“Yes,” Beresford said dryly. “With a wife. Did you meet Rosamund Hunter at tea?”
“March’s sister?” Lord Wetherby stood back from the mirror and decided that the pin was not centered but was close enough not to matter.
“I haven't seen her for years,” Lord Beresford said. “March forced her to marry an old man when she was scarce out of the schoolroom.”
“She was not forced,” the earl said. He met his friend’s eyes in the mirror. “At least, that is what I have heard.”
“She used to come here as a girl,” Lord Beresford said. “She was always good fun—just one of the fellows, in fact. She used to climb trees and chase sheep and sled down the steepest hills. She has grown into a regular beauty, I must say.”
“Yes,” Lord Wetherby said, turning from the mirror and indicating his readiness to go downstairs. “I was presented to her at teatime.”
“I rather fancy her,” his friend said, getting to his feet. “She might liven up a potentially dull couple of weeks, don’t you think?”
The earl opened the door without answering.
“A widow and all that,” Lord Beresford said, winking at the earl. “Did you notice her figure, Justin? Or do you have eyes for no one but Annabelle these days?”
The earl’s thoughts tingled with memories of Rosamund Hunter’s figure. “Good, is it?” he asked, indicating that his friend should precede him through the door and resisting the urge to plant him a facer as he passed.
Lord Beresford made a shape with his hands that did not fit at all well with the earl’s memories of her slenderness. “Quite good enough,” he said, walking out onto the upstairs landing. “Quite good enough, my friend.”
A good firm hand at his back would send him shooting over the banister and toppling to the tiled hallway two stories below, the earl thought uncharitably as he quietly closed the door of his dressing room.
Lady March, Annabelle, and Rosamund were approaching the staircase at the same moment, the earl saw with a sinking of the heart. The two gentlemen bowed, exchanged pleasantries with the ladies, and allowed them to go first down the stairs. Beresford turned to the earl, raised his eyebrows, and made a whistling gesture with his mouth. Rosamund was dressed in an emerald-green long-sleeved gown that emphasized her slender curves. Her hair was piled high as it had been that first evening when she had worn the orange silk dress.
It was only as they reached the next floor and entered the drawing room that the Earl of Wetherby realized that he had not noticed at all what Annabelle was wearing. He approached her, complimented her on her appearance, which was decidedly good, he discovered when he focused his attention on her, and offered to fetch her a drink.
“Of course I remember you, my lord,” Rosamund said with a smile.
Lord Beresford grimaced. “Does this mean I must call you Lady Hunter?” he asked. “It used to be Josh and Rosamund.”
“But that was before you became so grand,” she said. “It seems presumptuous to call a marquess’s heir Josh.”
The Earl of Wetherby was taking Annabelle across the room toward an older lady and a younger couple, who had been pointed out to Rosamund as his mother and Lord and Lady Sitwell, his sister and brother-in-law. She felt that she could relax for at least the moment with her former comrade-in-arms.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he said with a grin. “You may call me my lord, then, and touch the ground with your nose as you curtsy each time you address me. Will that make you feel better?”
He had been a thin and wiry boy, always untidy, always laughing, always into some mischief, always ready to fight anyone who dared tease him about the dimple in his right cheek. He was no longer thin, though he was not particularly tall or muscular. His gray eyes looked as if they still laughed much of the time. His thick dark hair was quite as unruly as it had ever been, though it had clearly been combed fairly recently. The dimple was still there. He walked with a limp, she had noticed upstairs.
“I think I will settle for Josh,” she said, laughing.
“If you feel you are being overfamiliar at any time,” he said, “you can always extend it to Joshua. How old were you and I when we last met?”
“Fifteen, I believe,” she said. “That was the year you fell into the stream and then splashed me with water for laughing at you.”
“So it was,” he said. “Tell me, Rosamund, were you always a beauty?”
“I believe the very first words my mother spoke when I was born were to the effect that I was the loveliest child ever to see the light of day,” she said.
“ Ah,” he said. “I suppose fifteen-year-old boys are blind to such matters. Did you not have pigtails?”
“Yes,” she said. “I did not win the battle to be rid of them until I was almost sixteen. What happened, Josh?” She glanced down at his leg.
“Battle of Waterloo,” he said. “I was lucky the old sawbones who tended it did not hack it off. I believe I informed him—at least, I have been told I did; I was not quite rational at the time—that my great-uncle the Marquess of Gilmore would have his license and his head, not necessarily in that order, if he did not put that saw down and practice responsible medicine. Apparently I roared loudly enough to draw a faint cheer from the other men lying around.” He grinned.
“I didn’t know you had fought,” she said.
“Cavalry officer,” he said. “Scarlet regimentals and the whole paraphernalia. You should have seen me then, Rosamund. You would have been swooning with admiration.”
