One
“The greatest plague ever to bedevil mortal man, the greatest threat to his peace, the most fiendish source of undeserved humility is his sister, and spinster sisters are the worst of a bad lot.” In the corridor outside the formal parlor, Nicholas, Earl of Bellefonte, sounded very certain of his point.
“Of course, my lord,” somebody replied softly, “but, my lord—”
“I tell you, Hanford,” the earl went on, “if it wouldn’t imperil certain personal masculine attributes which my countess holds dear, I’d turn Lady Nita right over my—”
“My lord, you have a visitor.”
Hanford’s pronouncement came off a little desperately but had the effect of silencing his lordship’s lament. Quiet words were exchanged beyond the door, giving Tremaine St. Michael time to step away from the parlor’s cozy fireplace, where he’d been shamelessly warming a personal attribute of his own formerly frozen to the saddle.
Bellefonte’s greeting as he strode into the parlor a moment later was as enthusiastic as his ranting had been.
“Our very own Mr. St. Michael! You are early. This is not fashionable. In fact, were I not the soul of congeniality, I’d call it unsporting in the extreme.”
“Bellefonte.” Tremaine St. Michael bowed, for Bellefonte was his social superior, also one of few men whose height and brawn exceeded Tremaine’s.
“Don’t suppose you have any sisters?” Bellefonte asked with a rueful smile. “I have four. They’re what my grandmother calls lively.”
So lively, Bellefonte had apparently bellowed at one of these sisters for the entire ten minutes Tremaine had been left to admire the spotless Turkey carpets in Belle Maison’s formal parlor. The sister’s responses had been inaudible until an upstairs door had slammed.
“Liveliness is a fine quality in a young lady,” Tremaine said, because he was a guest in this house, and sociability was called for if he was to relieve Bellefonte of substantial assets.
His lordship was welcome to keep all four sisters, thank you very much.
“Fat lot you know,” Bellefonte retorted, taking a position with his back to the fire. “If every man in the House of Lords had rounded up his lively sisters and sent them to France, the Corsican would have been on bended knee, seeking asylum of old George in a week flat. How was your journey?”
Bellefonte had the blond hair and blue eyes of many an English aristocrat. The corners of those eyes crinkled agreeably, and he’d followed up Tremaine’s bow with a hearty handshake.
Bellefonte would never be a friend, but he was friendly.
“My journey was uneventful, if cold,” Tremaine said. “I apologize for making good time down from Town.”
“I apologize for complaining. I am blessed in my family, truly, but Lady Nita, my oldest sister, is particularly strong willed.”
Bellefonte’s hearty bonhomie faded to a soft smile as feminine laughter rang out in the corridor.
“You were saying?” Tremaine prompted. When would his lordship offer a guest a damned drink?
“Nothing of any moment, St. Michael. My sister Kirsten and my sister Della have taken note of your arrival. Shall we to the library, where the best libation and coziest hearth await? Beckman gave me to understand you’re not the tea-and-crumpets sort.”
When and why had his lordship’s brother conveyed that sentiment? Another thought intruded on Tremaine’s irritation: Bellefonte knew his womenfolk by their laughter. How odd was that?
“I’m the whiskey sort,” Tremaine said. “Winter ale wouldn’t go amiss either.” Not brandy though. Not if Tremaine could avoid it.
His lordship was too well-bred to raise an eyebrow at tastes refined in drovers’ inns the length of the realm.
“Whiskey, then. Hanford!”
A little old fellow in formal livery stepped into the parlor. “My lord?”
Bellefonte directed the butler to send some decent sandwiches ’round to the library, to fetch the countess to her husband’s side when the fiend in the nursery had turned loose of her, and to inform the housekeeper that Mr. St. Michael was on the premises earlier than planned.
His lordship set a smart pace down carpeted hallways, past bouquets of white hothouse roses and across gleaming parquet floors, to a high-ceilinged, oak-paneled treasury of books. Belle Maison was a well-maintained example of the last century’s enthusiasm for the spacious countryseat, and whoever had designed the house had had an eye for light.
The library was blessed with tall windows at regular intervals, and the red velvet draperies were caught back, despite the cold. Winter sunshine bounced cheerily off mirrors, brass, and silver, and here, too, the hearth was blazing extravagantly.
The entire impression—genial Lord Bellefonte; his dear, plaguey sisters; roaring fires even in empty rooms; the casual wealth lined up on the library’s endless, sunny shelves—left Tremaine feeling out of place.
Tremaine had been in countless aristocratic family seats and more than a few castles and palaces. The out-of-place feeling he experienced at Belle Maison was the fault of the sisters, whom Bellefonte clearly loved and worried over.
Commerce Tremaine comprehended, and even gloried in.
Sisters had no part in commerce, but the lively variety could apparently transform an imposing family seat into a home. Bellefonte’s sisters inspired slammed doors, fraternal grumbling, and even laughter, and in this, Belle Maison was a departure from Tremaine’s usual experience with titled English families.
“I know you only intended to stay for a few days,” Bellefonte said, gesturing to a pair of chairs beneath a tall window, “but my countess declares that will not do. You are to visit for at least two weeks, so the neighbors may come by and inspect you. Don’t worry. I’ll warn you which ones have marriageable daughters—which is most of them—and my brother George will distract the young ladies.”
After the winter journey from Town, the cozy library and plush armchair were exquisitely comfortable. To Tremaine, who had vivid memories of Highland winters, comfortable was never a bad thing.
“A few days might be all the time I can spare, my lord,” Tremaine said, seating himself in cushioned luxury. “The press of business waits for no man, and wasted time is often wasted money.”
“Protest is futile, no matter how sensible your arguments,” Bellefonte countered, folding his length into the second chair. “My countess has spoken, and my sisters will abet her. You are an eligible bachelor and, therefore, a doomed man.”
The earl crossed long legs at the ankle, the picture of a fellow to whom doom was a merry concept.
“Her ladyship will ply you with delicacies at every meal,” he went on. “Kirsten will interrogate you about your business ventures, Susannah will discuss that Scottish poet fellow with you, and Della will catch you up on all the Town gossip. George will be glad you’re on hand to distract our sisters. The Haddonfield womenfolk are like faeries. A man falls into their clutches and time ceases to have meaning.”
Avoid faeries as if your life depends on it. Tremaine’s Scottish grandfather had smacked that lesson into his hard little head before Tremaine had been breeched.
“What about your sister Lady Bernita?” Tremaine asked. The sister putting the worry and exasperation in her brother’s eyes, and inspiring the earl to raise his voice.
Tremaine would never approach an objective without reconnoitering first. Knowing who got on with whom often made the difference between closing a deal or watching the profits waltz into some other fellow’s pocket.
“Oh, her.” Bellefonte’s gaze went to the window, which looked out over terraced gardens in all their winter solemnity. Rosebushes were pruned back to knee height so that only canes of thorny bracken remained. The shadows of the hedges harbored dirty snow, and not a single bird enlivened the scene.
A tall, blond woman marched off toward the stables along a walk of crushed white shells. She wore a riding habit of dark blue—no clever hat or pheasant feather cocked over her ear—and her briskly swishing hems were muddy.
Bellefonte’s gaze followed the woman, his expression forlorn. “Lady Nita is very dear to me. She will be the death of us all.”
* * *
The baby was small and vigorously alive, two points in her favor—possibly the only two.
“Your mother is resting,” Nita said to the infant’s oldest sibling, “and this is your new sister. Does she have a name?”
Eleven-year-old Mary took the bundle from Nita’s arms. “Ma said a girl would be Annie Elizabeth. Ma wanted a boy though. Boys can do more work.”
“Boys also eat more, make more noise, and run off to become soldiers or worse,” Nita said. Boys became young wastrels who disported with the local soiled dove, heedless of the innocent life resulting from their pleasures, heedless that the soiled dove was a baronet’s granddaughter and a squire’s daughter. “Have you had anything to eat today, Mary?”
“Bread.”
Thin, freckled, and wearing a dress that likely hadn’t been washed in weeks, Mary looked younger than her eleven years—also much, much older.
“Your mother will need more than bread to recover from this birth,” Nita said. “I’ve brought butter, sausage, jam, sugar, boiled eggs, and tea, in the sack on the table.”
Nita would have milk sent over too. She’d been distracted by her altercation with Nicholas, and in her haste to reach Addy Chalmers’s side, she’d neglected the most obvious need.
Mary pressed a kiss to Annie’s brow. “She’s ever so dear.”
Would that the child’s mother viewed the baby similarly. Nita went down to her haunches, the better to impress on young Mary what must be said.
“When Annie fusses, you bring her to your mother to nurse. When Annie’s had her fill, you burp her and take her back to her blankets. She’ll sleep a lot at first, but she needs to sleep where it’s quiet, warm, and safe.” Though the little cottage wouldn’t be warm again until summer.
Mary cradled the newborn closer. “I’ll watch out for her, Lady Nita. Ma won’t have any custom for weeks, and that means no gin. Wee Annie will grow up strong.”
Mary was an astute child, of necessity.
Nita rose, feeling the cold and the lateness of the hour in every joint and muscle.
“I’ll send the vicar’s wife by next week, and she’ll have more food for you and your brothers, and maybe even some coal.” The vicar’s maid of all work would, in any case. “You store the food where nobody can steal it, and here…” Nita withdrew five shillings from a pocket. “Don’t tell anybody you have this. Not your mother, not your brothers, not even wee Annie. This is for bread and butter, not for gin.”
“Thank you, Lady Nita.”
“I’ll come back next week to check on your mother,” Nita said, shrugging into one of George’s cast-off coats. “If she runs a fever or if the baby is doing poorly, come for me or send one of your brothers.”
Mary bobbed an awkward curtsy, the baby in her arms. “Yes, Lady Nita.”
Then Nita had nothing more to do except climb onto Atlas’s broad back and let the horse find his way home through the frigid darkness.
* * *
“They are charming, the lot of them,” Tremaine said. “I’d forgotten what a big, happy family can do to a man’s composure.” Particularly a big, happy, healthy family with Saxon good looks and a thriving appreciation for life’s finer comforts.
“Bellefonte is besotted,” Tremaine went on, scratching William’s hairy withers. “As is his countess.”
“I’m told it works better that way.”
William hadn’t spoken—William was a gelding and the voice was decidedly feminine.
A tall, blond female, rosy cheeked from the cold, led a saddled specimen of plow stock down the barn aisle. The flame of the stable’s single lantern gilded red-and-gold highlights in her hair, and the hem of her dark blue riding habit was damp.
She brought the beast to a halt outside William’s stall. “I don’t recognize you, sir.”
Tremaine recognized her though. The sculpted cheekbones, defined chin, height, and bearing—and the muddy hem—proclaimed the late-night arrival to be Lady Nita Haddonfield, oldest of the late earl’s daughters, and the selfsame woman who’d marched across the barren gardens hours ago.
“Tremaine St. Michael, at your service, my lady. I am visiting your brother to discuss common business interests.”
Something about his recitation bothered her. She was too tired to hide it, or perhaps she didn’t care if she offended him.
“May I take your horse, my lady?” Though why the grooms weren’t thundering down from their quarters above the carriage house, Tremaine could not guess.
“Why would you do that?” she asked, stuffing her gloves into a pocket. She wore a man’s coat, well made but too big, as if sized for one of her brothers. The cuffs had been turned back to accommodate her shorter arms, the collar turned up.
The great beast at her side let out a gusty sigh, as if to say debate and discussion could wait until he’d been unsaddled.
“I’d see to your horse because you are a lady and I am a gentleman,” Tremaine said, which was half-true, “and you should not have to manage your own mount at this late hour.” She should not be allowed to do a groom’s work at any hour.
Her ladyship patted the horse’s shaggy neck. “Atlas and I have kept much later hours than this. I’ll unsaddle him, but if you’d make sure he has hay and water, I’d appreciate it.”
What manner of lady went about unescorted after dark with what looked like bloodstains on the cuff of her sleeve?
Tremaine made short work of the hay and water, and Lady Nita was equally efficient removing the horse’s saddle and bridle. Atlas ambled into his stall without being haltered or led, and commenced a friendly sniffing through the slats with William.
“Your gelding is very handsome,” Lady Nita said, closing the stall door. “Atlas’s charms are more subtle.”
Nothing about Atlas was subtle. He had feet the size of tea trays and quarters suitable for displaying an entire service.
“Charms such as?” Tremaine asked.
“Atlas has never been known to buck or spook. Steadiness in a fellow is a fine quality.”
Very likely the horse was too lazy to buck or spook, though he applied himself to his fodder with singular diligence.
While Lady Nita’s eyes were shadowed with fatigue.
“Your absence was remarked at dinner, my lady.”
“You know who I am, then. Nobody warned me you were coming, Mr. St. Michael, or I might have sent my regrets to dinner.”
Suggesting her ladyship would not have attended, even if she’d known the family was entertaining.
“May I escort you back to the house?” Tremaine asked. “I’ve assured myself William’s not kicking down a wall or dying of thirst, and the day has been wearying.” Dinner with the Haddonfields had been every bit as wearying as the trip down from London, though significantly warmer.
“My thanks for your courtesy.”
Her ladyship’s thanks were tired though sincere. Why had no one come out from the house to see to her well-being?
Tremaine took the lantern down from its peg, causing shadows to grow and dance. He did not offer his arm. A woman who could ride the countryside by moonlight was well equipped to negotiate the paths of her own garden.
“Is my presence at Belle Maison an unpleasant surprise, my lady?” he asked.
Her sisters would have turned Tremaine’s question into a joke or a flirtation. The Haddonfields seemed much given to joking and flirtation, with the exception of present company.
“Please do not be offended if I say your presence is a matter of indifference to me now,” her ladyship informed him as they left the stable for the chilly air of a winter night. “Not so very long ago, I was the one who would have made sure your room was prepared, a bath waiting for you, refreshment and cut flowers in the chamber I’d selected for you.”
Tremaine appreciated honesty more than he did the laughter and banter of the Haddonfield dinner table.
“I do not presume to know you, my lady, but arranging flowers and ordering a tea tray could not be much of a challenge for you.”
His observation pleased her ladyship enough that a hint of a smile flitted across her features, while somewhere in the distance, a dog commenced barking. In the manner of winter nights, the sound carried, lonely and annoying.
Lady Nita moved along the garden path far more slowly than she had hours earlier. Either she was exhausted, or she wasn’t looking forward to returning to her home.
“I’d like to sit for a moment,” she said as they approached a gazebo. “Seek your bed, if you wish. I’ll be fine alone.”
She believed this, despite the cold, despite the hour, despite her obvious fatigue. Tremaine took a seat beside her, ignoring the siren call of his quilts and pillows because, in another sense, she was not fine.
Lady Nita was quite alone, however, and Tremaine knew how that felt.
A half-moon hung above the horizon, stars shone in frosty abundance, and the dog had gone silent.
“The child lived,” Lady Nita said. “I want to wake up each and every member of my family and inform them of that. The mother was also resting comfortably when I took my leave of her.”
“You attended a birth.” The only acceptable reason for bloodstains on a lady’s attire.
“The midwife can only attend one birth at a time,” Lady Nita said. “The babies are rude though. They do not appear one at a time. I have explained this to my brother repeatedly. In fact, when the weather changes, the babies conspire to arrive all at once, and the midwife, understandably, will go where her services are remunerated. The women with the least consequence deliver with the least support, and yet they need the most help.”
Despite Lady Nita’s calm and euphemistic summary, she was all in a lather. Her emotional fists were raised, and she would make her blows count.
Though she wouldn’t rain them down on Tremaine.
“You are a reproach to your family, then,” Tremaine concluded.
The lantern sat on the bench opposite them, casting little light because the wick was low. Even so, Tremaine had the sense his words earned him the first smidgen of genuine regard from the lady beside him.
“I am a reproach, Mr. St. Michael? They’ve certainly become free with chides and scolds aimed in my direction.”
Now they were. Now that she’d been deposed as lady of the manor. Bellefonte probably had not the first inkling of the hurt he’d done Lady Nita when he’d acquired a countess.
Tremaine’s backside ached from hours in a cold saddle, and yet he remained on the equally cold bench a moment longer. He withdrew the lady’s gloves from the oversized pocket in which she’d jammed them and passed them to her.
“A great debate ensued after the fish course, my lady, as to whether country assemblies should permit the waltz when so few know how to dance it properly. While this inanity held the company’s entire attention, you helped a new life get a start in the world. Yes, you are a reproach to your family, and to all who think Christian charity is a matter of Sunday finery and Boxing Day benevolence.”
A great sigh went out of her ladyship, interrupted by a sneeze. She leaned her head back against a support and closed her eyes. She hadn’t put on her gloves.
“You’re Scottish,” she observed.
What Tremaine was, was cold. He put his handkerchief on the bench between them, in case the sneezing, tired, honest lady had need of it.
Despite Lady Nita’s willingness to wrestle demons on behalf of the newborn parish poor, she was attractive. The local beauties would refer to her as “handsome” in an effort to denigrate her features politely, but she was lovely nonetheless. Her brows were the perfect graceful complement to wide, intelligent eyes; her eyes, nose, and mouth were assembled into a face that deserved excellent portraiture and needed no cosmetics.
The beauty of her features was such that even weariness was becoming on her.
“I can sound Scottish,” Tremaine said, “particularly when in the grip of strong sentiment. My mother was born in Aberdeenshire.” He could hold a grudge like a Scot too, and endure cold and handle strong drink.
“And your father?” She had a good ear, did Lady Nita. Also pretty ears.
“French.” Tremaine waited for her to put more questions to him, but she instead turned the lamp wick down until the light extinguished.
“We were wasting oil,” she said.
“The hour is late and the night cold. We should go in. If you’d like to linger here in solitude, I’ll bid you good evening,” Tremaine said, rising.
To be found alone with him in the dark would cause greater problems for the lady than to be found alone with her discontents.
He bowed over her bare, cold, elegant hand. “A pleasure to have made your acquaintance, my lady.”
Tremaine left Lady Nita the unlit lamp and his handkerchief and made his way to the house. Nita Haddonfield was an earl’s daughter who understood the practicalities, and she didn’t dress her sentiments up in tedious dinner conversation. She was easily Tremaine’s favorite Haddonfield of the lot.
What a pity he’d have no time to get to know her.
* * *
In Nita’s experience, the best intelligence officers in any big family were found among the younger siblings. They began their careers while small, nonthreatening, and unobtrusive. By adolescence, they developed formidable powers of observation and recollection, to say nothing of an ability to lurk at keyholes and befriend the servants.
Thus, Nita started her morning with a visit to Della’s room. Her youngest sister liked to sleep late, a habit Della claimed would stand her in good stead when she made her come-out in the spring.
“Wake up, baby Sister,” Nita said, exchanging a look with the chambermaid adding coal to the hearth. “It’s a new day and breakfast awaits.”
“Spring?” came from the tangle of pillows and blankets.
“Not yet, but Nicholas and George will eat up all the oranges if you tarry abed, and Kirsten will swill every last drop of chocolate.”
Nicholas, Kirsten, and George would gobble up every crumb on the breakfast sideboard given the opportunity. Ethan and Beckman were similarly fond of their victuals—as was Nita.
“Tray.” A croak that nonetheless sounded imperious.
“Leah permits only tea trays in the bedrooms in the morning,” Nita said, climbing onto Della’s bed. “She thinks we should join each other for the morning meal.” A fine theory, though Nita typically made it a habit to come down earlier or later than her siblings.
“Hate you.” Della’s dark crown disappeared beneath the covers.
Nita took an orange from her pocket and began to peel it while she waited for the maid to leave.
“I have a few questions, and I’m willing to bargain for the answers,” Nita said when privacy was assured and the peel stripped from the orange.
“Go away, Nita.”
“I’ll bargain with fresh sections of a sweet, juicy orange.”
Della flipped the covers down to peer at her sister. “Fiend. What do you want to know?”
Nita held out a bite of fresh fruit, which was like dangling a bit of haddock before a barn cat.
“Tell me about Mr. St. Michael.”
Della took the piece of orange. “He’s here to transact business with Nicholas, at least nominally. Something about the woolly sheep Papa bought from the King all those years ago. This is a divine orange.”
Nita helped herself to a bite. “It’s quite good. You’re sure Nicholas isn’t matchmaking?”
“He might be, or maybe Leah is,” Della said, pushing to a sitting position and accepting the rest of the orange. “Kirsten was convivial at dinner, and Mr. St. Michael made Susannah blush.”
“Kirsten was convivial in a pleasant way or a Kirsten way?” For Kirsten was beset with a restlessness that could make her a difficult conversation partner for the average, unsuspecting gentleman.
Della munched philosophically on another section of orange. “Kirsten behaved, which was interesting. Mr. St. Michael spouted some poem about a mouse, and Susannah was impressed.”
Nita was impressed with Mr. St. Michael as well, for he hadn’t had a fit of the vapors when she’d put up her own horse last night. Men, particularly gentlemen, were prone to the vapors, in Nita’s experience. Mr. St. Michael had instead helped when Nita had asked it of him.
How lovely, to meet a man who helped rather than fussed and scolded.
Nita had also been impressed with Mr. St. Michael’s voice, which had blended beguilingly with night shadows and winter-brilliant stars. His burr hinted of far-off hills and the canny competence of a man who’d bested life on his own terms, rather than through hereditary advantages. He spoke slowly, though Nita had no doubt his mind was as nimble as a baby goat.
Despite his canniness, Mr. St. Michael’s company in the frigid little gazebo had been restful. He didn’t presume or put on airs. He smelled good, and he was of a size with Nita’s brothers while being far less inclined to share his opinions uninvited.
His features were not refined, having already acquired a weathered quality about his eyes, and yet his looks would change little as he aged. He’d become distinguished, and he already managed to be formidable, for all his unassuming ways.
Nita could not see Mr. St. Michael spouting poetry though, much less about a mouse. Shrewd of him, to realize literary matters were ever dear to Susannah’s heart.
“I’m glad Mr. St. Michael trotted out his poetry for Susannah,” Nita said. “He’ll remind Suze that the list of eligibles does not begin and end with Edward Nash.”
Though the present list of suitors for Susannah’s hand did.
“Mr. Nash is kind to Susannah,” Della said, tearing apart the last two sections of orange. “What’s more, she likes him. Where did you get this orange?”
“I still have my set of keys to the larders,” Nita said, taking the second succulent portion for herself. “Edward Nash is not a suitable husband for any of you, and that’s an end to it.”
Della drew her knees up, her dark braid falling in a ratty rope over one shoulder. She was out of the schoolroom but could still look achingly young.
“It’s not like you to be a snob, Nita. Edward is old-fashioned about some things, but Susannah is too. Help me dress, and we’ll further inspect Mr. St. Michael over breakfast.”
The offer was generous and would assure at least one other sibling joined Nita at the table. Having rested and considered the previous evening’s encounter with Mr. St. Michael, Nita was not proud of her behavior. Fatigue and delivering another baby doomed to poverty or worse had soured her manners, and a guest at Belle Maison deserved better than that.
“I’m in a green mood today,” Della said, slogging out of the bed. “Green and warm, not in that order. You were out quite late.”
That Della would notice was reassuring. “Addy Chalmers had a girl. Mother and child were doing well enough when I left.”
Della stretched luxuriously, like a small, sleek cat upon rising from a cozy hearth. “I don’t know how you stand it, Nita. Let’s hope this child fares better than the last. Velvet for today, I think, and my paisley shawl.”
Nita helped Della dress and arrange her hair, but that small comment, about hoping the child fared better than Addy Chalmers’s last baby, stung.
Della was as kindhearted as the next young woman of means and good birth, but a child’s life and death should be worth more than a passing sentiment expressed between the wardrobe and the vanity.
* * *
Tremaine endured as much conviviality from the Haddonfields over breakfast as he had at dinner the previous evening, though the informality of the morning meal meant Bellefonte could bill and coo at his countess even more openly.
Tremaine’s tolerance for billing and cooing had improved in recent months, with the reintroduction into his life of his late brother’s wife, child, and the wife’s sister, but Bellefonte’s besottedness would strain anybody’s digestion.
The earl lifted a pink Sevres teapot in his countess’s direction. “More tea, lovey?”
The countess patted his hand. “I’m having chocolate, Nicholas.”
His lordship took a sip of the countess’s beverage. “So you are. Cold mornings call for the fortification of chocolate. Ah, Nita, and who is that with you? Given the hour, that cannot possibly be our dearest little Della.”
Two Haddonfield sisters stood in the door, one petite and dark, the other tall, fair, and not as sure of herself as she had been the previous evening.
“Ladies, good morning.” Tremaine rose and held out the chair next to him, letting the invitation stand or fall on its own merit. Lady Nita obliged him by taking the seat he offered, which put her directly in the path of a sharp beam of winter sunshine.
The morning light revealed fatigue around her eyes and mouth, and confirmed that she was not in the first blush of youth. A relief, that, for reasons Tremaine did not examine when his eggs were growing cold.
“Nita reports that Addy Chalmers had a daughter,” Della said, appropriating the teapot. “Nicholas, did you leave me any cream or sugar?”
A wince was exchanged at the table, between the earl and his countess, and between Lady Kirsten and Lady Susannah. George Haddonfield, who’d been the soul of good cheer the previous evening, aimed a flat stare at Lady Della.
In the space of a moment, Tremaine gained a clear sense of Lady Nita’s situation. He resisted the temptation to squeeze her hand beneath the table.
“The cream is in short supply, Lady Della,” Tremaine said, passing the pitcher down the table, “but sugar remains abundant. I can also recommend the eggs, and I’ve seldom had bacon so delectable.”
George left off glowering, and Bellefonte’s relief was written on his handsome features.
“Eat up, St. Michael,” the earl said. “If we’re to inspect the sheep, we’ll have a chilly morning.”
The earl’s observation was a little too hearty, a little too pointless. Tremaine had already been out to check on William, and the morning’s weather made “chilly” the mother of all delicate understatements.
“Nicholas, you promised me you wouldn’t leave me to Vicar’s tender mercies again,” Lady Bellefonte said. “Twice now I’ve had to brave his calls on my own, and he’s incapable of leaving while a cake remains on the tea tray.”
While Bellefonte, of course, would excel at denuding the tray of cakes, such were the accomplishments of the typical peer.
“I would never abandon you, lovey,” Bellefonte said. “At what time is His Holiness—?”
The countess clearly was not fooled by this display of guilelessness.
“I’ll take Mr. St. Michael to see the sheep,” Lady Nita said, when Tremaine had been hoping to see an earl scolded at his own breakfast table. “It’s not that cold out if the wind remains calm. Perhaps we might make a riding party of it?”
Lady Nita aimed her question at her sisters, who’d thus far been busy demolishing their breakfasts.
“Kirsten, Della, and I are off to pay a call on Mrs. Nash,” Lady Susannah replied. “We’ll take the coach in this weather.”
“That leaves me,” George Haddonfield said, “to shepherd the inspection of the sheep, so to speak. Shall we say in three-quarters of an hour?”
George was a spectacularly handsome young man, in the same blond, blue-eyed mold as most of his siblings. Though tall by comparison to most men, he was shorter than his older brother by several inches.
George made a more subtle job of exuding jovial harmlessness than the earl did, and he was quieter about it. Tremaine’s instincts suggested George would be slow to anger, formidable when roused, loyal as hell, and attractive even when roaring drunk or in the grip of an ague.
“Your outing to see the sheep can wait for an hour,” Bellefonte said. “Nita just sat down to her breakfast.”
Beside Tremaine, the lady silently bristled at her brother’s solicitude, as if she would rather have spoken for herself.
“Jam, my lady?” Tremaine held out the jar of preserves, and another of those familial awkwardnesses passed in silence.
“Thank you, Mr. St. Michael.” Her ladyship spread raspberry jam on her toast, her movements relaxed, even graceful, while Tremaine resigned himself to cold eggs. In his thirty-odd years on earth, he’d often been grateful for far worse fare and far worse company.
Though the Haddonfields were not at peace with each other, or at least not with Lady Nita. All families endured such tensions, which was part of the reason Tremaine remained largely outside the ambit of what family he had.
He took another bite of cold eggs and vowed to pin Bellefonte down regarding the herd of merino sheep before the sun had set. The sooner Tremaine transacted his business with Bellefonte and was on his way, the better.