Louisa shot Jenny an excuse-my-poor-daft-sister look. “Kesmore is a grouch, his children are complete hellions, he can hardly dance because of his perishing limp, and the man raises pigs.”

“And you adore him,” Jenny reiterated sweetly. “What about that nice Mr. Perrington?” Gentle persistence was Jenny’s forte, one learned at the knee of Her Grace, whose gentle persistence had been known to overcome the objections of Wellington himself.

“Mr. Perrington has lost half his teeth, and the other half are not long for his mouth,” Louisa observed as she moved on to the sandwiches. “Thank God he hides behind his hand when he laughs, but it gives him a slightly girlish air. I rather fancy Deene for Evie.”

“Deene?” Eve and Jenny gaped in unison.

“You fancy Lucas Denning as my husband?” Eve clarified.

Louisa sat back, a sandwich poised in her hand. “He’d behave because our brothers would take it amiss were he a disappointing husband. Then too, he’d never do anything to make Their Graces think ill of him, and yet he wouldn’t bring any troublesome in-laws into the bargain. He needs somebody with a fat dowry, and he’s quite competent on the dance floor. He’d leave you alone for the most part. I think you could manage him very well.”

Jenny’s lips pursed. “You want a husband you can manage?”

Eve answered, feeling a rare sympathy for Louisa, “One hardly wants a husband one can’t manage, does one?”

“Suppose not.” Jenny blinked at the tea tray. “You left us one cake each, Lou. Not well done of you.”

Louisa turned guileless green eyes on her sister. “You left me only four sandwiches, Jen.”

They all started laughing at the same time, then ordered more sandwiches and more cakes, while Eve wondered if she had the courage—and determination—to find herself a man who’d be a husband in name only.

* * *

“It’s like this.” Anthony lounged back in the chair behind the estate desk and steepled his fingers. “You aren’t poor, exactly, but you haven’t a great deal of cash.”

Deene paced the room, wondering if his own father had felt a similar gnawing frustration. “Give me figures, Anthony. The marquessate holds at least sixty thousand acres, and I have another ten thousand in my own name. There’s a soap factory in Manchester, a distillery on some Scottish island. How can I be poor?”

“Not poor, but that sixty thousand acres includes some thirty thousand bound with the entail. You can’t sell it, but you have to maintain it. You must tend to the land, the cottages, the woods, even the ditches.”

Deene peered at his cousin and stopped perusing a library stacked twelve feet high with books nobody read. “How does one tend to a ditch, for God’s sake?”

“If it’s a ditch that channels storm water, you have to keep it clear, else you’ll have standing water, and that seems to lead to cholera and other nuisances.”

Deene knew that. Anybody raised in expectation of holding property knew that. He pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache threatened to take up residence behind his eyes.

“Forgive me my exasperation. I should have spent the last year gathering up the reins of my estate, not rusticating in Kent under the guise of mourning.” More like a year and a half, truth be told.

Anthony’s smile was sympathetic. “I’ve been stewarding the properties for more than a decade, Cousin, and I can tell you, his late lordship had no more gathered up the reins after thirty years than you have after less than two. We’ll manage, just don’t take to extravagant gambling.”

“Do I need to marry for money?”

The question had to be asked. Deene could see the runners in the upper floors were worn, the carriages in his mews were out of date, and sconces in more than just the servants’ quarter of the house were burning tallow candles.

Sometimes, though, a man needed to hear his sentence pronounced in the King’s English.

“Marry for money?” Anthony’s finely arched blond brows rose then settled again. “I didn’t know you were thinking of marrying at all.”

“And yet”—Deene settled into a chair facing the desk—“you constantly remind me you have no desire to inherit the title. Do we let the crown have the estate then? You’ve certainly shown no signs of marrying.”

Too late, Deene realized the words weren’t going to sound like the good-natured ribbing they were meant to be. With a carefully blank expression, Anthony closed a few of the ledgers lying on the desk, rose, and tugged on his gloves.

“Don’t stick your neck in parson’s mousetrap just yet,” Anthony said. “Your father tried to right the marquessate’s fortune in just such a manner, if you’ll recall.”

Tit for tat. The conversation needed to move on. “You’ll get me figures, then?”

Anthony gestured to the ledgers. “Here are your figures. It’s a moving target, you see. We sell a few thousand spring lambs, but in the next month, we must hire a dozen crews for shearing. Until you’ve had a few years—a few decades—to get a sense of the problem, the figures you see can be very misleading. A place to start would be the household ledgers. They’re fairly straightforward.”

Straightforward. Straightforward was a quality that seemed to have fled Deene’s existence on all fronts.

“Anthony, have you ever bitten lengthwise into a fat, juicy, perfectly ripe strawberry?”

Anthony tapped his top hat onto this head, his smile returning in its most patient variation. “I’m sure I have. Are we to raise strawberries?”

“Not immediately. Thanks for your time. I’ll look forward to seeing what the present cash reserves are, though, regardless of how fluid the number.”

Anthony took his leave. Deene sat at the desk and opened the most recent ledger for household expenses at the London residence, which Deene would use for his abode over the next few months.

God help him.

Several hours later, his eyes were crossing, his temples were throbbing, and he had no idea how he’d make sense of the expenses listed on page after page of the damned accounting book. He’d been top wrangler in math at Cambridge his final year, and he could determine nothing from looking at the columns and columns of orderly, perfectly legible entries.

Though as he sat back and tossed the pen on the desk, he suspected part of the problem was the shocking resemblance of a strawberry split lengthwise to a particularly lovely and intimate part of the female anatomy.

Two

“Having family in your employ is always a mixed blessing.”

His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, made this observation while Deene ambled along at his side in the gardens behind the Moreland mansion. “You want to provide for your dependents, and you expect they’ll be somewhat more loyal than strangers would be, but it can also get complicated.”

“Anthony has done a magnificent job,” Deene countered. “He’s never once by word or deed indicated he has designs on the title.”

His Grace paused to sniff a white rose. “Then you are fortunate indeed, since he’s all the family you’ve got.”

“Not all.”

His Grace straightened. “There is the girl. I’d forgotten, but you likely haven’t. How does she go on?”

Upon the death of Deene’s father, Percival, Duke of Moreland, had come calling with his duchess as part of the usual round of condolence visits. The Moreland estates neighbored with the seat of the Deene marquessate, and if nothing else, His Grace and his late lordship had ridden to hounds together countless times.

What had begun as a neighborly gesture had turned into something unprecedented in Deene’s experience: a mentorship of sorts on Moreland’s part.

“The girl isn’t in poor health, from what I can tell. Dolan does not permit me to call.”

“He wouldn’t turn your wife away.”

Deene didn’t flatter himself that he was any particular friend of Moreland’s—he was a vote, perhaps, on some of the duke’s pet bills—but Moreland had been generous with advice at a time when Deene was without much wisdom of his own.

“Except I have no wife.”

This provoked a surprisingly sweet smile from His Grace. “Then you should rectify that poverty posthaste. Because I am the lone male in my household at present, I am more privy to the ladies’ views on your situation than I would be otherwise. I understand you are being stalked by the debutantes and their mamas.”

“Of course I am being stalked.” Lest this conversation continue on into the Moreland home itself, Deene gestured to a bench and waited for Moreland to seat himself before doing the same. “I am the highest available title, unless you count some septuagenarian dukes with ample progeny, and I am in need of an heir. When I am riding to hounds, I will never pursue Reynard with quite the same lack of sympathy I have in the past.”

“The fox most often escapes the hounds, because he’s running for his life. The wrong wife can make you entirely resent yours.”

How honest could one be with a man twice one’s age?

“I cannot say my parents’ union escaped such a characterization.”

His Grace stretched out long legs and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. “Times were different then. Matches were usually arranged by the parents for dynastic reasons, and expectations of the institution were different. Here is my advice to you, young man, which you may discard or heed at your pleasure: do not marry until you meet that person whom you cannot imagine living the rest of your life without. Call it love, call it affection, call it a fine understanding. Put whatever label you want on it. You will be wed for the rest of your life or perhaps for hers, and that can be a long, long time.”

His Grace sat up and speared Deene with a look. “Take your cousin about with you socially. Have him shadow your moves so you’re not waylaid in the rose arbor by some scheming minx. I know of what I speak, young Deene, having climbed out of more than one window in my heedless youth. If it hadn’t been for my brother Tony, there’s no telling what my fate might have been.”

The confidence was surprising and… endearing. Moreland was tall, with the ramrod straight posture of the former cavalry officer and a head of distinguished white hair to go with blue eyes that could turn arctic when his will was opposed.

Just now though, the man did not look so much like a duke as he did like a husband, a papa, a hale old fellow who valued his family above anything else.

“And here comes my duchess now to make sure I’m not lecturing you into a stupor.” His Grace rose smoothly to his feet and met his duchess on the graveled walk. “My dear, I was just coming to fetch you.”

She greeted Deene genially then gave His Grace her hand, which he tucked onto his arm.

“Deene, you will excuse us? Her Grace has requested my escort on a visit to Westhaven’s household, and this is a privilege I would not forego even to ensure I have your vote on the shipping amendments.”

Deene bowed to the duchess, who very likely fit Eve’s definition of an English beauty even in the woman’s sixth decade of life: tall, willowy, kind green eyes, and hair shading from gold to wheat around a face still lovely and unlined.

“Your Graces, I bid you good day, and of course you have my vote, Moreland.”

“Run along into the house, then. I’m sure the girls will be sitting down to lunch. You can ask them who’s most desperate for a husband and avoid the traps accordingly.” His Grace winked, patted his duchess’s hand, and led her off in the direction of the mews.

They had a peace about them, a sense of effortless communion Deene found fascinating, even as it made his chest feel a trifle queer.

He would not be joining the ladies for lunch—the lunching hour had passed—but he let himself in the French doors leading to the Moreland library, thinking to head straight for the front door.

“Why, Lord Deene. A pleasure.” Louisa, Lady Kesmore, smiled at him, a somewhat unnerving prospect involving a number of straight, white teeth. Lady Jenny’s smile was sweeter, and Eve’s smile was forced. They sat on the sofa, to Deene’s eye a trio of lovely women showing graduated degrees of disgruntlement.

“I beg your pardon, my ladies, Mr. Trottenham. I did not realize I’d be intruding unannounced.”

“Deene, good day.” Trottenham rose and bowed, smacking his heels together audibly. “The more the merrier, I say, what? Saw your colt beat Islington’s by two lengths. Well done, jolly good and all that. Islington’s made a bit too much blunt off that animal in my opinion.”