it was a draughty, dour old place. It is not now, and I would take hope from that. No one knows what the future holds, but I feel strongly that it is for a person, or two people," she said, stepping a little closer to him, "to build the kind of future that they want."

Nathaniel looked down at her with a smile. "How have I been so lucky as to meet a woman who is both beautiful and wise?"