William’s expression was saintly, a definition of the absence of guile, which suggested strongly to Darius that guile was at work. Vivian’s gaze was trained on the parquet flooring—no help would be forthcoming from her. Knowing it to be a Worse Idea Yet, Darius winged his arm.

“Come along, my lady. The ballroom is indeed stifling.”

Without so much as a backward glance at her husband—should Darius be pleased or alarmed?—Vivian laced her fingers over Darius’s arm.

“Do you think William is pale?” she asked when they’d left William to banter politics with a crony. The honest concern in her tone was a bracing reminder of the realities.

Vivvie—Vivian—was married to William Longstreet and cared for him sincerely. “I’ve met his lordship on only two occasions. He didn’t strike me as any more pale tonight than he did months ago.”

They exchanged no more words until they’d reached the relatively quiet terrace overlooking torch-lit gardens.

“The moon is about to come up,” Vivian said. “Shall we find a seat?”

Darius gave up cataloguing what an ill-advised turn the evening was taking and escorted Vivian to a stone bench in a shadowed corner of the terrace. Shadows were appropriate for them, and always would be.

The thought steadied even as it frustrated.

“How do you fare, my lady?”

She scuffed her dancing slipper against the flagstone, and though they were sitting, she did not disentangle her arm from his. “I am growing fat, Darius Lindsey.”

“You sound pleased enough with this state of affairs.” She sounded smug, in fact. Wonderfully, femininely smug.

“I am…” She turned her face up to the stars. “There are not words, Darius.”

Mr. Lindsey. He needed to be nothing more than Mr. Lindsey to her.

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’m a little worried, of course. Things can go wrong.”

Darius stroked his fingers over her knuckles. If she’d been worried, he’d been nigh cataleptic with concern. “You will have the best doctors. William assured me of this.”

“It’s a bigger worry than that. I worry the child won’t be healthy, that I won’t know what to do, that I’ll drop him, that he won’t like the names William chooses.”

Darius wanted desperately to pursue that topic—what would his child be called? He hadn’t the right. But he did have the right to offer Vivian comfort, even as his heart broke for what he could not offer her.

“You will be a wonderful mother, Vivvie. You’ll be a lioness, and all will know that your child has his mother’s love and devotion.” Or hers. A daughter with Vivian’s smile and her tender heart… Darius snapped that thought off like an errant daisy growing among thorny roses where it had no business being.

He’d apparently found the right thing to say, though. Vivian went silent, but perhaps—just perhaps—she leaned a little more heavily against his arm.

He’d taught her that. The thought was both a comfort and a torment. While he pondered the subtleties of the torment, the moon crested the horizon.

“The light of a full moon is so beautiful,” Vivian said. “There’s peace in it, benevolence. It comforts one just to behold it.”

She was trying to tell him something, something sweet, painful, and well intended. “It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in several months. I thank you for showing it to me, my lady. I would have missed it otherwise.”

A lean. A definite lean of a full, soft breast against his arm. He cherished the torture of it. “Give me your hand, Darius.”

He’d taken off his gloves in anticipation of playing some whist. Her excuse for being barehanded was a mystery. He let her take his left hand in her right, but nearly shot off the bench when she settled his hand, quite firmly, low on her belly.

“I’m fat, getting fatter by the day.”

He said nothing, too stunned by the shape of her. She wasn’t fat—of course she wasn’t—but where her waist had been was a soft bulge, a change, a whisper of movement.

“Good God. The child has quickened.”

She kept her hand over his. “In the past couple of weeks. I lie down at night, and for half an hour, I simply marvel at the sensation. It’s like… a soft breeze fluttering my insides.”

The little breeze came again and again. The feeling at once unmanned him and made him want to conquer armies barehanded for the woman beside him. He wanted to go down on his knees, to bow his head, to pen sonnets and ballads and proclaim them from every street corner.

“I am happy for you, Vivvie. Profoundly, indescribably happy.” Not enough, but a truth, nonetheless. He brought her fingers to his lips, offered her a kiss, and withdrew his hand.

“I wanted you to be happy too, Darius.”

So she’d put William up to this outing, engineered a stroll on the patio, and utterly ambushed Darius’s best intentions. He loved her for it, even as he knew the rest of his life wouldn’t be adequate for him to recover from the emotions her sharing of happiness had engendered in his breast.

* * *

Vivian had composed all manner of foolish speeches once she’d decided Darius ought to know his child was thriving in the womb.

She and Darius could be friends—she was friends of a sort with some MPs who shared William’s politics.

She and Darius could be cordial—she was an earl’s daughter; he was an earl’s son. No one would remark it, much.

He might call on William just to be polite, and Vivian would pour. She’d poured a thousand cups of tea in aid of lesser ends, such as the good of the realm and the glory of old England.

Only to find, when Darius said not one word but merely shared a moonrise with her—the most beautiful thing he’d seen in months—that Darius had the right of it. They could be nothing cordial, friendly, or polite to each other. He might have the savoir faire and stamina for it; she did not.

William had said a little infatuation was acceptable, to be expected even, but part of Vivian’s wonder at her pregnancy had to do with becoming a person William knew not at all. For the first time, she had a privacy in her marriage to rival what William had in his memories of Muriel.

She respected his privacy now more than she had, and William extended to Vivian the same courtesy. He was all those things Vivian had tried to tell herself Darius could be—cordial, friendly, polite—which was fine. Vivian loved her husband, was grateful to him, and wished him only the best.

But for Darius Lindsey, the father of her child, her feelings were so much more complicated, inconvenient, and precious. She would accept every instance when their paths crossed and treasure the pain and delight of each meeting, for in Darius Lindsey, she’d found not just a man to respect and appreciate, but a man whom she could love.

The moon was clearing the horizon, spreading light in all directions even as its size seemed to diminish, when a woman’s laughter sounded out in the shadowed garden.

Beside her, right immediately beside her, Vivian felt Darius stiffen. Before he could make some polite comment to reestablish the picket lines, Vivian slipped her arm from his and rose.

“Shall we go in, Mr. Lindsey? The best of the moon’s display is over, and I would not want to cause my husband undue concern over my absence.”

His eyes widened, suggesting Vivian might have overstated her point. “I would never want Lord Longstreet to worry unnecessarily. A lady is always safe in my care.”

Safe. The slight emphasis on the word made it clear Darius would not use tonight’s shared moment to encroach in the future—which ought to be a relief rather than a cause of sorrow. The laughter came again from the garden, a raucous taunt, reminding Vivian that she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for in this rendezvous.

And much less.

“Shall we go in?” Darius managed to put some pugnacity into the way he offered her his arm. In no time at all, Vivian was back at William’s side, and Darius had disappeared into the smiling, bejeweled crowd.

“How fares Mr. Lindsey, Vivian?”

William’s question was kindly, his expression suggesting concern for Vivian—and even some for young Mr. Lindsey.

“He is all that is correct, William.”

William patted her hand and said nothing while the orchestra took up a gavotte. When the knot in Vivian’s chest was threatening to choke her, William said, without glancing down at her, “I’ll have the carriage brought around.”

Twelve

Blanche Cowell was loose on the grounds—Darius would recognize her laughter anywhere—and all Darius could think was that he must not allow her to see him with Vivian. By the time he emerged from the safety of the card room, Vivian was nowhere to be seen, heard, or sniffed.

And neither was Leah, until he spotted her leaving the supper buffet on the arm of none other than Baron Hellerington.

The old goat must have come late and kept out of sight until he could accost his prey. As Darius made his way around the periphery of the ballroom, Hellerington parted from Leah with a bow and a damp, lingering kiss to her hand.

“Are you all right?” Darius peered down at Leah in concern. She had the indefinable stillness of a woman coping with internal tumult. “You look pale, and you’ve been thinking too hard.”

“Hellerington is going to talk to Papa.”

“God.” Darius ran a hand through his hair. “It would have to be him.”

“He’s titled, and he has some blunt, Dare.” Leah was tapping her foot, though not in time to the music. “And he’s desperate, which are the requisite qualities for any match Papa finds for me.”