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“Your twin’s bastard? How difficult that would be. After all, the child would resemble you. Whatever would you do?”
“Victoria,” he said, his teeth gritted, “shut up. I want no more of this from you.”
“Oh, I understand now. Of course, if the child were yours, it would be born nine months after you committed your sexual act. Any earlier, the good Lord help me, and there is yet another bastard to populate the earth.”
“Victoria, I told you to be quiet.”
“Your peace offering is growing more tattered and unrecognizable by the moment, Rafael.”
“I’m not used to ladies asking me the symptoms of virginity. Surely it’s not all that proper a topic of conversation.”
“Little we’ve spoken of would qualify, I think, as proper.”
She began to pare the warm skin off a peach. He watched her graceful fingers. “Untouched by Mrs. Ripple’s housewifely hands,” she said.
He poured himself another glass of wine. In silence.
“I have chanced upon some proper conversation,” she said at last as she chewed on a peach slice. “Here it is. It will be difficult returning to Drago Hall. Perhaps Damien won’t want us there. I can’t imagine that he would ever wish to see either of us again. After all, Rafael, you did take what he must have seen as his fifty thousand pounds.”
“Whatever else Damien is or has become, he never could tolerate any sort of scandal, particularly if he were the one in the middle of it. It would cause a great scandal for him to refuse shelter to his own twin brother.” Rafael smiled, a rather nasty smile. “And you can be certain that everyone would know of it if he did refuse.”
“I don’t understand why you wish to stay there.”
“I told you. Drago Hall would be a base of sorts. I wish to find a site for my future home.”
His home, she thought, not theirs. “There are comfortable inns about.”
“I haven’t been in the house of my birth in many years. It was my home as well, you know, just as it was yours for five years.”
“I have nothing at all against Drago Hall. It’s just the inmates that are trying.”
“You become vehement now. Why is that, I wonder. You weren’t when I first told you of it this afternoon.”
“Was I not? Well, perhaps I had other things on my mind. Would you care for a peach slice? No? I shall finish it off in that case. It’s very sweet. Mrs. Ripple told me all the fruit is from the cottage orchard. Is it—”
“Victoria, do shut up.”
“It took me a goodly amount of time, and, I might add, being away from you, but I also determined why you wanted so very much to make peace with me.”
He stiffened. “I’m really quite tired of your prattle. Would you like coffee in the drawing room?”
“No. Nor would I care to climb into your bed. If you but had some physical flaws, Rafael, I should have understood your motives much sooner.”
“That is the oddest compliment I have ever received. I can’t thank you for it. Nor, I might add, do I understand what you mean.”
Victoria rose from the table. “It matters not. Do you play piquet?”
“Yes, certainly. At sea, one learns all sorts of interesting games to pass the time.”
“Well, I suggest we ask Mrs. Ripple for a deck of cards. It is either that or doubtless we can begin to argue in earnest.”
“I don’t wish to argue with you.”
“I don’t wish to return to Drago Hall.”
“I’m sorry, Victoria, but we must. Truly, I won’t allow anyone to treat you—”
“—with less consideration than you do?”
