"I believe so," Meggie said.

"She is too young to be your mother," Lord Kipper said, both his eyes on Mary Rose. "Wonderful features, interesting the way she is leaning toward your father, you can feel it, even though she appears to be sitting straight."

"You cannot seduce her, Niles," Madeleine said.

Lord Kipper turned and smiled. "Would you like to wager on that, my dear?"

"Mary Rose is Meggie's stepmother. She's Scottish," Thomas said, turned from the painting, and added toward his wife, "Would you be so kind as to serve us tea?"

And so she did. She knew everyone's taste in tea now and moved quickly. Cook had made scones for her, and they were really quite good. Cook now made, besides a brilliant breakfast, a very acceptable luncheon. She never sang except delivering the nutty buns to the breakfast table each morning. Dinner, however, still strained her abilities. She needed a song, Meggie knew, and felt guilty because she hadn't thought about it.

She said more to herself than to Thomas, "I should be receiving some more recipes from Mary Rose soon now."

"Cook will butcher them," William said, coming into the drawing room. "Give her a haunch of beef and she will turn it into a fence rail." So saying, he cast Meggie a wary look.

Meggie frowned at him and began rearranging the scones on the platter. "Oh, stop looking like a whipped dog, William. Would you like tea?"

He nodded and managed to slink all the way across the huge room to stand behind a very old wing chair that Meggie planned to replace just as soon as-She frowned into her teacup. She had to go to Dublin to the Gibbs Furniture Warehouse. She wondered what her husband of three weeks would say when she asked him about that.

"I say, that's your father, Meggie. The vicar."

"That's right. You caused a very fine mess, William, and he was the one to resolve it, he and your brother."

"What is this?" Libby said. "What did you do this time, dearest?"

"Mother, I haven't done a single thing since I've gotten home. Lord Kipper, you promised you would show me your new hunter. I should very much like to see it, sir."

"Since your mother bought it off me for your birthday, I suppose you can see it."

"The new hunter, Mother?" At Libby's nod, William swooped down on her and nearly crushed her into the sofa, so exuberant was he with his hugs.

"You are a good boy, William," she said, kissing his cheek, "you always have been."

Meggie nearly turned blue she held her breath so long so that she wouldn't say anything.

Near midnight, when Thomas finally came into her bed, making his way quietly from his own bedchamber, Meggie said from the depths of the goose down, "Thomas, we must go to the furniture warehouse in Dublin."

He jumped a good foot.

To her delight, after he paced the room three times, he turned back toward the bed on his bare heel, frowned, and nodded. "All right. You'll probably be safer in Dublin than here. Make your lists, Meggie, and we will leave when you're ready."

"Would you like to come lie beside me and we can discuss it?"

He looked over at his wife. She was sitting up now and she wasn't wearing one of her usual white muslin nightgowns. She was wearing something that looked sinful, the color of a peach, and fit her so well he could clearly see her breasts. He was so hard he hurt. By the time he reached the bed, he was harder than Lord Kipper's pipe stem.

He stopped cold. "No."

"No what?"

"I want you, Meggie. You can look at me and I am incapable of hiding it from you."

"I am your wife. I want you as well. Please, Thomas, if you can't tell me what's bothering you, can't you at least come here and make love to me?"

He felt himself shaking, beginning at his feet, those shakes working their way up. "You're trying to seduce me," he said slowly, the shakes now to his knees.

"Well, yes," she said, and smiled at him. "If you won't talk to me about what's bothering you, why then, I might as well enjoy you in other ways."

She'd brushed her hair out and it was curling and falling down her back and over her right shoulder, framing her right breast, her hair and that wicked nightgown she was wearing that was now in danger of falling off her right shoulder.

He swallowed. "If a man doesn't have pride, he has very little."

"Pride? Whatever are you talking about?"

He said at nearly a shout because it had been festering inside him for so very long now, and he just couldn't hold it in anymore, it was corroding his innards, "Jeremy, that damned almost cousin of yours! That's what I'm talking about, as if you didn't know.

"You betrayed me in your heart, Meggie. You married me when you knew you loved him, and you still love that damned bastard, and here he is married and will have a child soon. You married me because you couldn't have him and thus it didn't matter to you. I knew you didn't love me, but I thought I could bring you around. But it had nothing to do with anything, did it?

"I was the fool who was ready to offer you everything. Did you even hesitate, Meggie? Did you feel the least bit guilty when you agreed to marry me? I don't think much of you for doing that, Meggie, I really don't."

Chapter 29

MEGGIE SAID, HER voice dull and accepting, "I loved him beginning when I was thirteen years old."

"Why did you marry me, dammit, when you loved another man?"

"I liked you very much, Thomas, you pleased me, you made me laugh, better still, I made you laugh. I esteemed you. I admired you and knew you were honorable. I wanted to marry you."

"You loved another man."

Slowly she nodded. "You didn't love me either."

"How do you know?" He slashed his hand through the air. "Not that it matters. Is that your defense? Let me tell you, Meggie, I wasn't cherishing some other woman in my heart, which is balderdash, naturally, but that is the way one says it, I suppose. I didn't marry you under false pretenses."

Meggie felt her heart pounding slow deep strokes. Her mouth felt dry. "May I ask how you know about Jeremy?"

"Yes, I'll tell you. We had been married all of an hour when I happened to overhear you speaking to your father about how very noble Jeremy was, how you admired him, how you would have loved him forever, if only he hadn't met Charlotte."

Meggie squeezed her eyes closed, remembering each word, feeling the pain each one brought her, pain that just by saying them had flowed over her husband. "You remember so very much. I'm sorry, Thomas. You see, my father was very worried about me and about you as well. He didn't want either of us to be disappointed. When he asked, I admitted that I knew Jeremy had been playacting when he'd come to the vicarage, that he'd just told me he wasn't really obnoxious at all, that it had all been an act to help me get over my feelings for him. He was telling me then since it wasn't important any longer since I'd just married, and he didn't want me to dislike him anymore."

Thomas wanted to yell down the moon, which was bright overhead tonight, not a single cloud in the Irish sky, a perfect spring night, the air soft and fragrant with the scent of new flowers, but he didn't want her anymore now. His sense of betrayal was greater now that she'd admitted to it.

"Well, damn you, you didn't get over your feelings for the bastard. Then you married me."

"Yes, I did."

"But he was married and he didn't want you?"

"No, but he was betrothed, something I didn't know about until it was too late."

"I see. If Jeremy walked through that door this very instant, told you he wanted you, would you go with him?"

"No."

"Because you're a damned vicar's daughter."

"Because I don't break my promises."

He plowed his hand through his hair, making it stand straight up. Meggie smiled.