SEPTEMBER

Neil read the letter twice, just to make sure, then tossed it back on the table with a snort of discontent. Verity looked up from buttering Annie's toast.

"Bad news?"

"More or less."

"Richard's not ill, is he? That's the second letter he's sent you in two weeks."

"He's... well he's not ill. Though he might be out of his mind." Neil drained his coffee without tasting it. "He's married her."

Verity dropped the knife with a clatter on the floor. "What!? Oh drat! There's butter everywhere!"

To Neil, that seemed less important than the news the letter had brought, but somehow it was cleaning up butter that occupied the next ten minutes of his life. Once that was done, it was time for Annie to be sent to the nursery again. Normally, Verity would go with her, but today she stayed behind in the breakfast room with Neil.

"Did he really marry her?" she asked, coming close and making a fuss of smoothing the shoulders of Neil's coat. "Oh, Neil, I hope— I hope he'll be happy."

"Happy!?" Neil was confounded by the notion. "Oh, so do I but—"

"But you don't like her." Verity nudged him gently. "You are going to write to congratulate him, aren't you?"

"Should I?" Neil asked bitterly. "He didn't invite us to the wedding. He didn't even have a wedding — or just barely. Nine o'clock in the village church on a Thursday, with no one to attend but a gaggle of tenant farmers!"

"That sounds quite romantic, really." A smile twitched on Verity's lips and Neil's anger faded. "He must really love her."

"I hope so." Neil looked into his wife's eyes a moment then pulled her into his lap and kissed her. "But oh God, if she hurts him I will—"

"—If." Verity drew back reproachfully. "Give her a chance, Neil."

But, thought Neil, it was easy for Verity to say that — Verity had never met Laura.

* * *

"Neil has sent his congratulations," Richard said, rather stiffly. Laura looked up from her own letter — ever since the news of her marriage had got around, acquaintances whom she hadn't spoken to in years were writing to congratulate her.

"Should I write back and thank him?"

"He's not happy about it." Richard sighed. "I knew he wouldn't be, but I didn't think it would be this bad, listen — 'as you refused my earlier advice, I shall neither waste ink nor risk offense by offering more, but content myself with sending my regards to her ladyship and my best wishes for your happiness'. He must have cribbed it from a book of manners."

"Give him time," Laura said, her heart sinking. "I know he never loved me, but he does love you. He'll come around."

"The post-script says he can't contain his surprise with how events turned out," Richard grumbled

"We were a little abrupt," Laura pointed out.

"That's not what he means. He warned me about marrying you months ago. Said you'd be a mistake, or something along those lines. Honestly, back then, I agreed with him."

Laura flinched. Richard leaned over the breakfast table to take her hand.

"It didn't take me long to realize I was wrong," he said. "You're not a mistake. You're wonderful."

OCTOBER

"I've been thinking," Elizabeth said as she did the flowers in Farthingdale's study. "It's not such a bad thing after all."

Her husband looked up from his newspaper. "Isn't it?"

"I mean, they certainly were improper about it, and tongues are wagging, but all in all, I think he might have done a great deal worse."

"Oh, indeed," Lord Farthingdale agreed. "One can always do worse than one gets, my lady."

"And there will have to be a child out of it sooner or later, with any luck, a son first. She's not very young, but a way off from thirty yet."

"A son would be very good," Lord Farthingdale said. "It's always nice to have a boy."

Elizabeth nodded. "I might have to write to them. Perhaps I'll invite them down for Christmas — they won't come, but if they've any sense they'll be flattered by it."

"Excellent," Lord Farthingdale said promptly; he hated visitors. "You send them my regards too, Lady Farthingdale. That will be very proper, won't it?"

"Perhaps in the post-script," Elizabeth said, to keep him in his place, and swept from the room to write the letter.

Once she was gone, Farthingdale chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment, then readjusted his newspaper and searched for his place. It occurred to him briefly that he hadn't the faintest idea who or what Elizabeth was talking about, but he had long since ceased caring about his wife's intrigues, and shrugged it off.

* * *

"Elizabeth is rather pleased with us," Richard remarked as they lay in bed one night. Laura raised her head from his arm.

"Why bring her up now, Rich?" she said sleepily. "I was very comfortable, lying here and thinking of nothing but pleasant things."

"She sent me a letter this morning," he said. "I'd forgotten about it until now."

"You have a very strange mind," Laura said reprovingly, rolling to the edge of the bed.

"Probably." He kissed her wrist. "Don't go."

She paused, half-way out of the covers.

"Don't go," he repeated. "I want to wake up tomorrow with my wife in my arms."

Slowly, hesitatingly, Laura lay back down. He circled his arms around her, aware of the sudden tension in her body. To put her at ease, he told her about the letter.

"She was very congratulatory. Told me that on reflection she'd come to believe that marrying you was a good decision for me, for the Armiger family, and for the Court of England too. Invited me down to Kent for Christmas to show her my new wife. I think she wants to be friends with you."

"Oh no," Laura retorted. "She wants to be friends with the Countess of Albroke."

"And that's you. Because I'm the Earl of Albroke, and you are my wife."

"You know what I mean." The tension in her body suddenly relaxed. "I really like it when you say that."

"What?"

"When you call me your wife."

NOVEMBER

"It's five hundred pounds," Miss Dalrymple said, through a mouthful of ginger cake. "How much you owe me."

Lady Roynor sniffed. "I don't owe you, Margaret. Lord Albroke did not abandon Lady Laura. He married her. We neither win."

"I win," Miss Dalrymple said, swallowing the cake. "I never bet he'd abandon her. I bet she would no longer be his mistress, and she's not. She's his wife."

Lady Roynor's toad-like eyes slowly blinked.

"I wrote it down," Miss Dalrymple said helpfully, digging into her reticule. Crumbs scattered over the carpet and a snuff box fell out and landed on the floor. "It's in here somewhere."

But Lady Roynor was no cheat. She silently stood and went to her desk. A moment later she came back and without a word passed a signed bank note to Miss Dalrymple.

Miss Dalrymple folded it into her reticule and then bent to pick up the various oddments that had fallen to the floor while she dug around in it.

"I suppose the woman's pregnant," Lady Roynor said in a dirty tone. "Well, at least he's doing the decent thing by her."

Miss Dalrymple finished collecting her things and sat up. "I don't think so. I think they married for love."

"Would you bet on it?" A glimmer of light came back into Lady Roynor's eyes.

"On love or a baby?"

"A baby," Lady Roynor said. "Three hundred pounds to whomever guesses correctly the month their first child is born. A hundred, if we're both wrong, to whomever is closest. I guess May."

Miss Dalrymple drummed her fingers on the table and used the motion to cover slipping a teaspoon into her sleeve. "Very well," she said, as Lady Roynor's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "I say December — of next year, not this."

"Done," Lady Roynor said instantly. And then, to Miss Dalrymple's annoyance, "Maggie, you've just won five hundred pounds from me — do you need to steal my silverware too?"

* * *

They're laying bets again," Richard murmured between kisses.

Laura stepped back to look him in the eyes. They were in the entrance hall, Richard having just returned from a short parliament in London. It had been a very, very pleasant reunion, lingering in the shadows of the hall while the servants scurried about the business of unpacking with their eyes averted.

"Of course they are," she said. "What is it this time? I'd like to lay odds myself. We'll not divorce. I'll not run away with an Italian waiter, and you'll not take up with an orange-seller."

"And we'll not have a child, six months after our wedding day."

Laura drew back again, disconcerted. "Oh. Is that what they're betting on this time?"

"Yes." Richard lifted her chin and softly kissed her. "Sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you."

"I'd have found out sooner or later." She locked her hands around the back of his neck. "Richard, if..."

"If?"

"If... if perhaps Neil or Elizabeth had... a spare..."

"A spare?" Richard kissed her again. "Oh, darling. Would you want that? To raise somebody else's child?"

"I don't know. I might. Would you?"

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. "I don't know. I really don't know. One day... maybe. Maybe I would."

Laura's heart ached. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, unsure if what she was feeling was relief or sorrow.

"For now," Richard said softly in her ear, "I just want you."

DECEMBER

"So then Richard isn't coming up for Christmas this year?" Verity asked.

"It doesn't look like it," Neil said shortly.

"Did you write to invite him?" Verity pressed, coming over to his desk where he was doing the accounts and looping her arms around his shoulders.

"He normally just writes that he's coming."

"Then perhaps this year we'll be polite and invite him." She kissed the point where the scar at his temple ran into his hairline. "And his wife."

Neil stiffened beneath her touch.

"How long are you going to hold a grudge?" Verity asked. "I know you don't like her but if Richard loves her — and he must, from everything he's written, I think he really must — then you have a duty to at least be civil to her. If only so that you can be friends with your brother again."

"It's not that," Neil said, throwing down his quill with a sigh. "It's not that I don't like her. Though I don't. It's that I don't trust her."

Verity looked skeptically down at him. "Do you trust Richard?"

"Yes."

"Then trust his judgement."

Neil sighed. "Verity, my dear, of all people, a man in love is the last person whose judgement ought to be trusted."

* * *

"You're happy then?" Richard asked, as they sat in the drawing room after Christmas dinner, Laura in his lap, resting her head rather tipsily against his shoulder.

"Yes," she said, "though a little drunk."

"Two glasses," Richard said reprovingly. "My wife is a feckless inebriate."

She giggled and nestled in closer against him, and he felt an ache of fondness for her.

"It's the best Christmas I've ever had," she said.

"We didn't do anything special. Church yesterday evening, and mead with our meal tonight instead of wine."

"Mead is much nicer than wine," Laura said dreamily. "But really, it's been lovely. I've never felt so at home in my life as I have this Christmas. My father always insisted on taking me with him to my uncle's house, and my uncle — why he really is not a nice man, and his poor wife was always so sad, and all his friends were so very unpleasant. It wasn't comfortable, being there. And Maidstone... it brought out the worst in him."

Laura sighed heavily and Richard tightened his arm around her.

"You had a good Christmas, didn't you?" Laura asked, her head slipping further down his shoulder.

"Of course. I had you."

"But you... well you must have missed Neil, and his wife, and their little children, surely? You normally go. We should have asked to go."

Richard bit his lip. It had been strange, the first Christmas in three years at Albroke. Despite having Laura with him, despite loving her, he had been acutely conscious of the absence of his brother's family.

"Maybe next year," he said, "Neil will have stopped being such a fool about you, and ask us to come."

JANUARY

"Feelin' better now, m'lord?"

The whore ran one toe caressingly down Giles's calf. He sighed and got up, going naked to the table where he poured himself a glass of wine. In bed, the whore rolled over and gazed admiringly at him.

"I'm right surprised an 'andsome man like you'd need a woman like me," she drawled. Her accent was cockney, another thing to despise about her, but she had smutty blue eyes and cascades of black hair, the kind Giles liked. And she was new to the brothels. Giles only ever took women who were new; he had a horror of catching syphilis.

"I thought you'd be 'avin a wife'f your own," she continued, reaching out and taking the wine glass from his hand. "'Less you do?"

"I don't," Giles said. "Does it matter?"

"Not 'ticularly." She drank a deep draught of wine. "It's nice to 'ave an Englishman for a change. We can talk. What're you doin' in Paris then?"

"There was a ruckus in England. I had to get out for a while."

"What kinda ruckus?" She eyed him suspiciously. "You pay yer debts, don't you?"

In answer, Giles took a purse from his pocket, extracted a handful of coin, and scattered them over the woman's bare thighs. Some fell to the folds of the bedcovers and disappeared, others clinked to the floor and rolled away. The woman sighed.

"You ain't gonna pick 'em up, are you?"

"No," said Giles, putting the purse away. "You can. On your hands and knees. Go on."

"You 'ave to pay extra to get me on me 'ands and knees," she said, drinking more wine. "You un'appy or somethin'?"

"I'm not unhappy. Why would I be unhappy?"

She looked up at him from under her heavily kohled lashes. "Coz you don't 'ave a wife and yer sleepin' with an 'ore."

Giles took his wine glass back and briefly considered smashing it in the bitch's face. But if he did that, they'd never let him back here again, and it was the best brothel in town. He drained his glass, considered her figure again, and decided he was up for a second round.

"How much extra do I have to pay to get you to shut up?"

* * *

"It's freezing," Richard said, kicking at a lump of snow and watching it scatter into powder. "Why the midnight wanderlust?"

"Because I wanted to see the stars," Laura said, pulling her cloak closer around her and looking at the sky. "You didn't have to come."

"I do have to come. When my wife leaves the house in the black of night in mid-winter, I follow. There might be—" he paused and looked around the snow-covered lawn, pristine and silver under the moonlight "—bears!"

Laura laughed, her breath frosting in the air. "In England? On the lawn of a country manor?"

"I was worried about you actually." Richard crossed his arms against the cold. "It seemed a strange thing to do, go for a walk alone on a night like this. I thought you might be unhappy."

"Richard, it was just a whim."

"Then you're not sad?"

"No. I'm very, very happy."

"Oh. Good." He looked upwards at the stars. "Then I'll stay out here and be happy with you."

A sudden warmth of feeling sunk over Laura, despite the chill of the night air. She watched her husband as he stood, hands in his pockets, staring upwards at the night sky, and let it swell within her. There was something right about the world. Something right in the snow crunching beneath her feet, something right in the stars glittering overhead, something right in simply being.

"I love you," she said.

It was the first time she'd told him, though she knew now it had been true for a long time. For a moment, he was motionless, then he turned, came close, and guided her hand to his chest, pressing it against his heart, which was racing so fast and so strong that it felt like a bird trying to take flight under Laura's hand.

"I love you too," he said. "I love you very, very much."