Trent shook his head. “Just like that. We’re fretting over her being dragged into Hellerington’s clutches one day, and she’s marrying Bellefonte’s heir the next.”

“I like him.”

“You know him?”

“Some. Not as much as I should, but Leah trusts him, and that has to count for a lot.”

“How can you tell?”

Darius cocked his head at his brother. “She was wrapped around him like seaweed, Trent. You had to have seen that.”

“I saw him whispering at you in the corner and looking alarmingly ferocious when he did.”

Nick Haddonfield looking ferocious was a sight to give any sane man pause. “He was suggesting, as a wedding present to our sister, I leave off associating with certain women of questionable character. Reston delivers a very convincing scold.”

Trent delivered a very convincing look of fraternal disappointment, which suggested Darius’s public encounters with Lucy and Blanche were being noticed.

Bloody, sodding hell.

“I will not waste my breath echoing Reston’s sentiments, but I will point out that our situation with John will be considerably complicated if Leah marries Reston. He’s not stupid, Dare, and if he’s part of the family, sooner or later, he’ll pop in on you at Averett Hill.”

Darius stopped walking. “Good God.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He’s my bloody neighbor.” Darius blew out a breath. “Not two miles up the lane, and closer as the crow flies. Reston, that is, down in Kent. This is going to get tricky, Trent.”

Trent kicked at a loose piece of cobblestone, sending it skittering and bouncing down the lane. “I hate tricky. Perhaps he’ll be at the family seat now that his papa is sticking his spoon in the wall.”

Darius resumed walking at a more brisk pace. “Not Reston. He hops around like a great flea, and I’ve seen him often enough on this or that huge horse to know he’ll be in evidence around the neighborhood. As will Leah.”

“Give it time,” Trent said, his tone grim. “They’re not married yet, and even when they are, we’ll want to see how they go on. Reston’s no saint. He’ll be decent about John, and he’ll keep his handsome, smiling mouth shut.”

“We could send John to Crossbridge.” Trent’s estate, one where he’d spent precious little time in recent years, and more distant from Town and all its gossip than Averett Hill. The notion of sending John away to strangers left Darius feeling sick in the pit of his stomach.

“I’ll write to my staff there,” Trent said, though the way he wrinkled his nose suggested the idea of moving John had no appeal to him either.

“It’s just a thought. There’s no need for any hasty maneuvers yet.” And, Darius reminded himself, he had a letter to write too.

* * *

Darius tried to write the letter, the brief note to Vivian, and it kept escaping him. Instead of a simple, innocuous apology, he’d trail off into admissions that he missed her, worried for her, regretted their encounter, but didn’t regret it either.

He stared at the little bottle of scent she’d left behind. He sniffed it repeatedly, and he missed her.

He worried for his brother, took Emily riding, and missed Vivian. He kept to his rooms lest Lucy and Blanche have more opportunities to accost him in the broad light of day, as lately they’d grown miserably bold and uncaring of appearances. It was as if they had put a collar and leash on him in truth.

Reston’s papa died, and Darius considered popping out to Kent to attend the funeral, just to get away from London. He discarded the notion because Leah needed privacy with her new husband, not Darius hovering at an awkward time.

And the truth was, Darius could never again be with Vivian the way he had been in Kent. The pain of that was sobering and checked his need to spend time with her again. So the silence between him and Vivian lengthened, until Darius was at a bookshop, looking for a gift to present to Emily on the occasion of her seventeenth birthday.

He caught Vivian’s scent first, then the sight of her, back turned to him, but it had to be Vivian. He knew the nape of that neck, knew the curve of that spine, and the soft, muscular swell of those glorious female buttocks.

“Vivvie.”

He’d spoken softly, for there were other patrons elsewhere in the shop. She went still at first, so he said her name again, and what a pleasure that was, just to say her name out loud. “Vivvie, look at me.”

She turned slowly and looked at him, and over his shoulder and everywhere else.

“I’m alone,” he assured her, closing the distance between them slowly, as if she might spook and bolt did he move too quickly. Except she was visibly, wonderfully pregnant, and bolting was likely beyond her. “You’re well?”

He stood as near to her as he dared. Seeing her up close was intoxicating, sending currents of pleasure and longing out over his limbs and down into his gut.

“Say something, Vivvie. Please.” He’d been paid to beg, but now, here, in this public place, he had to struggle not to go down on his knees. “Laugh me to scorn, ring a peal over my head, kick me anywhere you need to, but please don’t—” He fell silent.

Her gaze held his, and in her eyes, Darius read a wealth of conflicting emotions: wariness, hurt, confusion, and—thank you, Jesus and the holy saints—longing.

“I’m well, Mr. Lindsey. And you?” Her hand settled over the bump where her waist used to be, and he had to touch her. He reached out and traced his fingers over her knuckles where her hand rested over her tummy.

“I’m…” Miserable. Miserable for want of her, for worrying about her, worrying about Trent, dodging the female predators he’d invited into his life, fretting over John… “I’m glad to see you. I’ve wanted to explain, to apologize for our last encounter.”

“You needn’t.” She turned from him, as if to study the shelf of books at her eye level.

“I need to,” he corrected her and leaned in close enough to whisper, close enough to inhale her fragrance. “The woman I was with would hurt you and enjoy doing it.”

Lucy and Blanche would hurt Leah, Trent, John, anybody Darius was foolish enough to allow within their ambit.

Vivian shook her head, and when she looked up at him, her eyes were glistening.

“I can’t understand it, Darius.” She stared at the books again. “I can’t understand what the attraction of such a woman is to you, but I must conclude you have a talent that serves to provide you coin, and where you exercise that talent matters little.”

“It’s not like that,” Darius protested in a whisper. “It wasn’t like that.”

She pierced him with a gimlet gaze, and Darius slipped his arms around her. This was dangerous, stupid, and utterly irresistible. He had to touch her, had to feel her embrace again. For a moment, she was stiff and resisting, but then, ah, then…

Vivian’s hands slid around his waist, and she pressed her face to his sternum. “I tell myself not to miss you. I should not miss you.”

“Hush.” He held her, rubbed her back, and breathed her in with his every sense. Her shape had changed, delightfully, so the baby rested between them, and he knew a flare of desire for her, even there, in public, with her upset and him needing to soothe her. He noted it, noted that it was the first bodily stirring to visit him since the last time he’d seen her, and then firmly ignored it.

Though he needed to kiss her, to soothe himself by kissing her. She startled a little—he remembered those little shocks and how they felt radiating through her body—and then she groaned softly into his mouth and kissed him back.

Ye gods and little fishes… He’d never kissed like this, with all the longing and tenderness he possessed, with all the apology, despair, and hope. He wanted to be better for her, but he was only Darius Lindsey, and she was married to William Longstreet, and so the kiss was a prayer too, for forgiveness and for time and for…

The kiss was not about any sexual passion on his part, though for her he had that in abundance. As he gloried in the sheer feel of her, what welled up in Darius’s soul was a passionate wish for her happiness, for her well-being, and that in some way, he might contribute to both.

“Vivian?” A shrill female voice carried from over the next set of shelves. “Where have you gotten off to, my dear?”

Slowly, Darius let her go, feeling as if a cold wind had pierced the first sunshine his soul had seen in months.

“I have to go.” Vivian rose up and kissed his cheek. “Stay well, Darius.”

“You too.” He watched her go, but it was the hardest thing he’d done. Harder than dealing with Lucy and Blanche, harder than handing Leah off to her giant viscount, harder than knowing John was lonely and inadequately supervised at Averett Hill. She moved off with that rolling gait common to women approaching the later stages of pregnancy, and Darius imprinted the vision of it in his imagination.

“Vivian, really, you shouldn’t go off like that by yourself,” he heard a woman complain. “What if I’d wanted to purchase something?”

“My apologies, Portia.” Vivian’s voice was softer. “One gets distracted by all that’s on offer. Have you found something to take back to Longchamps with you?”

The women moved off, while Darius kept to his niche in the back of the store, trying to think his galloping emotions into submission and letting the gladness in his heart and mind subside. He’d seen her, he’d held her, they’d spoken, and his cup was running over with relief. He waited until they’d left the shop then waited another fifteen minutes lest he run into them on the street.

He didn’t wait quite long enough though, because as Darius quit the bookshop, a purchase for Emily in his hand, he saw Vivian and her companion emerging from the shop across the street. He couldn’t help but smile like an idiot when their gazes met fleetingly across the distance. He was still smiling a moment later when a voice at his elbow snapped him out of his reverie.