Page 15

But all of this duty and honor had done nothing for his mood, and he’d been stormy ever since the early morning when Miss Ephram announced from the other side of the curtain that she was decent once again. He must have been a bear, because she’d left him alone with his thoughts through breakfast and saddling the horses. Of course, his thoughts were exactly the problem.

“Whatever it is I’ve done, I apologize,” she said when they were two hours into their slow slog through muddy roads that were only just beginning to drain.

He twisted in his saddle. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve hardly said a word since we left the inn. I thought—”

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said with more bite than he intended.

To her credit, Miss Ephram didn’t flinch. Instead, she raised an eyebrow and looked at him from underneath the shallow brim on her little black bonnet.

“I’m sorry. You haven’t,” he said, trying to make it sound more believable this time.

Her brow arched higher. “If you say so.”

He pushed a hand through his hair that was—as usual—already falling out of place despite his having combed it with water just a few hours before. He couldn’t tell her that this was all about his growing annoyance that she was quite possibly the most intriguing, desirable woman he’d seen in a very long time. No, he needed some small excuse—just a little white lie that would set her at ease.

Finally he settled on “I was thinking of my sisters. I dislike having to leave them on their own.”

She cast him another one of those doubtful looks but then nodded as though willing to play along with this little game. “Effie and Helen, I think you said.”

This time his own brows quirked up. “You have a good memory.”

“Remembering young people’s names is what I’m paid to do.”

“My sisters can’t be much younger than you. Effie is nineteen and Helen just turned seventeen last month.”

Miss Ephram gave a little smile, but her eyes dropped to the reins clutched in her gloved hands. “You flatter me. I turned twenty-eight in February. What are they like?”

“Who?” he asked, far too distracted by the way she played her thumb over the leather straps.

“Effie and Helen.”

“Of course,” he said with a shake of his head, trying his best not to conjure up images of her thumbs stroking over him. “Well, Effie runs all of our lives. She’s been mistress of Madeley House since my mother died two years ago.”

“Is she bossy?” she asked with a laugh.

“In the best way. She has the ruthless discipline of a general and the attention to detail of London’s best hostesses. She needs the right sort of man for a husband because she’s never suffered fools lightly. The right man will appreciate that there’s no one like Effie.”

“And what of Helen?”

He couldn’t help but grin at the sound of his younger sister’s name. “The baby of the family. She’s one of the merriest girls you’ll ever meet. There was never a person Helen couldn’t charm into eating out of her hand. She’s also got a mischievous streak. I spent most of her childhood pulling her out of trees and fishing her out of the pond around the back of the house because she refused to stay seated in the rowboat when I would take her out on my school holidays.”

“Are the three of you still very close?”

All at once, the warmth of his memories cooled a little. “Not as much we used to be.”

“Why not? Oh—” She stopped herself. “Unless of course you don’t wish to tell me. I understand that some things are best kept between family.”

He turned her question over in his mind as he carefully chose his words to reflect the complications of being patriarch, provider, and protector all while also being a brother.

“There’s a significant gap in our years, but we were close until my father died. Then I came home from Oxford to stay and in one night assumed the responsibility of securing both their futures while also figuring out a way to save Madeley. It had suffered under years of my father’s mismanagement and was in a sorry state. It still is, if truth be told.”

“What did he do?” she asked.

He sighed. “It’s more what he didn’t do. He was a good man, but he was always swept up in the latest craze in agricultural invention. He’d buy anything, try any new theory for working the land. The problem was he never saw anything through. When he died he had nothing more than a haphazard mess of ruined fields and falling-down buildings.” Nicholas reached down and stroked a hand over his mount’s neck. “There is one area where I’ll give the man credit. He had a good eye for horses, even if he bought what he couldn’t afford.”

“And that’s why you need Merlin back.”