“If I may,” Darius interrupted. “The chances are even any child born would be female, in which case your impoverished viscountess is left to support not only herself, but a girl child, which can be an expensive proposition.”

Longstreet’s gaze turned crafty as he propped himself against the mantel. “That would be the usual case, except my title is very old, and only in my great-grandfather’s day was it elevated from a barony to a viscountcy. Nobody has looked at the letters patent in a century, save myself, and while the viscountcy carries a male entail, the barony can be preserved through the female line.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s that old. When the Black Death came through, there was pressure on the monarchy to liberalize its patents, as tremendous wealth was reverting when family after family lost its male line. Mine is one of the few surviving more liberally drafted letters, and thus the barony—and the estate wealth—will be preserved regardless of the gender of the child.”

This scheme was madness—thoroughly researched, carefully considered, potentially lucrative madness. “The barony will survive if there is a child. If I agree to your terms.”

“Stop putting that bottle up, young man. Having heard this much, I think there are terms you’ll agree to, do we apply ourselves to their negotiation in good faith.”

“Good faith? You’re attempting to cheat the Crown, procure the intimate services of a worthless bounder for your lady wife, perpetrate a fraud on your patrimony, and you speak of good faith?”

“You’re young.” Lord Longstreet resumed his seat in another succession of creaks and totters, this time popping a knee joint as well. “You can afford your ideals. Imagine what might befall your family were your father to lose the Wilton title, his lands, his wealth—how might your sisters go on, if not in some version of the oldest and least-respected profession?”

Darius leveled a look at him such that Lord Longstreet flushed and glanced away.

“So you beat your sisters to it,” he surmised. “Your father isn’t just a braying ass, Lindsey, he’s a disgrace to his kind.”

“And yet it’s his line you’ll be grafting onto your own—if I agree.”

It took two hours, the rest of the cognac, and very likely some of the toughest negotiating Lord Longstreet had seen in half a century, but in the end, Darius agreed.

* * *

“William will not be joining us.”

In addition to lustrous dark hair done up in a prim coronet, Lady Vivian Longstreet had a low voice, a contralto, laced with controlled tension.

“I beg your pardon?” Darius succeeded in keeping the irritation from his tone, but only just. This civilized dinner a trois had been one of Lord Longstreet’s terms, and Darius had grudgingly acceded to the older man’s desire to see his wife politely introduced to her… what? Darius couldn’t bring himself to apply the word lover. Stud was too vulgar, if accurate, though worse terms came to mind.

“William is under the weather,” Lady Longstreet said. “May I take your coat? The servants have been dismissed for the evening, and yes, I truly mean he’s feeling poorly. William is capable of diplomatic illnesses, but I’m sure if he told you he would be here, he meant to keep his word. It’s just…”

“Yes?” Darius turned slightly, so she could lift his coat from his shoulders, her touch conveying hesitance, even timidity, as she did.

She smiled slightly and hoisted his coat to a hook in the alcove. “I don’t mean to babble. William is much involved in the Lords, and it tires him. I assured him we’d manage, but if you’d rather reschedule this encounter, we can.”

Begin as you intend to go on.

“We’ll manage.” Darius offered his arm, noting with disinterest—professional disinterest—that Lady Longstreet was quite pretty. He’d put her age at around five-and-twenty, the same as his sister Leah. Her smile was polite, and her countenance was serene.

That serenity brought lovely features into submission—a perfectly straight nose, slanting dark eyes, full lips, and classic cheekbones—when a more animated expression might have rendered the same face arresting.

She was hiding her beauty, maybe even from herself.

He laid his hand over hers where it rested on his sleeve. “My business with Lord Longstreet has been concluded, my lady, leaving only my dealings with you before you can be shut of me.”

“And you’ll be relieved when that’s the case?” She was barely, barely tolerating his touch, for all her calm expression.

Could he be intimate with a woman who disdained to touch even his sleeve? “Now how will I answer that?” He glanced down at her as they made their progress through the house, not sure if he was irritated with her or for her. “If I say yes, I’ll be relieved to complete my obligations with you, you’ll be insulted. If I say no, you’ll think I relish a bargain I, in truth, regret.”

She turned velvety brown eyes to him, her expression curious. “Why?”

Lady Longstreet was brave—martyrs were supposed to be brave—and despite the circumstances, she truly was a lady. The realization made Darius pause, and not happily. He was most comfortable when the women with whom he consorted intimately shared with him a kind of mutual resentment and scorn. They used him, he used them, and each could look down on the other’s neediness and pretend the other party was the more venal, the more vulnerable. Lady Longstreet would not fit the same mold.

Perhaps she wasn’t of any mold.

He resumed the thread of their discussion. “Why what?”

“Why do you regret this bargain? I regret that it can’t be William’s child I bear, but it will still be the child William gave me, in a sense. I can live with that.”

“You’re very sensible,” Darius said as they entered a small dining room. The hearth at one end was blazing, bringing blessed relief from the unheated corridor. The table had been set à la française, with the various dishes covered and waiting over warming lights.

“William is the sensible one,” Lady Longstreet said. “Practical to a fault, his wife used to say.”

“You’re his wife.”

“I meant his first wife,” Lady Longstreet corrected herself without a flicker of irritation. “The woman he was married to for thirty-some years, the woman who bore him two sons. Shall we be seated?”

The table was positioned near the hearth, their two places set at right angles to each other so it couldn’t be said there was a head or a foot to the table. William’s absence allowed that, and Darius had to wonder how honest the older man was with his composed young wife.

Darius seated her and gestured to the wine breathing in the center of the table. “Shall I pour?” The question seemed absurd, and yet, with such a woman, what else was there to do but continue the pretense of civility?

“I hope you like it.” Lady Longstreet’s smile was gracious. “We often entertain diplomats, and there is universal accord that a hostess gift must be either wine from one’s own country or sweets. The sweets are invariably consumed while the company is present, though we’ve acquired an interesting cellar.”

Darius peered at the label. “German?”

“We’re working our way across the Continent,” his hostess replied. “Tell me, have you traveled much?”

The meal was… odd, because Darius of late spent little time around women whom he wasn’t obligated to deal with. He loved his two sisters, but they still put demands on him. And the other women… They put demands on him as well, demands he was compensated for meeting but would as soon forget.

Dinner with Vivian Longstreet had nothing of overt obligation about it, but rather, was a pleasant encounter with a woman whose mannerliness was such that she could draw him out in conversation, ply him with excellent food and good wine, and make him forget for a time why it was their lives were briefly entangling.

Her ladyship eyed the remains of the fruit and cheese nearly an hour later. “I wasn’t sure quite what we were supposed to do with each other this evening, but William insisted that ours is a civilized bargain for civilized ends, and we should begin it on a civil note.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree with him.” Darius sliced her off another bite of cheese and put it on her plate. He’d never realized how intimate sharing a meal could be and wasn’t sure he liked the revelation. She’d be sharing a damned month of meals with him if they kept their bargain.

“You agreed to this.” Lady Longstreet’s hand waved over the table. “Hasn’t there been benefit to you in sharing this meal?”

He’d eaten every bite offered to him, though he sensed she wasn’t alluding to that. “Some. I’m not as hungry, and I’ve made the acquaintance of three very respectable German wines.” To his own ears, he sounded a tad… churlish, though not petulant.

“One vintage was Rhenish. Aren’t you also a little less uncomfortable with what lies ahead of us, Mr. Lindsey?”

“Are you?” Her answer mattered, when it should not. The bills stacking up apace on Darius’s escritoire had to be what mattered most.

She lifted the slice of cheese, eyed it, and set it back on her plate. “I see what you mean, about giving answers that can be either flattering or honest. I’ve said I will do this for William—he posited this eventuality as a condition of his proposal, though at the time both of his sons yet lived. I will honor my word to him, but it is… odd.”

“Yes. Odd.”

“Not as odd as we think.” Her smile was fleeting, impish, and entirely unexpected. Not her gracious-hostess smile, it was devilish, full of mischief.

“What does that mean?”

“Lord Longstreet is fairly certain he himself was a cuckoo in his papa’s nest, by design. He calls himself a judicious outcross.”

Darius grimaced to think what his own father might have made of such a notion. “By design?”

“The Longstreet line has not been blessed with a great lot of male progeny.” Lady Longstreet popped the cheese into her mouth. “It helps me to know other ladies in the family have been called upon to serve as I have.”

Darius watched her chew. “And the late Lady Longstreet would not object to this scheme?”

The present Lady Longstreet blinked. “I was Lady Muriel Longstreet’s companion in her final years, and yes, she would approve. One is to hedge one’s husband’s bets, or so she said. I think forty years ago marriage was a more pragmatic undertaking. She and William loved each other, and they were most assuredly best friends by the time Lady Muriel died.”

“If you say so, but I cannot imagine…”

“Neither can I.” Lady Longstreet’s tone was a little forlorn. “And in a just a few weeks’ time, I won’t have to imagine it, because I will be on your doorstep, bag and baggage. Oh, dear.”

He smiled, mostly because the double meaning was embarrassing her. “I’ll be the baggage, if you’d rather.”

“We’ll get through this, won’t we, Mr. Lindsey?” Now her tone was hopeful, and in her brown eyes, he saw she wasn’t at all as poised and certain as she’d have him believe. Maybe it was the German wine or the realization that they were indeed to be intimate when next they met or the quiet all around them, but as he held her gaze, Lady Longstreet’s trepidation peeked out at him.

She was anxious as hell, bloody scared to death.

“We’ll manage,” he said. “It is ever a failing of mine to take things too seriously, and in this case, you mustn’t allow it of me.”

She nodded solemnly. “Nor you of me. I think you have the right of it.”

Darius held out his hand to her, palm up. She glanced down at his bare fingers in consternation then tentatively put her own hand over his. He brought her knuckles to his lips, planted a kiss there, then drew her to her feet.

“We’ve put off the more delicate subjects,” he said as he led her over to the fire. There was a tea service waiting there, a kettle on a swing over the hearth, and two cozy chairs catching some of the fire’s heat.

She took a seat, all grace and composure, though his observation had made her eyes widen. “Isn’t a month long enough to sort through those?”

He considered what he wanted to ask her—regarding her intimate preferences, toys, games, fantasies—and then realized her elderly husband was likely asleep on the next floor up, and really, the discussion could wait.

“We can talk more later. If there is a later. You need to know I won’t hold you to this bargain.”

“What does that mean?” She motioned him into a seat and prepared the tea, her grace as soothing as the warmth of the hearth. “I’m to be your guest in Kent for a few weeks, but you’d take William’s coin and deceive the man?” She wrinkled her nose. “I won’t lie to my husband just for your gain, Mr. Lindsey. If I’m that unappealing, you need only…”