She kept her eyes closed and her hands over her face until she heard the door open quietly and close again. Even then she did not move immediately.
He wondered at what exact moment he had fallen in love with her. When he had first seen her walking along the driveway behind her son? When he had held her and soothed her at the lake? When he had danced with her and she had stepped on his foot and giggled like a girl? When he had kissed her?
Or perhaps there was no exact moment. Perhaps all his encounters with her, few though they had been, had contributed to his knowledge the morning after that kiss that he loved her.
Or perhaps he did not love her at all, he thought. Perhaps it was that he was lonely and that he had recognized her loneliness and responded to it. Perhaps it was nothing more than that.
But Lady Eve could soothe his loneliness. Any number of women who would be only too eager to receive the addresses of a wealthy viscount and heir to a marquess could soothe his loneliness. And yet with Lady Eve, with all the other guests at Durham Hall, he felt lonelier than he had for the previous two years.
No, it was not just need that drew him to Lady Barbara Hanover. It was Lady Barbara herself. There was a quiet maturity about her, an acceptance of life, an absence of bitterness despite the cruel treatment she had received at the hands of fate, an inner strength. Those qualities drew him like a magnet. And her beauty. And the slender, graceful body.
She was as different from Anna-Marie as it was possible to be. Anna-Marie had been tiny and fragile and timid and adoring. He had realized long before that his feelings for her had been as much paternal as loverlike. He had wanted to shield her from the inevitable clutches of death. He would have gladly died for her if he could. But he had loved her and always would.
And now he loved Lady Barbara Hanover. Except that he had no business loving her. He was a guest at the home of the Duke of Durham, and the duke did not even publicly acknowledge her. He himself was there on the understanding that he was Lady Eve’s suitor, and she obviously had every intention of having him. It would be awkward to do nothing about developing that relationship after all. It would be impossible to choose her elder sister instead.
And he had insulted Lady Barbara horribly the night before. Kissing her like a gauche schoolboy and losing his head as soon as his lips touched hers. Allowing the kiss to become intimate and suggestive. Touching her, fondling her through the thin fabric of her dress. Wanting her.
God! How much more insulting could he possibly have been? It had been as if he were telling her that he considered her a woman of easy virtue merely because she had once loved too well and too unwisely. He should never even have called on her at that hour of the night.
What must she think of him? He had felt her need. It had almost overwhelmed her—and him— for a few moments. But that was of no consequence now. He had started the whole thing by going there, by dancing with her, by kissing her. She was a woman of dignity. He would be fortunate indeed if she even allowed him to apologize.
His thoughts and his feelings gnawed at him all morning until the time when Lady Eve and her lady guests led the gentlemen into a downstairs salon and displayed to their interested gaze a table of large ornate hearts at either side of the room—seven on each table. Before dinner that night, each of the gentlemen was to pick up one heart from the table on the right. The lady whose name was written on the back of the heart was to be his valentine for the next day. Each lady was to pick a heart from the table on the left. The gentleman whose name appeared on the back was to be her valentine for the next day.
“In a moment we ladies will leave,” Lady Eve announced, “so that you may each write your name on the back of a heart, gentlemen. But remember that you are gentlemen and must not peep at the hearts of the other table.”
“But what if my valentine does not choose my heart in return?” Mr. Stills asked. “Will it not be a trifle confusing?”
The ladies laughed merrily. “Therein lies the fun,” Lady Eve said, clapping her hands. “Tomorrow could prove to be a most interesting day.”
All the hearts were quite different from one another, the viscount noticed. Doubtless there would be some whispering and dropping of hints between then and the time before dinner when the choices were to be made. The choosing of a valentine might not be quite as random as it would appear to be.
But the idea was fun. He had to admit that. He grinned at Lady Eve as she smiled brightly at him, and winked at Lady Caroline Weaver as she whisked herself from the room behind the other ladies. He chose a rather lopsided heart whose base had been cut clumsily with careless scissors, and wrote his name large on the back of it.
He would slip outside, he decided as he left the room. There must be almost an hour before luncheon. If he hurried, he should be able to ride to the dower house and back in that time and make his apologies. There was little else he could do. He could not call on her for tea as if nothing had happened between them the night before. If he went out through a back entrance, perhaps he would avoid company.
He was almost at the back entrance of his choice when he literally collided with a servant coming down the back stairs. He caught her by the arms to steady her.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said.
But she was not a servant. It was hard to know what Lady Barbara was doing coming down a servants’ stairway—no, perhaps not so hard—but there she was anyway. She focused her eyes on his chin.
“I was not looking where I was going,” she said. And then, unnecessarily, “I was calling on my mother.”
“I was on my way to the dower house,” he said.
“There is no need.” She had not once looked into his face. “It was all my fault. I would prefer to forget about it.”
“No,” he said, and somehow he had possessed himself of her hand. “No, Barbara, I should not have put you in such a compromising position. I apologize most humbly.”
She looked up into his eyes then, such an agony of something in her own that he unconsciously gripped her hand more tightly. But there was no chance to say more. Someone else was coming down the stairs, and he drew her to the door and outside.
“Zachary is in the stables with the puppies,” she said. “He will be wondering why I have been so long.”
Which was as foolish a thing as she could have said, he thought. What boy, alone in the stables with horses and dogs and puppies, would ever think of wondering why his mother was spending such a long time with his grandmother? He offered her his arm.
“No.” She shook her head. “You ought not to be seen with me, my lord. My father would not like it.”
“A gentleman being polite to his own daughter?” he said, falling into step beside her and clasping his hands behind his back.
