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“It’s quite unusual to find them in this leaf pattern, or so Madame Humphries said.”

“I see the pattern is repeated on the sleeves.”

“If you can call them sleeves,” Henrietta said. “They’re much smaller than anything I’ve worn before.”

“The bodice is much tighter than any garment I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you wear.”

Henrietta choked back a smile. “That’s the lacing,” she pointed out. “You see that the bodice laces in front.”

He ran a finger over the lacing between her breasts. “I do see that.”

“You seem to like the gown,” Henrietta said, as his fingers lingered in that lacing. “So why the profanity when I entered?”

His head had been bent; suddenly he raised it and looked straight into her eyes. “This is not a gown that makes one wish to leave one’s wife at home,” he told her. Her leg was throbbing with the exertion of standing up, and Darby seemed to know, because he scooped her up and carried her over to a chair by the window.

“I’m sorry,” she said. There was no way to signify precisely how sorry she was to be so lame that she couldn’t attend the opening of Rees’s new comic opera. Or to tell her husband the jealous desperation in her heart when she thought of an opera house full of beautiful women. That jeal-Fool for Love 305

ousy had spurred her to wear a fete dress to a simple dinner with her spouse.

He sat down and she folded into his lap as if they were designed to be together. “I’ve been thinking about it, Henrietta, and I do believe that your hip dislikes it when I put your legs on my shoulders.”

“You mustn’t say such things aloud,” she said, rather feebly. She was becoming accustomed to his blithe disregard for convention.

He shrugged. “This is our drawing room, my dear, and there isn’t a footman in sight.” His eyes had that wicked glint again. “There are many other positions just as delectable that we could try. Looking at you in that lacing, I’m just as glad that you’re not accompanying me to the opera. I can’t have every man in London dreaming of unlacing your gown.”

“But I will never be as beautiful as you,” she blurted out. Red surged into her cheeks. Would she never learn to keep her tongue silent?

“Why on earth would you say that?” His fingers stilled on her chest, and he looked at her with curiosity. It irritated her. “You never seem to remember that I’m lame. Deformed. You are perfect. There’s not the slightest thing wrong with your body.”

“I see no disfigurement in yours either.”

She swallowed. “Don’t you understand, Darby? It’s not just my hip. If a woman can’t give birth, she’s—she’s nothing. Bartholomew Batt says that children are a woman’s greatest accomplishment.”

“I am beginning to dislike Bartholomew.”

“Well, I agree with him. To be a mother is—is—” She couldn’t even put into words what it meant.

“When my father lost the estate I grew up on,” Darby said, dropping a kiss on her ear, “I couldn’t imagine what I would do with myself. After all, I was only trained to run a large es-306 Eloisa James

tate. That particular estate, to my mind: the one my greatgrandfather established. And it was gone.”

“Lost? How did your father lose it?”

“Gambling.” Darby’s lips dropped away from her skin, leaving an unwelcome coolness. “Gambling. He lost our house and land on the turn of a pair of dice. I still have them. He brought the pair home, swearing that he’d kill himself. He didn’t do that, but he did wake me up, give me the dice, and tell me that they were all I’d ever inherit from him.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Oh, Simon, that’s awful.” Henrietta twisted around and kissed him. She had taken to calling him Simon in intimate moments, although she still couldn’t bring herself to do it in public.

“But now I have my own estate,” he said. “It’s not the one my grandfather lived on, but it is mine. And I am happy there. Are you happy in the nursery, Henrietta?”

She blinked at him.

“And how is that pestilent little child of yours today?” He dropped a kiss on her ear. “Did Anabel lose a meal on you, or just in your sight?”

She smiled wryly in acknowledgement of his point.