“And a cranky shadow.” Augusta shifted ever so slightly, so her backside nestled more snugly against a certain part of her husband’s anatomy. “Did you learn anything from Spathfoy over the manly tot of truth potion?”

“He’s not his younger brother. I left enough insults in the air to be risking my good health, but Spathfoy is cannier than that. I couldn’t bait him, and if I’m not mistaken, he was trying to pass along some information without being blatantly disloyal to the marquess.” He shifted as well, so there was no mistaking his arousal. “My love, I never did get that lecture on proper deportment.”

“I had hopes my good example might be inspiration enough.”

But a thought was trying to edge its way through her growing arousal. “Do you think Gordie had despoiled other innocents?”

Ian went still. Bodily, this manifested as a simple absence of movement, but Augusta was his devoted wife, and even lying on her side facing away from him, she could feel his mind focus on a single still point as well.

“Wife, you are brilliant. I would bet the rest of the laird’s cache that’s exactly what Spathfoy was intimating. He said he wouldn’t be surprised to find Gordie had taken advantage of Mary Fran—disappointed, but not surprised. My wife is a genius.” He rolled her to her back and caged her with his much larger body.

His kisses were tender, enthusiastic, and captivating. His kisses were part of what had endeared him to her when their chances of lasting happiness had seemed so dim.

“Ian?”

“Your Brilliance?”

“Have we heard from Mary Fran and Matthew?”

He lifted up and scowled down at her. “We have not. I will worry about that in the morning, Wife.”

“Will you also worry about any will Gordie might have left?”

He smoothed a big hand over her hair and sighed gustily, some of the lust seeming to go out of him. “My heart, I thought you wanted a large family, though why you’d aspire to such a thing when one baby has already turned this household upside down is beyond the understanding of a simple man such as myself.”

“You are worried.” Augusta urged him down against her chest and wrapped her arms around him. “Did Gordie leave a will?”

“I’ve people looking into it. Gordie was an officer, so making a will ought to have been something he saw to in the ordinary course. The question is, was it a will that provided for the guardianship of any minor children, and if so, what did it provide?”

“You think he’d leave his children in his father’s care, don’t you?”

Ian settled more closely on her, though even preoccupied, he was careful of her breasts. “Gordie was a heedless, selfish younger son. Such prudence and consideration would have been foreign to his nature.”

“But you’re worried.” She stroked a hand through his thick, dark hair. “You’re worried for Fee, for Mary Fran, and even for Matthew.”

“No.” He lifted his head to meet Augusta’s gaze. “In the morning, I might be a wee bit concerned, but right now, I’m in bed with my wife, and the only thing worrying me is that I might once again be left with only the dubious comfort of my wife’s example of proper deportment.”

As it turned out, that example was not among the comforts to befall the Earl of Balfour, and by the time he fell asleep entangled with his loving wife, neither did his lordship feel the least bit worried.

* * *

Hester watched from her vantage point as Spathfoy led his horse into the stables. He was talking to the animal, though she was too far away to hear exactly what was said. No doubt it was a lecture of some sort on proper equine deportment.

Her perch on a garden bench gave her a clear view into the barn. By the lantern hanging in the aisle, she could see Spathfoy didn’t wake the lads but tended to the animal himself—and didn’t skimp either. The saddle and bridle came off and were properly stowed, then a grooming ensued from one end of the gelding’s glossy dark hide to the other.

Then—this surprised her—a scratching about the beast’s withers and shoulders amid more talk.

Spathfoy left the horse in the cross ties while he scrubbed out, dumped, and refilled a water bucket. He picked out each hoof, which could be a messy proposition for a man in informal evening attire, then forked some hay into the stall.

Hester wasn’t sure the grooms would have been quite that considerate, which was perhaps why Spathfoy was tending to his mount himself: an English lord in unfriendly territory needed a sound horse for his eventual retreat.

After making a circuit of the stables for which purpose Hester could not divine, Spathfoy started up the path, and still he didn’t notice her sitting on her bench in the moonlight.

“Good evening, my lord.” She hadn’t intended to speak, but lurking any longer seemed rude.

“Miss Daniels, good evening.” In the moonlight, his voice seemed different—richer, darker, less English and less of all the things that clouded its inherent beauty. “May I escort you to the house?”

He would offer to observe the proprieties.

“No thank you. You may join me if you like. I trust you found Ian and Augusta in good health?”

He settled beside her, a piece of the night taking a seat. “They did not terrorize me with the company of their offspring at table, if that’s what you’re asking, and the meal was above reproach.”

“The meal was delicious. If Ian broke out the laird’s cache, then the drink was among the finest you’ve ever been served.”

He sighed, a big gust of male emotion that would never be accurately labeled. “I don’t want to bicker with you, Miss Daniels. Are you sure I can’t escort you to the house?”

“So you can lurk out here among the roses and brood in solitude?”

In the darkness, she saw his teeth gleam. A smile or a grimace? “Yes, if you must know. Solitude is my preferred state, in fact, and if I don’t get regular doses of it, I become restive.”

“You usually like bickering with me.” And she liked bickering with him. The realization was not as lowering as it should have been.

“Your observation is no compliment to one who aspires to the status of gentleman.”

“It wasn’t an insult either.” He was in some sort of mood. Hester recognized it, because she’d been in the same mood ever since Lord Jasper Merriman had left bruises on her person that had only recently faded. “And you don’t deny it, either. You enjoy our spats.”

“I’m tired, Miss Daniels, and yet I am not comfortable leaving you out here without companionship at such a late hour. What do you want of me?”

Even for him, that was brusque.

“Ian worked you over properly, didn’t he? And Augusta abetted him, smiling and nodding all the while.”

“Ian—Lord Balfour—reminded me I have a conscience, and the realization is not at all convenient, even when softened by marvelously smooth whisky.”

She didn’t think he’d intended to be that honest, but she seized the opening before her courage deserted her. “Please call me Hester. We are practically family, and our paths are likely to cross on occasion if you remain interested in Fiona’s well-being.”

“Very well. May I escort you to the house, Hester?”

He was truly rattled. Whatever Ian had said or implied or otherwise insinuated, Spathfoy was wrestling with it.

“Will you kiss me, my lord?”

“For God’s sake, no, I will not kiss you.” He didn’t get off the bench though. Didn’t shift the slightest bit away from her.

“It’s just that I don’t particularly like you,” Hester said, “so I think it’s safe to try out your paces, so to speak. You’ve already had your tongue in my mouth, after all, and your bare hands on my person.”

“We’re back to your equestrian analogies?”

Still he didn’t leave. Didn’t get to his feet or cross his arms or otherwise reject her proposition.

“There is something amiss with me,” Hester said, speaking slowly. “You say you are restive if too much in the company of others. I comprehend this, though I would not have even a few months ago. It’s why I left London, why I so very thoroughly enjoyed a good gallop yesterday. Fiona says I’m out of sorts, and Ian and Augusta look at me like I’m a powder keg whose fuse they must not inadvertently light. Sometimes, I can’t get my breath, and I feel like I am a powder keg.”

She fell silent, because the more words she let spin forth, the faster they wanted to come—and to him, of all people.

“You feel as if a fuse has been lit,” Spathfoy said slowly—reluctantly? “You feel as if you’re watching it burn down, and there’s nothing you can do to stop the impending mayhem.”

She nodded, because speech abruptly seemed a chancy thing. Her heart began to thump palpably, and she had to part her lips to draw breath.

“Any further kissing between us is ill-advised in the extreme.” He stood and marched half a dozen steps in the direction of the house. Hester knew the urge to scream, to drag him back to her side by the hair, to rage and cry out and destroy the entire peace of the night around her.

Then he turned and stalked toward the bench. He kept coming, until to her shock, he knelt over her, one knee by each hip, so the great bulk of him was straddling her lap. “Very ill-advised.”

He framed her face in his hands and paused, his mouth just a whisper from hers. “You will regret this, Hester. I will regret this.”

His mouth descended onto hers firmly, nothing tentative or reluctant about it, and inside Hester, something eased. All the tension and frustrations she’d been corralling behind her manners and her benighted self-restraint found an outlet, a way to express themselves. She didn’t think about Jasper Merriman or bruises, or her idiot mother, or her silently worried family.

With just his mouth on hers, Spathfoy obliterated all thought and all memory from Hester’s awareness, leaving her to feast her senses on him alone.

He was warm all around her, and clean and yet male too, in the scents of horse and night and well-oiled leather clinging to his clothing. When Hester opened her mouth beneath his, his arms came around her, and hers lashed around him. She held him desperately tight, letting herself cling and need for just a few moments.

His tongue was a marvel, tasting first the corners of her mouth, then tracing her lips, then retreating to invite her into similar boldness. She accepted the invitation, went plundering into the hot, wet reaches of his mouth, sent her fingers into his hair, arched her body up into his.

“For God’s sake, woman.”

He hung over her, panting, while Hester pressed her face to his chest and resented his clothing. She could feel his erect male flesh, could feel curiosity in her vitals where distaste ought to be, and she rejoiced that it should be so.

“Do you want me to swive you right here on this bloody damned bench?” He climbed off her and turned his back, likely to arrange himself in his clothing. Then he faced her, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “I assume you comprehend the term?”

“I comprehend the term better than you imagine, my lord. And what would you say if I replied in the affirmative?”

She’d shocked herself with her own question, but she’d shocked him as well. His posture shifted with it, as if she’d smacked him physically.

“I would say, madam, that you are overwrought for reasons I cannot fathom, and I would offer once again to escort you inside the damned house, where I would leave you in blasted peace and hope you might offer me the same ruddy courtesy while I try to forget this whole misguided encounter.”

He resumed his seat on the bench when Hester had expected him to stomp off into the darkness. They sat there in silence until Hester realized she’d synchronized her breathing with his.

“Ian upset you.”

He leaned back and ranged his arm along the bench behind her. “It might delight you to know, Miss Daniels, that you have upset me. You are family to the lord and lady of this home, family to the child who is my niece. You are young and innocent, despite what you think of a few wicked kisses, and it has never been an ambition of mine to despoil innocents.”

“Now you’re scolding me? I asked you to kiss me, I did not toss you bodily onto your lordly back and force my wiles upon you. I can’t help that I like kissing you.”

“You sound damned unhappy about it yourself. God knows a taste for you—for your kisses—doesn’t make my life any easier.”