“I was going to say ‘naïve,’ ” Sheridan said sternly.
“That, too,” Heywood said. “And truly, I could accept a certain amount of naïveté in a wife.” Though he liked Cass all the more because she wasn’t one of those wide-eyed innocents who didn’t know men even had urges. That was refreshing to a rough-and-tumble soldier who’d spent as much of his life in armed camps as in the rarefied atmosphere of society. “But I’m not sure I want to marry a woman lacking in the good sense to run a household.”
“I didn’t realize you were looking for a wife,” Sheridan said.
“Aren’tyou? We both have estates in need of wives with sizable fortunes. Indeed, you ought to marry Kitty yourself. I’m told she has quite a large dowry.”
Sheridan searched Heywood’s face. “Perhaps I don’t want to marry an heiress. Perhaps I find Kitty’s cousin, Cass, more attractive.”
A surge of jealous anger shattered Heywood’s calm. “Do you?”
Sheridan burst into laughter. “I wish you could see your face right now. You look downright murderous.”
Heywood turned to walk ahead of him down the hall. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You stare at Cass like a wolf eyeing a lamb. She stares atyoulike a—”
“Lamb fearing a wolf?” he bit out, disliking Sheridan’s characterization entirely.
“More like a lamb eyeing a shepherd. She trusts you. I can’t imagine why, considering how she ended up here, but she does. So if your intentions aren’t honorable—”
“What are you, her guardian? Cass is none of your concern.”
He said it so forcefully that Sheridan stiffened. “Forgive me. I meant no insult.”
Damn. After years apart, he and his brother had begun to forge a new relationship this past couple of weeks. Heywood didn’t want to damage that.
“I know.” Heywood dragged his fingers through his hair. “You mean well. But I’d prefer you stayed out of it.”
“All right. Just don’t damage our family’s reputation. It’s hard enough for Mother to weather the gossip about her three dead husbands. If you do anything untoward, it will reflect badly on all of us.”
Though Heywood bristled at the warning, he knew his brother was right. “I won’t. I swear.”
“One more thing. I know you’re set on marrying an heiress and Cass isn’t who you think you need. But happiness should be one of your criteria as well. If you wouldn’t—couldn’t—be happy with any other woman, you must take that into consideration. Because, to paraphrase a certain scripture in the Bible, what does it profit you if you save your estate but lose your soul?”
Heywood gritted his teeth. “I never took you for a religious man.”
“I never took you for a fool. But you’re making me re-examine that supposition.”
Halting in his tracks, Heywood turned on his brother. “So you think I should shirk my responsibilities. That for the sake of my . . . urges, I should abandon the tenants and property that Grandmother entrusted to me.”
“No, not if your ‘urges’ are all there is to it. But if you feel something more . . .”
“Like what? Love?” He snorted. “I’m not foolish enough to be a slave to that. And you shouldn’t be either, given that Mother and Father were more friends than lovers.”
“That wastheirmarriage. You must forge your own.”
Heywood didn’t want to forge his own. Keeping his heart protected was safer. He remembered only too well how it had felt to be sent off to war as a lad. Yes, it was the way of the aristocracy, but he refused to take that path with his own children.
His own children? Now he was thinking ahead to having children? What kind of madness was that?
They’d reached the drawing room, but no one was there with the half-constructed gingerbread castle. “Damn. The ladies have gone,” he told Sheridan.
“To the ballroom, probably.”
“Right.”
They both headed there.
