"Loretta believes that a husband would hamper her career as an actress," Gabe said, his mouth a hard line.
"She let you warm her sheets, but she wouldn't take a ring? She must be stark, raving mad."
"Not mad, but young."
"How young?"
Gabe's mouth grew even tighter. "I had assumed she was at least three and twenty. It seems that she is only nineteen years of age."
Rafe gaped at him. "What the hell did you do? Steal her from under her father's roof?"
"Absolutely not. Her father was a wealthy burgher who left her his fortune. She was raised by an aunt, but the moment Loretta turned eighteen years of age and inherited control, she set up her own household."
"In Cambridge?"
"In London. She has a fierce passion for the stage."
It seemed his brother had fallen prey to a woman of little morals and less family. He tried to make the question delicate. "Are you quite certain that the child is…"
"She is mine. And she lives with me." Gabe swung around to face Rafe fully. "Loretta had no more wish to be a mother than to be a wife. Unfortunately, I am responsible for Loretta losing her place at the Royal Theater at Covent Garden. And a well-attended lead role in an amateur production might well result in a permanent position at one of the London theaters."
"That's where I come in," Rafe said, grinning.
Gabe didn't look amused. "Just because I'm named after an archangel doesn't mean that I couldn't clout Raphael to the ground if I wished."
Rafe laughed aloud. No one had offered to clout him since Peter died. Just so had Peter looked, about two minutes before he would make a concerted effort to pound him into the pavement. Not that a brother one has known for a mere twenty minutes would presum-ably lose control on such brief acquaintance, but the very thought of it made Rafe grin.
"We can have the theater in ready shape in a matter of a month or two."
Gabe's jaw was rigid. "I would never have approached you except this happened," he said fiercely. He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes shadowed, his face beautiful as that of an archangel himself, his body furious with rage.
Rafe couldn't seem to stop smiling. "I seem to remember the housekeeper nattering on about rain on the stage. The floor might have to be replaced."
"I regret putting you to the trouble." His eyes were bleak with distaste. Whoever Gabe's mother was—and she must have been quite a woman to inspire the former Duke of Holbrook's devotion—she had raised her son as a gentleman. Gabe had the pained look of every English gentleman caught in an untenable situation.
"You'll have to bring the baby here," Rafe said. "Believe it or not, I have a brand-new nursery upstairs. What's her name?"
"I most certainly will not!"
Rafe folded his arms over his chest. "You will. Unless you and my niece are here, I won't order work on the theater."
"I'm in the midst of the Easter Term."
"Don't tell me you're actually planning to talk to a student," Rafe scoffed. "Oxford can't be so different from Cambridge, and I think I only met a proper professor once in my years there."
"Why would you want us here?"
"You're my brother," he said, grinning. "My brother and his daughter will live at Holbrook Court."
"Your illegitimate brother and his illegitimate child," Gabe said grimly. "And I won't live here; I have a perfectly respectable house in Cambridge."
"Do I look as if I give a damn about your respectable house or my reputation?"
A grin quirked the corner of Gabe's mouth. "No. But I wouldn't wish to separate my daughter from her wet nurse, and the woman has children of her own in Cambridge."
"What is my niece's name? And don't tell me—" But he saw the truth of it in his brother's eyes. "You didn't!"
"I couldn't help it," Gabe said, and he was starting to laugh now as well.
"Poor child," Rafe said mournfully. "She has a crazed papa. Lucky for her, she will have me as a mitigating influence."
Gabe rolled his eyes.
"Poor little mite," Rafe repeated. "So she's Mary, is she?"
And, at Gabe's nod, "Heavenly. That's just heavenly."
Chapter 3
Lessons in the Art of Widowhood
September 14, 1817
On the road from Scotland
There are people who travel well. They make long journeys with cheerfulness and fortitude, watching endless leagues spin by the window with equanimity. Imogen was not one of them. Sitting in a carriage gave her far too much time to think, and thinking tended to turn into brooding. Should she remarry? She'd spent so many years longing for Draven that she felt far more unmoored than one presumably should after the demise of a two-week marriage. It wasn't just a two-week marriage. It was the five years of adoration that preceded their marriage. It was the hundreds of times she'd traced the name Lady Imogen Maitland on a scrap of foolscap, and the thousands of times she'd as-sured her sisters that she would marry Draven… someday.
It was a fact that she had designed her entire adult life around Draven Maitland. And now he was gone, sometimes she felt as if there was no Imogen without him.
Marry? Marry whom? And why?
Draven had been gone a year, and it was only now that such questions seemed to be leaping before her, unhampered by that burning grief that kept her in tears and anger for the past twelve months.
But the discomfort of being thrown on the mercy of her own thoughts was not a scrap on the discomfort suffered by her poor chaperone, Lady Griselda Willoughby.
Griselda had climbed into the carriage in Scotland with her crisped curls tucked under a beautiful little bonnet. She was starched, plump, and charming. Now, a fortnight later, she turned pale at the very sight of the carriage. She was no longer starched, much thinner, and charm was in short supply.
"I just don't understand what is wrong with your stomach," Imogen said, ringing the bell so that the coach could pull over for the second time that morning.
"I've always had these problems," Griselda said. She was leaning against the wall, her face a delicate green. The color of spring leaves that have just unfurled, Imogen decided. "How long have we left on this benighted road?"
"Just one more day," Imogen said, tucking a rug around Griselda's knees.
"Just look at me," Griselda moaned. "I've lost my shape entirely."
"Well," Imogen said tentatively, "there are a great many people who find a slim figure desirable given the current fashion in slender gowns."
"Naught more than female fools," Griselda moaned. "Men like curves and they always will. I do try to reduce sometimes, but not—not in this drastic fashion!"
"But Griselda," Imogen said, searching for a way to put her question delicately, "are you… interested in what men think?"
"I haven't been measured for a coffin yet," Griselda said, not opening her eyes.
"Of course not!" By Imogen's calculations, her chaperone was around thirty years old: not young, but not old either. And certainly not too old to remarry. "But you haven't shown any interest in marriage, to this point. Your husband has been gone for quite a while, hasn't he?"