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Season.”
    Lord Pelham winced while Mr. Gascoigne threw back hishead and laughed. “A hit, Ede,” he said. “Come, you must admit it.”
    â€œShe was new to town,” Lord Pelham said, scowling, “and had a body to die for. How was I to know that she was married? You two may find the idea of being discovered in bed by a husband and in the act, so to speak, to be uproariously hilarious, but I did not and do not.”
    â€œIn truth,” Mr. Gascoigne said, one hand to his heart, “I feel for you, Ede. The timing was wretched. He might at least have had the decency to wait in the shadows until you were properly—or improperly—finished.” He threw back his head and laughed again. Fortunately they were beyond the confines of the village street and in progress up the oak-lined driveway that led to Bodley House.
    â€œWell,” his friend said after pursing his lips and deciding against taking up the gauntlet—after all, he had been putting up with this ribbing for several weeks now, “I am not the only one forced to rusticate, Nat. Shall I drop the name Miss Sybil Armstrong onto the breeze?”
    â€œWhy not?” Mr. Gascoigne said with a shrug. “You have done so often enough lately, Ede. A Christmas kiss, that was all it was. Beneath the mistletoe. It would have been churlish to have resisted. The chit was standing there deliberately, pretending she had not noticed either it or me. And then brothers and fathers and mothers and cousins and uncles and aunts—”
    â€œWe see the picture with painful clarity,” the viscount assured him.
    â€œâ€”coming through doorways and walls and ceilings andfloors,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “All looking at me in expectation of an imminent declaration. I tell you both, it was enough to put the wind up a fellow. Make that a hurricane.”
    â€œYes, we already have on more than one occasion before today,” the viscount said. “And so you descended upon me, the two of you, like a pair of frightened rabbits, and I am expected to rusticate with you and miss the Season myself.”
    â€œUnfair, Rex,” Mr. Gascoigne said. “Did we say anything about you missing the Season and all the young hopefuls and their mamas? Now, did we? Tell him, Ede.”
    â€œWe offered to keep Stratton warm and lived in while you were gone,” Lord Pelham said. “Come, you must admit it, Rex.”
    The viscount grinned. “It serves you both right,” he said, “that my sister-in-law invited us all here and that I decided we would come rather than stay at Stratton and be dull. And it serves you right that the village appears to boast only one looker and that she fancies me.”
    There was a chorus of protests, but they were incoherent and quickly silenced by their arrival at the house. They dismounted and handed their reins to waiting grooms and proceeded to help the ladies down from the carriages.
    She certainly
was
a looker, Viscount Rawleigh thought, though she was no young girl and looked rather too genteel to be a milkmaid or a laundry maid or someone else who might be tumbled for a few coins. She had been standing in the garden of a small but respectable-looking cottage. The odds were high that there was a husband to go along with that cottage and to lay claim to that beauty.
    A pity. She was definitely a beauty, with her dark hair and regular features and creamy complexion. And she had a pleasing figure, neither too thin nor too voluptuous. Unlike most men of his acquaintance, he did not favor voluptuous women. Neither was she all crimped and curled and frilled. She allowed her beauty to stand on its own merits, unassisted by art. And her beauty had many merits.
    Of course, she was a bold woman. His eyes had found her when she was nodding to Clarissa. He had not failed to notice, then, how her eyes had passed over Eden and Nat before coming to rest on him. She had smiled and curtsied,