“No, I couldn’t and wouldn’t,” the earl said. “Because refusing wasn’t an option for you or me.”
Both men fell still.
“Would you like us to leave?” Daisy asked.
“Good God, no!” Leland exclaimed. “Finding me with a room full of young beauties may well speed her on her way. So please stay. You brighten my day. I’m a most unnatural son,” he added because of the shocked look on Helena’s face. “And she, a most indifferent mother. Still, if I greeted her with exclamations of profound joy, she’d believe me about to depart this life. We haven’t the warmest relationship,” he explained. “And everyone knows it.”
“Well, I can understand that sort of thing,” Daisy said with a shrug. “I loved my father, but I always knew he didn’t feel the same about me. He didn’t dislike me,” she added hastily. “Or treat me badly. He just didn’t think of me at all, is what it was.”
Leland narrowed his eyes against the blaze of color that surrounded her where she sat, in a pool of sunlight at the side of his bed. Or was she the light that dazzled him? he wondered. She was radiant; her hair, her gown, her frequent smile, her laughter.
Again, he wondered why she was attaching herself to a middle-aged recluse and his wounded friend, when she could have all London at her feet. It was true that with her past she might not attract a man who was a stickler for propriety. But this was the nineteenth century, after all. She was wellborn and well funded. Her wit and beauty, the novelty of her, could lure any normal male to ask for her hand and yearn for the sumptuous rest of her to follow as soon as possible.
Dangerous things to be thinking while lounging in bed, Leland realized, feeling his body stirring in reaction to his thoughts. He struggled to sit up straighter, but the high featherbed defeated him, embracing him and sinking him deeper every time he tried to move. “My lord,” he pleaded when he couldn’t manage it, punching one of the pillows behind him. “See how helpless I am. At least let me sit in a chair again.”
The earl lifted an eyebrow. Leland subsided.
“I don’t want your blood on my hands, literally or figuratively,” the earl said.
“At least tell the viscountess that I’ll see her another day,” Leland said. “I feel far too vulnerable this way. She hasn’t seen me in bed since the day I was born.”
The earl shook his head. “I can’t. She’s already on her way.”
“Damn!” Leland said, and then quickly said, “I meant ‘drat,’ ladies. Mark it down to my distress and forgive me.”
Daisy wondered what he was apologizing for, until Helena spoke up. “It’s nothing, my lord,” she said. “Or at least nothing we never heard before.”
The viscount apologized for saying “damn”? Lord! Daisy thought, what would he have made of how they talked back in the colony? Her eyes met the earl’s and they smiled at each other, obviously both struck by the same thought.
“My dear Leland,” a cool voice exclaimed from the doorway. “So it was true! You were injured, attacked in public by a cutpurse.”
“Hello, Mama,” Leland said in an equally cool voice. “No saying it was a cutpurse. It could have been anyone with a grudge against me, as you always said might happen if I didn’t reform my way of life.”
His mother paused in the doorway, looking at him. Here, in the unrelenting light of day, Daisy could see that the years had left their mark on what was probably once flawless beauty. But signs of age-the few wrinkles at the eyes and around the corners of the mouth, and the gray in the golden hair-didn’t detract so much as point up the fact that she was still remarkably handsome. And cold.
From her voice to her smile, Viscountess Haye was a model of composure. She didn’t look like the sort of female who had once kicked over the traces and run off with a Gypsy. Or like the kind who had conducted countless affairs afterward. Daisy couldn’t imagine this woman showing any kind of passion. But then Daisy remembered a murderess she’d known who had poisoned three husbands and yet looked as though she was incapable of pouring a guest tea that was too hot.
Daisy saw that cool blue gaze fall on her, and looked away. The woman made her feel guilty, and she wasn’t sure of what.
“Mrs. Tanner, good morning,” the countess said as she stripped off her gloves and came into the room. She glanced at Helena, but only gave her a brief nod, because servants weren’t acknowledged, and if Helena wasn’t precisely a servant, she was in a paid position, and so, of no account.
Then that piercing blue gaze found the earl, and the countess smiled. “My lord,” she said. “Thank you for taking Haye in after the incident. It was very kind of you.”
“No kindness involved,” the earl said. “Leland’s a friend, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But, please, have a seat and stay as long as you wish. Mrs. Masters, if you’d be kind enough to come with me? I’ve a few questions to ask you about just that incident that I ought to have asked before.”
“I’ll come, too!” Daisy said, springing up from her chair.
“Please stay,” Leland said, “Or my mama will think she’s frightened you away.”
“Indeed,” the viscountess said. “Do stay, Mrs. Tanner. We hardly had time to get acquainted before, and I see you are already a fixture in my son’s life.”
“Lud, no!” Daisy blurted. “I mean to say, I’m not. That is, I’m an old friend of Geoff’s, I mean, the earl’s, and since the viscount’s a friend of his, we’re thrown into each other’s company a lot, is what it is.”
Daisy’s face flushed. Gracelessly said, and not what she meant, it made the viscount laugh and the viscountess’s gaze grow sharper.
“Absolutely true,” the earl said with a chuckle. “And just like Daisy to say it that way. Come along, Mrs. Masters. We’ll be back in no time.”
“Don’t look so anxious,” he murmured to Helena as they left the room. “I’ve just a few questions, because the man from Bow Street said everyone present that night should be interviewed, and I wanted to spare you the ordeal of having him do it.”
Once they were gone, Daisy sat back, feeling uneasy and out of place. Surely mother and son needed some private time together. So she sat quietly, trying to disappear by her silence.
The viscountess sat upright in her chair and put her hands in her lap. She turned toward Daisy. “So you are in England to stay now, Mrs. Tanner?”
“Yes,” Daisy said, wondering why she didn’t ask her son how he felt before she chatted with his visitor.
“I see. And where will you live?”
“I’m staying at Grillions, on the park, for now.”
The countess’s brilliant blue eyes grew larger; that was the only way Daisy could read any reaction. “Surely you don’t mean to stay in a hotel forever?”
“Well, no. But I don’t know where I want to settle yet.”
“Mrs. Tanner will probably settle down with a husband before long,” Leland said. “So there’s little sense in her buying or renting a house now.”
“I see,” his mother said, without looking at him. “Have you anyone in mind, my dear?”
“My lady!” Leland said with an exasperated laugh. “Bow Street wouldn’t ask her such personal questions.”
“Would they not?” the viscountess asked. “So what
Daisy sat up straighter. The lady might be elegant, and far above her touch, but her conversation was presumptuous. She herself had been raised to act like a lady, and if the countess wasn’t behaving like one, she would.
“Bow Street hasn’t asked me anything yet,” Daisy said calmly. “If they do, I’ll tell them all. The thief that stabbed your son was after my purse, and when the viscount here rushed to protect me, he got stabbed. I wish he hadn’t had to; it wouldn’t have happened if I’d my wits and remembered I had my knife about me. But not my barker. I usually carry one, too, but I’d left it home that night. That won’t happen again.”
“A
“And a pistol,” Leland said with amusement. “Don’t worry about me, Mama, if you are, that is to say. I’ll be perfectly safe now that I’ve got a bruiser like Mrs. Tanner to protect me.”
Daisy laughed. The countess didn’t. Daisy wondered if she could.
“Of course I worry about you, Haye,” the viscountess said without a trace of emotion. “I understood the wound was not serious. At least that’s what the message the earl sent to me said. So why then are you still abed?”
