* * *

Alice awoke the next morning to see her curtains whipping in a damp breeze. The overcast that had rolled in during the night had let her sleep later than usual, so she hurried through her morning toilette, until a slight sensitivity in her private parts had her blushing and recalling the events of the previous evening.

Ye gods, ye gods… so that was sexual pleasure? That was the great prize given to the married and the naughty unmarried?

She couldn’t imagine sharing so intimately with any other man, and with that insight, she gained some understanding of Ethan’s claim that he could not make love with her unless desire was mutual. She did not want just the glorious sensations, she wanted Ethan. She wanted his arms around her, his voice in her ear, his scent on her skin, his hands stroking her flesh.

She wanted his confidences, his dreams, his hopes, and his rare playful gambits. She wanted his headaches, his extended family in Kent, and his stubborn determination to get her back up on a horse. She wanted not just his lovely body, but his entire heart.

Oh, dear.

Alice collapsed onto the bed and considered what it meant, when she longed for a man to trust her with his heart. This could not be a good thing, not when the man was a confirmed widower who’d endured one miserable marriage for the sake of his children. Not when he was so wealthy the Regent turned to him for financial advice.

Not when he’d been so carefully honest with her, assuring her he was beyond ever remarrying.

Oh, dear. Oh, God. She’d fallen in love with Ethan Grey, and where did that leave her—besides looking forward to the coming night?

Alice had always thought love could only come to her slowly, a gradual shift in emotions from respect to affection to the kind of abiding regard her parents had had. She had never expected this tumult, this drama of the emotions, would befall her.

There was no fighting it. Her feelings were subject to neither reason nor logic, and all she could hope for was to keep her sentiments behind her teeth, where she would not embarrass Ethan with them.

Or herself.

So they would make love tonight, and in the privacy of her heart, Alice would love Ethan too. When he tired of her, her heart would break, but she’d be prepared for that. Her idea of heartbreak had shifted, though.

Heartbreak was no longer a vague, bothersome sense that she’d be unhappy for a while. Heartbreak was worse and better, she decided as she pinned up her hair. When Ethan set her aside, she’d be devastated at the loss of him, but she’d also be richer for having shared with him what lovers shared, even temporarily. It would be enough. It was more than she’d thought life would offer her, and it would be enough.

Sixteen

“How old is Uncle Dolph?” Jeremiah posed the question to his father as their horses walked back to the barn at the end of the one weekly ride that did not include Joshua.

“Nineteen, maybe.” Ethan realized he wasn’t quite sure. “Or maybe eighteen. I don’t know. Why?”

“He’s still at school. He’s been at school a long time.”

“Not so long. Dolph spent only a couple of years at public school, and he’s been up at university for two years, I think. Before that, he was tutored at home, as you and Joshua have been.”

“You went to public school,” Jeremiah said, his tone diffident.

“I did, for a few years, as did your uncles Nick, Beck, George, and Dolph. Do you want to go to public school?”

Ethan’s tone was equally casual, though a cold knife of anxiety sliced at his guts. Children did go away to school as young as six, and Ethan wondered at their parents for allowing it. Was Jeremiah somehow so unhappy he wanted to leave home?

“A young man goes away to school,” Jeremiah said, his gaze even more intent on his pony’s mane, “and you said I’m on the threshold of young manhood.”

“I did say that. Give me your reins, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah looked puzzled but complied, and watched as his father tied the reins to a ring on the front of Waltzer’s saddle.

“Up you go.” Ethan grasped Jeremiah under the arms and lifted him from the pony’s back to the front of Ethan’s saddle. Waltzer paused, adjusted to the new load, and sauntered on while the pony obediently trailed beside the horse.

“You might have asked.” Jeremiah looked down at his pony and reminded Ethan for all the world of Alice Portman when she was displeased with her high-handed employer.

“I might. I’m sorry. Next time I will. What is this interest in public school? Are you ready to leave your papa and strike out on your own?”

“Soon. Joshua should come with me, and he’s still too young.”

“I’m glad he’s too young.” Ethan had one arm around Jeremiah’s waist, which meant he could feel the tension in his son’s body.

“Why would you be glad about that? Miss Alice says we’re growing like magic beanstalks,” Jeremiah said, fiddling with the horse’s mane.

“Why?” Ethan paused and tried to find words to explain the hole in his heart, in his life, in his soul, that would result if his children left his household now. He was just coming to know them, to be a father to them in any meaningful sense, and here his six-year-old—his six-year-old—was calmly suggesting Ethan abandon them to the likes of Stoneham and Hart Collins.

“Because, Jeremiah Nicholas Grey, there is nobody I love the way I love my sons, and I would miss you very, very much.”

Before him, Jeremiah stopped fiddling with Waltzer’s mane. “You would? You’d miss us?”

“Because I love you.” Ethan emphasized the words Jeremiah had tried to ignore. “Because you are my family, and too soon you will grow up and become a young man who wants to make his own way in the world. Then I will have to let you go, but I won’t like it then, either.”

“Even when we’re old, like Uncle Dolph or Uncle George?”

“Even when you’re old like me. I didn’t go to school until I was fourteen, Jeremiah, and then only because my father thought Nick and I should be meeting other boys our age.” This was a lie, but Ethan forgave himself for it before the words had left his lips.

“Fourteen? That’s twice as old as me, and more.”

As I, Ethan thought with a parent’s inherent need to edit grammar. He kept his parental editor quiet and hugged his son instead. “It’s forever from now, and there are plenty of young men who go to university without ever having gone away to school.”

“I don’t want to go,” Jeremiah said on a huge sigh. “Mr. Harold said we ought, because we were an embarrassment and gutterswipes.”

“Guttersnipes. It means orphans or little criminals in the making. Children who have no supervision or manners or home.”

“I have supervision and manners and a home,” Jeremiah said with a touch of defiance. “Mr. Harold was wrong.”

“Very.”

And when Jeremiah might have burdened his father with yet more memories of the execrable Mr. Harold, Ethan chose that moment to tickle his son gently. “Are you ready to return to your own saddle?”

“Not yet. I like it way up here. When can Joshua and I have bigger ponies?”

“Horses, you mean?” Ethan tousled his son’s hair with a gloved hand. “Not for a while. Joshua is a demon on that pony, and I’m frankly scared of what he’d do with a larger mount.”

“Thunder and Lightning are good boys,” Jeremiah declared staunchly. “I wouldn’t want to sell them.”

“So we won’t. This estate can support a couple of ponies who’ve done their share of work.” Ethan did not examine too closely the notion that other children might come along to interrupt Thunder and Lightning’s retirement.

“We don’t have to sell them?” Jeremiah turned to regard his father. “Mr. Harold said the only things more useless than me and Josh were those fat, lame ponies of ours. He said they should go to the knackers, because they were a complete waste of money.”

An accurate description for Mr. Harold. Ethan batted aside the paternal guilt following that sentiment.

“Mr. Harold was likely jealous. Your ponies are first-rate, and you ride them like a pair of Cossacks. And Jeremiah? It’s ill-bred to mention it, so I beg your discretion, but what we do with our wealth is none of Mr. Harold’s damned business.”

“You said damned. I won’t tattle. Do you think Miss Alice will ever canter?”

If Ethan had his way, her heart at least would be galloping that very night. “I don’t know. For her to get on Waltzer, much less to hack out at the trot, took a lot of courage. We should be proud of her.”

“She’s proud of us. She tells us all the time. I like her, even if she makes us do lessons.”

Ethan tolerated another filial inspection and realized Jeremiah had cast one of his subtle lures. “I like her too, Jeremiah. I like her a great deal.”

“More than you liked Mama?” Jeremiah sprung the trap with casual innocence.

“That’s complicated.” Ethan searched for useful truths amid the painful and surprising realities. “I will always treasure your mother because she gave me you and Joshua, but she’s in heaven now, and we are left here to live out our lives without her. I do like Miss Alice a lot, and I respect her. Those are probably the same feelings you have about your mother’s memory.”

“Sorta.” Jeremiah started to braid a hank of mane. “Mama wasn’t always nice.”

“Nobody is nice all the time.”

“She yelled.” Jeremiah shrank back against his father’s chest as he spoke. “She yelled a lot, at you, and at us too.”

“Some people yell.” Ethan tried to keep his tone level, but God above, Jeremiah had barely been out of nappies when his mother had died. Was his only memory of his mother her temper? “It doesn’t mean they don’t love you. I yell. Uncle Nick yells.”