had your bold spirit. But I must confess that I have also been a little afraid of you.'
Freyja let out a short bark of laughter. 'One would never have known it,' she said. 'Do you remember that first time you came to Lindsey Hall with Kit?'
'And you all tried to make me as uncomfortable as you possibly could?' Lauren said, laughing too. 'How could I possibly forget? I could cheerfully have curled up and died.'
'But instead you dealt me a magnificent, oh-so-ladylike set-down,' Freyja said. 'My brothers were crowing with delight after you left.'
The party was breaking up, Freyja saw when they entered the drawing room. Some of the neighbors had already left. Wulfric was on his feet. So were the other members of her family. The carriages must have been sent for.
'Gracious, Free,' Alleyne said, appearing at her side as Lauren made her way toward Wulf, 'has there been a grand reconciliation between you and Lauren? Life is threatening to grow very dull indeed.'
'It is time you got a life for yourself,' she said severely.
He winced. 'A hit, Free!' he said. 'A palpable hit, to quote some authority I cannot quite identify at the moment. I shall have to go out into the world to seek my own happy ending. Aidan, Ralf, you . . . Happy endings are becoming an epidemic among us.'
Joshua was standing talking with Lady Kilbourne and the Duchess of Portfrey. He was using all his considerable charm on them and looking devastatingly handsome in the process. The light from the chandelier overhead made his hair gleam very blond. Again Freyja felt that rush of knee-weakening knowledge. Just an hour or so ago . . .
He had tried to stop it from happening.
She had dared him to stop.
How complicated life had become.
And how undeniably exhilarating!
He turned his head and smiled at her, and she raised her eyebrows. And then he slowly depressed one eyelid and she bristled with indignation.
Joshua was normally an early riser. He was not late up the following morning, but he was later than usual. He had scarcely slept all night, only to fall into a deep sleep when it was already light. All the Bedwyns except Freyja and Judith were at breakfast.
'She is feeling indisposed this morning,' Rannulf said, looking rather sheepish, when Joshua asked about Judith, 'just as she was yesterday morning until it was almost time to leave for church. I have just been admitting to the family that she is in a delicate way. We were going to keep it to ourselves for a while, but morning sickness is a great spoiler of secrets.'
'Poor Judith,' Eve said. 'I'll go up and keep her company for a while after breakfast-unless I discover that she would rather be alone.'
'And Freyja?' Joshua asked. Surely she was not still in bed, unless she had had as sleepless a night as he. It was altogether possible.
'Did you two quarrel yesterday?' Alleyne asked, grinning. 'She would not come back inside after riding with us before breakfast. She said she needed more air and went striding off on foot.'
'Quarrel?' Joshua said. 'With your sister? How could one ever provoke a quarrel with a sweet-natured lady like Freyja?'
Everyone at the table laughed. Even Bewcastle looked faintly amused.
'I winked at her across the drawing room just before we left Alvesley last evening,' Joshua said, 'and sent her into a towering rage. People, she told me when we had a moment alone together before getting into the carriage with Morgan and Alleyne, might have noticed and thought us remarkably vulgar. Where might she have gone?'
'You might be wise,' Aidan said, 'to wait for her to walk off any lingering indignation and return to the house in her own good time.'
'Ah,' Joshua said, 'but no one has ever been able to accuse me of excessive wisdom.'
'There is a wilderness walk out behind the house,' Morgan said. 'She usually goes there when she wishes to be alone. And if I had quarreled with my betrothed, Aidan, I would want him to come after me even if I had told everyone that I wished to be left alone and even if I had warned him not to follow me.'
'Eve is still in the process of teaching me how to understand women,' Aidan said. 'I spent too many years in the military, it seems.'
It was not that they had quarreled exactly, of course, Joshua thought as he strode off beyond the stables half an hour later to where the wilderness walk began. And she had not been in a towering rage over the wink-only hotly indignant. He had made a kissing gesture with his lips and called her sweetheart when she had scolded him, and had watched her nostrils flare, and then they had been in the carriage with her brother and sister and he had deliberately drawn her hand through his arm.
No, they had not quarreled. But last evening they had had conjugal relations and everything had changed between them. What had begun as a light flirtation to alleviate the boredom of being stuck in Bath for a week had escalated into an impulsive and very temporary betrothal to stave off his aunt's dastardly entrapment scheme and then into something rather more lengthy with his grandmother's decision to give them a betrothal party. And then Bewcastle had arrived in Bath and quickly discerned the truth, and that had led to this prolonging of the connection. He had known the danger. He had prepared himself for it, steeled himself against it, for both her sake and his own. But now look what had happened. They were in dire peril of having their temporary lark transformed into a lifelong commitment. If it so happened that she was with child, they would have no choice at all. And even if she was not . . .
Good Lord, she was Lady Freyja Bedwyn.
Last night she had seemed not to realize the seriousness of what had happened. Or perhaps she had, but had simply refused to admit it. This morning, if his guess was correct, she had faced reality and found it disturbing indeed.
