Page 2

“And you never know. Lady Rawlings might have a girl.”

“A pleasing thought, under the circumstances.”

“You’re a cool one. Don’t know what I’d do, if I had two girls to get off on the market, and—”

“You would do admirably.” Darby rang the bell, and his butler, Fanning, appeared with Bunge’s coat, hat, and cane. As he walked back into his study, the mask of detached amusement fell from Darby’s face. He had choked back his rage in front of the painted popinjay who had so delighted in telling him of his aunt’s pregnancy. But anger swelled in his throat.

4 Eloisa

James

“God-damned bitch.” The words burned like poison in his mouth.

Whatever his uncle was doing in his wife’s bedchamber, it didn’t involve fornication. Rawlings had told him last July, just before he died, that the doctor had ruled out connubial acts—and since he’d been a little in his cups, he’d added that Lady Childe was agreeable. No need to mention his wife, and he hadn’t. His mistress, Lady Childe, was the only person remotely interested in Miles’s ability to shake the bedsheets. And yet he died in Esme Rawlings’s bedchamber a week or so later. Suffered a heart attack in his wife’s bedchamber. And now the woman was increasing—waddling, even?

Doubtless the child would be born on the early side. The house party took place last July. If the child were Miles’s, his wife was six months along at the most. And why would the elegantly slim Lady Rawlings be waddling at only six months, with three long months to go?

Damn her for a lying jade. He didn’t believe for a moment that Miles slept in her bed. Likely she sprouted the babe with another man and lured Miles into the room in order to confuse the issue of paternity. Miles never deserved that hussy of a wife he married. But he stuck by his wife, never flinched as Esme Rawlings created scandal after scandal. Refused even to consider divorce. There were people in London who thought Darby was an uncaring, dispassionate man. They judged him an Exquisite, given the eccentricity and elegance of his clothing. They noted the ease with which he played the fashionable games of the ton and the trail of broken hearts that followed him, judged him by whispered tales of debauchery and degenerate friends. Told each other that the only emotion he ever displayed was vanity. Belying the gossips, Simon Darby stared at the mantelpiece with a look of such savagery that it was a wonder the china dogs didn’t shiver into pieces.

Fool for Love

5

The man who pushed open the door to the study didn’t seem to notice as he loped into the room and slung himself into a chair facing the fire. He was an olive-skinned, broad, brawny brute of a man whose only signs of his aristocratic birth lay in a crumpled neck cloth and a pair of fine boots. Darby glanced at him over his shoulder. “I’ve not the inclination for company.”

“Stubble it.” Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, accepted a glass of Madeira from the butler with the grimace he used for a smile and tossed off the glass, only to break into a fit of coughing. “Dammit, where did you get this hellacious wine?”

“I’d rather not discuss household exigencies.”

There was a note in Darby’s voice that made Rees blink.

“You’ve heard,” he said.

“That my aunt is increasing? Gerard Bunge just left the house. He suggested I marry a wool heiress otherwise known as the woolly breeder.”

“Blasted little gossip hound.”

“Bunge describes my aunt as waddling. There can be little doubt the child was conceived during my uncle’s life, if not actually by my uncle.”

Rees eyed his closest friend. He wasn’t much good on the comfort front, and the fact that he’d known Darby since they were boys only made it worse. He knew just how much his friend loathed pity.

Darby stood at the mantelpiece staring down at the fire, a long lean body of coiled muscle clothed in superb fine cloth. He looked a lord, from his tossled brown hair, to his shining boots, which is what he stood to be, if he inherited his uncle’s title and estate.

Without the estate, Darby was left with whatever he made from importing lace, and that couldn’t be much, in Rees’s estimation. Darby had two young stepsisters to raise. Even this house was likely entailed to the little whelp growing in Lady Rawlings’s belly.

6 Eloisa

James

Whereas Rees himself was a shambling mess, sartorially speaking, and yet had three or four houses, and more money than he knew what to do with.

Darby swung around. He had a face that made women swoon, with lean hollows in both cheeks that emphasized his cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and lean chin. It was a look that was exquisitely aristocratic and dangerously male. “The important thing is that Esme Rawlings is not carrying my uncle’s child.”

“Doubt it’s an immaculate conception. And bastardy is the devil to prove.”

“Then a baseborn whelp is going to inherit my uncle’s estate. God only knows who the father is. Do you know how much Miles—my uncle—wanted an heir?” It burst from him. Rees jerked his head. “We never discussed offspring.”

“That was the one thing he wanted: an heir. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to renounce his wife. Miles was the kindest of men. He couldn’t hold the line before an impudent beggar, let alone his wife.”