He could not help the shock that played across his face. “More inappropriate than the rest of this conversation?”
Both ladies laughed, and Lilith smiled. “Likely not, as a matter of fact.” He waited for her to find the proper words. “Do you wish a new wife?”
And there it was, his exit from this debacle. “I do not, as a matter of fact.”
She nodded and looked to Felicity. “Well, that’s that, then.”
“Indeed.” Felicity hopped down from her seat on the parapet. “Thank you very much, Your Grace. This is a lovely folly. The best I’ve seen.”
“And estate,” Lilith leapt to add, politely. “That statue of Orion in the lake is particularly beautiful.”
Confusion flared, and not a small bit of hope. Were all women everywhere so unsettling? Or was it specific to the women with whom he came into contact?
“Are you leaving?” he asked, fairly agog.
“We are,” Felicity said, dipping a quick curtsy. “I’m sure you understand.”
“I don’t, as a matter of fact,” he pointed out. “I’ve never in my life met women so willing to speak such truth.”
Lilith smirked. “Perhaps you should meet more women. We are not so very uncommon.”
“Certainly not here. There are five other women on this estate who also seem to have no trouble speaking truth to you, Your Grace,” Felicity said. “And that’s not counting Miss Mary Mayhew, who spoke such truth it ended in her going off to find Gerald.”
Lilith smiled. “I wonder what sort of man Gerald is?”
And like that, he was dismissed, the two leaving in happy conversation, skirts brushing softly against the stone floor as they made their way for the stairs. “Wait,” he called, the entire afternoon seeming to slip away from him.
They turned back. “No need to worry, Your Grace,” Lilith said. “We shall see ourselves off. You stay here and do whatever it is men do when they are not required to play the willing suitor.”
“You did not tell me the other problem.” They turned back, curious twin smiles on their vastly different faces. He clarified. “The one that is clear as crystal.”
“Ah,” Lilith said.
“Hmm,” Felicity added.
“Ladies.” The word came out more threatening than he intended. “I imagine it’s something like the fact that I’m a terrible husband?”
“You know, I’m not sure you would be a terrible husband at all,” Lilith said thoughtfully.
“Oh, no. He shan’t be,” Felicity rushed to reply. “I mean, not as soon as he discovers how much he loves her.”
He could have been ashamed. He could have been defensive. But instead, Felicity’s words, filled with truth, made him relieved. Finally, he thought. Finally someone saw it. Someone who believed it. Two someones. Two someones, who listened when he said, “I know how much I love her. I’ve known it for years.”
They looked at each other, then to him, their judgment plain. They thought him an imbecile. “You should tell her, then.”
Frustration flared. Did they honestly believe he did not wish to do just that? Did they believe it was so simple?
A flash of color came behind them, a deep, rich aubergine.
Sera.
Dammit, he would do it right now if he thought it would change things.
He stilled. Would it change things?
His heart began to pound as she came through the doorway, interest in her eyes and curiosity on her face. “This is a lovely folly,” she said.
He would do it now. Here, in this place that his ancestor had built for a woman loved beyond reason. He would do it in front of these women, and finish this idiot scheme. Had he not told himself this morning that he was through with schemes?
Awareness and pleasure and excitement and desire pulled the words from him, as though he was a too-eager schoolboy. “I shall do it now.”
He did not see the instant surprise and clear doubt in Lilith and Felicity’s eyes. He was too busy looking at his wife, who stepped through the doorway, into the conversation, a portrait of interest.
He did not see Lilith shake her head.
He did not see Felicity open her mouth to speak, or see the way her brow furrowed when Sera asked, “You shall do what?”
If he had seen any of that, he might not have said what he said in front of what immediately seemed like all the world.
He might not have looked her in the eyes and said, with no thought of what might come of it, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, “Tell you that I love you.”
Chapter 21
Correct Your Courtship: Love Lessons from Legitimate Ladies
To be fair, he realized immediately that he’d made a mistake.
And, surprisingly, it was not when his wife turned tail and returned down the stairs from whence she’d came.
Nor was it when Lady Lilith let out a little, “Oh, no.”
Nor did he require Lady Felicity Faircloth’s quite frank, “Well. That was badly done.”
He realized he’d made a mistake the moment he’d heard himself speak the words—so unfamiliar—and discovered that he’d never spoken them before. Of course, he’d said them a thousand times in his head. Into the darkness as he longed for her late at night.
But never to her face.
And now, as he followed her through the eastern pastures of Highley, he thoroughly regretted saying them in front of Lilith and Felicity, feet from Sesily, whom Sera had nearly toppled from the staircase as she pushed past, and Seleste, who pressed herself flat to the ground-floor wall of the tower as Haven tore out after his wife. And from Seline, whose loud, “Oi! Haven, what’ve you done wrong now?” was punctuated by Sera’s leap into the saddle, before she gave the horse a mighty “Hyah!” and let the beast have free rein.
“Goddammit, Sera,” Malcolm called after her. “Wait!”
Of course, she didn’t, and he was headed for his own horse, nearly there when a heavy object caught him squarely between the shoulders. He turned to face his sister-in-law, who was straightening, testing the weight of another projectile.
“What in hell? Did you just throw a rock at me?”
Seline appeared to be calculating the distance between them. “I don’t know that I would use the word rock.”
“Stone, more like!” Sesily Talbot called down from atop the tower, where three bonneted heads peeked through the parapet.
“Barely a pebble.” Seleste appeared in the entryway of the folly, arms akimbo, ready to do battle like a damn Amazon.
He shook his head at the sister-in-law who was armed. “You realize that throwing rocks is unsafe.”
Seline tossed her current stone up in the air and caught it. “Not for me,” she said. “I’ve a good arm.”
He shook his head. “You’re mad.”
“No, I’m loyal. Which is a thing you have never been.”
An instinctual denial caught in his throat as the Countess Clare called from her place, “And amen to that! Hit him in the head this time!”
For a moment, he wondered if Seline might actually do it. He spread his hands wide. “You’re all mad. And I’m going after your sister.”