“You could not possibly pay me any greater series of compliments than you just have,” he said. “The man you describe is a paragon, a fellow I’d very much like to meet.”

“See?” Anna nudged him with her shoulder. “You do not think enough of yourself. But I can also tell you the parts of you that irritate me—if that will make you feel better?”

“I irritate you?” The earl’s eyebrows rose. “This should be interesting. You gave me the good news first, fortifying me for more burdensome truths, so let fly.”

“You are proud,” Anna began, her tone thoughtful. “You don’t think your papa can manage anything correctly, and you won’t ask your brothers nor mother nor sisters even, for help with things directly affecting them. I wonder, in fact, if you have anybody you would call a friend.”

“Ouch. A very definite ouch, Anna. Go on.”

“You have forgotten how to play,” Anna said, “how to frolic, though I cannot fault you for a lack of appreciation for what’s around you. You appreciate; you just don’t seem to… indulge yourself.”

“I see. And in what should I indulge myself?”

“That is for you to determine,” she replied. “Marzipan has gone over well, I think, and sweets in general. You have indulged your love of music by having Val underfoot. As to what else brings you pleasure, you would be the best judge of that.”

The earl turned down a shady lane lined with towering oaks and an understory of rhododendrons in vigorous bloom.

“It was you,” he said. “Before Val moved in, I thought it was a neighbor playing the piano late in the evenings, but it was you. Were you playing for me?”

Anna glanced off to the park beyond the trees and nodded.

“It seemed somebody should. Nanny Fran said you have a marvelous singing voice, and you play well yourself, but you’d stopped playing or singing when Bart died.”

“Life did not change for the better for anyone when Bart died.”

They pulled up to a pretty Tudor manor house, complete with fresh thatch on the roof and gleaming mullioned windows. Pericles blew out a horsy breath that sounded suspiciously like a sigh, but the earl did not climb down.

“Before Bart left,” the earl said, fiddling with the reins, “he told me he wouldn’t go if I forbade it. That was the word he used… forbid. He asked my permission, and knowing his temper and his penchant for dramatics, I had misgivings about his joining up, but I did not stop him. I could see that battling the duke day after day was killing them both. Bart was getting wilder, angrier, and the duke was becoming so bewildered by his cherished heir it was painful to watch.”

“If you had to do it again, would you still give your permission?”

“I would.” The earl nodded after a moment. “But first I would have told my brother I loved him, and then, just maybe, he would not have had to go.”

“He knew,” Anna said. “Just as you know he loved you, but he was coping as well as he could in a situation where every option came with significant costs.”

A considering silence stretched between them, while Anna marveled that the man beside her was so given to introspection and so adept at hiding even that.

“Let’s put away this difficult topic,” the earl suggested, “and look over the property, shall we?” Because the place was uninhabited, it fell to them to lead Pericles to a roomy stall in the carriage house cum stable and see him tucked in with hay and water.

They made their way to the back terrace of the house, where the earl set down the wicker hamper he’d carried from the gig, and bent to loosen a particular brick from the back stoop. He produced a key from under the brick, opened the back door, and gestured for Anna to precede him.

“I like what I see,” Anna said, folding her shawl on the kitchen counter. She turned to put her gloves on top of the shawl, only to find the earl had been standing immediately behind her.

“As do I,” he said, looking directly down at her. His eyes were steady, even searching. Looking into those eyes, Anna admitted she’d been deceiving herself. She was a good girl, but at least part of her was here to be wicked with him—maybe just a little wicked by his standards but more wicked than Anna had ever wanted to be before.

He made no move to touch her, though, and so she frowned until insight struck: He was waiting for her to touch him, to do as she pleased.

He merely stood there, hands at his sides, watching her, until she closed the distance between them, slid both hands around his waist, and rested her forehead against his collarbone.

“Is this all you want, Anna?” He brought his arms around her and urged her to lean into him. “Merely an embrace? I’ll understand it, if you do.”

“It isn’t merely an embrace,” she replied, loving the feel of his lean muscles and long bones against her body. “It is your embrace, and your scent, and the cadence of your breathing, and the warmth of your hands. To me, there is nothing mere about it. ”

She remained in his arms, feeling the way his hands learned the planes and angles of her back, feeling his mind absorb and consider her words.

“Let’s explore the house,” he suggested, “then poke around the grounds and outbuildings before it gets too hot.”

She nodded, feeling a hint of wariness.

“Anna.” He smiled faintly as he stepped back. “I am not going to maul you, ever. And I did bring you out here for the purpose of evaluating this property, not becoming my next mistress.”

“Your next…?”

“Badly put.” The earl took her hand. “Forget I said it.”

She let him tow her along out of the kitchen and through the various pantries, cellars, laundries, and servants’ quarters on the ground floor. Not until he led her up the stairs to the main floor and she was standing beside him in the library did Anna find the words she needed.

“This was the former owner’s pride and joy,” the earl said, “and I must admit, for a country library, it is a magnificent room.” The ceilings were twelve feet at least, with windows that ran the entire height of the room on two walls. Two massive fieldstone fireplaces sat one on each outside wall, both with raised hearths and richly carved chestnut mantels.

“It’s such a pretty wood,” the earl remarked, stroking a hand across one mantel. “Warmer to the eye than oak, and lighter in weight, but almost as strong.” Anna watched that hand caressing the grain of the carved surface and felt an internal shiver.

“I would never be a man’s mistress, you know.” She sat on the hearth and regarded him. Somewhere in their travels through the house, he had taken off his jacket and waistcoat, and turned back his cuffs. He had dispensed with a neckcloth altogether in deference to the heat, but the informality of his attire only made him handsome in a different way.

“Why not?” The earl didn’t seem surprised nor offended, he just sat himself beside her on the cool, hard stones and shot her a sidewise glance.

“It isn’t my precious virtue, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Anna wrapped her arms around her knees.

“The thought had crossed my mind you might set store by a chaste reputation.”

“Of course I do.” She laid her cheek on her knees and regarded him with a frown. “Though only up to a point. Being a mistress has no appeal, though, because of the money.”

“You eschew good coin?” the earl said, and though his tone was casual, Anna detected a hint of pique in it.

“I most assuredly do not, but how can a man accept intimacies from a woman who is paid to pretend she cares for his attentions? It seems to me an insupportable farce and as degrading to the man as the woman.”

“Degrading how?” He was amused now, or at least diverted.

“If a woman will allow you liberties only if you pay her,” Anna explained, “then it’s your coin she treasures, not your kisses or caresses or whatnot.”

He was trying not to smile now. “Most men care only for the whatnot, Anna. They trouble themselves little about what they parted with or put up with to procure it.”