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“You know nothing of midwifery,” Rees objected.
“Her hip looks precisely like any other woman’s. And who knows what happened during her mother’s lying-in? A bunch 334 Eloisa
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of country doctors jumped to the conclusion that the tragedy resulted from that weak joint. I don’t call that sufficient evidence. But she believes—she truly believes—what she’s been told.”
“Then you must tell her different.”
“How? She expects me to take myself off and get a mistress. She’s decided that future bedding is out of the question—
and she doesn’t seem to have any other use for me! She thinks I’m the kind of man who would betray her.” Darby ground to a halt. He hadn’t meant to tell Rees that particular truth.
“Bosh,” Rees said, turning around from the mantelpiece and scowling at Darby. “You’re a fool if you believe that tripe. You’re as bad as she is. She’s likely been told that men have to tup a woman every other hour or die trying, and she believes it; you believe that she doesn’t care if you take a mistress. Fools, both of you.” He paused for a moment. Then: “I never had the chance to have a marriage like yours. You know that.”
Darby stared at his friend. Rees looked like a great, growling bear.
“I have no use for women. But if Henrietta was my wife—”
Rees turned to the door and said it over his shoulder.
“Don’t—” He stopped, turned around, and looked his friend straight in the face.
“Don’t lose her.”
Darby emerged from the card room shaken. He’d known Rees for years and never seen him look like that. Almost . . . almost as if he were lonely.
It only took a minute to locate Henrietta. She was seated on a rounded settee in the corner of the ballroom, being entertained by two gentlemen. She looked up when he approached. “May I request the pleasure of this dance?” he said, bowing with a flourish. There was a collective little gasp amongst the men around her, and he remembered too late that Henrietta was lame. Fool for Love
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That his wife couldn’t dance. He never thought of her in those terms.
She threw up her fan but he could feel the anger glittering from behind it. “You must have misremembered,” she cooed. “I do not dance. I suggest you find some other partner. I shall be quite happy here.” She waved her fan and smiled brilliantly at the Honorable James Landow, seated to her left. The poor besotted fool smiled back as if she had promised him the moon.
“We were just discussing the old-fashioned tradition in which a lady invites gentlemen into her boudoir to help her dress.”
Henrietta in a rage was a revelation. Gone was the country mouse. She shone with a glittering, sensual wit that made every man within her orbit come to attention.
“Told Lady Henrietta I think it would be a charming habit to resurrect,” Landow said, with a quick sideways glance at Darby.
“Oh, don’t worry about my husband, dear sir,” Henrietta said with a roguish smile. She tapped her closed fan on Darby’s arm. “We have a thoroughly modern marriage. In fact, we hardly know a thing about each other. He did just ask me to dance!” Her laughter spilled out, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in it.
The two gentlemen seated on either side of her laughed as well, although neither of them met Darby’s eyes.
“Ah, my lady,” Count Frescobaldi said, lowering his mustached face to kiss Henrietta’s hand, “I am certain that your husband merely expressed his deepest wishes. As would I, if I had asked you to join me on the dance floor.” His voice was deep and rich as chocolate.
Darby’s fists clenched. But what was the point of hitting Frescobaldi? Henrietta looked a bit taken aback. Perhaps she grasped the implications of Frescobaldi’s deepest wishes.
“I think you underestimate how well we know each other,”
Darby said to Henrietta through clenched teeth.
“In what respect, dear husband? Do enlighten us all.”
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