Regina Scott by The Heiresss Homecoming Page A

estate.
    Now he eyed her, sitting in such a tight ball beside him, as if trying to huddle away from the things she did not want him to know. “It must be difficult being the keeper of so many secrets,” he said.
    Her head jerked up, her eyes wide and panicked. “How did you know?”
    Something inside him tightened. So, she did hide secrets. Why did that so disappoint him? Just because he tended to live his scandals in the open didn’t mean others were as oblivious to Society’s demands. He should simply be grateful she’d refused Jamie and so was no danger to his family. Her affairs were no concern to him now.
    But he could not let the matter go.
    “I spent nearly ten years on the diplomatic circuit, remember?” he answered her. “There, many things are not what they seem. A smile to the wrong person can mean a dagger in your back.”
    She shuddered, and he wasn’t sure if it was from his words or the loss of warmth from his touch. Certainly he was already missing her closeness. He felt as if a cool breeze had blown down the corridor, past the paintings of his ancestors, the marble bust of his mother on a pedestal along the wall.
    “My secrets won’t put you in danger,” Samantha promised, and rather primly too, her hands folded in the lap of her fencing gown. “They are my burden to carry.”
    Why? She had cousins, family. Why was she alone responsible for the Everard miscellany? She might have inherited the title, but if her cousins were any kind of gentlemen, they would be helping her with the duties, just as his brother and Will had helped their father, just as Jamie was helping Will now.
    “They have a saying in Constantinople,” he offered, leaning back. “What burdens one camel is lighter for two.”
    She cast him a glance from the corners of her eyes. “By that you mean I should share my concerns with you. Thank you, but no.”
    The dismissal was curt, but he should accept it nonetheless. Still something protested that she should not have to take this road alone, that he was meant to walk it with her. Wasn’t that his duty as a gentleman? Why have this experience, this knowledge of the world, if not to share it, to make life easier for another?
    “I suppose you have no reason to trust me,” he ventured, keeping his gaze carefully away from hers and fixed on the far paneled wall. “We don’t know each other well.”
    “Both true,” she allowed.
    “Yet you’ve known my son his whole life,” he continued, crossing his legs at the ankles, “and I believe you were a great favorite with my father. He wrote of you frequently.”
    “He did?” She sounded surprised.
    Will found himself smiling, remembering. “My father was a dedicated correspondent. Being so far away, I found letters from home a great treat. It was the same for all embassy staff. We used to read the letters to each other, just to get the feel of being in England. His were particularly popular.”
    “Why?” she asked, turning toward him.
    He chanced a glance her way. She was obviously intrigued by his story, one leg bent at the knee so she could lean toward him.
    “He had a way of making you feel as if you knew everyone he wrote about,” he explained. “Your friend Mr. Giles’s adventures put the other members of the embassy in stitches. And I think more than one of them hoped to come back and meet you.”
    She blinked, golden lashes fluttering. “Me? Whyever me?”
    Will shot her a grin. “A sweet young heiress, pretty, vivacious. What fellow wouldn’t fall in line?”
    He thought she might dimple at the prospect, but the color that had been returning to her cheeks fled once more, and she pushed herself to her feet. “Far too many, I fear. Your father was a darling man, and I was very fond of him. But you mustn’t think his letters told all the truth, my lord.”
    “Will,” he said gently, rising as well as propriety demanded.
    “Will,” she conceded. “That girl your father wrote about went to London eight years