Page 62 of Tremaine's True Love
“Eligible, amiable gentlemen are more precious than rubies in this shire.” The earl glowered at George for a moment, then went back to peeling an orange for his lady.
“When Nicholas wed, the young ladies of the parish went into collective decline,” George observed placidly. “Then Beckman fell into parson’s mousetrap, and I became the sole, unworthy consolation of at least two dozen women. You will cause a riot, Mr. St. Michael, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Despite their party dresses and pretty manners, the ladies will take you captive and soon be counting your figurative teeth. I hope your affairs are in order.”
“They usually are,” Tremaine said, passing Lady Susannah the teapot.
Because he did not want to spend the next twenty minutes discussing which dances he enjoyed the most—he was partial to the Scottish sword dances, come to that—Tremaine embarked on a minor riot of his own.
“Will Lady Nita join us soon? I’m of a mind to see if any more lambs have arrived among the merino herd. One lively young fellow in particular might like to renew his acquaintance with her.”
The lively fellow in Tremaine’s breeches certainly would.
Lady Susannah tapped her spoon three times on the rim of the teacup, a feminine judge of the breakfast parlor bringing her court to order.
“Disagreeable weather for such an outing,” she pronounced. “Today’s a day for reading.”
George’s comment, about Susannah needing to get off her backside, came to mind. She was pretty in a blond, blue-eyed, unremarkable way. Not as tall as Nita, nor as dramatic as Kirsten, she looked suited to—and apparently craved—a life of quiet, peaceful domesticity.
“You should come with me,” Tremaine said. “We’ll think up names for the new arrivals. Lady Nita might enjoy an outing with her sisters.”
Another glance went ricocheting around the table. The countess broke the silence when it appeared none of the Haddonfield siblings would.
“Nita was summoned to a neighbor’s early this morning on a medical matter. Kirsten apparently accompanied her. More tea, Mr. St. Michael?”
The earl stood abruptly. “If he drinks any more tea, he’ll float away to France. Why didn’t anybody tell me Nita had gone haring off again? Now she’s inveigling Kirsten into her daft behaviors? Famous.”
Bellefonte was legendarily indulgent where his womenfolk were concerned, and when Tremaine wanted to chide his lordship for high-handedness—Lady Nita was not a ewe who’d wandered from her herd—he instead felt sympathy for the earl.
“If your lordship could spare me a moment in the library?” Tremaine said, rising as well. “I’d like to discuss a matter of business.”
Bellefonte kissed his countess on the cheek, cast a censorious glance at his siblings, and stalked from the room, tossing an, “I am at your service, St. Michael,” over his shoulder.
“Be patient with him, Mr. St. Michael,” the countess said. “Nicholas means well.”
Tremaine bowed to the ladies. “Lady Nita means well too.”
For that matter, so did Tremaine.
* * *
“I’m not in the mood to discuss a lot of damned woolly sheep, St. Michael,” Nick said as soon as the door to the library was closed. He stomped to the window, assessing a leaden sky that mirrored his mood exactly.
“My two most stubborn sisters have gone off to contract measles, dysentery, or God knows what evil,” he went on. “Bad enough I can’t contain Nita’s excesses of Christian charity, now Kirsten must thwart my authority as well.”
Leah claimed Nita was sensible, Nita would take precautions, Nita would not knowingly put herself at risk for contagion.
“Do you know where she’s gone?” St. Michael asked, joining him at the window.
Frigid air radiated from the panes of glass, though that did nothing to cool Nick’s temper. “My own countess did not see fit to confide that information in me.”
“That bothers you?”
St. Michael was an innocent. He was free to get and spend, to lark about the known world, to blithely amass wealth because he had neither wife nor sisters nor mother nor daughters.
For now.
“Will you take a lady to wife, expecting to indulge a penchant for falsehood on her part, Mr. St. Michael?”
“I will marry, if I marry, expecting that domestic matters will fall to my wife’s supervision, while dealing with business and greater affairs will remain my responsibility.”
