The Courtship

One

“One hears he takes snuff only from his mistresses’ naked breasts.”

Esther Himmelfarb rearranged her cards and stifled a snort at one of Charlotte Pankhurst’s more ridiculous observations.

Herodia Bellamy tossed the queen of diamonds onto the table. “One hears that he bathes frequently, but seldom alone.”

“A crowded undertaking,” Esther murmured, “given the man’s size in relation to the average bathing tub. Your turn, Lady Zephora.”

“I know for a fact,” Lady Zephora said softly, “that both Lord Anthony and Lord Percival have been ordered by Her Grace, their mama, to take brides this year.”

So much for whist. Esther continued to study her cards while the ladies catalogued Colonel Lord Percival Windham’s many positive attributes.

Their raptures matched Esther’s list of the man’s shortcomings almost exactly.

“He’s soooo handsome,” Charlotte cooed. “And it’s all genuine—the golden hair, the muscles, the height.”

“The dreamy blue eyes,” Herodia added. “When he looks at you, it’s as if he’s trying to convey that he loves you simply in the way he regards you.”

Not to be outdone, Zephora stated what Charlotte and Herodia had no doubt heard repeatedly from their mamas. “His wife would always have a courtesy title, and someday she might become the next Duchess of Moreland.”

Which was the outside of too much, since it contemplated the death of the present duke—a gentleman as vigorous as he was dignified—as well as the death of the current ducal heir, Lord Pembroke, an upright soul whose greatest sin was that he’d fathered only two girl children in ten years of marriage.

“Consider,” Esther said, gathering up the cards, “the present duchess would be your mama-in-law when you married Lord Percival. If she has the authority to recall commissioned officers from their billets in service to His Majesty, imagine the power she’d wield over a mere daughter-in-law.”

“Lord Percy wouldn’t allow her to intrude.” Charlotte sniffed. “You are just jealous, Esther, because a girl without a title or a dowry can’t look so high.”

The jab was unexpected, since these conclusions were seldom spoken aloud. They were accepted as common knowledge, which usually allowed Esther the backhanded gift of a nonentity’s privacy.

“Esther is pretty, well spoken, well educated in the domestic arts, and wellborn,” Herodia pointed out. “Cease carping, Charlotte, lest the gentlemen overhear you.”

This rebuke did not feel to Esther like a defense, because it wasn’t. Herodia was seizing an opportunity to appear superior to Charlotte, nothing more.

“I can look as high as I please,” Esther said, shuffling the deck into a neat stack. “Though looking alone holds little gratification. Shall I deal again?”

As long as lords Percival and Anthony Windham were in the room chatting up the hostess by the punch bowl, Esther would have to remain as the fourth in the game. Play—or what passed for it—resumed, while Esther sent up a silent prayer that the next three weeks went by as quickly—and as painlessly—as possible.

“I know that look, Percy.” Tony kept his voice down, thank God, because Lady Morrisette was only several yards away, latched on to the arm of His Grace, the Duke of Quimbey.

Percival Windham did not pause in his perusal of the blond young lady seated at a card table across the parlor. She had a stillness to her, a serenity that drew the eye more than all the flirtatious glances and powdered bosoms in the room. “What look?”

“You’re falling in love again. I’ve seen it a dozen times at least. Her Grace will rejoice to hear of it.”

“I do not fall in love, Anthony. I fall into bed, or occasionally into linen closets, private boudoirs, secluded bowers, that sort of thing.” Percival took a sip of decent punch and turned a direct stare on his younger brother. “And Her Grace will not be hearing a peep out of you, not unless you want me to apprise her of a certain tryst you had with Miss Gladys Holsopple before leaving Town.”

Tony’s smile was hopelessly unguarded. “Gladys Holsopple is toothsome and not too much concerned for propriety when nobody’s looking. An estimable female. And you don’t have to worry about my peaching on you—we’ve Mannering for that.”

Mannering, the valet they’d be sharing for the duration of the house party. Percival turned his thoughts in a more sanguine direction and gestured slightly with his glass. “Who’s the pretty card player?”

While appearing to arrange the lace at his cuff, Tony glanced across the room. “Herodia Bellamy. Well dowered, her papa is said to have Bute’s ear. Dances nicely and doesn’t titter.”

Tony was one of the best reconnaissance officers ever dispatched to Canada—where his talents had clearly been wasted. “Not her. She damned near tried to dance her way into my bedroom at Heckenbaum’s last week. The pretty one.” The one who made even arranging her cards an exercise in grace.

“Lady Zephora Needham. Her papa’s Earl Needham, and they say it takes two hours to arrange all them bows in the chit’s hair.”

Tony in a teasing mood was a burden, indeed.

“Not her, and not that gossiping Pankhurst twit, either. The one with the unpowdered hair. I haven’t seen her before.”

“Her.” Tony’s smile was replaced by a frown. “Not your type at all, Perce. Esther Himmelfarb. Well-bred, well read. The poor relation invited to make up the numbers when somebody cancels—at the very last minute. Grandpapa’s an earl, but she didn’t take, according to Gladys. She’s the sort to play chaperone when the proper chaperones are off in the butler’s pantry with the likes of you and me.”

Himmelfarb, a prosaic Teutonic name, suggesting connections to the heavily Germanized royal court.

Or suggesting… Percival studied the young lady. Blond hair was severely braided into a coronet that would accentuate her height when she stood. A single spray of rosebuds had been woven into the back of her coiffure, the barest ornamentation, when fashion allowed women to adorn their hair with bird’s nests and battleships.

Northern lights came to mind. Cool, beautiful, unexpected, and ethereal. Miss Esther Himmelfarb had a complexion other women sought to achieve with cosmetics and generally failed. Perfect pale skin with more rosebud pink tingeing her high cheekbones, and not a beauty patch to be seen. Her dress was a sky-blue gown de chemise, no panniers, and not much bustle, but of soft velvet and expertly tailored.

All in all, a lovely woman, one upon whom primness sat more temptingly than all the wiles of a beckoning siren.

Percival watched as she shuffled the deck in tidy, economical moves. “Dallying with her would be a great deal of effort.” A challenge.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “And yet you’re considering it. Ruin that girl’s reputation, and she has nothing left. I’ll call you out myself, tattle to Her Grace—”

“You are feeling the effects of the punch, Anthony. I do not dally with ladies barely out of the schoolroom.”

“Unless they’re widowed, fast, or fairly determined.”

Percy’s lips quirked up. “And very, very discreet.”

A moment of fraternal silence fell, during which the Duke of Quimbey, a handsome single man yet in his prime, laughed merrily at something Lady Morrisette said. The ladies at the card table all turned to regard Quimbey, the greatest prize on the marriage market for the past several Seasons.

“Thank God for Quimbey,” Percival said.

He’d spoken a trifle too loudly. Esther Himmelfarb swiveled her gaze to regard him, while the other ladies continued to ogle Quimbey with longing glances.

God in heaven, Anthony, I do believe you’re right this time.

Green eyes regarded the Moreland spare with a blend of humor, condescension, and… pity? There were depths in Esther Himmelfarb’s gaze, depths of reserve and self-possession that made a red-blooded male want to take down all that golden, shot-silk hair. To provoke her to blushes and sighs and… passion.

“Right about what, Perce?”

Had he spoken aloud?

“We’d best find a housemaid who can provide a distraction for Mannering. Can’t have any tales getting back to Her Grace when she’s decreed we’re both to be wed by year’s end.”

House parties entailed dancing. This was Holy Writ.

What better opportunity to look over the possible flirts and affairs, and to show oneself off to same, than the endless rotation of partners encountered on the dance floor?

Esther loathed the dance floor as her personal purgatory, until the final set concluded, and she found herself on the arm of—Everlasting Powers forefend!—Percival Windham. For her, the Almighty was now fashioning circles even of purgatory.

“Miss Himmelfarb, I believe?” His lordship winged an arm and smiled graciously. “Shall I have us introduced, or in the informality of the occasion, will you allow me to join you at supper?”

A more calculating man would have offered to escort her to whoever had the honor of dining with her, but then, Lord Percival likely did not have to be calculating.

“I will happily accept your escort to the buffet, my lord.” Where Michael might rescue her or Lady Morrisette would find some dowager needing company. Esther laced her gloved hand around Lord Percival’s arm, only to encounter a small surprise.

Or not so small.

Gossip had not lied. The man was muscular in the extreme, and this close, he was also of sufficient height to uphold the fiction that he’d protect Esther from any brigands or wolves wandering about Lady Morrisette’s parlor.

“Does your family hail from Kent, Miss Himmelfarb? I know most of the local families and cannot recall Himmelfarbs among them.”

The question was perfectly pleasant, and so too was his lordship’s scent. Not the scent of exertion or the standard rose-scented rice powder—he wasn’t wearing a wig—but something elusive…

“You’re twitching your nose like a thoughtful bunny, Miss Himmelfarb. Are you in anticipation of something particularly succulent among the supper offerings?”

He smiled down at her as he spoke, and for moment, Esther could not fashion a reply. Of all the times for Charlotte Pankhurst to be right about a man’s blue, blue eyes… “I’m trying to fathom the fragrance you’re wearing, my lord. It’s pleasant.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think from your expression that you do not approve of men wearing pleasant scents.” His tone, amused, teasing, suggested that sometimes, all he wore was a pleasant scent—and that just-for-you smile.

They came to a halt in the buffet line, which meant… Esther was doomed to sharing a meal with the man.

Lord Percival leaned nearer, as if confiding something amid the noise and bustle of the first night of a lively, extended social gathering. “Bay rum lacks imagination, don’t you think? I shall wear it when I’m a settled fellow with children in my nursery. There’s cedar in the scent I wear, reminds me of Canada. You’re partial to spicy scents yourself.”

He was inviting a reciprocal confidence from her with that observation. The notion of trading secrets with Percival Windham made something beneath Esther’s heart twang—disagreeably, of course. “Lavender with a touch of a few other things.”

While Esther stood beside Lord Percival, he leaned even closer and subtly inhaled through his patrician nose. Horses did that, gathered each other’s scent upon acquaintance. And like a filly, Esther held still for his lordship’s olfactory inspection and resisted the urge—the unladylike, disconcerting, thoroughly inappropriate urge—to treat him to a similar examination.

“My dear”—his lordship had straightened only a bit—“why is My Lady Hair Bows staring daggers in this direction?”

My lady…? Then… my dear?!

He was a very presuming fellow, even for a duke’s spare, and yet Esther felt the urge to smile back at him. “I’m not sure what you mean, my lord.”

“You know exactly what I mean, Miss Himmelfarb.” He picked up a plate, though they were still some distance from any sustenance. “Now the Needy girl is at her elbow, pouring brandy on the flames of gossip. You and I will be engaged by this time tomorrow, I don’t doubt.”

Did one correct a duke’s spare when he made light of marriage to a woman within staring distance of professional spinsterhood?

Yes, one did.

“Her name is Needham, my lord. And I should think an engagement unlikely when you have yet to ask for my hand and I have given no indication I would accept your suit.”

The light in his eyes changed, going from friendly—yes, that was the word—to something more intent. “You are an impertinent woman.” This did not, unfortunately, sound as if it put him off.

“As compared to you, my lord, who are somehow a pertinent man? Or perhaps pertinacious might apply?”

That was rude, intended to put the perishing idiot in his place, but it only added approval to the warmth in his gaze. His eyes crinkled at the corners, his lips curved up to reveal perfect, straight white teeth in a dazzling, alarmingly intimate smile.

“We’re going to get on famously, Miss Himmelfarb. I adore impertinent women.”

Esther knew not what to say to that. The line shuffled forward while Charlotte, Herodia, and Zephora glared a firing squad of daggers, and Esther tried to ignore the scent of cedar and spices.

“You most assuredly do not look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Esther glanced around the ballroom, where guests were milling before the dancing resumed, then cast a brief, exasperated look at her cousin, the Honorable Michael Adelman.

“Could you enjoy yourself while the tops of your breasts were engaged in conversation by one man after another, and half those men married to wives busily ogling some other fellow’s falls?”

Michael’s lids drooped in a manner he likely did not intend to be seductive, though it made his good looks even more alluring. “I think the Needham girl might accept my suit. She’s said to be well dowered. The party lasts only three weeks, Esther.”

Remorse had Esther patting Michael’s sleeve. “Three weeks is nothing. We shall contrive. Compliment her coiffure lavishly.” That was the purpose of the outing, in fact—to secure an advantageous match for Michael, and as expeditiously as possible. Michael shuddered beside Esther on a gilded green-velvet sofa set into an alcove off the ballroom’s dance floor.

“How does one consummate a union with a wife who must sleep with a wooden pillow, lest she disturb the architecture of her hairstyle? I lie awake at night and fret over this, you know.”

He was her cousin, and Esther loved him, but he was only a man and therefore not much afflicted with insight.

“You capture her heart so completely that for you she’ll give up hours of torment having her hair dressed and content herself with elaborate wigs, while leaving her crowning glory in the state intended by the Almighty. We’d best mingle. Lady Morrisette has twice smiled this way.”

Michael rose and assisted Esther to her feet. “God help me,” he murmured. “Our hostess is reported to hold these gatherings mostly as a means of seeing to her own entertainment.” He bowed over Esther’s hand. “Say nice things about me to the Needmore girl.”

“Needham.”

And of course Esther would, for despite his dark good looks, height, and charm, without a decent match, Michael’s future held little worth looking forward to.

“Miss Himmelfarb.”

With effort, Esther did not grimace, for it appeared the tops of her breasts were again to engage in conversation. “Sir Jasper.” She gave him her hand, and because he was standing so close, when he bowed over it, his nose nearly touched her décolletage.

“The sets are forming, Miss Himmelfarb, and I would happily partner you.”

Something in his tone implied that his partnering was available in locations other than the dance floor, and on short notice. Sir Jasper Layton was not yet thirty, had all his teeth, and was as handsome as a bad bout with smallpox could leave a man. Three beauty patches and a heavy hand with the face powder did more to call attention to his scars than hide them, though.

Esther manufactured a smile. “Thank you, sir, and tell me how your sisters go on.”

He appeared surprised to recall he had sisters, though both attended the same court functions as Esther and many of the ladies present at the house party. Soon enough the steps of the dance saw him partnering other women, and Esther could breathe a sigh of relief.

“Are you concentrating on the steps, or have you taken me into dislike?” Percival Windham bowed to her jauntily, took both of her hands, and as the dance called for, moved closer. “Or is Sir Jasper overstepping?”

Esther dropped his hands, turned her back, smiled over her shoulder—who had chosen this particular dance?—and turned back to take Lord Percival’s hands. “I’m concentrating on the steps.”

They promenaded down the line, hands joined before them. “You’d rather be in the library, curled up with a book by the fire, reading French poems, or possibly German. Tell me, Miss Himmelfarb, do Germans write poetry?”

He was teasing, but also studying her as he smiled that particular, personal smile.

Esther dropped his hands and turned a full circle. “I’d be reading Shakespeare sonnets up in my room. Anybody can come upon a lady in the library.”

Though her room would be stuffy and dank because Esther lacked sufficient strength to pry open its single window.

“There’s a full moon tonight, Miss Himmelfarb. Why not walk with me in the garden instead?”

He turned to his corner and whisked her down the line, leaving Esther to wonder if twenty more days—and nights—of this nonsense was worth the effort of seeing her cousin suitably matched.

As she slipped up to her room an hour later on aching feet, she also spared a thought to wonder whom Percival Windham would have enticed into the garden, and if he’d truly limit his activities there to walking.

“The trouble is, we ain’t got a proper dam.”

Dear Tony was sliding past pleasantly foxed and barreling on to true inebriation, so Percival waved away the footman plying the card room’s decanter.

“You’re insulting the Duchess of Moreland, Tony, if you’re saying our mother is anything less than proper. One does this at considerable peril to his well-being.”

Tony continued to stare morosely at his brandy. “That’s what I’m saying. She’s all duchess and no mama. Not mama, not dame, not mother. We’d be back in Canada if His Grace had a notion how to foil her queer starts.”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe you’re missing Canada?”

“Not missing it, exactly, but there ain’t any debutantes in Canada, no levees, no duchesses.”

In vino, veritas. “There are bears and wolves, or had you forgotten?”

Tony offered his brother a rueful grin. “Wolves don’t sing any worse than those sopranos at the opera.”

“The sopranos are a good deal better smelling and friendlier.”

“That they are.” Tony blinked at his drink, perhaps wondering how the thing had gotten so quickly empty. “There’s one little Italian gal from the chorus, and I swear that mouth of hers could devour—”

“Anthony, we’re in proper company.” To the extent a card room of reprobates and dowagers could be considered proper at the end of a long evening.

At the peremptory note in Percy’s voice, Tony blinked. “Is it time to go home?”

Not for another twenty days. “We’re certainly not going back to Canada tonight.”

“Bloody cold in Canada,” Tony observed, apropos of nothing.

“True.” Percy set his drink aside and debated whether to leave Tony to his own devices at such a late hour. “At least in Canada the savages announce themselves as such, observe certain rules of engagement, and don’t use the minuet to scout out the opposition.”

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Tony gestured with his glass a trifle wildly. Then paused as if he’d heard an arresting sound. “I’ll be stepping to the gent’s retiring room for a moment.”

“Of course.” And Percy would not allow his younger brother to stumble through the corridors, half-disguised, in charity with the world, only to be pulled into a convenient broom closet by some enterprising debutante.

They negotiated the dimly lit passages without incident—unless a giggle from a secluded alcove on the second floor could be considered an incident. As Tony unbuttoned his falls and took a lean against a handy wall in the men’s retiring room, he aimed an oddly sober look at his brother.

“I’ve had this notion, lately, Perce.”

The man could piss and philosophize at the same time—a true exponent of the aristocracy. “Any particular notion?”

“It’s a queer notion, as queer as considering a vocation in the church.”

“Which you did for about fifteen minutes, until you recalled that bit about poverty, chastity, and obedience.” For Percy, five minutes’ contemplation of a life in the church had seen him buying his colors. “For God’s sake, button up if you’re done.”

“What? Oh, indeed.”

This late in the evening, Tony’s fingers were clumsy, though his brain apparently continued to lumber around and his mouth danced attendance on it. “I’ve had the notion Her Grace might be right. Petey ain’t getting any younger, and his lady ain’t dropped a bull calf in ten years of marriage.”

Tony was the only person in the whole of the realm who could refer to the Marquess of Pembroke, heir to the Moreland ducal title, as “Petey.”

“Lady Pembroke could yet conceive a son.”

“Canada is cold, Perce. It’s full of wolves and savages and colonials with very big, loud guns and little allegiance to dear King George.”

When Tony had fumbled a few buttons closed in relevant locations, Percy linked his arm through his brother’s. “Are you thinking of selling out and joining the ranks of retired bachelors?”

That would solve a significant problem for Percy, true, but the idea of boarding a ship for the colonies at the end of the Season and not having Tony there to provide his inane commentary was disquieting.

“I’m thinking of taking a bride,” Tony said, much of the bonhomie leaving his voice. “You like all that military whatnot, the pomp and nonsense, for King and Country. I like to be warm and well fed, to tup pretty girls, and spend my quarterly in two weeks flat.”

And so had Percy, until a few years in charge of several hundred younger sons and rascals like Tony had somehow soured the allure of returning to an idle existence. Then Her Grace had taken this notion to recall her sons from the provinces and lecture them about Duty to the Succession, Familial Loyalty, and Social Responsibility.

The woman put the average gunnery sergeant to shame with her harangues.

“You are not ideal husband material, Tony.” Percy spoke as gently as he could. “The ladies like some constancy for the first few years of marriage. They like to show off their trophy and drag a new husband about on calls. You’ve got the place in Hampshire, and you’d be expected to tend your acres for much of the year.”

Tony was silent until they reached the head of the stairs. “You’re saying I’d have to leave my bed before noon. Save the drinking until after supper, show up for parade inspection, the same as in Canada. Scout the terrain, deal with the locals.”

Put like that, civilian life didn’t sound like much of an adjustment.

“A wife would take umbrage at the opera singers. She’d expect pin money and babies.”

“Babies aren’t so bad.”

Tony sounded wistful, though he was right: babies were dear and about as easy to love as a human being could be. A man with two adorable nieces could admit such a thing easily—to himself. On the one hand, if Tony married and produced babies—male babies in particular—then Percy could sail back to the regiment despite Her Grace’s harangues and blustering.

And yet, on the other hand, to leave Tony behind in the clutches of a duchess-in-training, no older brother to seek consolation and counsel with, Her Grace looming over the marriage with a calendar in one hand and a receiving blanket in the other…

The Marquess of Pembroke was a decent fellow, but he hadn’t been able to hide from his younger brothers what the duchess’s interference had done to an otherwise civil and sanguine union.

“You’ll not be marrying anybody just yet, Tony Windham. As a duke’s son, you’re a prime catch. At least look over the possibilities at some length and think of your chorus girl.”

“Right-o, dear, sweet, little… the Italian—whatever her name is.”

“The one with the devouring mouth.”

A room to oneself was a mixed blessing at a gathering like Lady Morrisette’s. On the one hand, Esther had a little privacy in those rare moments when she wasn’t stepping and fetching for her betters, and particularly for Lady Morrisette.

On the other hand, a lady with a room to herself had to guard doubly against the gentlemen who “accidentally” stumbled into her chambers late at night. She also had no one with whom to discuss the day’s small revelations, such as how hard it had been not to watch Lord Percival Windham as he showed one lady after another how to hold her bow and let fly her arrows.

While Esther had lost the archery contest only by deliberately aiming her last shots wide of the bull’s-eye, Charlotte’s accuracy with a barbed comment was not to be underestimated, regardless of how desperately she’d needed Lord Percy’s assistance with her bow.

Esther flipped back the covers and eased from the bed—the cot. She’d had a choice of sleeping with Lady Pott’s maid in a stuffy little dressing room, or taking this glorified closet under the eaves. The closet had appealed, though on a warm night, it was nigh stifling, and on a cool night it would be frigid.

“I need a posset.”

Closets did not sport bellpulls, so Esther slid her feet into slippers, belted a plain dressing gown over her nightgown, and headed down the maid’s stairs to the kitchen.

A tired scullery maid frowned only slightly at Esther’s request before preparing a cup of hot, spiced, spiked milk.

“There ye be, mum. Will there be anything else?”

Esther took a sip of her posset. “My thanks, it’s very good. Does that door lead to the kitchen garden?”

“It do, and from thence to the scent garden and the cutting garden. The formal garden lies beyond that, and then the knot gardens and the folly.” The maid shot a longing glance at the stool by the hearth, as if even giving these directions made a girl’s feet ache.

Ache worse. After eighteen hours on her feet, the maid was no doubt even more tired than Esther.

“I’ll take my posset to the garden.”

“The guests don’t generally use the kitchen garden, mum.”

“All the better.”

This earned Esther a small, understanding smile. The girl sought her stool, and Esther sought the cooler air of the garden by moonlight—the garden where she’d be safe from wandering guests of either gender.

Kitchen gardens bore a particular scent, a fresh, green, culinary fragrance that tickled Esther’s nose as she found a bench along the far wall. Percival Windham’s comment the day before about the moon being full came to mind, because the garden was limned in silvery light, the moon beaming down in all its beneficent glory.

“So you couldn’t sleep either?”

Esther’s first clue regarding the garden’s other occupant was moonlight gleaming on his unpowdered hair.

“My lord.” She started to rise, only to see Percival Windham’s teeth flash in the shadows.

“Oh, must you?” He approached her bench, gaze trained on the cup in her hand. “Might I join you? I fear the farther reaches of the garden are full of predators stalking large game.”

He sounded tired and not the least flirtatious. Esther pulled her skirts aside when what she ought to be doing was returning to the stuffy, mildewed confines of her garret.

She took a sip of her posset and waited.

“How do you do it, Miss Himmelfarb?”

“My lord?”

He sighed and stretched long legs out before him, crossing his feet at the ankles and leaning back against the wall behind them. Moonlight caught the silver of his shoe buckles and the gold of the ring on his left little finger.

“How do you endure these infernal gatherings? They are exhausting of a man’s fortitude if not his energy. If one more young lady presses a feminine part of her anatomy against my person, I am going to start howling like a wolf and wearing my wig backward.”

His lordship sounded so put upon, Esther found it difficult not to smile. “May I ask you a question, your lordship?”

“Lord Percy, if you must stand on ceremony—or sit upon it, as the case may be.”

“Do you take snuff?”

He peered over at her in the moonlight. “I do not. It’s a deucedly filthy habit. Nor do I use smoking tobacco. I’m convinced my father’s frequent agues of the lungs are related to his fondness for the pipe. If you were to ask to borrow my snuffbox, you’d find it holds lemon drops.”

He reached over and plucked Esther’s cup from her grasp, raising it up. “May I?”

What was she to say to that? “You may.”

He helped himself to a sip of her posset, and the idea of it, of this handsome lordling drinking so casually from her cup, was peculiar indeed.

“Are you flirting with me, my lord?”

He set the cup down between them, his lips quirking. “If you have to ask, Miss Himmelfarb, then I’m making a poor job of it, aren’t I?”

He hadn’t said no. “May I ask you another question?”

His lordship closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “I’d rather it be a flirtatious sort of question now that you raise the subject. You’re very pretty, you know, and I’ve lately concluded the entire purpose of this gathering is to develop one’s stamina as a flirt. Like field maneuvers, I suppose.” He cracked open one eye. “I apologize if I’m being rude. That’s a truth potion you’ve slipped me.”

He settled back against the wall, shifting broad shoulders as if to get more comfortable. With his eyes closed, Percival Windham by moonlight was…

Handsome. Still, yet, more… deucedly handsome, to use his word. Lord Percival was the spare, but he had “duke” stamped all over him. The height, the self-possession, the charm…

“So you’re not averse to another question, my lord?”

“If we’re to be drinking companions, Miss Himmelfarb, then the ‘my lording’ has to cease. Mind you, I am not flirting with you.”

He was humoring her, though. Or something. “Do you frequently bathe in company?”

A beat of silence went by, while Esther wondered if perhaps that posset wasn’t truth potion after all.

“Miss Himmelfarb, this version of not-flirting holds a man’s interest. Whyever would you ask?”

He sounded amused and genuinely intrigued.

“I am appeasing my curiosity. Young ladies gossip almost as much as young men do.”

“They couldn’t possibly. To answer your question, it might have escaped your notice, but my dimensions are such that I rather take up the available space in most tubs. I am not in the habit of entertaining callers when I’m at my bath, despite what our hostess appears to have told half the women in the realm. You never did answer my question.”

Esther cast back over their short, odd conversation. “How do I endure house parties?”

“Without committing hanging felonies on your fellow guests, all of whom seem intent on mischief. It’s worse than an entire regiment of Scottish recruits on leave.”

He wasn’t simply tired, he was exasperated and not a little bewildered. Esther picked up the posset and handed it to him.

“Do you miss Canada?” This was what she should have asked him, not those other questions—the ones that Herodia, Charlotte, and Zephora would not believe the answers to.

He drank deeply from her cup and kept it in his hands. “I wish I missed Canada. The land is so beautiful it makes your soul ache, but pitiless, too. In any season, Canada has ways to kill a man—snakes, locals, diseases, itching vines, and lunatic commanding officers.”

Perhaps he was a little drunk, or a little homesick for somewhere neither Canada nor Kent.

“You could transfer elsewhere.”

“And it would be the same, Miss Himmelfarb, because it would still be His Majesty’s military, and I would still be the Moreland spare.” He fell silent, Esther’s cup held in his two hands on his flat belly.

“You were treated differently because your father is a duke?”

“I was. By some I was treated worse, by others better. At my last post, I was bitterly resented by my superior officer.”

This was far, far worse than flirting, or even that whispering-in-her-ear thing Percival Windham could do in a room full of people. Still, she asked the next question.

“What happened?”

He grew still, the darkness seemed to gather closer, and Esther caught a whiff of his cedary scent on soft night air.

“I will tell you, Esther Himmelfarb, because I am a just a wee bit in my cups, or perhaps it’s the moonshine loosening my tongue. In any case, we will both wish—and in the morning pretend—that I had kept my own counsel.” Another pause, another sip of her posset. “My unit was between posts—there are no roads worth the name—and we came upon an encampment of natives. There are all stripes of Indians in the Canadian woods, some friendly, some murderous, and some both, depending on the day of the week. We encountered not even a gesture in the direction of hostility from this group, which upon inspection turned out to be a function of their menfolk being off on a trapping expedition.”

Rape. He would not use the word in her presence, but Esther felt it lurking on the edges of the conversation.

“General Starkweather ordered the women and children rounded up, declared them prisoners, and started marching them through the woods. He did this to goad me, I’m fairly certain. We were not to provoke the locals without cause, and shivering in the woods while praying for spring did not constitute cause in the opinion of any man in that company.”

He set the cup aside, apparently having finished Esther’s posset.

“We got about two hours’ march from the encampment, and were not likely to make our billet by dark. The general ordered the prisoners lined up in a ditch and declared himself unwilling to be slowed down by such a lot of filthy, murdering savages when the weather might turn foul at any point.”

Murder now joined rape in the part of the conversation Lord Percival was not speaking aloud. Murder, rape, and offense to the honor of any officer, any honest man, present on the scene. Esther wanted to touch him, to stop him from speaking more words that would hurt him and forever haunt her.

“General Starkweather assembled a firing squad. He made sure I was directly on hand when the lads were given the command to shoulder arms. If I interfered, I was of course, guilty of insubordination of a magnitude that would earn me a conclusion to my troubles in the same manner our captives were facing.”

Rape, murder, dishonor, execution.

While all around him, gossip wanted to accuse Percival Windham of frivolousness and debauchery.

“You did not give the order to fire. Not on helpless women and children.”

He sat up, set the cup on the ground, and peered over at her for a long moment before he resumed speaking, his words addressed to a patch of rosemary growing across the walk.

“There was an old woman, a stout little thing with a brown face as wrinkled as a prune. She’d been carrying an infant the entire distance, and the child had begun to fuss, likely from hunger. I sat there on my horse, wrapped from head to toe in thick layers of wool, while that old woman shivered, her own blanket given up to keep the child warm. I have never seen such fortitude before or since.

“The men figured out what Starkweather was up to, and the quality of their silence was as chilling as the wind in those woods. Picture this: snow all around us, two hundred of His Majesty’s finest poised to witness murder, and the only sound the wind in the pine boughs and that crying baby.”

Rape, murder, dishonor, hanging, dread, and no options.

“The old woman tickled the baby’s chin.”

Lord Percival reached over and brushed a knuckle twice over the point of Esther’s chin. “She tickled the baby’s chin, jostled him and jollied him, until he was laughing as babies will. Despite the cold, despite his hungry belly, despite the firing squad several yards away, the baby laughed. Starkweather gave the command to take aim then told me to take over.”

“You did not do murder. I know you did not.”

How did she know it, though? From the kindness in his eyes when he flirted? From the weariness he’d let her see by moonlight? From the fact that he’d even noticed an old woman with the courage to tickle a baby while death loomed?

“I did not give the order to fire, Esther Himmelfarb. I will admit to you I was insubordinate, and Tony was there to witness it. As I opened my mouth and gave the command to order arms, the air was filled with a shrieking such as I hope never to hear again. The trapping party had tracked us, circled around front and taken their position in the trees above the trail. I regret to report that though casualties on both sides were minimal, General Starkweather did not survive the affray.”

Had he killed his superior officer? Esther did not think so, but neither did she care if he had. “Good. The man was not fit to command.”

Lord Percival regarded her again for a long, long moment, until his lips curved up in a grave, sweet smile. “A court martial would not have rendered that decision, my dear.”

“Then a higher court intervened in a timely fashion, my lord. Surely you cannot argue my conclusion?”

“I cannot—I will not, given your insistence, but neither will I be romanticizing the appeal of the military. If I retain my commission, I’ll likely ask for and get an administrative position. I excel at recall and application of rules and regulations—I should probably have become a barrister, except the inactivity would have bored me silly.”

In the past five minutes, they’d gone from an uneasy discussion on a hard bench, to a conversation between two refugees from… life. “You’ll hate working at a desk, my lord.”

“I’d hate even more the vapid existence of a younger son dancing about on the end of Her Grace’s leash. My sister-in-law begged us to come home, and Tony and I could refuse Bella nothing.”

“You are fond of Lady Pembroke?”

“I was eight years old when I met her, and yes, she is the first woman I fell in love with, if you discount Mrs. Wood.”

He was perfectly, astoundingly serious. “Mrs. Wood was your governess?” This was safer ground, no awful words lurking unsaid, but in some ways the honesty he offered was equally dangerous.

“The very one. A dear old soul who made Latin and French into games and declared sums fit only for naughty boys on rainy days. Tony and I adored her. My father intervened when the tutors took over and said Mrs. Wood must stay on as our French instructor because her accent was superior.”

“Can you speak any French at all?”

“Je vous adore, Miss Himmelfarb, will that do? I enjoy languages, but find sums a bloody lot of work, particularly in a commercial context. You know, you never did tell me how you endure these infernal house parties. Tony thinks we’ve been sent here to convince us to take brides out of sheer self-preservation. A bachelor’s pillorying earned by our failure to become engaged this past winter.”

A little dart of pain lanced through the sense of commiseration Esther had been fancying she shared with Lord Percival. A man who complained of being marital prey did not regard present company as a threat.

Which she wasn’t. He was a duke’s son, after all.

“I do as little as possible to burden the help, for one thing. These parties are very trying for them, and they can be unexpected allies.”

“Sound advice. Mannering has to do double duty, serving both myself and Tony. But how do you… endure?”

His tone held genuine consternation, a sentiment Esther could share all too easily.

“Nap in the middle of the day, my lord. Don’t drink to excess ever, and keep a chair wedged under your door latch if you’re alone in your room. If your drink tastes the least strange, set it aside, the same with your food. Retire to your room on the pretext of seeing to correspondence, and you should be given some privacy. I also ride out on the fine days but take a groom with me, even when I’d prefer a solitary outing.”

His examination of her this time was not accompanied by a smile. “I see you are a veteran of these gatherings, Miss Himmelfarb. Why aren’t you married, if you find them so tedious?”

“Maybe for the same reasons you aren’t married.” Even that was probably saying too much. Esther retrieved her empty cup from where it sat on the ground between them. “I ought to be going in, my lord.”

“Percival, or Percy to my friends. We can be friends, can we not?”

He was offering something—friendship, of some offhand, passing variety—even as he removed from consideration the curious, budding, silly notion that he might have noticed her as a man notices a young woman.

“I must be going.” Esther scooted to the edge of the bench only to find her companion on his feet, his hand under her elbow.

“I’d see you in, Esther Himmelfarb, and even up to your room, but we both know what gossip that might cause. My thanks for your company and for sharing your posset.”

She turned to go, but his hand was still on her arm and his fingers closed around her wrist. A few beats of silence went by while Esther cataloged impressions.

He was wonderfully tall and substantial, a man upon whom even an Amazon like herself could lean, confident of his support.

At the end of a long day, his scent was still beguilingly pleasant. Not overwhelming, not cloying, just a teasing hint of cedar and spices that made her want to close her eyes and breathe through her nose.

And he was near enough that Esther could feel the heat of his body in the moonlit shadows.

“Good night, Esther.”

“Good night, my—Percival.”

Would he kiss her? She hoped he would, a token kiss to her cheek, a small memory of pleasure in the midst of purgatory, a touch to make all that had been shared before a little more real.

His lips brushed her forehead before he dropped her wrist. “Sweet dreams, my lady.”

She was being dismissed. Esther stepped back—did not curtsy—and left him standing in the garden, bathed in cool, silvery moonlight and solitude.