“Which is not a particularly ardent thing to say,” Viscount Luttrell pointed out. “Shall I replenish our glasses?”
“Help yourself,” the earl told him, but he held on to his own almost-empty glass. “I am not looking for ardor, Harry, or romantic love or anything like that. I outgrew that nonsense long ago. And I am not sure I am looking for anything or anyone evenwithoutardor.”
“You have been taking life altogether too seriously, Ger,” his friend told him, downing his fresh drink in two swallows. “What you need is a mistress. Or at the very least a flirt. But you don’t want to flirt too particularly with the likes of Lizzie Gaynor or you will find yourself with a leg shackle before the new year is even slightly tarnished. Widows are often the best bet. They enjoy their freedom and independence and frequently do not want to give up either one to another husband, yet unlike their maiden sisters they know what they are missing in the way of bed sports.”
“I’ll put an advertisement in theMorning Post, then,” the earl said with a grin. “I had better go up and get changed. It would not do to be late down for dinner in my own home when I have guests, would it? Her ladyship would not stop glowering for a week.”
“The countess?” Viscount Luttrell raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is she capable of glowering? She is a devilish attractive woman. More so now than when she was younger, though you were quite taken with her then, if I remember rightly. I daresay we all were. It is a damned shame that Wanstead—your cousin, that is—was a killjoy, Gerard. Dampened her spirits, no doubt.”
“That, I suppose,” the earl said, unaccountably irritated by the turn the conversation was taking, “was their business.” He set down his glass and moved in the direction of the door.
“It makes one feel one would be rendering an invaluable service to lighten those spirits again, does it not?” Viscount Luttrell said. “She is remarkably easy on the eyes—no doubt on the body too, though perhapseasywould not be quite the word. The lady is eminently bedable. Those long legs—ah, the mind boggles. Oh, sorry, old chap, do you object to such plain speaking about your cousin’s widow?”
He did. For a moment he saw red. He had to repress an impulse to whirl about and plant his friend a facer.
“She does live under my roof,” he said rather stiffly. “She is under my protection here since Gilbert made no separate provision for her. Have a care.”
The viscount chuckled. “I always have a care for my women, Ger,” he said. “I don’t raise expectations and I don’t break hearts. I do give pleasure where I take it. And I do make sure that partings are amicable. You will not have a distraught widow on your hands when Christmas is over, old chap. Gentleman’s honor.”
The urge to answer with both fists was still almost irresistible—almost, but not quite. She was adult and she was free. She was nothing to him except a constant annoyance. If she chose to dally with Harry over Christmas, then that was up to her. Though the very thought of them together, Harry and Christina ...
“I will not have any scandal in the house with respectable guests present,” he said curtly.
But Viscount Luttrell merely raised his eyebrows and his quizzing glass at the same moment. “Scandal, Wanstead?” he said. “I? When Christmas is over, old chap, even you will not know for sure whether I have bedded the widow or not.” He lowered his glass and smiled dazzlingly. “Though you may wager upon it that I will have.”
The earl opened the door with a vengeful jerk. “We are going to be late,” he said.
“What about your young cousin?” his friend asked, preceding him through the door. “Are you considering a courtship with her, Gerard? A pretty little thing. It is the easiest and the most delightful thing in the world to make her blush and to watch her eyes sparkle.”
“Hands off!” the earl commanded. “Lady Margaret is a mere child, Harry. Not in years so much, perhaps, but definitely in experience. She has never been from home and is almost dangerously innocent. She is not nearly up to your expertise. And she is my ward.”
The viscount laughed. “I do not seduce infants,” he said. “And I certainly do not marry ’em, old chap. Relax!”
If Luttrell should so much as attempt. . .
The Earl of Wanstead climbed the stairs to his room without saying another word on the subject. If Luttrell should attempt what? Seducing Margaret? He simply would not do so. Seducing Christina, then? She was a widow of close to thirty years. If it happened, it would not be seduction. It would be her free choice.
But it made him feel savage to imagine that she might choose to engage in a discreet affair with Luttrell. Discretion or no discretion, it would be happening beneath his roof— beneath the roof shared by her children. But that, he was honest enough to admit, was not his real objection.
He rang impatiently for his valet, who should have been in his dressing room long before now. His happy mood at the arrival of his house guests appeared to have evaporated somewhere between here and the drawing room. The devil! he thought, snatching at his neckcloth, too impatient to await the arrival of his man. All this talk of marriage and avoiding marriage had thoroughly blue-deviled him.
Wouldshe fall prey to Harry’s experienced charm?
Had he led Lizzie Gaynor and her mama into believing that an offer of marriage was imminent?
Had Jeannette ever thought of him as anything other than a friend?
Could he simply return to Montreal in the spring, pick up the threads of his life as it had been before the arrival of that fateful letter by last spring’s first ship, and forget about the burdens of being the Earl of Wanstead?
Would she go as far as to allow Harry to bed her? Hardly—she was cold and Puritanical. Not a promising mix for a would-be seducer. But she had not been that way this afternoon with his guests. And she was not that way with her children. And she waltzed as if the music and the rhythm were a part of her very soul.
“You have taken your time,” he snapped irritably as his valet entered the dressing room in answer to his ring.
“You just rang, sir,” his valet of longstanding pointed out quite reasonably.
Yes, and so he had. It would certainly not say much for his character if he started taking out his bad moods on servants.
“And you brought my shaving water with you?” he said. “Good man.”
