Page 36

“You’re my wife. I want you back. Tell your maids that I’ll send over a couple of footmen to carry your boxes.”

“You must be cracked!”

“No. Unless I’m much mistaken, we have decided to have an heir, and we may already have begun the process. Under those circumstances, obviously you have to move back into the house.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t move into that house for a million pounds. And you cannot have really expected that I would do so!”

“I know you, Helene. You’ll want what’s best for the child. And living in his family home with a father on the premises is by far the best.” Darby had been absolutely right. He could see in her eyes that fatherhood was a potent argument.

“I see no reason why we should live under the same roof,” she said.

“Because the child will be my son or daughter.”

“Mine as well!” Helene snapped.

“Of course. I may be a rakehell,” he said, unconsciously echoing Mrs. Austerleigh’s condemnation of his rival, the Earl of Mayne, “but I’m growing old. I seem to be gaining some measure of responsibility towards my name.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it!” Helene scoffed. Then she asked the question Rees was rather dreading: “Is one to suppose, then, that you are planning to reorder your household to accommodate my presence? Won’t that be a sacrifice?”

The delicate irony in her voice made his stomach churn. He picked up a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.

“Don’t eat that!” Helene screeched. “It belonged to Lady Sladdington, and she has very bad teeth.”

Rees shrugged. “Do you think they’re catching?” But he put the sandwich down. “At any rate, no, I haven’t.”

“You haven’t what?”

“Told Lina to leave the house.” This was harder than he thought, now he was looking right at Helene. “I told Leke to clean out the bedchamber—the large bedchamber—next to the nursery for you.”

“You must be joking,” she said, staring at him with what appeared to be fascination.

“I’m not.” This was the tricky part. “You want a child, Helene, am I right?”

She laughed. “Not under those circumstances.”

“I want an heir as well. I hadn’t really thought about it until you brought up the question, but now I realize that I do. Tom shows no sign of marriage; he’s about as wet as a waterlily, and he’s never shown any interest in women that I know of. If neither of us has issue, the title and the estate would revert to the crown, you know. My father was an only child and as far as I know, there aren’t any far-flung cousins waiting for my obituary in the Times.”

“Why would you care?” she asked. “You’ve never shown any interest in the honor of your name. The very suggestion is laughable.”

“Well, now I do,” Rees said, picking up the sandwich and eating it. Who cared if all his teeth fell out? Not his wife.

“This is all very well,” Helene said impatiently, “but I fail to see that it has any relevance to the presence of a strumpet in my bedchamber, not to mention your absurd suggestion that I take over the nursemaid’s quarters.”

“You want a baby,” he said shrewdly, meeting her eyes. “Don’t you, Helene? All these—” he waved his hand at her “—these changes in your hair and dress, they’re because you want a baby.”

“Yes, although,” she said with a little smirk, “they have compensations of their own.”

“Mayne, I would gather.”

“Precisely,” Helene replied, noticing with appreciation that the idea seemed to irritate him. Esme had said that Rees was jealous and while Helene thought it was unlikely, the idea of causing her husband any sort of annoyance was too pleasurable to ignore. “Mayne was here this morning, and his attentions are most marked.”

“If you have a child with Mayne,” Rees said deliberately, “I’ll make its life a misery. I will divorce you, of course. Did you know that I keep your dowry in the event that we divorce on grounds of adultery? How will you raise the child, Helene?”

Her heart was sinking, but she kept her chin high. “My mother and I shall live together, just as we do now.”

“Now you have an extremely generous allowance from me,” he snapped. “As a divorced woman, you will have to live in the country, of course, but I believe your mother’s dower estate includes only this house in town. So you’ll rent some small house somewhere. Your child will go to the parish school, if there is one, and if they allow bastards to attend these days. I’m not sure about that. I am certain that he will be ostracized though. And what if you have a daughter, Helene? Who will she marry? What will her life be like?”

She stared at him, lips pressed together.