The Duke’s Obsession Bundle by Grace Burrowes Page B

grinding, desolate ache that followed. Anna’s own losses and grief rose up and threatened to swamp her, even as the earl moved into the kitchen and eyed the tray on the counter.
    His eyes shifted back up just in time for Anna to be caught wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
    “Come.” He took her hand and led her to the table, sitting her down, passing her his handkerchief, fetching the tray, then taking the place beside her, hip to hip.
    They listened for long moments, the cool of the kitchen cocooning them both in the beauty and pain of the music, and then Val’s playing shifted again, still sad but with a piercingly sweet lift of acceptance and peace to it. Death, his music seemed to say, was not the end, not when there was love.
    “Your brother is a genius.”
    The earl leaned back to rest his shoulder blades along the wall behind them. “A genius who likely only plays like this late at night among whores and strangers. He’s still a little lost with it.” He slipped his fingers through Anna’s and gently closed his hand. “As, I suppose, am I.”
    “It has been less than a year?”
    “It has. Victor asked that we observe only six months of full mourning, but my mother is still grieving deeply. I should have offered Valentine a bunk months ago.”
    “He probably would not have come,” Anna said, turning their hands over to study his brown knuckles. “I think your brother needs a certain amount of solitude.”
    “In that, he and I and Devlin are all alike.”
    “Devlin is your half brother?” Ducal bastards were apparently an accepted reality, at least in the Windham family.
    “He is.” Westhaven nodded, giving her back her hand. “Tea or cider or lemonade?”
    “Any will do,” Anna said, noting that Val’s musicwas lighter now, still tender but sweetly wistful, the grief nowhere evident.
    “Lemonade, then.” The earl sugared his, added a spoonful to Anna’s, and set it down before her. “You might as well drink it here with me, and I’ll tell you of my illustrious family.” He sat again, but more than their hips touched this time, as his whole side lay along hers, and Anna felt heat and weariness in his long frame. One by one, the earl described his siblings, both deceased and extant, legitimate and not.
    “You speak of each of them with such affection,” Anna said. “It isn’t always so with siblings.”
    “If I credit my parents with one thing,” the earl said, running his finger around the rim of his glass, “it is with making our family a real family. They didn’t send us boys off to school until we were fourteen or so, and then just so we could meet our form before we went to university. We were frightfully well educated, too, so there was no feeling inadequate before our peers. We did things all together, though it took a parade of coaches to move us hither and thither, but Dev and Maggie often went with us, particularly in the summer.”
    “They are received, then?”
    “Everywhere. Her Grace made it obvious that a virile young lord’s premarital indiscretions were not to be censored, and the die was cast. It helps that Devlin is charming, handsome, and independently wealthy, and Maggie is as pretty and well mannered as her sisters.”
    “That would tend to encourage a few doors to open.”
    “And what of you, Anna Seaton?” The earl cocked his head to regard her. “You have a brotherand a sister, and you had a grandpapa. Did you all get along?”
    “We did not,” Anna said, rising and taking her glass to the sink. “My parents died when I was young. My brother grew up with a lack of parental supervision, though my grandfather tried to provide guidance. My parents, I’m told, loved each other sincerely. Grandpapa took us into his home immediately when they died, but as my brother is ten years my senior, he was considerably less malleable. There was a lot of shouting.”
    “As there is between my father and me.” The earl smiled at her when she sat back down