Page 5 of Nice Earls Do

Kit took a deep gulp from his glass before setting it aside. “I hardly know which question to ask first. I, uh”—another laugh, incredulous—“I did not believe Mrs. Goode to be an actual person.”

“It is an assumed name,” she explained, feeling safe to confess that much. As a girl, Tabetha had never managed to keep secrets from Kit—at least not for very long. But Oliver’s situation demanded her circumspection.

“You—” He hesitated. “You are still Lady Manwaring, then.”

“By courtesy,” she answered, after a moment’s reflection as to what could or could not be said. “My stepson holds the title now. I was widowed four years ago.”

Kit’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Why should you?”

“Surely such old friends may take an interest in one another’s lives?”

It surprised her to discover she’d been in his thoughts. Then again, when news of Kit or his family had made its way to her over the years, she’d been glad enough to get it. And if she had ever thought to herself that it might be strange, even unseemly, for a married woman to follow the affairs of another man, she had told herself it was merely because they were old friends, just as Kit had said.

“But it just so happens that four years ago, I was distracted.” A bitter smile stretched around the rim of his glass. A second swallow drained it. “You see, I’d just inherited...all this.” With the hand holding the now-empty glass, he gestured wide enough to take in his new title, the manor house, and the estate beyond.

She focused her attention on the room in which they sat, with its warm, masculine furnishings and overfilled bookcases. Its comfortableness reflected the man who sat before her in buckskin breeches, a coat softened with years of wear, and an unstarched cravat—a gentleman at home, indifferent to fashion. It was the sort of ensemble that made Oliver twitch, but it suited Kit perfectly.

And much to Tabetha’s surprise, seeing Kit in it suited her.

The years had been gentle with him, despite the signs that he’d been spending a great deal of time outdoors. His golden-brown hair had always betrayed hints of copper after a day in the sun; now it was also sprinkled with silver. His shoulders were as broad and solid as they had ever been, if anything strengthened by the weight of the responsibilities he had been made to bear while still a young man: his widowed mother, his—

“Oh, Kit.” Her wavering breath was loud in the silent study. “I’m sorry too.” She’d just recalled the reason Mrs. Goode had been summoned to Hertfordshire. “Poor Edmund....”

Tabetha didn’t even realize she’d stretched out her hand, but she suddenly found her fingers clasped in Kit’s, which were as warm and steady as she remembered. She wanted to stand and wrap her arms around him, to comfort her friend as she would have done without a second thought, so long ago.

But the very idea made her heart resume its erratic thumping, and she decided it would be safest to stay in her seat.

“I’ve been told he didn’t suffer,” Kit said—meaning, she supposed, to reassure her. But his voice was at once weary and sharp, a reminder that others had suffered, and would go on suffering, in Edmund’s place. “And you? I gather...” He seemed not to know how to frame the sentence he wished to speak. Finally, it tumbled from his lips with surprising bluntness: “Did you decide to take up writing after your husband’s death?”

Tabetha had read through the Guide to Homekeeping twice in the past week, to familiarize herself with the part she was to play. In it, Oliver had been careful to reveal very few particulars of Mrs. Goode’s domestic life, the better to allow readers to identify with her. What would he say to the idea of her as a genteel but impoverished widow, forced to pick up a pen to support herself?

Not, of course, that Manwaring had left her poor—at least, not by any conventional definition of the word.

“That is to say,” Kit went on, “I don’t remember you being particularly interested in housekeeping matters. Before.”

Tabetha managed to disguise her chuckle of agreement by taking another sip of her drink. As a young girl, she’d been notoriously indifferent to anything that smacked of domesticity, preferring rough-and-tumble games with Kit and Edmund to playing with dolls or stitching her sampler. Marriage to a staid viscount had restrained, but not necessarily reformed, her. There had been no Mrs. Goode’s Guide for her life.

“People change,” she said, making herself look him square in the eye as she added, “Lord Stalbridge.”

“In some ways, yes,” he agreed with a wry sort of smile that made fine wrinkles form at the corners of his gray-green eyes. “In others, not at all.”

His expression did nothing at all to quiet her erratic pulse. Or perhaps she should blame the gentle pressure of his fingers...?

Freeing her hand from Kit’s, she rose, placed her glass on the desktop, and smoothed her skirts, determined to behave in a businesslike manner from this point forward. She had come to Ferncliffe for Oliver’s sake, and she would do well to remember it.

“I’m perfectly recovered now. Shall we go upstairs?”

* * * *

Was it ever ungentlemanly to offer one’s arm to a lady?

Certainly, if the offer was made to someone who didn’t require assistance, purely to court her touch.

Nevertheless, Kit offered.

After an almost imperceptible hesitation, Beth laid a gloved hand along his forearm. He didn’t know what fascinated him more—the ways she had changed or the ways she hadn’t. She had always had a pertness, even a hardness, about her. Time, or circumstance, had sharpened her edges even further. But her figure was softer, her curves more generous. And twenty years had not lessened his desire to trace those curves with his eyes...his fingertips...his lips.