Chapter 4
He could not suppress the warmth that suffused his entire body as he gazed down at Winn cavorting with his three boys on the back lawn. More snow had fallen last night and from its looks, it was sticky, powdery stuff to make excellent snowballs.
The idea to marry Winn was preposterous to so very many. It was against all the rules of high society. Bettington knew it. Had known. Debated it for the past two years since his wife’s death. He’d even voiced his dilemma with his best friend, Wharton—and with his mother.
Wharton had said, “Society does not sit at your table, laugh with you in your parlor or rejoice with you in your bed.”
His mother was even more adamant. “You love her? Then marry her. She cares for you? Even better. You have three sons, and we know they bring you joy. It is time you had a wife who does the same.”
Bettington flinched at that statement. His mother did not mention that his wife may have given him his youngest child who was not truly his.
Society had certainly whispered about the countess’s wayward ways, but he had not cast her out.
Wharton said he should have. Mama had turned a black eye to the woman who came to his bed to cover her own promiscuous ways.
He had refused to make a spectacle of their marriage and had allowed her to remain with him. But they were not a couple who appeared anywhere together. The last year of her life when she became so ill with her rashes and fevers, she did not wish to leave the house anyway.
Now she was gone. He had waited the requisite year during which he had rebuilt his own confidence in himself as a nobleman, an estate manager and as a man with ambition and a clear view of how to gain his happiness.
He had spent the next year planning how to make a new life for himself.
His first step had been to admit he did not simply fancy the old barrister’s beautiful hazel-eyed daughter who was his country house housekeeper.
He loved her. Biding his time, he had gone often to the Grange and innocently enjoyed her company.
Most of that was spent discussing household matters, but increasingly, it had included their discussion of his boys.
Then last year when they walked in his rose garden and she had spontaneously kissed him in the meadow, he knew she cared for him.
He began to plan to ask her to marry him.
Save for the political matter this morning demanding his attention, he too would be wrapped up tight against the cold with the four of them out there catching snowflakes. Snow ‘bakes.’
He chuckled. His youngest Tio would call them that. The little boy had such trouble with pronouncing words. But he’d grow out of that soon enough.
Bettington knew he himself would not grow out of his desire for the lady who danced like a sprite with Tio and his older two sons.
Would that he could persuade her to dance into his arms. And into my bed.
So, how, Walter? The lady doth protest so much. How will you do this?