“You have a bleak view of the world, sir.”
“Long experience, but am I unreasonable to have a bleak view of the dowager?”
“Thus she might be capable of murder to rid her son of a troublesome wife.”
They turned into his street. “If that were true, you’d want her to hang?” he asked.
“No, but the threat will make her do as we wish.”
“Gads, you terrify me.”
She gave him a look. “I very much doubt that.” When he didn’t respond, she lost patience. “Do you object to my being with some officers in the park?”
“It was disconcerting,” he admitted, his tone unreadable.
“I won’t turn away old friends.”
“And they will gather. How could they not? What ifyou find Diane is alive and happy in Herzegovina or China?”
How could they not?
Had that been praise or accusation?
Kitty sensed it would be unwise to pursue the issue. She hated her own reluctance, but she had no wish to test her husband’s limits as yet.
“I’ll rejoice and inform her she’s a widow,” she said. “She might be conventional enough to want to marry her lover. She might have children.”
“I’d not considered that.”
“Who knows what drove her to flight?” Kitty demanded. “It might have been the dowager’s cruelty or her husband’s. But it could have been the irresistible pull of love. That is a wild force.”
“Only in novels and plays.”
“Your view of the world is excessively mundane, sir!”
“If only it were.”
She remembered why they were in Town and welcomed a new subject. “Your business doesn’t go well?”
“It hardly goes at all, but we have a diversion. We’re invited to dinner tonight, if you’ve made no other arrangements.”
“An assignation with my host of admirers? We hadn’t had time to come around to that.”Damnation.She’d been determined to let that issue rest.
“If it was a host,” he said, “I might not object.”
“I assure you, Braydon, there will never be assignations with an individual.”
“Very well.”
It could be acceptance, but she felt his simmering suspicion, and that triggered her next words. “If we move to the town house, I might like to hold an open house for officers once a week. There is a need. I know they have their clubs, but sometimes they want something else.”
“Someone.”
“It’snotabout me.”
“I think it is, but if it came to that, I wouldn’t object. I assume I would not be excluded.”
“Of course not. And I’d welcome other ladies, especially wives. And widows. There must be too many military widows.”
