The Heir

chance to sort matters through with Grandmama and Morgan, there is little point in speculating. Shall I leave you gentleman to your port and cigars?”

“I never learned the habit of smoking,” the earl said, his brothers concurring. “Would you perhaps rather join us in a nightcap, Anna?”

“Thank you, no.” Anna stood, bringing all three men to their feet. “While your company is lovely, my eyes are heavy.”

“I’ll light you up,” the earl offered, crooking his arm at her. Anna accepted it, taking guilty pleasure in even that small touch. When they were safely out of earshot, the earl paused and frowned at her. “You aren’t coming down with something, are you?”

“I am just tired.”

“You have every right to be.” He patted her hand, and Anna wanted to scream. She held her tongue though, until they’d gained her bedroom.

“Is this how it’s to be, Westhaven?” She crossed her arms and regarded him as he lit her candles.

“I beg your pardon?” He went on, carefully lighting a candelabra on her mantle.

“I am suddenly a sister to you?” Anna began to pace. “Or a stranger? A houseguest to whom you are merely polite?”

“You are not a sister to me.” The earl turned to face her, the planes of his face harsh in the muted light. “But you are under my protection, Anna, as a guest. You are also a woman who has repeatedly told me my honorable intentions are not welcome. I will not offer you dishonorable intentions.”

“Why not?” she shot back, wishing her dignity was equal to the task of keeping her mouth shut. “You certainly were willing to before.”

“I was courting you,” he said, “and there were lapses, I admit. But our circumstances are not the same now.”

“Because my grandfather was an earl?”

“It makes a difference, Anna.” Westhaven eyed her levelly. “Or it should. More to the point, you are likely to be the victim of another attempted kidnapping in the near future, and your brother is guilty of misfeasance, at the very least.”

“You can’t prove that,” Anna said. But more than fatigue, what she felt was the weight of the earl’s withdrawal.

He walked over to her, hesitated then reached up to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear. “You are tired, your life is in turmoil, and while I could importune you now, it would hardly be gentlemanly. I have trespassed against you badly enough as it is and would not compound my errors now.”

“And would it be ungentlemanly,” Anna said, turning her back to him, “to simply hold me?”

He walked around to the front of her, his eyes unreadable.

“Get into your nightclothes,” he said. “I’m going to fetch you some chamomile tea, and then we’ll get you settled.”

Anna just stood in the middle of her room for long minutes after he’d left, her heart breaking with the certain knowledge she was being humored by a man who no longer desired her. She desired him, to be sure, but desire and willingness to destroy a good man’s future were two different things.

Still, it hurt terribly that while she missed him, missed him with a throbbing, bodily ache, he was not similarly afflicted. She had disappointed him then refused his very gentlemanly offers and now he was done with her, all but the wrapping up and slaying her dragons part.

“You are ready for bed,” the earl said, carrying a tray with him when he rejoined her. “Your hair is still up. Shall I braid it for you?”

She let him, let him soothe her with his kindness and his familiar touch and his beautiful, mellow baritone describing his conversation with his father and the various details of his day. He lay down beside her on the bed, rubbing her back as she lay on her side. She drifted off to sleep, the feel of his hand on her back and his breath on her neck reassuring her in ways she could not name.

When she woke the next morning, it was later than she’d ever slept before, and there was no trace of the earl’s late-night visit.

Anna slept a great deal in the days that followed. Her appetite was off, and she cried easily, something that put three grown men on particularly good behavior. She cried at Val’s music, at notes Morgan sent her, at the way the odd-colored cat would sit in the window of the music room and listen to Beethoven. She cried when her flower arrangements wouldn’t work out, and she cried when Westhaven held her at night.

She cried so much Westhaven remarked upon it to his father.

“Probably breeding.” The duke shrugged. “If she wasn’t one to cry before but she’s crying buckets now, best beware. Does she toss up her accounts?”

“She doesn’t,” the earl said, “but she doesn’t eat much, at least not at meals.”

“Is she sore to the touch?” The duke waved a hand at his chest. “Using the chamber pot every five minutes?”

“I wouldn’t know.” The earl felt himself blushing, but he could easily find out.

“Your dear mother was a crier. Not a particularly sentimental woman, for all her softheartedness, but I knew we were in anticipation of another happy event when she took to napping and crying.”

“I see.” The earl smiled. There were depths to his parents’ intimacy he’d not yet glimpsed, he realized. Sweet depths, rich in caring and humor.

“Mayhap you do.” The duke’s answering smile faded. “And your mother was most affectionate when breeding, as well, not that she isn’t always, but she was particularly in need of cuddling and cosseting, much to my delight. If this woman is carrying your child, Westhaven, it puts matters in a different light.”

“It does.”

“I’m not proud to have sired two bastards”—the duke frowned—“though in my day, these things were considered part of the ordinary course. Times aren’t so tolerant now.”

“They aren’t,” Westhaven agreed, sitting down as the weight of possible fatherhood began to sink in. “I would not wish bastardy on any child of mine.”

“Good of you.” The duke smiled thinly. “The child’s mother is the one you’ll have to convince. Best not fret about it now, though. Things sometimes work themselves out despite our efforts.”

The earl barely heard him, so taken was he with the idea of creating a child with Anna. It felt right: in his bones it felt right and good. She would be a wonderful mother, and she would make him an at least tolerable father.

Papa.

The word took on rich significance, and the earl turned to regard his own sire.

“Weren’t you ever afraid?” he asked. “Ten children, three different women, and you a duke?”

“I wasn’t much of a duke.” The old man snorted. “Not at first. But children have a way of putting a fellow on the right path rather sooner than he’d find it himself. Children and their mothers. But to answer your question, I was fairly oblivious, at first, but then Devlin was born, and Maggie, and I began to sense my own childhood was coming to a close. I was not sanguine at this prospect, Westhaven. Many of our class regard perpetual childhood as our God-given right. Fortunately, I met your mother, and she showed me just how much I had to be fearful of.”

“But you kept having children. Fatherhood couldn’t have been all that daunting if you embraced it so frequently.”

“Silly boy.” The duke beamed. “It was your mother I was embracing. Still do, though it probably horrifies you to hear of it.”

“No.” Westhaven smiled. “It rather doesn’t.”

The duke’s smile faded. “More to the point, you don’t have a choice with children, Westhaven. You bring them into this world, and you are honor bound to do the best you can. If you are fortunate, they have another parent on hand to help out when you are inclined to be an ass, but if not, you muddle on anyway. Look at Gwen Hollister—or Allen, I suppose. She muddled on, and Rose is a wonderful child.”

“She is. Very. You might consider telling her mother that sometime.”

He shifted the conversation, to regale his father with an account of his time spent with Rose. It seemed like ages ago that His Grace had come thundering into the sick room at Welbourne, but listening to his father recount more stories of Victor and his brothers, Westhaven had the strong sense the duke was healing from more than just