Alaric eyed the narrow shaft of sunlight slowly working its way across the room and letting him know there were much better things to do outside if only he dared get out of bed. He huffed out a sigh of self-pity and gloomily counted out the least number of days he could spend in this old-fashioned, unexciting bedchamber before he dared risk defying orders and felt even worse. ‘Best go to sleep again and while away the time that way, Stratford,’ he ordered himself, ‘and make sure you do not dream of a sleepy-eyed siren who wants you as urgently as you want her this time.’ If willpower could get him well and out of here and Juno happy with the right companion to help her face the world, he had best march it out right away.
Marianne saw the doctor out of the front door, waved a distracted farewell then sat down on one of the ancient oak benches in the grand entrance porch with a heavy sigh. There was nothing she could do to keep Lord Stratford in bed and safely out of the way now all danger of him suffering lasting damage if he stirred had been officially pronounced over and done. She hardly had time to sit and dream of an uncomplicated life without any viscounts in it when she heard the sound of His Lordship’s uneven footsteps on the stone floor behind her.
She got up to eye the man with disfavour and tried to ignore the skip in her heartbeat at seeing him fully dressed and almost his arrogant self again. He was easily as handsome as the devil and could be every bit as dangerous if she let herself be beguiled by him. ‘I thought you were supposed to use a stick,’ she told him grumpily.
‘Find me one and I will.’
‘Stay there, then,’ she ordered him sharply and went to raid her late great-uncle’s store of them in his still-untouched study. Tempted by the mischievous image of a lord hobbling about the place with the aid of a roughly fashioned one from a country hedgerow, she snatched up a silver-mounted gentleman’s walking cane Uncle Hubert must have kept for best instead, before Lord Stratford limped in here in her wake. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the cane at him as she turned round to march back into the hall and found him only a few steps behind her. ‘Do you never stay where you are put?’ she asked crossly. She would never see him as a rich and entitled gentleman if he kept getting so close she could almost feel him breathe.
‘Not if I can help it,’ he said unrepentantly, swirled his new prop with his good hand and nodded approvingly as if he was surprised about not being given a hedge stick as well. ‘Now tell me what is to do here?’
‘Nothing as far as you are concerned,’ she told him with a frown—what was a still-injured viscount intending to do in another man’s house?
‘I never could abide doing that.’
‘Me neither,’ she said unwarily and saw him raise his eyebrows at such heartfelt agreement when they argued over most things.
‘Perhaps we should stroll about the ground floor of your brother’s house and take a look at what you Yelvertons laughingly call a garden. I need some exercise, you see, the doctor said so.’
‘He said a little gentle walk would do your ankle no harm, not that you should stamp about the place ordering everyone about and getting in the way.’
‘You do not know that I will,’ he objected quite mildly and held out the elbow of his good arm for her to hold.
She placed her hand on it before her head could order the rest of her not to be so witless. ‘I know you have been fretting for something to do and I heard you and Darius arguing about it while he was shaving you this morning,’ she admitted.
‘Did you, now—eavesdropping, Mrs Turner? How very unbecoming in a lady.’
‘I told you, I am not—’
‘And I believe I told you that you are very much a lady, like it or not,’ he interrupted before she could make her usual disclaimer.
‘And Lord Stratford’s word is law?’ she carped, mostly because she did not like being ridden over roughshod and a little bit because she was far too conscious of him walking at her side. She could feel his firm muscles flex under her fingertips and there was this silly sense it was right to walk at his side and argue over what should happen next and how they were to bring it about.
‘With you about to disagree I very much doubt it, but on important matters it is as well to be firm from the outset.’
‘And if you say I am a genteel widow I shall be one whether I like it or not?’
‘Precisely, so, as your brother and Miss Grantham seem determined to marry the moment the banns have been read, where are you planning to hold the wedding breakfast?’ he said as if that was her sorted out so now it was time for the next item on his list.
‘You two seem to have been confiding in one another like a pair of ageing spinsters.’
‘We are the only males in a houseful of females, so we men must stick
