“Yes!” Daisy said. “Exactly! He’s past the age of all that cuddling and knocking nonsense. Even so, he’s not dead, and so I might be able to get a child from him one day. That would be beyond wonderful. But I likely won’t, what with his age and my history. I didn’t have one when I was married. Still, Tanner never blamed me for it, and he would have if he could have, so I think it might have been his fault.”
She shrugged. “Whatever happens, it won’t matter much to a man my gentleman’s age. He’s got his son and heir already, and two more fellows that he calls sons. They’re all married now, so he’s on his own at last. He’s perfect for me. He liked me; I respect him. I can make him happy; he won’t ask for much but I won’t begrudge him much, either. Don’t you see? I could live free with him,” she said fervently. “I know I could live safe and in peace with him.”
“You could marry anyone here.”
“No one here would give me the freedom he would. Wealthy noblemen in England let their wives have their own bedchambers as well as their own social lives. Their own beds! Can you imagine a man here allowing that?”
She gave a theatrical shudder. “Besides, soon I won’t have a choice anymore, what with the way Thompson and Edwards are acting and the way that horrible Hughes is talking. I don’t dare go out after dark and have to keep my doors locked at all hours. I’ve no influential male to protect me. No, no matter how much money she has, a woman alone has no power or freedom here. The same’s true in England, but at least there I’ll have my choice of husband. And I choose Geoffrey Sauvage: once a convict, now the Earl of Egremont. Who would understand what I’ve been through better? Who would suit me better? He’s old, wise, and kind.”
“I wish I were half as brave as you are!” her friend blurted. “But I’m not. Though I suppose I could make a life again in England, I’m not willing to chance it.”
Daisy turned, her eyes grave. “I’m not brave. The truth, after all my bluster, is that I don’t have the courage to stay here any longer.” Her smile was sudden, radiant, warming, like the sun coming out from the clouds. “But I can pretend to be brave, and I will. I mean to take my chances, because at least this time, they’ll be
“I wish you luck,” her friend said. “Though I don’t think you’ll need it.”
“Thank you, but I mean to make my own luck, so please send me off with prayers instead of wishes. I have wishes enough. Now I have to go and make them come true.”
Chapter One
“I’m flattered, my dear, and no mistake,” the gentleman said as he gently unlocked the lovely young woman’s dimpled arms from around his neck. “But believe me, I’m not worth your time.”
She let her arms drop, but didn’t move away. She pressed her body to his, put a dainty hand on his chest, looked up at him, and pouted.
“No, in all honesty,” he said with a rueful smile, stepping back a pace. “You’re such a tempting little delicacy, but I am simply not in the market. Now, Carlton, over there, is,” he said, tilting a shoulder toward a short gentleman across the green room. “He’s a baron, to boot! Plus he’s wealthy, amiable, and very generous when he’s pleased. And,” he added, raising one long finger to make his point, “I have heard women call him ‘cuddly.’ Mind, I find that appellation nauseating, but I would.
She looked at the plump gentleman he’d indicated, looked back at the tall, thin, exquisitely dressed gentleman before her, and sighed. Then she winked at him, and turned. She strolled off toward the baron Carlton with an exaggerated wriggle of her scantily clad bottom.
“Good evening, Haye,” an older gentleman standing nearby said in an amused voice. “Giving up sweets for Lent, are we?”
“Give you good evening too, Egremont,” Leland Grant, Viscount Haye, said in an amused drawl. “Well met. I saw you earlier but didn’t have a chance to speak with you. How have you been?”
“I’ve been fine, thank you, although I hear the latest gossip has me at death’s door or up to no good.”
“That’s what you get for wanting privacy,” Leland said. “I’ve been up to worse and they’ve said less because my life is an open book.”
“A spicy one,” the earl commented. “And about as open as a miser’s purse. You show only surface; the rest is hidden deep.”
“Indeed?” the viscount drawled. “Well, if you say so. However, I agree I’ve found that tossing gossips warm red meat keeps them full and happy, and not likely to ask for more.”
The earl smiled. He was more than a decade older than the viscount, but they’d been friends since they’d met the year before at the earl’s adopted son’s wedding. The Viscount Haye had turned out to be the long-lost half brother of the illegitimate Daffyd, whose wedding it had been. The earl and the viscount had found much in common and become friends. This puzzled the earl’s friends and amused the viscount’s cronies, because two more dissimilar men were hard to find.
Leland, Viscount Haye, was a wildly successful womanizer. He loved women and they loved him, but he was resolutely single and lived in high style, entertaining females of all classes and conditions. The earl was still in love with his late wife, and only occasionally formed brief relationships with discreet women.
Geoffrey Sauvage, Earl of Egremont, was bookish, reclusive, a man with a gentle nature. The viscount Haye was said to be amazingly trivial, but also enormously fashionable and in demand, even though he possessed a cutting sense of humor.
They couldn’t have looked more different. The earl was a solidly built, muscular, middle-aged gentleman of medium height, who still had his thick brown hair, strong white teeth, and a face that was deemed handsome even though it was unfashionably tanned.
The viscount had just passed his thirtieth birthday. He was tall and very thin, with a long, bony, elegant face, and was languid and affected in speech and movement. But his lean body was deceptively strong. Most people he knew didn’t know that, or that he could move with killing force if needed, because most of the time he used only his killing wit.
They were different in age, face, and manner. But the two men got along splendidly.
The earl had discovered that the viscount’s care-for-nothing manner concealed a sympathetic heart and a strong sense of justice. He appreciated the viscount’s sense of humor, agreed with his politics, and was aware that the younger man hid his true nature except when with friends. The earl’s own son and adopted sons were among those few, and since he missed his newly wed sons, the earl was glad for the viscount’s company. He found it stimulating.
The viscount thought of the earl as the father he’d not only never had, but never expected to find. He appreciated the older man’s experience of the world, compassion, and quiet wisdom.
And so the viscount was surprised to find the earl in the green room at the theater, because that was where men went after the play to make assignations with the actresses and dancers, most of whom were for sale, or at least for rent.
He raised a thin eyebrow in inquiry.
The earl knew what he was asking. “Miss Fanny La Fey, the star of the play, is an old friend of mine,” the earl said. “I came to congratulate her. Nothing more.”
Leland glanced over at a startlingly bright-haired woman in a gown so flimsy that her modesty was preserved only because of the crush of admirers surrounding her. He raised the eyebrow higher.
“We’re friends from the bad old days,” the earl explained, “She and I met on a distant shore. She’s a rarely determined young woman. I’m happy she also found her way safely back home.”
“Ah!” Leland said. Both eyebrows went up. He hadn’t known that the actress had been in prison.
The Earl of Egremont had been wrongly accused of a crime before he’d come into the title he’d never expected to inherit. He and his son had been sent to Botany Bay. They, and two young men the earl befriended in prison and took as wards, had served their sentences and returned with him when he claimed his title and the vast fortune that went with it. The earl had already made a fortune for himself through investments, and now was one of the
