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Rees got to his feet. “You can’t get me out of here too early in the morning,” he remarked. “Why didn’t it occur to me that Helene might be here? Jesus.”

Both of them looked to the other corner of the salon, where his wife was seated at the piano. Helene wasn’t playing, just looking through the music. From this distance, she looked too slim for health, her cheekbones standing out in her face and an intricate set of braids surrounding her head.

“Perhaps she’ll play for us later,” Rees grumbled. “That’d be about the only thing that would better this affair.” He looked contemptuously around the room.

“I haven’t heard Helene play since she left your house,”

Darby said. “How do you know she still enjoys music?”

“Heard her last year, at Mrs. Kittlebliss’s. I had just dropped in. At any rate, she plays even better than she did when we were married. Actually had to tear myself away, or I would have spoken to her.” Rees looked faintly astonished.

“Nothing surprising about that. From my recollection, about the only time you two weren’t quarreling was when you were making music together.”

“There you’re wrong,” Rees said promptly. “We used to fight like cats and dogs over music as well. Those battles were rather fun, though. She always had some sort of criticism of my work.” He looked truly astonished at that admission. Fool for Love

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“You? ” Darby said with derision. “She criticized the work of London’s foremost writer of comic opera?”

“Shut your trap,” Rees growled.

“So did she really criticize your work?”

Rees nodded. “Made it better, I’ll say that for her. Helene has a perfect ear. She could tell instinctively when something was just a little off.”

Henrietta had moved to a couch quite close to them, and Darby found himself watching the way she laughed.

“The devil about marriage is that you don’t quite get over the woman,” Rees said abruptly. “That’s what I came up here to tell you. Marriages fall apart right and left, but what no one says is that your spouse is like a burr in your side. You just can’t get rid of her.”

“You’ve done a pretty good job,” Darby said, pulling his attention away from Henrietta. “How long did you and Helene live together, a year or so?”

“Not quite,” he grunted. “Doesn’t matter. They get under your skins, wives. I still find myself wondering what she would think of this or that stave of music.” He looked outraged.

“Hmmm,” Darby said. “Why don’t you go play her a stave or two then?” He walked off as if he was giving Rees permission to go, when what he wanted to do was walk over to Henrietta, which of course he wasn’t going to do. She was seated in a couch placed at an odd angle, almost stuck in the corner of the room. Earlier, it seemed to him that her limp was a bit more pronounced than normally. He thought about that and decided to amble over and ask in a neighborly kind of way about her status.

He wasn’t quite sure that he would actually do it until she looked up. Without warning, she smiled at him. Henrietta Maclellan might not have had much experience calling men to her side, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t a 200 Eloisa

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god-given genius at it. Darby had been the subject of many a come-hither smile, and he enjoyed brilliance when he saw it. Her eyes widened just a little bit, and then she smiled. She didn’t even smile with her mouth. It was all with her eyes. Naturally, he walked over to her like a sailor to a siren. Carola Perwinkle was seated next to Henrietta. He had always liked her, impudent little thing that she was, and he liked her even more when she got up as he approached, gave him a saucy smile, and pranced off to walk with her husband into the dining room.

He sat down, naturally. A bit closer to Henrietta than he needed to be. “How are you feeling, Lady Henrietta?” he asked, finally.

Henrietta had that look of utter calm, as if nothing that happened could shake her friendliness. “I am quite well, thank you,” she said.

Looking closely, he could see that she was nervous. Still, she didn’t edge away from him. He stretched out his leg so that it just touched hers. He didn’t bother to think about why he was flirting with an ineligible woman. He just wanted to flirt with her, that’s all. Actually, what he really wanted to do was run his tongue around her little shell of an ear. She was wearing her hair up with curls drifting into ringlets over her ears. He would brush those aside and find her ear like someone looking for blackberries in a thicket.

“What on earth are you thinking about?” she finally asked.

“Eating blackberries,” he said lazily.

“Really?” She looked surprised.

“Finding them in a blackberry patch, when you have to reach in among the prickly branches. When you bite them they’re sour as the devil if they’re not ripe, and God’s perfection if they’re ripe.”

She looked at him suspiciously.

“What I like to do,” he said gently, “is roll one between my teeth. Did you know that that’s the best way to test for . . . Fool for Love