“Always. They never cease, and youarean earl, after all. No doubt they all believed you’d come to London on the hunt for a countess. What a pity you didn’t find her while you were there.”
A memory tried to creep in then, of laughing red lips and sparkling dark blue eyes set like jewels in the face of a lady with sleek, silky hair as dark as midnight, but Miles shut it out before her features could fully emerge from the shadows of his mind. “I wasn’t on the hunt for a countess. I promised Melrose I would accompany him to London for a season, and I did. That’s all.”
“You can’t put marrying off forever, Cross.”
Certainly, he could. If nothing else, his adventures this season had confirmed what he’d suspected all along.
He wasn’tevergoing to marry.
No doubt that news would devastate London’s eligible young ladies, but—
“How old are you now, Cross? Forty? Forty-one?”
“Forty-one! I’m twenty-nine, for God’s sake.”
“What, is that all? I beg your pardon.” Barnaby’s eyes were dancing with laughter. “I had you at a mere handful of years away from your dotage.”
Impudent pup. “You’re a great nuisance, Barnaby, and not nearly as clever as you fancy yourself to be.”
Barnaby snorted. “Well, no, but only because I fancy myself very clever, indeed.”
“You’ll marry before I do.” The sooner Barnaby succumbed to the parson’s mousetrap, the more comfortably Miles could rest at night.
Since he’d inherited the viscountcy two years earlier, Barnaby had taken to gadding about London with a group of fashionable scoundrels who had far fewer scruples than they did gold coins in their pockets. A tidy fortune had come with Barnaby’s title, but profligacy would put an end to it quickly enough.
Yet Barnaby had a great many admirable qualities, and might yet make an acceptable Earl of Cross one day, if he didn’t ruin himself first with drink and debts.
He’d need to be properly managed, however.
But to conjure an acceptable earl from the ashes of a rogue, one first required an admirable countess. Hence the stable of eager young ladies even now assembling at Steeple Cross.
“I do hope you aren’t scheming to marry me off, Cross.” Barnaby let out the carefree chuckle of a man who hadn’t any idea of the nefarious plans in store for him. “I came to hunt grouse, not wives.”
“There’s no reason you can’t hunt both, is there? Any one of the young ladies attending the house party would make a proper wife for you, Barnaby.”
Barnaby’s grin faded, replaced by a look of dawning horror. “Good Lord. Please tell me that isn’t why you’ve invited them all to Steeple Cross!”
“I invited them because that’s what one does when one has a house party.” It was the truth, or most of it. As for therestof the truth, it would out soon enough, but this wasn’t the proper time to make a full confession, or Barnaby would almost certainly become contrary.
Countesses were a delicate business. One must tread lightly.
“Bloody good thing, Cross, because I have no desire to marry yet, and even if I did, I wouldn’t choose Lady Cora Drummond. We were friends a long time ago, and we’re not anything anymore.”
“Friends become lovers all the time, Barnaby. Who better to marry than a lady you know, who was once your friend?”
“Why, a lady I’m in love with, of course!” Barnaby flung his arms out wide, his reins dangling from his fingers. “Nothing less than love couldevercompel me to marry.”
Ah, spoken like a passionate young man. Had he ever been as passionate as that? He’d certainly never been so young. “It pains me to shatter your illusions, cousin, but love has made far more men miserable than happy. You’re better off marrying a lady you admire and respect than one you’ve lost your head over.”
“Why can’t I have a lady I admire, respect,andam madly in love with?” Barnaby didn’t wait for an answer, but tapped his heels into his horse’s flanks and shot forward, heedless of the muck flying from the beast’s hooves.
But it would take more than a bit of mud to end this discussion. Miles went after his cousin, and caught him at the crest of a rise, his horse’s hooves skidding in the deep muck. “No man gets everything he desires in a wife, Barnaby.”
“Bollocks.”
“The idea that there is a lady out there more perfect for us than any other, a lady who calls forth all our tender sentiments, a lady who stirs our mind as well as our loins is an illusion, cousin.”
“Loins?For God’s sake, Cross.”
