Apparently Lord Longstreet was familiar with Leah’s circumstances too, which notion brought no comfort. “So you’ve convinced Lady Longstreet to secure her future by disporting with me,” Darius concluded. “How flattering.”

Longstreet set his drink down with a thump, the first spark of temper he’d exhibited in a quarter hour of fencing. “You should be flattered, by God. Vivian chose you from a set of candidates I selected for her. There were precious few left on the list once I started discreet inquiries, but you were the one she chose.”

“Am I to know why?”

“You can ask her,” Longstreet replied, showing the guile of a seasoned politician. “She’s a damsel in distress, Lindsey, and you have it in your power to provide her a lifetime of security and to preserve a fine old title from the maw of the regent’s bottomless appetite.”

Darius felt relief as insight struck. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You don’t favor Prinny’s politics or priorities, and you’re loathe to see centuries of Longstreet wealth poured onto his side of the scales.”

Lord Longstreet’s brow knitted. “I wouldn’t like that outcome, no.”

“And even less would you like it known you’d schemed with your wife to avoid it by consorting with the likes of me.”

“Shrewd.” Longstreet blew out a breath. “You must see that as much as you desire my discretion, I need yours. I’ve worked for nigh fifty years for the good of the realm, Lindsey, and between the lunatic Americans, the equally mad King, and the greedy, mad Corsican, it hasn’t been an easy fifty years. If word gets out I sent my wife off to some impoverished younger son, like a mare to the breeding shed, then nobody will recall the votes I won, the bills I drafted, the riots I prevented. I will simply be a greedy, unpatriotic old fool.”

Darius reluctantly, and silently, admitted that Lord Longstreet’s reasoning made a peculiar sort of sense. “You don’t mind the old fool part, but the unpatriotic hurts abominably. Again, my lord, I do sympathize, or I would if the nation’s fate interested me half as much as my own, but I cannot help you.”

“You haven’t heard the entirety of my proposal, young man.” Longstreet held out his glass for a refresher, buying himself a few more minutes. Darius understood the ploy and allowed it only because of the pile of unpaid bills silently mocking him from the corner of his desk.

And the other pile in the drawer, aging not half so well as William Longstreet had.

“I’m listening,” Darius said, foregoing any further drink for himself. “For the present.”

Longstreet shoved to his feet in a succession of creaky moves: scoot, brace, push, totter, balance, then pace. “First, you and Vivian must spend enough time together that there is a reasonable likelihood of a child. Second, I’d like you sufficiently invested in the child’s life that you will not, for any amount of money, divulge the facts of his or her paternity.”

“If I may,” Darius interrupted. “The chances are even any child born would be female, in which case your impoverished viscountess is left to support not only herself, but a girl child, which can be an expensive proposition.”

Longstreet’s gaze turned crafty as he propped himself against the mantel. “That would be the usual case, except my title is very old, and only in my great-grandfather’s day was it elevated from a barony to a viscountcy. Nobody has looked at the letters patent in a century, save myself, and while the viscountcy carries a male entail, the barony can be preserved through the female line.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s that old. When the Black Death came through, there was pressure on the monarchy to liberalize its patents, as tremendous wealth was reverting when family after family lost its male line. Mine is one of the few surviving more liberally drafted letters, and thus the barony—and the estate wealth—will be preserved regardless of the gender of the child.”

This scheme was madness—thoroughly researched, carefully considered, potentially lucrative madness. “The barony will survive if there is a child. If I agree to your terms.”

“Stop putting that bottle up, young man. Having heard this much, I think there are terms you’ll agree to, do we apply ourselves to their negotiation in good faith.”

“Good faith? You’re attempting to cheat the Crown, procure the intimate services of a worthless bounder for your lady wife, perpetrate a fraud on your patrimony, and you speak of good faith?”

“You’re young.” Lord Longstreet resumed his seat in another succession of creaks and totters, this time popping a knee joint as well. “You can afford your ideals. Imagine what might befall your family were your father to lose the Wilton title, his lands, his wealth—how might your sisters go on, if not in some version of the oldest and least-respected profession?”

Darius leveled a look at him such that Lord Longstreet flushed and glanced away.

“So you beat your sisters to it,” he surmised. “Your father isn’t just a braying ass, Lindsey, he’s a disgrace to his kind.”

“And yet it’s his line you’ll be grafting onto your own—if I agree.”

It took two hours, the rest of the cognac, and very likely some of the toughest negotiating Lord Longstreet had seen in half a century, but in the end, Darius agreed.

* * *

“William will not be joining us.”

In addition to lustrous dark hair done up in a prim coronet, Lady Vivian Longstreet had a low voice, a contralto, laced with controlled tension.

“I beg your pardon?” Darius succeeded in keeping the irritation from his tone, but only just. This civilized dinner a trois had been one of Lord Longstreet’s terms, and Darius had grudgingly acceded to the older man’s desire to see his wife politely introduced to her… what? Darius couldn’t bring himself to apply the word lover. Stud was too vulgar, if accurate, though worse terms came to mind.

“William is under the weather,” Lady Longstreet said. “May I take your coat? The servants have been dismissed for the evening, and yes, I truly mean he’s feeling poorly. William is capable of diplomatic illnesses, but I’m sure if he told you he would be here, he meant to keep his word. It’s just…”

“Yes?” Darius turned slightly, so she could lift his coat from his shoulders, her touch conveying hesitance, even timidity, as she did.

She smiled slightly and hoisted his coat to a hook in the alcove. “I don’t mean to babble. William is much involved in the Lords, and it tires him. I assured him we’d manage, but if you’d rather reschedule this encounter, we can.”

Begin as you intend to go on.

“We’ll manage.” Darius offered his arm, noting with disinterest—professional disinterest—that Lady Longstreet was quite pretty. He’d put her age at around five-and-twenty, the same as his sister Leah. Her smile was polite, and her countenance was serene.

That serenity brought lovely features into submission—a perfectly straight nose, slanting dark eyes, full lips, and classic cheekbones—when a more animated expression might have rendered the same face arresting.

She was hiding her beauty, maybe even from herself.

He laid his hand over hers where it rested on his sleeve. “My business with Lord Longstreet has been concluded, my lady, leaving only my dealings with you before you can be shut of me.”

“And you’ll be relieved when that’s the case?” She was barely, barely tolerating his touch, for all her calm expression.

Could he be intimate with a woman who disdained to touch even his sleeve? “Now how will I answer that?” He glanced down at her as they made their progress through the house, not sure if he was irritated with her or for her. “If I say yes, I’ll be relieved to complete my obligations with you, you’ll be insulted. If I say no, you’ll think I relish a bargain I, in truth, regret.”

She turned velvety brown eyes to him, her expression curious. “Why?”

Lady Longstreet was brave—martyrs were supposed to be brave—and despite the circumstances, she truly was a lady. The realization made Darius pause, and not happily. He was most comfortable when the women with whom he consorted intimately shared with him a kind of mutual resentment and scorn. They used him, he used them, and each could look down on the other’s neediness and pretend the other party was the more venal, the more vulnerable. Lady Longstreet would not fit the same mold.

Perhaps she wasn’t of any mold.

He resumed the thread of their discussion. “Why what?”

“Why do you regret this bargain? I regret that it can’t be William’s child I bear, but it will still be the child William gave me, in a sense. I can live with that.”

“You’re very sensible,” Darius said as they entered a small dining room. The hearth at one end was blazing, bringing blessed relief from the unheated corridor. The table had been set à la française, with the various dishes covered and waiting over warming lights.

“William is the sensible one,” Lady Longstreet said. “Practical to a fault, his wife used to say.”

“You’re his wife.”

“I meant his first wife,” Lady Longstreet corrected herself without a flicker of irritation. “The woman he was married to for thirty-some years, the woman who bore him two sons. Shall we be seated?”

The table was positioned near the hearth, their two places set at right angles to each other so it couldn’t be said there was a head or a foot to the table. William’s absence allowed that, and Darius had to wonder how honest the older man was with his composed young wife.

Darius seated her and gestured to the wine breathing in the center of the table. “Shall I pour?” The question seemed absurd, and yet, with such a woman, what else was there to do but continue the pretense of civility?