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“I’m a poor motherless—”

“I know that too,” he said, interrupting her. Josie’s lower lip quivered.

“Why do you need a mother?” he demanded. “You have a brother.”

Her forehead crinkled as she tried to figure out whether that made any difference. He could see that it didn’t.

“Fine. Lady Henrietta will become your mother. How does that sound?”

Josie twisted her head to see Henrietta, who was still seated on the little stool, looking rather taken aback. Though what Henrietta had to be surprised about, Darby didn’t know. The concept was hardly a revelation.

“Lady Henny threw water on me,” Josie reminded him. Then she leaned closer to his ear and whispered noisily, “I’m not sure that Anabel likes her very much.”

Darby considered Anabel’s propensity to kiss total Fool for Love

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strangers and address them as Mama. “Anabel will get used to her,” he advised Josie.

“She did throw water on me, Simon. Don’t you remember?”

“You deserved it.”

“Why don’t you make Aunt Esme my mother?” Josie whispered loudly. “Nurse says she’s going to have a baby. Then we’d have a new baby in the nursery. One that doesn’t throw up!” She gave Anabel a baleful stare. Anabel was headed toward Darby in a staggering kind of way. She looked clean enough, but one never knew. His valet was pessimistic about the removal of vomit stains from boots.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I must go.” He placed Josie back on her feet. “Good afternoon, children. Lady Henrietta, may I have a word with you?”

Henrietta followed him reluctantly. He escorted her downstairs to the sitting room, and all she thought of as they made their way down the stairs was whether her leg was dragging. He held her arm as if he didn’t notice the roll in her step. The moment they entered the sitting room, he said, without ceremony, “I have obtained a special license. We can have the ceremony whenever you wish.”

But Henrietta had known the moment he walked into the nursery that she couldn’t go through with it. He was too beautiful. Simply too beautiful. He looked like some sort of Greek statue, and she was nothing more than a short country girl with a limp. Just his cheekbones, and the way his cheeks hollowed beneath them, were simply too much for her. Too beautiful, too golden, too perfect. There wasn’t a trace of a limp, or anything deformed about him at all.

He needed to find a flawless person, just like himself. Someone who would bear him children who shared his elegant, lean form and deep eyes. 232 Eloisa

James

She sat bolt upright on the settee and ignored the pain shooting through her hip. It had been a mistake to sit on a stool in order to play with Josie. But the pain lent her a certain clarity of mind. She was deformed. He was not. That very fact spoke for itself. She had to set him free to find someone as perfect as himself.

“I am going to tell my stepmother the truth,” she said. She cut off the rest of her statement because her tone had an unbecoming edge to it. He didn’t seem to notice. “That would be pleasant. I shall feel much easier if my mother-in-law didn’t growl at me each time we met.”

“I mean to say, I will tell her the truth, and that will remove the reason for this marriage.”

His brows knit. “We have an arrangement. I have obtained a special license. Why are you reneging on your word, Lady Henrietta?”

“Because you don’t deserve this.”

He was standing in the last rays of the afternoon sun as it crept through the windows. Henrietta didn’t want to think about his beauty. She really didn’t. He was tiresomely attractive; well, he could go off to London and find himself someone who would suit.

“I fail to see what you mean,” he remarked. He lifted his amber-topped cane and examined the top, seemingly looking for scratches. There were none.

“We will not suit,” Henrietta said.

“I believe we shall.”

What was she to say to that? She said nothing. He strolled over to her, a model of self-possession. “You made a bargain, Henrietta. I expect you to live up to it.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling. “Those two little creatures are yours, from the day we rattle off our vows. You said you want them: you’ve got them.”

“You might want children of your own someday.”

Fool for Love