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Darby bowed. “I never doubted it for a moment.”

“Yes, you did.” Her eyes twinkled, and for a moment Darby felt the pull of the glorious woman whom all London had called the Aphrodite when she debuted. “I don’t blame you. But I am carrying Miles’s child. He wanted an heir, you know.”

“I know that,” Darby said.

“So we agreed to a rapprochement,” she said, unconsciously echoing his words to Gerard Bunge. “But I had no idea—no idea!—that Miles’s heart was so frail.” She looked up at him, and her eyes were suddenly brimming with tears.

“You have to believe me. I would never have agreed to . . . to heir-making if I thought it would endanger his health.”

Darby blinked. Perhaps he was wrong, and the child was legitimate.

His aunt was still talking. “Even if the child is male, I shall Fool for Love

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not disinherit you. We’ll get around the entail somehow. Miles would not have wished it.”

Darby suddenly saw through the aura of sensuality that his aunt had always carried around her like a suit of armor. He saw her anxious eyes, heard her words, and realized that he knew nothing of his uncle and aunt’s marriage. The chilling truth was that her child likely was his uncle’s own babe. He sat down and said, flatly, “I owe you an apology, Lady Rawlings. Shamefully, I did come because I questioned whether Miles could be the child’s father. I am deeply sorry that I ever doubted you.”

“Please call me Esme,” she said, putting her hand on his.

“I completely understand your suspicions. I would have doubted myself. The fact is that it was a very recent arrangement between Miles and myself. And I simply can’t understand why he didn’t tell me about his heart. I know that we were estranged, but to risk his life in that fashion—”

“He wanted a child desperately,” Darby put in. “If Miles thought there was a way to secure an heir, he would not have considered the risk too high.”

Esme’s hand tightened around his. Her eyes were painfully earnest and, Darby noticed with alarm, still swimming with tears. “Do you really think so? I can’t stop thinking that if he had simply told me about his heart condition, he would be here at this very moment.” Tears welled up and spilled over. Darby patted her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said.

“No, it’s not all right,” she replied in a strangled voice.

“It’s not all right! I am quite certain that he strained his heart that evening, and that’s why it failed when, when—”

“It is unfortunate that Marquess Bonnington mistook your chamber and entered the room. The shock seems to have precipitated a heart attack. But Miles himself told me that the doctor had given him an ultimatum—”

“I know!” she wailed. “I went to the doctor after Miles died, and he said that Miles was not supposed to—to have—

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to have—but Miles didn’t tell me!” She collapsed against Darby’s shoulder.

It was decidedly odd to feel her huge ball of a stomach pressing against his side. “Even if he had told you, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The doctor had only given him until the end of the summer.”

“The doctor told me as well. I simply cannot believe that Miles didn’t tell me— that.”

“Not Miles,” Darby said. “He disliked making people sad. He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to make you unhappy.”

That brought on a fresh onslaught of tears. Her voice was falling to pieces now, and he could only catch tangled bits of language, about how Miles was too good for her, truly, and she would never, ever—something—and. . . . He stroked her shoulder silently. He would have unequivocally stated that his aunt and uncle had no marriage at all, that they barely spoke and couldn’t tolerate each other’s company. But he was clearly wrong.

Esme was grieving for Miles, even if they hadn’t lived together in the common way of things. And even if she had flirted with every attractive man in London. And even if Miles’s affair with Lady Childe was public knowledge. After another moment of patting his aunt’s shoulder, his mind wandered to the woman who rescued Josie and Anabel, Lady Henrietta Maclellan. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never seen her in London. Perhaps her father decided she was too needle-tongued for marriage. She had certainly summed him up as beneath her notice in a mere breath. He had never seen such a dismissive expression on a woman in his entire life.

But he’d never seen such a beautiful smile either. When she smiled good-bye, she turned exquisite, in a way that made his heart stop: like a bird in flight, delicate and fine boned.

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Beside him, Esme straightened up and mopped the last of her tears with a handkerchief. “I’m sa-sa-sorry,” she said, hiccupping a little. “I’m afraid I’m terribly emotional these days, and I do miss Miles, and it’s just so—so—”