“You are going to marry Eve,” she said. “You are, are you not?”
“I have made no formal offer,” he said.
“But you will.” Her pace had quickened. “You will discover soon enough that I am acknowledged only as a dependent. William is kind to Zachary, and my mother still receives me, but to my father I am no longer his daughter. Stay away from me, my lord. If you think to befriend Zachary and to be kind to me, you will find yourself in an untenable position after you are married.”
“I was not being kind last evening,” he said. “I am sorry, Barbara. I did not mean to be insulting. I was playing with fire, coming late as I did and then dancing with you.”
She smiled unexpectedly. “At least I have danced again,” she said. She looked up at him fleetingly. “It was wonderful.”
“Tomorrow there will be an orchestra at the house here,” he said, and then wished he had not spoken.
“Yes,” she said.
Zachary was sitting cross-legged in the straw, his chosen puppy sleeping in his lap as he stroked with one finger between its eyes. The mother looked quite unconcerned, glad perhaps to have one less puppy to worry her constantly.
“Mama,” the boy said excitedly when she appeared in the doorway of the stall with the viscount. He scrambled to his feet, holding the puppy in the palm of one hand. “Uncle Will says I can take him home tomorrow. Because it is Valentine's Day, he said. What is Valentine's Day?”
“It is a day to show love,” she said.
“I am going to care for him until he follows me everywhere,” Zachary said. “I am going to train him to fetch and to sit up and beg. Uncle Will says that the first thing I will have to do is train him not to make puddles on the floor.”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh while the viscount chuckled.
“Hello, sir,” Zachary said. “Will you come tomorrow to see him? I want to show you my drawings of horses. Mama says that one looks just like my papa's horse when he left for the wars. Mama says I am a good artist.”
Lord Brandon rubbed the backs of two fingers across the child’s nose. “I shall call for a few minutes,” he said, “if it is all right with your mother.”
“Oh, it will be all right with Mama,” Zachary said confidently. “Won’t it, Mama?”
She looked up at the viscount’s chin again. “You will be busy,” she said. “But Zachary would be pleased if you can find a moment to come.”
And you?he wanted to ask. But it was a pointless question. It would draw merely a polite response. It was a good thing the boy was there, he thought, even though he had turned away to set his puppy down carefully beside the mother dog and was laughing at the squeaking of his waking pet. And it was a good thing that the voices of grooms told him that they were not far away. He might have drawn her into his arms otherwise. She looked so very tense, so very unhappy.
She had been warm and soft and yielding and passionate the night before. She would be a calm and a gentle and a warm companion. And it was so long since he had contemplated a relationship with a woman. It was so long since he had had a woman. Even his marriage had not brought him that sensual satisfaction that he craved.
But her son was there. And the grooms were there. And it was just as well.
“I shall do my best to find a moment,” he said. He bade her and her son a good morning and turned back to the house. He sensed that she did not want him to walk home with them.
He wished suddenly that he had been invited to Durham Hall as just an ordinary guest. If that were so, he would know his course and he would pursue it without hesitation. But it was not so. Although no formal offer had been made, he had been invited there as the prospective husband of Lady Eve Hanover. Surely it would be arranged that she was his valentine and he hers the next day. He would be expected to pay court to her all day and to make his offer either during the evening or on the following day.
He was not committed, of course. There was nothing to stop him from leaving Durham Hall a free man. But there was everything to stop him from turning his attentions to the girl’s sister.
Yes, it was as well that he had been stopped from acting according to instinct in the stables a few minutes before. It would be well for him to find it quite impossible to call at the dower house the next day. Except that the promise had been made to the boy.
And except that he knew he would move heaven and hell to make that brief visit.
“Do you approve of our little game, my lord?” Lady Eve looked up into Lord Brandon’s face as they strolled with the rest of her guests through the trees toward one of the follies later that afternoon. Her eyes sparkled with fun and merriment.
“Now I know why you and the other ladies were absent for so long last evening,” he said. “You must have made two hearts apiece.”
“Right,” she said. “One would think that a heart is a heart, would one not? We were amused to find that all were different when we were finally finished and compared efforts.”
The viscount smiled. This was exactly what he had been expecting.
“Mine were short and fat,” she said, laughing, “and extravagant. I used twice as much lace as anyone else. But I ought not to be saying this, ought I?”
“That depends, I suppose,” he said gallantly, “on who your listener is.”
