His butler’s cat’s feet drew to a halt and a muffled tap sounded against the door. The marquess looked at his watch. Damn, Spiverson was early. “Come in, Rabbell.” He set his empty coffee cup onto the table.
“Your grace,” Rabbell said, looking for the world like a Cornish piskey with his spiky red hair and his pointed nose.
The marquess sighed. “I know, Rabbell. Please tell Spiverson I’ll join him shortly in the estate room. Oh see to it he gets himself dried off. We don’t want him croaking from an inflammation of the lung.”
“It isn’t Spiverson, your grace,” Rabbell said, and gave his master a big impudent grin. “Oh no, it’s the earl of March and here he is right on my boot heels.”
“St. Clair,” Jason said, rising. “Good lord, man, whatever sends you out on this dreary morning?”
“You might well ask, Jason,” the earl said, shaking his friend’s hand. “Actually, I expected you to still be in bed, it’s where any sane man belongs this morning. Bloody nasty weather.”
“My man of business that has me up and about at this ungodly hour. Come, Julien, join me in a cup of coffee.”
“It’s your Spanish blend, I trust. Ah, yes it is.” He took a cup of coffee and drank deeply. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me the recipe for this blend for a Christmas present?”
“If I did, you wouldn’t have reason to visit me anymore.”
The earl just smiled and sat himself down. “How did you find Italy, Jason?”
He wanted to say that it was naught but a place, that he could have traveled to Russia and it wouldn’t have made a difference, that he’d simply wanted to exile himself. But he said instead, “Too warm for my tastes, if you would know the truth. One cannot fault the beauty of Florence, and yet, you know, I could not escape the feeling that I was somehow treading on an overripe fruit.”
“A peach perhaps,” the earl said. “Italy reminds me of peaches.” The earl knew that Jason’s extended trip was the result of his wife’s death. He and Kate had been in Paris when Jason’s wife had died in childbirth. It was odd, but Jason had never invited either of them to meet his wife during the months before her death. Since Jason was a friend, he wasn’t about to ask. But he wanted to. He was frankly tired of worrying about his friend.
“Your forbearance is alarming. Come, Julien, I won’t call you out if you speak your mind, which I can see you’re dying to do.”
“What would you have me say, Jason? That I’ve heard stories of dissolute behavior? That you took every woman who looked your way, and given that you’re not a troll, many did? I want to know the truth, damn you.”
The marquess was very still. He then smiled, a slow bitter smile that made the earl frown deeply at him. He said after a moment, his gaze fastened on the orange glowing embers in the fireplace, “I have an excellent notion of the drivel spouted from the gossips’ mouths. The truth, then, Julien. I did go to the devil himself. I am very lucky that I didn’t get the pox. It was an interesting experience, particularly hearing sex words I didn’t understand. I laughed many times, and yet” He paused, his spoken thought left unfinished.
The earl said slowly, “And yet, Jason, it was no balm for the soul.”
The earl was exactly right, only for the wrong reasons. Jason just shook his head. “Enough of this. More truth, my head aches from too much brandy and I have the most unpleasant notion that Spiverson will keep my nose in his damnable account books until the afternoon. Now you will tell me what you’re doing in Berkeley Square. Surely your mission wasn’t just to see if I still lived or not.”
“No, I have other ways of knowing whether your breathing is steady,” the earl said. “Actually, I was on my way to Tattersall’s. I want to purchase a sporting phaeton for Kate, and unfortunately I must rise with the birds, if I want to keep her in the dark. It’s a surprise for her.” The earl sat forward in his chair. “Congratulate me, Jason. Kate is pregnant.”