‘You took my book,’ he replied and if his excuse sounded lame and defensive, it might explain what he was doing here better than a smoother lie, designed to cover something clandestine and shocking.
‘And there are none downstairs in the famously well-stocked library Aunt Virginia and Uncle Virgil amassed between them?’ Eve asked, as if she knew very well her father had really stumbled on the housekeeper enjoying a nap in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time, but how could she?
‘Not the one I was reading before you stole it,’ he said grumpily.
‘And now I am reading it, so you would be stealing it from me. I can’t believe you to need distraction so badly, especially in the midst of a house party you must play host to, that you need to barge into my bedchamber when I am not there and try to repossess part of your library, Papa. I’m not even going to think about the list of tasks awaiting you here that you reeled off as an excuse for not being able to spend much time greeting neighbours who call to express their condolences.’
‘I didn’t know then how much distraction I’d need,’ he muttered darkly.
Chloe’s eyes stung at the sound of him so gruffly sheepish it opened up a host of new temptations inside her. She didn’t want to love him and screwed her eyes shut in denial of any tears tempted to come further.
‘Don’t be such a cross old bear, Papa,’ Eve told him and Chloe could hear the rustle of her skirts as she marched up and hugged her father.
Wrong to envy Eve such ease with her father, that ability to breach the chilly touch-me-not air he normally carried about with him like a shield.
‘I’ll try not to be, my she-cub, but there will be reasons aplenty for me to growl over the next few days.’
‘Aye,’ Brandy Brown added from what sounded like a position just inside the room, ‘you’ll need the patience of a saint before the vultures fly off at last.’
‘They’re not all vultures, Bran,’ Eve chided.
‘We don’t know them well enough to judge what they are yet, my lamb,’ her maid said cynically and Chloe decided there was no need to worry about Eve Winterley with such a formidable protector at her side, as well as a father who would clearly walk through fire to keep his beloved daughter safe.
‘I know Lord Mantaigne and Great-Uncle Giles perfectly well and even Uncle James isn’t as savage and sarcastic as he used to be. Aunt Virginia was always trying to persuade him to live a steadier life, so perhaps he will turn over a new leaf in her honour.’
‘And I’m a Dutchman,’ Chloe thought she heard Lord Farenze mutter darkly and wondered what divided the half-brothers so deeply, so alike in colouring and stature as they were, yet as sharply distant with each other as two siblings could be without openly declaring war.
‘No, what you are is a curmudgeon, Papa, so I can’t imagine why you’re worrying about reading a book you seem very familiar with when you have your brother nearby to argue with once more. I dare say if you start now you could have Uncle James simmering nicely by dinner and ready to call you out the moment Aunt Virginia’s funeral is over.’
‘Thank you, minx, the gossips have plenty to say already, without a brotherly feud or a family riot breaking out. I’m not sure I should have let you read Tom Jones after all, it seems to have given you some odd ideas.’
‘There’s a copy in the study, if you truly want to take up where you left off,’ Eve called after the sound of her father’s retreating footsteps and surely it was wrong of Chloe to wish he wouldn’t go at the same time as she longed to be up and away and pretend he hardly impinged on her thoughts, let alone her wildest dreams? ‘Virginia told me where all her warm novels were in the event of my ever having to be bored here in her absence. It’s all right, Papa, she told me anything she and Uncle Virgil locked away was far too warm for a young lady to read and I really can’t think why the tabbies make such a fuss about Mr Fielding’s splendid book.’
‘Don’t get caught with it, then, and it’s probably best if you don’t admit to reading it in polite company. I won’t have you labelled fast before you’re even out.’
‘Of course not and stop being such a worrywart, I’ll be so painfully good over the next few weeks you will hardly recognise me.’
The only reply Chloe heard was a distant masculine humph then Eve ordered her maid to shut the outer door before hastily pushing open the one to the bedroom where Chloe was sitting up in bed, feeling flustered and confused.
‘That was close,’ Eve confided with an impish smile.
‘We should have locked the door,’ Bran told them. ‘Imagine if his lordship had opened it and found you lying here asleep, Mrs Wheaton.’
‘Yes, only imagine,’ Chloe echoed hollowly and used her artistic shudder as an excuse to spring out of bed and start setting herself to rights.
‘I’ll help,’ Bran said as Chloe then tried to struggle into her gown and wrestle with her rebellious curls at the same time. ‘Button yourself up and I’ll comb out your hair and dress it for you, although it seems a crying shame to screw it into a knot and hide it under that thing when it’s so beautiful. There’s many a fine lady as would give her eye teeth for hair half as thick and full of life.’
‘It’s wild and unruly and people get entirely the wrong impression of me if I allow it to show. Anyway, I’m nearly thirty years of age and a respectable widow, not a dewy-eyed débutante.’
‘You don’t look much older than one right now,’ Bran observed as her eyes met Chloe’s in the square of mirror above the diminutive washstand.
‘I can’t afford dreams,’ Chloe murmured.
‘Neither of us can, but it don’t stop us ’avin’ ’em, do it?’
‘What do you dream of, Mrs Brown?’
‘A fine man for my girl; one who’ll love her as she is and not try to make her into a society missus without a good word to say to anyone but a lord.’
‘I can’t see him doing that, whoever he might be.’
‘Can’t you, ma’am? Then you’ve been a lucky woman up to now.’
‘Maybe I have at that,’ Chloe admitted and suppressed a shudder at the thought of all the ways in which a man might mould his wife.
‘His lordship now, he’s a man as would let a woman be herself and love her all the more for it, if you know what I mean?’ Bran said as she finished pinning Chloe’s wild mane back in place, then eyed the cap with disfavour before fitting it over her handiwork with a sigh.
‘He doesn’t strike me as a man on the lookout for love,’ Chloe argued.
‘Ah, well, there’s what a man says he wants then there’s what he really does want. They don’t always meet in the middle, until the right woman comes along and changes his mind.’
‘If I understood all that I might argue, but since I don’t and dinner will be served in a little over an hour, neither of us has enough time for riddles,’ Chloe said with a last glance in the mirror to make sure she was correct and subdued again.
‘Just as well, since we’ll never agree about his lordship.’
‘Maybe not,’ Chloe said distractedly and, picking up her keys, clipped them back on her belt and with a word of breathless thanks fled the room.
* * *
Luke stumped back downstairs to the study and cursed as rampant need roiled inside him. This wasn’t some unique enchantment; he was tired and it was too long since he’d visited his mistress. Forcing the pace on a long journey had left him weary and less in control of himself and his masculine appetites than usual. Combine tiredness and grief with Mrs Wheaton’s exhaustion and Eve’s kind heart and trouble looked inevitable with hindsight, but