His Convenient Marchioness. Elizabeth Rolls

rage lashed at Emma over the next two days. Disappointment that Huntercombe’s apparently disinterested kindliness towards the children had been anything but disinterested and rage that he had used them in his attempt to get close to her.

      Harry and Georgie could talk of little but Lord Huntercombe and Fergus. Emma even overheard Harry tell his sister what a jolly good idea she’d had with the handkerchief. ‘Because no matter what Mama says, I’m sure he’ll bring it back!’

      Georgie, openly smug about the predicted success of her scheme, asked Emma, ever so casually, just how long it took to launder a handkerchief. ‘In a big house, Mama.’

      It might have been funny had Emma not been so angry. And if she were honest, angry with herself for feeling even for an instant that betraying flicker of interest. Had she accidentally encouraged him? Did she have to be rude to every gentleman who spoke to her to avoid this sort of thing? And somewhere in all that there was hurt. Why she had thought Huntercombe would be different, she had no idea. After eleven years she knew how society viewed her.

      She did not have the heart to disabuse the children of their conviction that Huntercombe would call. How could she, without giving an explanation as to why she was so sure he would not? Six and ten was far too young for them to realise how gentlemen viewed their mother. Instead she took advantage of any dry weather to get them out for walks as much as possible, trying everything she could think of to keep them busy and distracted.

      And yet walks inevitably brought on chatter of how fast Fergus could run, how he twisted in mid-air to catch the ball and when they might see him again.

      So the knock on the door on the third morning was as unwelcome as it was unexpected. Nor did Emma appreciate the involuntary leap of her own pulse. Harry and Georgie, just sat down for their morning lessons, looked up, eyes bright.

      ‘It might be him, Mama!’

      Emma gave Georgie a quelling look. ‘Him? The cat’s father?’

      ‘Fergus!’

      She changed her snort of laughter into a cough. The Marquess of Huntercombe, outranked by his own dog. Bessie’s footsteps hurried down the short hallway and the door creaked open. A velvet-dark voice spoke, the tone questioning, and Emma’s pulse skittered. Anger, she assured herself. Unfortunately it didn’t feel like anger, but that did not change how she was going to deal with this.

      ‘Yes, yer honour. What? Right. I’ll ask her then.’

      ‘Mama!’ Georgie and Harry jigged in their seats.

      ‘Stay where you are.’ She held them in place with a raised hand. ‘It might be a complete stranger.’

      More hurried steps and Bessie opened the door, face pink. ‘It’s a lordship, mum! Do I let him in?’

      Despite her anger, Emma suppressed another laugh. The Most Noble Marquess of Huntercombe left kicking his heels on the doorstep...

      ‘It is him!’ Harry and Georgie let out a unison shriek of delight, surged from their seats and stampeded past Bessie and into the hall.

      ‘Sir! Good morning!’

      ‘Look! It’s Fergus!’

      Bessie held out a visiting card. ‘Said ’is name was Huntercombe, mum. Not Fergus.’

      ‘The dog,’ Emma said. Damn his eyes! Must he make it so difficult? But it was not only Huntercombe who was making it difficult. She had repelled other men with ease. It was her own unruly attraction to him that was difficult. The others had been annoying. Huntercombe’s approach infuriated her.

      Huntercombe’s deep, quiet voice returned the children’s greetings.

      ‘Come in, sir!’

      His lordship’s response to Harry’s invitation was dismissed by Georgie. ‘Of course she won’t. It’s this way.’

      A moment later his broad shoulders filled the doorway. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Emma.’ A tinge of colour stained his cheekbones. ‘I did ask your servant if you were at home, but—’

      ‘We’re nearly always at home,’ Georgie said. ‘Except when we aren’t.’

      Huntercombe’s eyes crinkled. ‘I see. The thing is, Miss Georgie, a gentleman should always give a lady the chance to send him to the right-a-bout if she does not wish to see him.’

      The smile in the grey eyes as he looked at Georgie was completely disarming. Emma had to remind herself that he was married, that he had no business calling on her alone, disarming her—even unintentionally—or causing her pulse to skip with that smile that stayed in his eyes and warmed her from the inside out. And he was years older than she was, although that didn’t seem to matter as much as it had when she was twenty. To Emma, at twenty, the greying hair on Sir Augustus Bolt, the man her father had decreed she was to marry, had horrified her. But now, curse it, on Huntercombe the greying dark hair—especially those silvery patches, just there at the temples—was simply gorgeous. And unlike Sir Augustus, who had run sadly to seed by forty-nine along with a pronounced stoop to his shoulders, Huntercombe was still straight, broad-shouldered and looked as though he kept himself fit.

      She forced her mind to function. What mattered, she reminded herself, was that he was married and she had two children to protect. Very well. He’d called. So she’d take his advice and send him to the right-a-bout. And since there was no way she could be even remotely private with someone in a house this size—

      ‘As it happens, sir, we are about to go for a walk,’ she said. ‘Would you care to join us?’

      Harry stared at her. ‘You said we had to do our lessons.’

      Emma wondered why children always contradicted you like that. ‘I’ve changed my mind. The sun is out now, but I wouldn’t care to wager upon it staying that way.’

      ‘But, Mama,’ Georgie looked up from patting Fergus, eyes wide, ‘When Harry said that at breakfast, you said—’

      ‘Don’t you want to come for a walk?’ Huntercombe asked mildly.

      ‘Of course we do,’ Harry said.

      Huntercombe nodded. ‘Then stop reminding your mother about lessons. Her conscience may get the better of her.’

      Emma stifled another laugh, wishing his dry sense of humour wasn’t so wickedly appealing.

      Harry grinned. ‘Yes, sir. Come on, Georgie. We’ll fetch our things.’

      * * *

      He’d meant to return the handkerchief, assure Lady Emma that she had been thoroughly mistaken and leave. But now he was going for a walk with the dreadful creature. Although he had to admit explaining Lady Emma’s mistake in that tiny house with two children present might have been awkward.

      Hunt noted that Emma again kept the conversation in the realm of polite generalities as they waited for the children. Nor by so much as a flicker did her demeanour suggest that she had received him in anything less than the most elegant drawing room.

      Whatever he had expected of her home, Hunt realised, it had not been the reality of this shabby-genteel, whitewashed parlour. It was spotlessly clean and he wondered if she did the dusting herself. The floorboards—no carpet, just scrubbed, bare boards—were swept. The furniture, what there was of it, was polished to a gleam and books crammed a battered set of shelves beside the window. An elderly lamp stood on the table and a plain wooden clock ticked on the shelf over the clean and empty grate. The chill in the room suggested that the fire was lit only in the evenings.

      Emma Lacy, he realised, lived on the edge of very real poverty and that puzzled him. Surely she had something to live on? Unless Lacy had muddled their money away. That was quite possible. Anyone brought up as Lacy and Emma had been would struggle to manage on much less. The younger sons of dukes, having been raised to luxury, then left with relatively little, were notoriously expensive and debt-ridden. A very pertinent reason why fathers preferred not to marry their daughters to them.