St. Just was silent for a moment while the fire hissed and popped in the hearth. “So I like to sing to my daughters. Emmie bears so much of the burden, it’s little enough I can do to look after my own children.”

“You love them all more than you ever thought possible, and you’re scared witless,” Westhaven said, feeling a pang of gratitude to be able to offer the simple comfort of a shared truth. “I believe we’re just getting started on that part. With every child, we’ll fret more for our ladies, more for the children, for the ones we have, the one to come.”

“You’re such a wonderful help to a man, Westhaven. Perhaps I’ll lock you in that nice cozy privy next time nature calls.”

Which in the peculiar dialect known only to brothers, Westhaven took as thanks for service rendered. The door behind them banged open on a draft of cold air.

“That old bugger in the stables says he knows where there’s a Guarneri, a del Gesù, not five miles from this stinking inn.” Valentine tossed gloves, hat, and scarf on the table as he spoke. “I’ve only seen a couple Guarneris, and by God they are beautiful. One was a viola, by the old master, but this is supposed to be by Bartolomeo Guiseppe Guarneri himself.”

“Guarneri sounds like a dessert.” St. Just passed his ale up to Val, who was making a circuit of the small parlor. “I favor good English apple tarts, myself.”

“It’s a violin,” Westhaven said. “Valentine, are you suggesting you met some instrument dealer in the stables?”

“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you the old man offered to take me to see this thing and even hinted it might be for sale.”

Westhaven kept his silence, because some things—like older brothers—were occasionally gratifyingly predictable.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Valentine,” St. Just said, “but wasn’t it you who was cursing and stomping about here last night because I suggested we wait one day to see what the weather was going to do?”

“I wasn’t cursing. Ellen frowns on it, and one needs to get out of the habit if one is going to have children underfoot.”

“Doesn’t exactly work that way,” Westhaven muttered. “I’m willing to tarry a day if you’re asking us to, Val. Devlin?”

“The horses can use the rest.”

Val looked momentarily nonplussed at having won his battle without firing a shot then dropped down onto a sofa. “So, Westhaven, are you saying children don’t inspire a man to stop cursing?”

“They most assuredly do not,” Westhaven said, rising. “His Grace and I are agreed on this, which is frightening of and by itself. Let me order some toddies, and we can discuss exactly how the arrival of children changes an otherwise happily married man’s vocabulary.”

Seven

“There are few consolations in my present state—do not piss on the mounting block, for God’s sake. How many times must I tell you?” Aethelbert Charpentier, Eighth Viscount Rothgreb, nudged his dog’s backside with the end of a stout oak cane. Talking to old Jock—not Jacques—was one of those consolations, and one could hardly indulge in it if the dog was off in a snit somewhere for having been too harshly reprimanded.

Jock lifted his head from giving the sight of his last indiscretion a good sniff and trotted obediently to the viscount’s side.

“As I was saying, there are few enough consolations in my life at present, you being one of them, such as you are, her ladyship’s predictability being another.”

The dog sneezed.

“Meaning no insult, old boy, but we’re neither of us what we used to be.”

Jock sidled over to the snow-dusted remains of a chrysanthemum and lifted his leg, his expression blasé while he heeded nature’s call.

“Piss on it, you say? Handy enough sentiment.” The viscount scanned the sky while he waited for the dog—nothing wrong with Jock’s bladder, no matter the canine was older in dog years than the viscount in human years.

“Nasty weather up toward Town,” the viscount remarked as they resumed their progress. “Must be why my nephew has yet to make an appearance. He cuts the holidays closer and closer in those years when he deigns to show up at all. Some people don’t know the meaning of family loyalty, even if they can be counted on not to toss up their accounts on her ladyship’s best carpets.”

If this slight reference to a previous lapse made any impression, Jock was not inclined to acknowledge it when the frosty ground was so full of interesting scents.

The trip to the stables seemed to take longer each season, but when a man felt the cold wheeze of eighty years breathing down his neck, he was grateful to be making the distance on his own two legs at any speed.

“Then again, perhaps Wilhelm has been detained in the North, or his life lost at sea. The boy can’t be bothered to write, but for his damned quarterly accountings.”

Jock stopped to water another bush—the dog’s abilities were still prodigious in some regards—and came quietly to heel as the viscount paused at the bottom of the swale upon which the Sidling stables sat in aging splendor.

“Noble hound, my ass,” Rothgreb said, stroking his hand over the dog’s head. There would be hell to pay for not putting on gloves before leaving the manor, but Essie had gone wandering again. With the weather threatening to turn miserable, retrieving her from the stables became urgent.

“Go find her ladyship,” Rothgreb said, moving one hand toward the stables. “Go find Essie, Jock.”

The beast bounded up the hill, ears flapping with an eagerness better suited to a puppy. Jock would find Essie where they always found her, sitting on some dusty old tack trunk, a cat or two in her lap, her expression serene despite the fact that of late she was wandering without gloves, bonnet, scarf, or—and this was truly worrisome—even a cloak.

Essie had always had her own kind of sense, which was fortunate when their daughters and granddaughters suffered an egregious lack of same.

But lately…

“My lady?” Rothgreb tottered into the barn aisle, leaning on his cane for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the gloom—he was not catching his breath, for God’s sake, the stables being only a quarter mile from the manor.

“Rothgreb?” Essie rose from her perch, gently displacing a worthless excuse for a mouser as she did. “My lord, you are without gloves and scarf. This is not well advised.”

“My lady, you are without a cloak, gloves, or scarf yourself.”

He said it as gently as he could, but the woman was haring around in a dress and shawl, and at her age, lung fever could be the end of her. She patted snow white hair braided neatly into a coronet.

“Why so I am. What an awkward state. Come say hello to Drusilla as long as you’re here.”

She glided away, drawing Rothgreb along by the hand. They stopped outside the stall of an elegant gray mare—Dutch’s Daughter was the only mare the viscount continued to breed, because her foals were nothing short of spectacular, just as her granddame Drusilla’s foals had been.

“Such a pretty girl,” Essie crooned, taking a lump of carrot from her pocket. The mare sidled over to the half door and craned her neck to take the treat from Essie’s hand.

“She is pretty,” the viscount said, watching as his wife of more than fifty years stroked her hand down the horse’s furry neck. “She’s beautiful, in fact, and she always will be. But we mustn’t spoil her, my dear. May I escort you back to the house?”

She gave the horse one more pat and turned to regard her husband sternly. “You certainly shall. I do not know what you were thinking, coming out in this weather without your gloves. I should spank that hound of yours for allowing it.”

“Yes, you should, but luncheon is long past, and I missed you, Essie.” He offered her his arm and sent up a prayer that they made it back to the house before spring—or before death claimed them.