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Esme Rawlings Discovers That Some Truths

Are Difficult to Conceal

“It isn’t your child,” Esme said, getting to her feet with a slight lurch. “It’s Miles’s baby.”

Sebastian stared at her without rising, which was a sign of how shocked he was. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “You’re with child.”

“Miles’s child,” she repeated, trying to invest her voice with authority.

He said nothing so she unbuttoned the front of her pelisse.

“Look!” She molded the fabric of her dress against her belly. He looked.

She waited for him to draw the obvious conclusion. When he said nothing, she supplied the truth herself. “If the baby were yours, I would only be six months pregnant, Lord Bonnington. I would hardly be showing my condition at all.”

He wrenched his eyes away and met hers. “We are on a first-name basis, Esme.”

There was something in his eyes that she didn’t like to contradict, at least not when it came to something so trivial. 146 Eloisa

James

“Sebastian,” she said reluctantly. “At any rate, I am much farther in the pregnancy than six months.”

“When will the babe be born?” he asked.

She tried to look casually uninterested. “Perhaps next month.”

Suddenly he realized she was standing, and leaped to his feet. Without speaking, he looked at her from head to foot. Esme suffered it. She had realized that he might as well see how plump she had become. It would convince him that the baby was not his but Miles’s. And that was essential, because—because—she wasn’t sure why. And he would lose that lovesick look when he realized that she was no longer one of the most beautiful woman in the ton, but a plump, round woman with a propensity to cry and not a bit of common sense left in her head.

He didn’t seem to be immediately revolted. Still without speaking, he reached out and took her shoulders in his hands and began a gentle circling of her shoulders that felt so good she almost sagged against him.

“Well,” she said instead, “I had better return to the house. I have many things to do. The Ladies’ Sewing Circle is coming tomorrow.”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “You are hosting a ladies’

sewing circle? You, Infamous Esme?”

“Don’t call me that,” she said scowling. “I’m a widow, and I’m being respectable, don’t you see?”

“Are you good at sewing?”

She wouldn’t have even answered him, but he seemed genuinely curious rather than sarcastic. “Not very,” she admitted. “But all we do is hem sheets for the poor. The vicar stops by to offer encouragement.”

“Sounds remarkably tedious,” Sebastian commented.

“Mr. Fetcham is a sweet man, truly. And quite handsome,”

she said with just a trace of smugness in her voice. His hands tightened on her back, but he looked down at Fool for Love

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her as calmly as ever. “A vicar could never keep you in line, sweetheart.”

“I don’t need to be kept in line,” she said indignantly. “At any rate, Sebastian Bonnington, my point is that I am busy and happy. And I would be quite grateful if you could take yourself back to Italy. Why, a number of people who know you are arriving for a dinner party next week.” She stopped, thinking that it wasn’t very polite to tell him about a gathering to which he was obviously not invited.

“You must give up this foolish idea of being a gardener,”