LITMIR.BIZ

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wishes, Luke,’ Chloe told him, and Tom thought he knew what his friend had meant at the beginning of all this about enjoying watching the next on the list dance about at Virginia’s bidding because he knew his task was safely over.

      He felt Polly next to him and the enormity of the changes in his own life caught him up in wonder, that he should be so other than how he had thought he was back then and that Polly should love him anyway.

      ‘So who is he?’

      ‘That is not for me to reveal.’

      ‘Me,’ Peters’s voice rasped from his own dark corner of the vast old vehicle as it rumbled to a stop, and the flares and noise of another great rout spilled out on to the streets around it. ‘Confound it, but she picked me for some reason best known to herself.’

      ‘I’m quite sure she had a good one,’ Chloe said soothingly, and Tom felt his Polly lean forward to ask more and ran a distracting hand over her pert derrière now shadows and the flurry of disembarking covered up his need to touch her as often as he could get away with it.

      ‘Enough, love, it’s his job to work through the next few months as best he can. We have our own lives to work on for our next fifty or sixty years together.’

      ‘True, but I can never thank your godmama enough for sending you back to Dayspring Castle this spring, Tom,’ Polly said with such certainty in her voice he had to swallow back an unmanly lump in his throat.

      She had done so much damage to the Marquis of Mantaigne’s light-hearted indifference to the rest of the world he hardly recognised himself in Polly Trethayne’s besotted husband, but the very thought of having missed out on this new life of theirs made him realise how deeply indebted he was to Virginia for making him return to the castle he’d sworn never to set foot in again as long as he lived.

      ‘True, and if I hadn’t loved her before I would have to now, love, for she’s turned all I ever swore not to do on its head. If only I’d come back when I came of age instead of ordering the place to fall down without me, we could have been happy for years by now.’

      ‘If you hadn’t left Dayspring empty, we would never have gone to live there in your absence, you idiot,’ his loving wife chided as Tom sprang out of the carriage to hand down his lady before any other rogue could do it for him.

      ‘There you are, you see, Peters? I have a lifetime of scolds and humility to look forward to,’ he said smugly as he stood back for Luke to echo his own determination not to let any other man lay a hand on his wife tonight and hand Chloe down from the grand old coach.

      ‘I look forward to observing it from afar, my lord,’ the supposedly quiet young lawyer told him solemnly.

      ‘If you think you can get away from Farenze that easily you’re about to discover your error. Fellow’s like a limpet. Polly and I will call our first son after you, then you won’t be able to deny our acquaintance either.’

      ‘Frederick, wasn’t it?’ Polly asked, looking as if she was trying hard to like the idea, and Tom considered the notion with apparent seriousness.

      ‘Peter?’ he suggested, thinking that sounded a fair enough name for a future marquis and the son he’d once sworn never to have. He caressed Polly’s long fingers as they walked up the steps to the next grand town house on their list unashamedly hand-locked. ‘It would keep the boy’s feet on the ground to have a good solid name to remind him he’s not one of the lords of Creation.’

      ‘He will have me for that,’ Polly reminded him with a radiant smile as they joined the tail of guests waiting to be introduced to their host and hostess for the next hour or so and yet another blushing daughter recently launched on the marriage mart.

      ‘How true,’ Tom replied with a mock grimace at the idea of being humbled for his own good for the next fifty years or so. ‘Perhaps we’d best call him after a great warrior after all then. It sounds as if the poor lad could need encouragement.’

      ‘Even if I thought you were serious, my lord, there’s no need to do either on my account,’ Peters told him with an uncomfortable glance around another glittering ballroom that told Tom he would rather be almost anywhere else, but he’d been drawn into that Farenze Connection old Trethayne had referred to so scornfully against his will and felt some sort of obligation to support the rest of them tonight. ‘Those are not my real names,’ he added as drily as if discussing some obscure point of law with his fellow lawyers.

      ‘An alias?’ Tom asked with raised eyebrows and tried to ignore his wife’s frown and shushing gesture as he challenged his latest brother-in-arms.

      ‘We all sail under false colours in some ways, don’t you agree, my lord?’ the man challenged him back, and Tom looked at himself at the beginning of his quest and decided the man was right.

      ‘Perhaps, but some of us not quite as deliberately as others. Are you the black sheep of the family then, cast adrift for some youthful sin I’m quite certain you won’t tell us about?’

      ‘I could be,’ not-Peters said tightly as they approached the head of the receiving line, and delighted whispers began to break out in another overcrowded ballroom like ripe corn chattering together on a stir of summer hot air. ‘I could be their worst nightmare,’ he added so low nobody else but Tom and Polly could hear.

      ‘Or their favourite dream,’ Polly argued. ‘You never know what the next three months might bring you, but I’m very glad Tom’s brought him to me. Perhaps you should go back to them and find out if they really think themselves better off without you rather than deciding for them?’

      ‘And perhaps I should do the decent thing and stay away,’ he replied with a bleak certainty even Tom found rather chilling for a man he’d come to respect and like, if he could get through the rigid self-control Peters used to fend off the world.

      ‘Whatever you should or shouldn’t do, you’re at Virginia’s mercy for the next season and I wish you joy of it,’ Luke put in with a grin after they had got through the surprised greetings and hasty congratulations of their hosts and moved out into the ballroom beyond. ‘I certainly intend to enjoy the fruits of my labours to the full,’ he added with a wicked smile at Chloe.

      ‘Cocksure braggart,’ she chided softly enough so only they could hear her, despite the stars in her eyes.

      ‘Guilty,’ he admitted brazenly and whisked her into the next dance to show the polite world he only had eyes for his wife and intended to ignore all those dreadful rumours that the Farenze curse had struck again.

      Dark and dangerous Lord Farenze himself had been captured and spellbound beyond diversion and now, horror of horrors, there was a rumour going about the ballroom that the Marquis of Mantaigne had wed the magnificent creature he refused to let go long enough to even be introduced. Society, or at least the young and hopeful female part of it, let out a long sigh of disappointment and readjusted its expectations of making a brilliant marriage or taking a dazzlingly handsome lover with that particular gentleman.

      ‘So you see, Peters, for I don’t imagine you’re about to gift us with the use of your real name, you are in danger of being made happy despite your best intentions to be miserable,’ Tom told him and dragged his own lady onto the dance-floor in his friend’s wake before Polly could protest at leaving her brother to be guided through the avidly curious throng by Virginia’s next hero.

      ‘He’ll guard your eldest lamb as if he’s the only heir to a kingdom, never fear, love,’ Tom whispered as Polly watched her eldest brother grin at the neatly dressed lawyer and follow him to the groaning refreshment table.

      ‘I don’t. Mr Peters has a very safe pair of hands and Toby is far more grown up than any of the pampered sons and heirs these people are accustomed to. If they try to pump him for details, he’ll very likely to tell them some wild and improbable story just for the fun of it.’

      ‘Aye, and I can’t help liking him for it.’

      ‘Neither can I,’ Polly admitted with a chuckle that

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