A Gentleman Never Tells by Juliana Gray

Splendid!”
    “We are
not
going to the lake! We’re going to the . . .” Lilibet scrambled forward to catch up.
    “Why ever not? It’s charming there. Clear mountain water, waves lapping against the shore, and all that. A fine choice.”
    “But . . .” There didn’t seem any point protesting. After all, her one objection to the lake—namely, Roland’s presence there—had been made more or less redundant. “I suppose so, then,” she finished weakly.
    “Excellent. Steady on, Philip!” Roland bounded on ahead after the boy, his tall body shimmering with grace and energy.
    She followed the two of them down the terraced vineyards, one by one; across the tender new grass in the sheep meadow; past the apple and peach trees, heavy with rich-scented blossoms. The delicate spring air rushed against her cheek, smelling of newly turned earth, and the thread of anxiety in her belly began to mellow and ripen into something much nicer.
    Something closer to anticipation.

SEVEN
    W as it fair play to win a lady’s favor by complimenting her offspring? Roland pondered the matter briefly, and then concluded as he usually did when faced with questions of delicate ethics: Ignore them.
    “He’s a fine boy,” Roland said, watching Philip arrange the stones on the lakeshore. He paused, searched his brain, and added: “Clever lad.”
    “Too clever at times,” she answered, in a quiet voice. She sat with her back against the sturdy trunk of an olive tree, her gaze pinioned to her son’s every move. “Don’t go too close to the water, Philip!” she called out.
    The boy pretended not to hear. Roland could tell, having utilized the technique on a regular basis as a child. Well, he still did, to be perfectly honest. He leaned back on one elbow and considered Lilibet from the corner of his eye.
    She’d been friendly enough. Too friendly, perhaps: the sort of shallow familiarity she’d shown when she first walked into the stables three weeks ago, pretending nothing existed between them. He reached for another piece of cheese from his napkin and let the pungent flavor fill his mouth.
    Time to stir things up, he decided.
    “Tell me,” he said, turning over to face her, “what was your husband like?”
    “Is,” she said. “He still exists. He’s still my husband.”
    “What
is
he like, then?”
    “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” She gave him a direct look. “I suppose you know him as well as I do, after all. You move in the same circles.”
    “Not really. I know him by reputation.”
    She shrugged. “Well, there you are. Reputations are seldom wrong in the essentials.” She reached behind her head and pulled out a single long hatpin. “But I suppose you were really asking what sort of lover he was. That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”
    He choked and sat up. “Good God.”
    She smiled and lifted her hat from her head, setting it on the ground beside her. “You think I can’t be daring? That I’m still the same girl I was six years ago?”
    “Of course not. And I adore you even more for it.”
    This time she laughed. “Well, it’s no more than you deserve, prying like that. I ought to tell you, just to make you think twice before you ask such things again.”
    She was just far enough away that he couldn’t touch her. He longed to reach out his hand, to make some sort of contact, but her hat sat on the grass between them like a prim, long-brimmed chaperone. Had he really experienced carnal knowledge of that body? Felt those eager hips surge against his?
    “Only say what you want,” he said.
    She returned her gaze to Philip. “What’s there to say? I had to put you from my head. I had to. I owed it to Lord Somerton, to the idea of marriage itself. I thought . . . well, I knew his reputation, of course. But I was naive; I didn’t know what it meant. What one really did in bed with someone, what that entailed.”
    “Oh, surely not!” he exclaimed. “You can’t have been that