“Fie, milady . . . there’s not a man alive who’d be too much for you to manage.”

“I don’t want a man I’d have to manage. I’d like a civilized one who can manage himself.” Phoebe reached over to a patch of wild chamomile and plucked a blossom. Rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger, she inhaled the sweet apple-ish scent. Glancing sideways at the other woman, she added quietly, “Besides, you haven’t forgotten what Henry asked of me.”

“No, milady. Nor have I forgotten that he asked it when he was in his last fading. You’d have promised anything to ease his mind.”

Phoebe felt comfortable discussing Henry with his old nanny, who had loved him from the first day of his life to the last. “Henry gave careful thought to my future,” she said. “He saw the advantages of a match with Edward, who has a fine reputation and a gentlemanly nature, and will set a good example for the boys while they’re growing up.”

“A fine shoe often pinches the foot.”

Phoebe gathered more blossoms to make a tiny bouquet. “I’d have thought you would approve of a match between me and Henry’s cousin. Edward is so very like him.”

“Is he, milady?”

“Yes, you’ve known him since he was a child. He’s very much like Henry, only without the quirks.”

Despite Edward’s relatively young age, he was a gentleman of the old school, courtly and soft-spoken, a man who would never dream of making a scene. In all the years of their acquaintance, Phoebe had never once seen him lose his temper. She wouldn’t have to worry that he would be unfaithful, or cold, or thoughtless: It simply wasn’t in him.

It wasn’t difficult to envision being content with Edward.

The difficult part was trying to imagine sleeping with him. Her mind couldn’t seem to conjure it except in an unfocused way, like watching shadow puppets.

When it came to West Ravenel, however, the problem was exactly the reverse. The idea of sharing a bed with him made her mouth go dry and her pulse race with excitement.

Troubled by the direction of her thoughts, Phoebe wrapped a stem around the little chamomile bouquet and gave it to Nanny. “I should go see what Mr. Ravenel and the children are doing,” she said lightly. “He probably has them playing with knives and sulfur matches by now.”

She found West and the children on a low bank of the stream, all three of them muddy and disheveled. Stephen was perched in West’s lap, his white linen smock positively filthy. They appeared to have made a project of stacking flat river stones into towers. Justin had used his stick to dig a channel in the sandy silt and was transferring water from the stream with his cupped hands.

Phoebe’s brows flew upward. “I took a rock away from the baby,” she asked West, “and you gave him a dozen more?”

“Shhh,” West said without looking at her. A corner of his mouth twitched as he continued, “Don’t interrupt a man while he’s working.”

Stephen clutched a flat stone with both hands, guiding it to a stack with wobbly determination. He pressed it on top of the other stones and held it there while West gently adjusted its position.

“Well done,” West said.

Justin offered Stephen another stone, and Stephen took it with a grunt of enthusiasm. His small face was comically serious as he maneuvered the stone to the top of the stack. Phoebe watched intently, struck by how excited and interested he was in the project.

Since the death of the father who’d never seen him, she had sheltered and coddled her youngest child as much as possible. She had filled his world with soft, pretty objects and endless comfort. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might want—or need—to play with rocks, sticks, and mud.

“He’s going to be a builder,” West said. “Or an excavator.”

“Lucky Stephen,” Justin said, surprising Phoebe. “I wish I could have a job someday.”

“Why can’t you?” West asked.

“I’m a viscount. And they won’t let you quit even if you want to.”

“A viscount can have another job as well.”

Justin paused in his digging to look up at him hopefully. “I can?”

“Perhaps if it’s one of the honorable professions,” Phoebe interceded gently, “such as diplomacy or the law.”

West sent her a sardonic glance. “His grandfather spent years running a gaming club in London. As I understand it, he was personally involved in its day-to-day management. Is that on your list of honorable professions?”

“Are you criticizing my father?” Phoebe asked, nettled.

“Just the opposite. Had the duke allowed himself to be hamstrung by the expectations of nobility, he probably wouldn’t have a shilling to his name.” He paused to adjust the pile of stones as Stephen stacked another one. “The point is, he ran the club, and ended up a duke all the same. Which means when Justin comes of age, he can choose any occupation he likes. Even a ‘dishonorable’ one.”

“I want to be a geologist,” Justin volunteered. “Or an elephant trainer.”

Phoebe looked at West and asked indignantly, “And who will look after the Clare estate?”

“Perhaps Stephen. Or you.” He grinned at her expression. “That reminds me: tomorrow I have to do some bookkeeping. Would you like to take a look at the estate account ledgers?

Phoebe hesitated, torn between wanting to chide him for putting ideas in her son’s head, and wanting to accept the offer. It would be enormously helpful to learn the estate farm’s accounting system, and she knew he could explain it in a way she could understand.

“Would we be alone?” she asked warily.

“I’m afraid so.” West’s voice lowered as if he were relating something scandalous. “Just the two of us in the study, poring over the lascivious details of income and expenditure estimates. Then we’ll move on to the really salacious materials . . . inventory . . . crop rotation charts . . .”

The man never missed an opportunity to mock her.

“Yes,” Phoebe said wryly, “I’ll join you.” She pulled two handkerchiefs from her pocket. “One for Stephen’s hands,” she said, giving them to him, “and one for Justin.”

“What about me?” West asked. “Don’t you want my hands to be clean?”

Phoebe fished another handkerchief from her bodice and gave it to him.

“You’re like a magician,” he said.

She grinned and returned to Nanny, who was tidying the interior of the pram. “We’ll go back to the house now,” she said briskly. “Don’t fuss when you see the boys: they’re both filthy but they’ve had a splendid time. Did you happen to see where the cat went?”

“She’s under the pram, milady.”

Phoebe crouched to look beneath the vehicle and saw a pair of amber eyes gleaming in the shadows. The cat crept from beneath the pram with the toy horse in her mouth and came to drop it in her lap.

Phoebe was amused and a bit touched by the cat’s obvious pride in the offering. The toy was no longer recognizable, the leather shredded and most of the stuffing removed. “Thank you, my dear. How very thoughtful.” After tucking the toy in her pocket, she picked up the cat. For the first time, there were no needling claws as the creature settled in her arms. “I suppose we’ll have to keep you until we leave Hampshire. But you’re still not a house cat, and you can’t go to Essex with us. My plans are fixed . . . and nothing will alter them.”

Chapter 17

“There’s nothing wicked about you, except your kisses.”

Ever since Phoebe’s astonishing whisper in his ear, West had been in a most peculiar state. Happy. Miserable. Off balance, fidgety, hungry, hot. He woke repeatedly in the middle of the night, his blood clamoring for morning.

It reminded him of the days when he used to drink himself into a stupor and regain consciousness in a dark room, bewildered and groggy. Not knowing the day, the time, or even where he was. Remembering nothing, not even the pleasures of gross self-indulgence that had put him there.

He sat at the long table in the oak-lined study, with stacks of ledgers and document folios in front of him. It was one of his favorite rooms in the house, a compact rectangular space lined with bookshelves. The floor was thickly carpeted, the air agreeably scented of vellum, parchment and ink. Daylight poured through a large window filled with a multitude of glittering antique panes, each no bigger than his hand.

Usually he was happy to be sitting here. He liked doing the accounting; it helped him understand how the estate was doing in every aspect. But at the moment his usual interest in the world around him—people, land, and livestock, the house, the weather, even food—had narrowed down to Phoebe.

He needed to be either right next to her or very far away from her. Anything in between was torture. Knowing she was in the same house or somewhere on the estate, somewhere reachable, made every cell in his body ache to find her.

When West had seen her so unexpectedly yesterday morning, he’d been jolted with an intense feeling of happiness, pleasurable on the surface but painful several layers down. She had been so beautiful there by the stream, as flowerlike as the wild irises on the banks.

Of all the mistakes in his life, and God knew there had been many, the worst had had been kissing her. He would never recover from it. He could still feel her head in his hands, and the softness of her lips against his. Twenty years from now, his fingers would still be able to shape the exact curves of her skull. Every sweet kiss she’d given had been like a promise, one hesitant leap of faith after another. He’d forced himself to be careful, gentle, when he was dying to crush and devour her. It had felt as if his body had been made for no other purpose than to pleasure her, his mouth to stroke her, his hardness to fill her.

As for what Phoebe might think or feel, West had no illusion that his desire was reciprocated. Not fully, anyway. If there was one thing he was good at, it was gauging the level of a woman’s interest in him. There was liking and attraction on her side, but it didn’t come close to matching his. Thank God. She had enough problems as it was—she didn’t need to add him to the list.

“Here are the latest banking and investment statements,” came his brother’s voice. Devon walked into the room with a document folio and dropped it on the table in front of him with a smart thwack. “So far, Winterborne’s advice has paid off well, especially concerning the railway shares and commodities.” He pulled a chair back and sat with his legs stretched out before him. Contemplating the tips of his polished shoes, he commented, “The only blot on the portfolio, as usual, is the Norfolk estate. Still losing money.”

A house and land in Norfolk had been among the various properties Devon had inherited along with the title. Unfortunately, the past three earls had neglected the maintenance of the estate, as they done with everything else. Most of the fertile fields had gone to rough grass, and the elegant Georgian country house had been closed and abandoned. “There are only five tenant families left,” Devon continued, “and we’re paying more in annual taxes than we’re taking in. We could sell the property, since it’s not entailed. Or . . . you could do something with it.”