her good name and therefore the good name of the Bedwyns, but about her. He was afraid she was going to be hurt again.
The library door clicked open behind him at that moment, and the ducal eyebrows arched even higher while his fingers curled about the handle of his quizzing glass. Joshua looked over his shoulder and saw that the intruder was young Becky, who peered around the door for a moment before stepping inside and shutting it carefully behind her.
'I just woke up from my nap,' she said very precisely in her piping little voice, 'and Davy was gone and Nanny Johnson said I could come down. But Mama and Papa and everyone else have gone outside and I do not want to go to join them there because it is cold today.'
Bewcastle half raised his glass to his eye. 'It would seem, then,' he said, 'that the only alternative is to remain indoors.'
'Yes,' she agreed. But she did not respond to the implied suggestion that she was free to make herself at home in any part of the indoors except the library.
'Hello, Uncle Joshua,' she said as she passed him on her way to examine the object that had taken her attention-Bewcastle's quizzing glass. She took it from his surprised fingers, examined it closely, turned it over in her hands, and raised it to her eye. She looked up at him. 'You look funny, Uncle Wulf.'
'I daresay I do,' he said. 'So does your eye.'
She went off into peals of giggles before turning and wriggling her way up onto his lap, leaning against his chest, and resuming her game with his glass.
The thing was, Joshua thought as Bewcastle began a determined conversation about Penhallow, he looked both slightly uncomfortable and slightly pleased. He also sat very still as if he feared frightening the child away. It was Joshua's guess that nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
Freyja was adamantly opposed to any public celebration of their betrothal at Lindsey Hall, as Joshua had expected.
'Gracious heavens,' she said when he asked her about it as they played a game of billiards later in the afternoon, 'whatever next? A mock wedding? Enough is enough. I am going to quarrel with you very soon, Josh, and very publicly, whether you like it or not. This whole business is becoming tedious and ridiculous.'
'Just wait a little while,' he said.
'Oh, wait, wait, wait,' she said impatiently. 'Will you still be saying that on my eightieth birthday? Everything has become so stupid. No, there is to be no soiree, no ball, no tea, no anything. I wish we had never started this. I wish you had not come dashing into my inn room that night. I wish I had not been walking in Sydney Gardens that morning. I wish I had ignored those silly screams. I wish I had not danced with you at the assembly. I wish-'
'If you hit that ball,' he warned, 'it is going to go sailing over the end of the table and smash right through that window.'
She slammed down the billiard cue.
'Josh,' she said, 'everyone is so happy for me. For us. I cannot stand it any longer.'
'There are two courses open to us, then,' he said. 'You can quarrel with me and break off the engagement and send me away, or I can discover important business that necessitates my immediate return to Penhallow and leave here. I would suggest the second course since it need not involve an immediate ending of our betrothal and will leave you open to recall me if it becomes necessary to do so.'
Devil take it, he thought, surprised, he did not want to leave just yet. But he had to admit that the situation had become intolerable and surely unnecessary. In retrospect he was not convinced that Bewcastle had been right to insist upon his coming here and keeping the betrothal alive this long.
'Do that, then,' she said, frowning. 'But how? What reason will you give?'
'My steward writes to me frequently,' he told her. 'He knows I am here. There is almost bound to be a letter from him within the next few days.'
'It cannot come too soon for me,' she said.
'Such warm, romantic words, sweetheart,' he said, lifting one hand and flicking his forefinger across her chin.
She picked up the billiard cue, frowning, and bent over the table again.
CHAPTER XV
The letter came the next morning. It was waiting on the silver tray on the great hall table where the family's letters were always displayed, except for Bewcastle's, which were delivered separately to the library. They had all just returned from a ride, slightly damp, since a drizzling rain had started falling. Even the duke had come with them this morning. The children were already running upstairs to the nursery to change.
'Oh, Aidan, here is a letter from Thelma!' Eve exclaimed, sounding delighted. 'And there is one for you underneath it, Joshua.' She handed it to him with a smile.
His eyes met Freyja's-she had just picked up a letter of her own. It was a bleak moment. Here it was, then, his excuse to leave. He had already thought out what he would say after 'reading' the letter, and indeed there would even be some truth in it-that with the harvest in and winter not far off there was an urgent need to begin some repairs and some rebuilding for his farm laborers, and that dreary as such business was, he really ought to be there to oversee the work, at least for a few weeks. During those weeks, of course, Freyja would learn the truth of her condition and either bring him back to arrange a hasty marriage or put an end to their betrothal. It would be up to her to think of a plausible reason for that.
He would leave tomorrow, he thought as he broke the seal of the letter. He would be a free man again-at least he would once he had heard from Freyja. He would be able to do whatever he wanted with the rest of his life. He could get back to enjoying himself in any way that presented itself.
Jim Saunders's letter was shorter than usual. Joshua read it quickly, and then read it again more slowly. Well, hell and damnation, he thought. He had crossed the woman's will, and now she would not be satisfied until she had destroyed him. She was prepared, it seemed, to go to extraordinary lengths to do just that.
'Is something wrong, Josh?' Freyja asked, her voice deliberately loud and concerned, and of course everyone looked at him, as she had intended they would.
