“As common as among any group of men.”
“I imagine you all must go through your allowances quickly.”
Rowlandson reddened and couldn’t meet Michael’s gaze. “Occasionally, yes, but Appertan is always the one with the cool head about such things.”
Cool head?Not a term Michael would have used to describe his brother-in-law. “Appertan doesn’t gamble?”
“Not to excess, unlike ... some of us.”
Michael didn’t think Rowlandson’s face could get any redder. He lowered his voice as if in confidence. “There were ladies expected the night your crowd played billiards here, a different kind of excess for someone like Appertan.”
Rowlandson showed the first signs of confused unease. “The women were for others, not Appertan. He’s surprisingly dull where the fair sex are concerned. Loyalty to his fiancée and all that. Seemsbeforemarriage should be the time for a last fling, eh?”
First coolheaded, and now twenty years of age and not chasing wild young women? Why did this not seem like the Appertan Michael had known these last few days?
Michael looked around the room. “I don’t see many of your other friends here. Are they back in London?”
“Some, but most live within an hour’s ride or so. We used to stay at Appertan Hall, but recently ...” He let his words trail off, then shrugged, as if he didn’t want to disparage Cecilia to her husband’s face. “I mean no disrespect to Lady Blackthorne,” he quickly added, his expression striving for sincerity. “A few even considered courting her, and I heard one had even gone so far as to make his intentions known, but Appertan wouldn’t tell me who it was.” He slowly smiled and gestured with his chin. “Could be any one of those fools flocking around her, yes?”
Michael turned his head sharply, and there was Cecilia, bathed in golden light from the chandelier overhead, several “fools” too close. They gazed with varying degrees of admiration and regret, but how to know what they were truly thinking?
She smiled at them all with a soft, pretty sweetness, as if she had forgotten what such attention was like. Suddenly, from somewhere deep inside Michael’s brain, he found himself thinking,Not again.
Whoa,he told himself, as if he were a racehorse off on the wrong course. Cecilia was not like his mother, except for beauty and wealth. His mother might have been an heiress, but she’d been known to have loose standards of fidelity, and his fortune-hunting father had taken her off her family’s hands.
It was an ugly story, and Michael’s father had only let it slip once, when he’d had too much to drink. He’d even implied that perhaps Michael’s brother Allen wasn’t truly his son. Michael had always believed his mother made the best of their situation. Never had she complained, as their status was lowered, along with their money, and her family would have nothing to do with her. She’d been a caring, loving mother.
Michael had successfully pushed those old, ugly accusations from his mind until he saw Cecilia surrounded by adoring young men. He now realized why he’d been relieved when he’d thought her plain, and the sight of her true beauty had surprised him—he’d felt the shock and recognition of possibly repeating his father’s life.
Though he’d vowed to marry on his own terms, instead he’d married a ravishing heiress. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t accepted her money. He knew what it looked like—as if he’d tricked her into marrying him from halfway around the world.
The guests’ gazes he’d thought simply intrigued now seemed to have a dark edge, and it took him a moment to call himself away from such foolishness. He knew who he was, and it wasn’t an imitation of his father. What Cecilia thought was all that mattered.
“Lady Cecilia!” called a young man’s voice from near the doorway.
Michael couldn’t see who it was, but he heard several gasps, saw people whispering together. The crowd parted before the quick strides of a young man, with longish blond hair disarrayed, as if he’d traveled there in haste. His face practically beamed with happiness.
“Lady Cecilia!” he said again, taking both her gloved hands in his. “I just returned from the Continent yesterday, and traveled to Enfield just to see you. I haven’t even had a chance to speak with my parents—”
“Roger,” began an older woman nervously, touching his arm, the feather in her gray hair bobbing forward. “I didn’t even know the date of your arrival.”
“I know, Mother,” he said, his gaze obviously entranced by Cecilia. “The housekeeper told me where you were. How fortunate!”
“We really must talk,” his mother said, looking around as if for support, but if her husband was in the room, he didn’t step forward.
“Lady Cecilia, you look lovely,” Roger continued, never taking his eyes from her, “no longer in mourning, I see.”
Michael limped toward them, taking his time, wondering how the tableau would play out. Cecilia glanced at him with bewildered blue eyes, and in that moment, he realized she didn’t quite understand Roger’s enthusiasm.
She began to say, “Mr. Nash—”
“Surely you’ll allow me to call upon you again,” Roger Nash interrupted. “I could take you driving, and oh, the picnics we used to have.” He smiled at his wide-eyed mother. “Of course, you can chaperone us, Mother. I’d never subject Lady Cecilia to improprieties.”
Michael gave a bow as he reached them, twining his arm with his wife’s, surprised to feel possessive. “Cecilia, may I be introduced to your friend?”
Nash looked at him at last, and his brilliant smile faded at the edges, as if Michael’s familiar use of her Christian name had at last penetrated.
“Mr. Nash, allow me to present my husband, Lord Blackthorne.”
