Page 21 of Tremaine's True Love
“Yet,” George said. “Give the boy time. I’m the runt in my family, and I struggle along adequately, despite that burden.”
Elsie ran an appraising eye over him, though her inspection was dispassionate rather than an assessment of his masculine charms.
Because Elsie Nash knew better.
“Digby’s father wasn’t particularly tall,” she said, “but I wouldn’t change a thing about my son. How are you getting along, George? Your sisters natter on about the assembly and some visiting Scottish fellow with a French title, but they seldom mention you. You’ve been traveling, haven’t you?”
George stood beside his horse, trapped by manners and a nagging concern for the boy. “Elsie, you needn’t pretend.”
“Pretend?”
“I travel on the Continent because my family finds my taste in kissing partners inconvenient.”Dangerous, Nicholas had said, for certain sexual behaviors, regardless of how casually undertaken or commonplace, were yet considered hanging offenses.
“George Haddonfield, if I were dismayed by every person I found kissing an inconvenient party in the garden, I should never have lasted a single Season as the colonel’s wife. You were kind to my son, and that is all that matters to me.”
Elsie glowered up at him, five entire feet—and possibly one inch—of mother love ready to trounce George if he contradicted her.
“Your son needs a brazier in his schoolroom,” George said, and Elsie’s glower disappeared like snow on hot coals.
“Digby exaggerates. You mustn’t mind him.”
“Digby is a good lad, and he’s lucky to have you for a mother.” While George was lucky Elsie had never breathed a word about what she’d seen in a certain earl’s moonlit garden. God help him, it hadn’t even been much of a kiss.
“You won’t come in for a biscuit and a cup of tea in the kitchen?” Elsie asked.
Her invitation was genuine, and the daywasbeastly cold. Then, too, George had enjoyed the time spent with Digby—who wouldn’t like such a lad?—so he pulled off a glove and gave a piercing whistle.
“If you could please walk my horse,” George said to the groom who jogged out of the stable. “Up and down the barn aisle will do, and I won’t be long.”
Elsie beamed at George as if he’d announced a sighting of blooming roses.
“Perfect,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “You must tell me about this Mr. St. Michael. Your sisters seemed to think he might do for Lady Nita, and he’s rumored to be quite wealthy.”
CHAPTERFOUR
“There you are!” Bellefonte advanced into the library, his tone suggesting Tremaine had been hiding for days, rather than drafting correspondence in plain sight for the past hour.
“I’m writing to your brother Beckman, who will want a full accounting of my sojourn among his siblings. Have you anything you’d like to include with my epistle?”
Bellefonte took a position with his backside to the roaring fire in the hearth. “I like the smell of a wood fire,” he said. “Though I’d be better off selling the wood, I’m sure. You may warn Beckman I’m sending Lady Nita to him in the spring, so he’d best ensure all in his ambit are in excellent health. From there, she can visit our brother Ethan, and I’ve any number of friends who’d be delighted to host her over the summer. My grandmother, Lady Warne, loves showing my sisters off at house parties.”
Tremaine sprinkled sand over the page. He and the Earl of Bellefonte had a few matters to clear up of a more pressing nature than social correspondence.
“Are you scolding me, Bellefonte, for accompanying your sister on an outing that you, a team of elephants, and a host of archangels could not have dissuaded her from?”
Women rallied around babies, and Tremaine had no quarrel with that. None at all. Women were supposed to be protective of the little ones—as were men.
“You are a guest in my home, a friend to my younger brother—who has few enough friends—and you mean well,” Bellefonte said. His tone implied a list of charges recited at the local magistrate’s parlor session. “I’m not scolding you.”
Bellefonte made a quarter turn, so he faced Tremaine without giving up proximity to the fire’s heat.
“Relieved to hear it,” Tremaine replied. “Shall we discuss your sheep, then? I might be a guest, though I’m a guest who would not be under your roof but for a desire to purchase that herd.” Lest any thoroughly domesticated earls develop aspirations in other directions.
Bellefonte rubbed a hand over the hip closest to the fire. “Right, my sheep. We’ll get to those. Why aren’t you married, St. Michael? Beckman said you proposed to Miss Polonaise Hunt earlier this winter.”
The list of reasons to thrash Beckman Haddonfield was growing by the hour.
“Miss Hunt turned me down.” Polly was now the Marchioness of Hesketh—also head over ears in love with her grouchy, taciturn, tender-hearted marquess. “A near miss, from my perspective.” And from the lady’s, no doubt. Tremaine hadn’t dared solicit Lord Hesketh’s opinion, lest the marquess’s sentiments be conveyed at twenty paces.
