“I would never do such a thing! You lie, Darius, and poorly.”

“Now, Lucy,” Darius nearly purred as he came to stand too close to her, “I have no reason to lie. I’ve been a naughty man, true, but I’ve never paid for the pleasure of whipping children nigh to death. What would your husband think, did he learn of such an excess of temper?”

“My husband is devoted,” Lucy said, her eyes venomous.

“Devoted, indeed, to the mistress who bore him two sons, for whom he provides well. He apparently had no trouble functioning with his mistress, unlike his situation with you. All he’d need is an excuse to have you sent to one of those pleasant, walled estates for women with nervous constitutions.”

Color drained from her face, and Darius observed with curious dispassion that the woman might have once been pretty, had not vice and bitterness twisted her expression.

But he hadn’t yet finished with her.

“And if you truly dispute the charges of treason”—he nailed her with a frigid look—“then charges of attempted kidnapping of my sister might still see you in jail, my lady. Your footmen can be bribed as easily as any, and Reston—Earl of Bellefonte, now—would do anything to see those who threatened his countess brought to justice.”

She sank onto the sofa, his words landing with more gratification than well-aimed blows.

“I’ll leave you to contemplate your sins, but be warned that Bellefonte’s brothers are yet at university, and they will be admonishing their entire forms to avoid the likes of you, and making sure their younger brothers are warned as well. Do we understand each other?”

“We do.” Her answering croak was in the voice of a woman who knew when she was… beaten.

“I suggest you and Lady Cowell take a repairing lease somewhere as distant as, say, the Italian coast. Latin men are notably solicitous toward older women. Good day.”

Casting off the pall of association with Blanche and Lucy should have left Darius euphoric. Mightily relieved, in any case. Instead, it was overshadowed by four things that deflated positive feelings considerably.

First, Darius had bid good-bye to the only family member to share his household, the only bright spot in much of his recent years.

Saying good-bye to John when the boy left for Belle Maison had hurt, but not Leah, not Trent, not even John himself seemed to comprehend Darius’s loss. Nicholas, oddly enough, had pulled Darius aside for a fierce hug and promised him the child would come to no harm and visit Darius often. That assurance had been so desperately needed Darius had found himself blinking back tears.

Crying, for God’s sake, and on another man’s shoulder. What did Darius have to cry about?

The second development of great proportions in Darius’s life was that Nick had confronted Wilton with evidence of the earl’s mishandling of funds—and worse—earlier in Leah’s life. Wilton was effectively banished to Wilton Acres out in Hampshire, and the maternal inheritance Darius’s father had pilfered from him was being repaid, with interest.

When a man learned to live on next to nothing, a sudden and deserved influx of capital created challenges: What to do with it, how much to invest, where, on what…? It all took time, concentration, and a focus Darius had to force himself to maintain.

The third development was more alarming still, in that Trent, drifting along into a shambling sort of widowerhood, had to be taken in hand. Darius escorted his brother bodily to Crossbridge, the estate Trent owned free of any entail, and set his brother down a considerable distance from the brandy decanter. Trent’s children were sent out to Nick and Leah in Kent, and Darius was left to pace and fret and pray that his brother pulled out of whatever malaise had him in its grip.

The fourth development was the worst: Vivian left Town.

The other matters—losing John, maybe losing Trent, being inundated with business decisions—Darius could manage those, relatively. He could not manage losing all contact with Vivian. She would be approaching her confinement, and likely concerned about it, and he…

He had no right to offer her reassurances, no right to comfort her, no right to look forward to the birth with her, and yet, she’d been right: in this regard, they’d been cheated.

He couldn’t help himself. When Lord Valentine Windham offered an invitation to rusticate in Oxfordshire just a few miles from Longchamps, Darius leapt at the chance.

Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s brains.

Vivian reached this profound conclusion within days of returning to Longchamps. True, London was miserable in summer, but she and William traditionally stayed in the city until Parliament adjourned in August. And William had stayed there, which only proved to Vivian that her wits had gone begging.

William was… failing. Dying. She’d admitted it to herself only as he’d deposited her into their traveling coach and she’d seen the way his shoulders were more stooped, his gaze less clear, his gait slower. She was losing him, and now of all times, she didn’t want to lose the closest thing she had to an ally.

Still, she’d been so intent on putting distance between herself and a certain Darius Lindsey that she’d left William in Town with no one but Dilquin to fuss over him, and hied herself back to Longchamps.

Where Portia’s hovering presence was going to move Vivian to murder. The woman was an atrocity, and Vivian’s sympathy for Able grew with each hour. Portia suggested changes to the house, as if she knew William’s health were precarious and she planned to take over as lady of the manor when William was gone. Able brushed off her plans and schemes and shared the occasional sympathetic look with Vivian.

But worst of all for Vivian was that distance, which she’d intended to help her get some perspective on Darius Lindsey, was only making his presence in her imagination harder to eradicate.

Would the child look like him? Would Darius come to the christening? Was he thinking of her, or was he sauntering around with one of those horrid women on his arm, in his bed, at his side? Had “very soon” come to pass that he’d parted company with them, or were they still commanding his escort when Vivian could not?

That last question hurt. He’d been honest with her, told her exactly who and what he was, but it still… hurt. If Darius were nothing but a cicisbeo, bought and paid for, what did that make Vivian?

She tortured herself with questions like that, even as she took long walks all over the ripening countryside. To see the crops growing, even as she grew, was a comfort, though her ambling became more and more deliberate.

Darius had told her to walk, to resist the urge to become sedentary as well as gravid.

To escape Portia, Vivian frequently took a blanket and a book—Byron was her most frequent choice—out to the stream running behind the orchard a half mile from the house. The roll of the land protected her from the view of the manor and its outbuildings, and the distance was just right to give her a sense of peace.

Which was disturbed past all recall when she felt something tickling her nose. She batted at it, not quite ready to be done with her late-morning nap, but it returned.

“Shall I kiss you awake?”

She opened her eyes, and her mind told her Darius Lindsey, whom she had not seen for weeks, was on the blanket with her, but she refused to accept such a reality.

Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s wits that badly.

“Go away.”

“Soon.” He did ease away, but not before Vivian saw a light dimming in his eyes. This was a good thing, lest he think he was still welcome to kiss her or hold her or take her hand in his.

But what he did was worse. He shifted to sit a foot away from her.

“How are you, Vivvie?”