“William is under the weather,” Lady Longstreet said. “May I take your coat? The servants have been dismissed for the evening, and yes, I truly mean he’s feeling poorly. William is capable of diplomatic illnesses, but I’m sure if he told you he would be here, he meant to keep his word. It’s just…”
“Yes?” Darius turned slightly, so she could lift his coat from his shoulders, her touch conveying hesitance, even timidity, as she did.
She smiled slightly and hoisted his coat to a hook in the alcove. “I don’t mean to babble. William is much involved in the Lords, and it tires him. I assured him we’d manage, but if you’d rather reschedule this encounter, we can.”
Begin as you intend to go on.
“We’ll manage.” Darius offered his arm, noting with disinterest—professional disinterest—that Lady Longstreet was quite pretty. He’d put her age at around five-and-twenty, the same as his sister Leah. Her smile was polite, and her countenance was serene.
That serenity brought lovely features into submission—a perfectly straight nose, slanting dark eyes, full lips, and classic cheekbones—when a more animated expression might have rendered the same face arresting.
She was hiding her beauty, maybe even from herself.
He laid his hand over hers where it rested on his sleeve. “My business with Lord Longstreet has been concluded, my lady, leaving only my dealings with you before you can be shut of me.”
“And you’ll be relieved when that’s the case?” She was barely, barely tolerating his touch, for all her calm expression.
Could he be intimate with a woman who disdained to touch even his sleeve? “Now how will I answer that?” He glanced down at her as they made their progress through the house, not sure if he was irritated with her or for her. “If I say yes, I’ll be relieved to complete my obligations with you, you’ll be insulted. If I say no, you’ll think I relish a bargain I, in truth, regret.”
She turned velvety brown eyes to him, her expression curious. “Why?”
Lady Longstreet was brave—martyrs were supposed to be brave—and despite the circumstances, she truly was a lady. The realization made Darius pause, and not happily. He was most comfortable when the women with whom he consorted intimately shared with him a kind of mutual resentment and scorn. They used him, he used them, and each could look down on the other’s neediness and pretend the other party was the more venal, the more vulnerable. Lady Longstreet would not fit the same mold.
Perhaps she wasn’t of any mold.
He resumed the thread of their discussion. “Why what?”
“Why do you regret this bargain? I regret that it can’t be William’s child I bear, but it will still be the child William gave me, in a sense. I can live with that.”
“You’re very sensible,” Darius said as they entered a small dining room. The hearth at one end was blazing, bringing blessed relief from the unheated corridor. The table had been set à la française, with the various dishes covered and waiting over warming lights.
“William is the sensible one,” Lady Longstreet said. “Practical to a fault, his wife used to say.”
“You’re his wife.”
“I meant his first wife,” Lady Longstreet corrected herself without a flicker of irritation. “The woman he was married to for thirty-some years, the woman who bore him two sons. Shall we be seated?”
The table was positioned near the hearth, their two places set at right angles to each other so it couldn’t be said there was a head or a foot to the table. William’s absence allowed that, and Darius had to wonder how honest the older man was with his composed young wife.
Darius seated her and gestured to the wine breathing in the center of the table. “Shall I pour?” The question seemed absurd, and yet, with such a woman, what else was there to do but continue the pretense of civility?
“I hope you like it.” Lady Longstreet’s smile was gracious. “We often entertain diplomats, and there is universal accord that a hostess gift must be either wine from one’s own country or sweets. The sweets are invariably consumed while the company is present, though we’ve acquired an interesting cellar.”
Darius peered at the label. “German?”
“We’re working our way across the Continent,” his hostess replied. “Tell me, have you traveled much?”
The meal was… odd, because Darius of late spent little time around women whom he wasn’t obligated to deal with. He loved his two sisters, but they still put demands on him. And the other women… They put demands on him as well, demands he was compensated for meeting but would as soon forget.
Dinner with Vivian Longstreet had nothing of overt obligation about it, but rather, was a pleasant encounter with a woman whose mannerliness was such that she could draw him out in conversation, ply him with excellent food and good wine, and make him forget for a time why it was their lives were briefly entangling.
Her ladyship eyed the remains of the fruit and cheese nearly an hour later. “I wasn’t sure quite what we were supposed to do with each other this evening, but William insisted that ours is a civilized bargain for civilized ends, and we should begin it on a civil note.”
“I’m not sure I’d agree with him.” Darius sliced her off another bite of cheese and put it on her plate. He’d never realized how intimate sharing a meal could be and wasn’t sure he liked the revelation. She’d be sharing a damned month of meals with him if they kept their bargain.
“You agreed to this.” Lady Longstreet’s hand waved over the table. “Hasn’t there been benefit to you in sharing this meal?”
He’d eaten every bite offered to him, though he sensed she wasn’t alluding to that. “Some. I’m not as hungry, and I’ve made the acquaintance of three very respectable German wines.” To his own ears, he sounded a tad… churlish, though not petulant.
“One vintage was Rhenish. Aren’t you also a little less uncomfortable with what lies ahead of us, Mr. Lindsey?”
“Are you?” Her answer mattered, when it should not. The bills stacking up apace on Darius’s escritoire had to be what mattered most.
She lifted the slice of cheese, eyed it, and set it back on her plate. “I see what you mean, about giving answers that can be either flattering or honest. I’ve said I will do this for William—he posited this eventuality as a condition of his proposal, though at the time both of his sons yet lived. I will honor my word to him, but it is… odd.”
“Yes. Odd.”
“Not as odd as we think.” Her smile was fleeting, impish, and entirely unexpected. Not her gracious-hostess smile, it was devilish, full of mischief.
“What does that mean?”
“Lord Longstreet is fairly certain he himself was a cuckoo in his papa’s nest, by design. He calls himself a judicious outcross.”
Darius grimaced to think what his own father might have made of such a notion. “By design?”
“The Longstreet line has not been blessed with a great lot of male progeny.” Lady Longstreet popped the cheese into her mouth. “It helps me to know other ladies in the family have been called upon to serve as I have.”
Darius watched her chew. “And the late Lady Longstreet would not object to this scheme?”
The present Lady Longstreet blinked. “I was Lady Muriel Longstreet’s companion in her final years, and yes, she would approve. One is to hedge one’s husband’s bets, or so she said. I think forty years ago marriage was a more pragmatic undertaking. She and William loved each other, and they were most assuredly best friends by the time Lady Muriel died.”
“If you say so, but I cannot imagine…”
“Neither can I.” Lady Longstreet’s tone was a little forlorn. “And in a just a few weeks’ time, I won’t have to imagine it, because I will be on your doorstep, bag and baggage. Oh, dear.”