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“The situation also could have been avoided had you paid attention. The third glass of wine was too much.”

“It was a matter of male pride. I believe this is probably Godfrey’s first dinner in which he was offered sufficient wine to make himself ill. It is far better that he overindulge tonight and learn from it, than that he do so on a more public occasion.”

“I don’t agree with you that there must be a general in every marriage,” Isidore said.

“The commonly accepted idea of marriage,” Simeon said, “is that the man has to be that leader. I have seen a few successful marriages in which the reverse was true. One of the two people must be accepted as such.”

Across the room, Godfrey was making a heavy breathing sound. She would rather assay her first seduction without a drunken thirteen-year-old in the corner.

But Simeon really meant it when he said that they would wait until the night of their wedding. He truly would walk away from her. She had to try something.

She leaned toward him so that the lush weight of her breasts hung forward. “Would you tell the footman outside the door that Godfrey has fallen asleep?” she said. “Perhaps Honeydew should escort him to his bed chamber.”

“And clear away these dishes,” Simeon said. He sounded as if she were a remote acquaintance, who had offered him a boiled sweet. She’d heard that voice before. He had a way of growing even more calm, more distant. She’d seen it before…

It meant he felt threatened.

Good.

She leaned back, thinking that her breasts had done their job. “Please,” she added.

He rose, opened the door to the outside and had a brief word with the footman. A moment later Godfrey walked unsteadily from the room, looking rather greenish.

“He’s going to cast up his accounts in the bushes,” Simeon said.

The little house drew around them again, sheltering, sweet, romantic. Then the door opened and Honeydew swept in with dishes of pear stewed in port. He was gone in a moment, leaving them with glasses of sparkling wine.

Isidore had been flirting for years. She let her eyelids droop and threw Simeon a sleepy glance from under her lashes.

He was busy cutting up his pear and didn’t notice. She waited a moment but he seemed as concentrated on the pear as if he were boning a pheasant. Fine. She turned to her own pear, trying desperately to think of a seductive topic. Nothing came to mind, so she found herself saying the least romantic thing possible: “When do you think that the water closets will be repaired?”

“Honeydew and I investigated the pipes today,” Simeon said, looking up. “They are completely rotted. If you can believe it, the original piping was done in wood. Naturally the water rotted them through within the year.”

“Your father must have been one of the first to install a water closet at all,” Isidore said. “That was rather progressive of him.”

“It appears from the correspondence I found that he was offered the water closets for a pittance,” Simeon said bluntly. “He was supposed to allow the fabricators to use his name and express his approval. I think they probably discarded this idea when he refused to pay that pittance, saying that the pipes didn’t work sufficiently. After that, the pipes rotted and there was no one to fix them.”

Isidore finished her bite. “It must be quite difficult to be in a position to judge one’s parents as an adult,” she offered. “Since mine died when I was very young, I knew them only as parents, never as people.”

“Were they good to you?”

“Oh yes. They were Italian, you know, so they had a different idea of family life than do many English parents. There were nursemaids, of course, but both of my parents visited the nursery every day. I spent a great deal of time with my mother, in particular.”

“And when they died, you were sent here, to my mother?”

“Until my aunt took me away again.”

“Probably even if your aunt had been busking at the side of the road, it would have been the right thing to do,” he said, putting down his fork and knife.

“The wife of a future duke playing for pennies along with Mr. McGurdy?” she said, laughing a bit.

“My mother has a difficult character,” Simeon said. “Your aunt was right. I had no right to criticize her earlier. It is no one’s business how you spent your time with your aunt, and certainly not mine, given my lengthy absence.”

Isidore was conscious of a warm glow under her breastbone. It wasn’t a seductive glow, though, and some time later her so-called husband began making his way out of the cottage without taking even the smallest liberty. In fact, without a single flirtatious comment.

“Wait!” she said, when he had a hand on the door.

He turned.