“Don’t be ridiculous.” Vivian glared at him but ruined the effect entirely when she reached out to brush his hair off his forehead. “You’ve been in the sun.”

Her touch, freely given, eased something miserable and desperate in Darius’s chest. “I’m spending the summer at the Markham estate, which Valentine Windham is hell-bent on restoring to its former glory.”

“Markham?” Vivian’s brow puckered. “I thought nobody lived there.”

“Bats live there. When we started it was barely habitable, but it’s coming along.”

She plucked clover from the grass and began threading a chain. “So you thought you’d just pop over and see how I’m doing?”

“No.” He’d thought he’d lose his mind if he had to face never seeing her again. “I thought I’d beg a berth with Windham so I could make amends for how I treated you this spring.”

“I’m a married woman,” Vivian reminded him, staring at her clover. “And I love my husband.”

They needed to air this linen, of course, but not at length. “I am not seeking favors from you, Vivvie.”

“You’re not?” The little note of wistfulness in her voice had him smiling again, though he was gentleman enough to try to hide it.

White clover was for promises, so he’d give her a promise and revel in the pleasure of that small token. “You love your husband,” Darius said slowly. “I promise to respect that. You would be upset if I sought to dally with you now. It would upset me not to offer you my sincere friendship.”

Vivian smiled too and tossed the chain of clover flowers at him. “Everything upsets me. Tell me about Windham’s estate.”

He spent an hour with her on that blanket, not touching, but talking, and by the end of it, she was talking too. Talking, Darius hoped, as she might have talked to a trusted friend.

“William tries to hide it, but he’s not doing well,” she finally admitted.

“What does that mean, Vivvie?”

“He’s fading.” She said it softly, as if it were a relief to share the reality with someone. “He’s tired of living, and now that I’m to have a child, he can assure himself my welfare is taken care of.”

“You’ll miss him.” Darius said it for her.

“Terribly. When there was nobody between me and Ainsworthy’s vile schemes, William shook off his mourning and married me, facing down scandal and talk and possible political repercussions. I’m grateful to him, but I love him too, and when I asked him to come down here with me early, he shook his head and told me to run along and enjoy being in the country.”

She sounded bewildered and forlorn, and in this, at least, Darius could offer a male perspective.

“He has a kind of courage,” Darius said. “Not simply the courage of his religious faith, which assures him an honorable life will find a reward in the hereafter, but a courage for living in this life, without you, without his first wife, without the faculties he had as a younger man.”

Vivian studied him for a moment, while the breeze riffled the branches of the ripening orchard above them and a fat bumblebee went lazily about its business.

“You admire him.”

“Of course I admire him.” Though he was only now realizing it. “He’s put aside his own convenience to do what was necessary to protect you, Vivian. How could I not admire a man with that much practical honor?”

She frowned as she digested this description of her husband. “Practical honor is a good term. William would understand it.”

“Remind me who Ainsworthy is.”

“My former stepfather.”

Darius watched emotions play across her features. “Given your expression, Vivian, I do not care for the fellow.”

She retrieved the chain of clover and wound it through her fingers. “When my mother died, he took it upon himself to launch my sister, except I saw what he did to Angela, and I wasn’t about to allow him to do that to me.”

“I thought you said Angela was happy with her… publisher?”

Vivian stretched her feet out and regarded her bare toes. Darius kept his gaze on her face lest he recall too clearly the taste of those toes when Vivian had been fresh from her bath.

“Angela is married to Jared Ventnor,” Vivian said. “They are happy now, but Jared essentially outbid the titles competing for Angie’s hand. It wasn’t a love match on her part. Angela barely knew her husband when they wed, and Ainsworthy was willing to use any means to secure the match.”

“And you.” Darius tapped her nose. “You consider your sister resigned herself to her fate so she’d have a household for you to come to when your turn arose.”

She frowned at the clover wrapped around her fingers. “Except I crossed paths with Muriel, who saw what was what and offered me a position as her companion.”

The bumblebee came around again, a reminder that time spent on a blanket with Vivian was time bartered for the sustenance of Darius’s soul from other responsibilities. “I will remember Muriel in my prayers. Shall I escort you back to the house?”

To make that offer openly and to mean it was a small moment of grace.

“Gracious, everlasting God, no. Portia is likely spying out of windows and bribing the servants to report my every move. The last thing she needs is to find some basis for her suspicions that I’ve played William false.”

“You’re going to have to explain me somehow.” Darius rose and offered Vivian a hand. “I’ll show up at the christening, and thereafter, and that is at William’s request.”

“Then William can explain you,” Vivian retorted. She let Darius pick up her book, fold the blanket over his shoulder, and offer her his arm.

Vivian scowled—even her scowls were dear—and accepted his escort. “You can’t walk me back to the house.”

“Let me see you across the stream.” He wrapped the reins of his courage around his wrists, and ambled along beside her. “I’d like to meet you here again on Friday.”

“Friday? This is not wise, Darius.”

He paused and looked down at her. “Your welfare concerns me. I know you don’t trust me, I know you’ve been disappointed in me and hurt by me. I am sorry, more sorry than you can possibly know. But if you’d allow it, I’d like to be your friend.”

To be her friend, a man she could rely upon for kindness, honesty, and decency, was the highest aspiration he’d ever held.

“What do friends do?”

She hadn’t ordered him off the property for his presumption. He took heart. “They occasionally pass the time together,” Darius said, resuming their progress. “They care for each other, and keep each other’s confidences, and they acknowledge each other in social situations.”

“Like you didn’t acknowledge me. On several notable occasions.”

“It won’t happen again,” he said quietly. “And I am abjectly sorry.”

“I believe you, but I don’t understand you, Darius. If you detest those women so much, why are they in your life? William has compensated you, hasn’t he?”

“We can talk more about that on Friday,” he replied, reluctant to explain that he’d used dirty weapons on dirty opponents, and been shown a curious grace by unlikely angels. “Weather permitting. And if the weather doesn’t permit, I’ll try on Monday, and so forth.”

“You’re determined on this, aren’t you?”

Was she trying to hide a smile—or a frown? “Yes. I am determined to be your friend.”

More silence as they approached a little rill babbling happily along toward the sea. “Very well, but for pity’s sake be discreet.”

“I’ll be careful, but my attentions are not going to be of a nature you’ll need to hide,” he replied, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her over the stream bordering the trees. “You be well, Vivian, and know I’m thinking of you.” He brushed a kiss to her cheek before setting her down and kept his hands on her upper arms for a moment.

“You can leave the blanket here,” Vivian said. “I’ll send a footman for it.”

“Until Friday then.” He bowed and smiled at her again, a soft, remembering smile—but a determined smile too.