“And what is her name?”
“Wilhelmina Kirby. But she prefers Mina.”
“Do your daughter and her husband also live with you?”
“I have no daughter. Mina was my oldest son’s child.”
“But, Delamere, you said, and—that is to say, I mean I thought—” Susannah was growing flustered.
“My granddaughter was born on the wrong side of the blankets, as people say.”
Susannah was quiet for a moment. “And what of her mother? You didn’t take Wilhelmina away from her, did you?”
“She is dead. Like my son.”
She nodded. “I see. But so much loss for such a little one.”
“Yes.”
“And you have also suffered great losses. Your son, your wife.”
The conflict and hatred between him and Diana for so many years meant he had never considered her death a loss. Except that it had marked the end of any kind of intercourse between him and his sons.
“I have another son,” he said abruptly. “Charles, my heir. But you will not meet him. He lives abroad.”
“Ah.”
A long silence came here.
“Well, your granddaughter is lucky to have your care,” she said. “You’re a good man.”
He wasn’t. He had been a good army officer. He had eventually become a good custodian of Bledsoe Park and the coronet. He tried very hard to be the best grandfather. But he had been a wretch of a husband and a horror of a father. He was not in any way a good man.
He could not imagine he ever would be, but it was very good to be sitting across from someone who thought he was.
Ten
The concubine had her own bed in the palace, but she had never slept there.
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
Susannah swallowed and willed herself to stay calm. The coach had turned off the road five minutes ago and gone through a huge gate flanked by two gatehouses, each of which had to be the size of The Swan, and yet they had still not yet arrived at the house proper. If the house were as grand as the property surrounding it, she didn’t know how she’d dare enter it.
She pinched her own leg. She was being a noodle. The house could not be more intimidating than the man who owned it. Yes, the earl did all kinds of queer things to her insides, but he did not cow her.
And she had dared so much already. She had sold the promise of a book and demanded to take a journey with him. True, she hadn’t known he was an earl at the time, but, sincelearning that, she had dared to dine with him in a private room at a coaching inn, and she had sat in a carriage and conversed with him for hours at a time. He had only treated her with great courtesy, just as if she really were a lady authoress.
Except for the kiss. That had been between a man and a woman, not a gentleman and a lady. Not an earl and his authoress.
But there would be no more of that.
She had wondered in the carriage and at the inn last night if he had really meant what he had said. It seemed he did. There were times when she had been chattering away at him, asking him questions—she had no shyness about asking questions, not her—and looking out the carriage window at the scenery—she might not be going to London, but she was not going to lose the opportunity to see something new, even a field of turnips—and she’d felt his gaze on her and a sear of heat. But when she’d looked at him, he’d always been a grave and proper gentleman, carved from a block of ice.
He thawed only when he spoke of his granddaughter. He could not hide his love for Mina.
What would Mina be like? Truly, and not just through her grandfather’s eyes. He was spending a hundred and fifty pounds on a book for a child. She had to be a spoiled, much-indulged little girl.
But, no. Susannah did not think the earl would allow bad behavior. By virtue of his bearing alone, he demanded everyone around him do their best. Perhaps that came from being an earl, or, as she had learned more about him over the last two days, from his time as an army officer. Or it was some essential part of his nature.
