“We were most obliged for the invitation, my lord,” Lady Gaynor said to him. “We would have spent Christmas with my late husband’s family as usual, of course, but Lizzie wished to come here instead, because some of her particular friends were to be here, you know, and it is important to young people to be with others their own age.”
“I am honored that you came, ma’am,” he told her.
“Thornwood is perfectly splendid, my lord,” Lizzie said, touching her fingertips to his sleeve for a moment and gazing into his eyes. “I do so look forward to seeing all over the house. Do tell me that you will conduct a tour.”
“Tomorrow morning if that will suit you,” he replied.
“I shall think of nothing else from the moment I awake,” she assured him.
He felt almost as if a clandestine assignation had been made.
And all the time, while he imagined the possible future, he was aware of the woman who was at present the countess and his hostess. She had done superlatively well at making his guests feel welcome and at home. She had shown unexpected warmth and charm, especially to poor Laura Cannadine, who had arrived flustered and embarrassed by her screeching infant. And of course she looked unusually beautiful.
He almost resented the fact that her beauty and warmth and charm had been assumed for the sake of his guests as they were frequently donned in private for her daughters. She was becoming something of an enigma to him. But he did not wish to unravel the mystery. He kept his mind and his eyes off her during tea—or tried to, at least.
Finally everyone had wandered off, most people to their rooms, Lady Langan and Mrs. Cannadine to the nursery with the countess. Only Viscount Luttrell remained.
“Come into the billiard room,” the earl suggested, “and have a drink. I need a few minutes in which to relax.”
“Grand!” the viscount said, looking about appreciatively when they got there. “A masculine domain. Every man needs one, especially if he has females living with him.”
“The table was gathering moths and dust in the attic,” the earl told him as he crossed the room to the sideboard, where he poured them both a drink. “It was hauled up there some time during my predecessor’s time. Playing billiards was a sinful pastime apparently.” He grinned as he handed the viscount a glass.
“Sinful!” Viscount Luttrell whistled. “Are you serious, Gerard? Your cousin? I always thought he was a peculiar fish, I must confess, even though I never knew him well. I never even saw him after his marriage. A killjoy, was he?”
“One might say so,” his lordship said.
“Poor Lady Wanstead.” Viscount Luttrell chuckled. “One hopes for her sake that there were certain pastimes considered less likely to, er, plunge them both into hell.”
The earl preferred not to pursue that topic. He ran one palm over the velvet of the tabletop. “The servants made a good job of cleaning it,” he said. While still looking faded with age, it did not look either spotty or dusty. Neither did it smell musty.
“Well,” the viscount said, fingering the cues and then taking one down from the wall and feeling its balance in his hand, “have you made your choice yet, Gerard?”
His lordship winced. “Devil take it, Harry,” he said, “have I walked into a trap of my own making? Am I obliged to choose a wife during the coming week? Is it expected?”
The viscount laughed. “You have been away too long,” he said, “or you have been titled for too short a time. Men like you and me are always being expected to choose a wife. One attends a ball and dances with a chit and smiles at her and her papa is drawing up the marriage papers and her mama the list of wedding guests. One has to learn how to depress expectations.”
“How?” The earl chuckled with him.
“By never being too particular in one’s attention to any one particular lady,” his friend advised him, “even if— heaven forbid—one really is considering paying one’s addresses to her. By cultivating one’s reputation as something of a rake. In your case you might take care to preface a number of remarks with phrases like—‘When I return to Canada...’”
They were standing at the long windows, sipping their drinks and looking out over sloping lawns to the forest beyond. The lake was hidden from view.
“That would probably be fair warning,” the earl agreed. “I never did intend to stay in England, you know. I am still planning to return to Montreal in the spring. And yet—”
“And yet old England exerts a pull on the heartstrings, especially when a little piece of it is one’s own,” the viscount said. “I feel it whenever I go home—which is as infrequently as I can make it because my mother and the girls are always after me to marry and settle down and my father is always reminding me of his mortality and of my future responsibilities. Fortunately he is hale and hearty and not even sixty yet. But sometimes, when I am there and realize that one day it will all be mine, I—well, I am dashed nearly tempted to rush off and get myself a leg shackle and an heir so that I can be sure it will always be in the family. The urge soon passes, let me add.”
They both laughed.
“But you are right,” the earl admitted. “Knowing while I was still in Montreal that I was Earl of Wanstead and owner of Thornwood Hall was one thing. Actually being here and having to live the part is another thing altogether. Sometimes I think I should not have come at all. I was perfectly contented as I was. I had made a life for myself.”
“What about Miss Campbell for a bride, then?” the viscount asked. “Too low on the social scale, Ger?”
“Hardly.” He felt a twinge of anger on Jeannette’s behalf, but he did not let it show. Birth was of more importance than almost any attribute of character or fortune with theton, and Luttrell was very definitely one of its members. “She is a gentleman’s daughter, Harry—and a gentlewoman’s. Which is more than can be said of me, after all. Perhaps I would be too low on the social scale for her.”
“She is deuced pretty, I grant you,” his friend said.
“I am exceedingly fond of her,” he said.
