Under the Kissing Bough by Shannon Donnelly

hunt, which is quite the local event. You might enjoy that."
    "Do you hunt very much?" she asked, a little dismayed.
    He glanced down at her. A frown drew his brows together before his face relaxed again. "Let me guess—your sympathies are more with the fox than with the hounds?"
    Color warmed her cheeks and throat, but she met his stare, a little irked by the fact that he looked ready to humor her about this. "Yes, they do. Poor animals. How should you like to be chased by a pack of barking, baying beasts three times your size, and run ragged 'til you must go to earth and face your death at the end of their fangs?"
    She glared at him, but his eyes only glinted warmer.
    "I supposed I should not like that at all, but you might spare a thought for the farmer's poor hens that face a similar fate, only from the fangs of that same innocent fox you champion."
    She would have argued the point, for she thought it quite possible to keep foxes from hen houses with proper construction, only he stopped before a set of oak doors and the amusement left his face.
    "And now I would urge you to leave behind your sympathies with the hunted. My father was a rather passionate huntsman in his day and will not find such sentiments at all endearing."
    She thought back to the portrait of his father, and of all the other family paintings with hunting dogs and horses. Oh, dear, she was marrying into a sporting family. She had not given it much thought in London, for in a family of girls, it had never been much of a topic. But now the thought of Lord Staines coming home to her, blood on his hands from shooting birds and hunting foxes left her queasy.
    Feeling slightly ill, she watched as Lord Staines reached for the door knob, and she almost reached out to stop him, to tell him this was all such a mistake, that they were mismatched and would never suit.
    Only before she could move or say anything, the door swung open inwards, and an elderly man, stocky and dressed in a crooked white wig and old-fashioned black breeches and coat, stepped into the hallway with them. His watery blue-gray eyes registered surprise and he frowned fiercely at them, his heavy jowls dragging down.
    For an instant Eleanor wondered if he could be Lord Herndon, but he looked nothing like the man in the portrait, and nothing like Lord Staines.
    "Ibbottson?" Staines said, puzzlement in his voice. "I had not heard you'd been summoned." Eleanor felt tension tighten his arm under her touch. "Good God, he is not…"
    "No, he is not," the thick-set elderly man snapped, his voice deep and gravely. A sheaf of papers crumpled in his hands. "A doctor may see his patient, I should hope, and not have the world thinking it is his last call."
    Tension eased from Staines's shoulders, but Geoff was left wondering why he had not been told of the doctor's visit.
    Ibbottson seems as aware of the breech in protocol, for he shifted on his feet and offered by way of explaining his presence, "Lord Herndon has taken an interest in the hospital I have proposed to build. He may offer an endowment for it."
    Startled, Geoff stared at the man. His father funding a hospital? Despite his own illness, the earl had always shown the greatest scorn for the weak and the sickly. He had put himself back in his own bed, in fact, numerous times by overestimating his own strength, but his obstinate will seemed to drive him to cling to life. However, perhaps with his own mortality so close, he had realized that, for some, weakness could not be overcome.
    "What a kind thing to do," Eleanor said, her voice soft.
    Geoff glanced down at her. He had almost forgotten her presence, and now her words pulled a crooked smile from him. Kind was not a word to associate with the Earl of Herndon. She would soon enough learn that.
    Clearing his throat, Ibbottson's deep jowls pulled down into a heavy scowl. "Well, Staines, do you present me, or wish to keep me a family secret?"
    "Your pardon. Miss Eleanor Glover, this is Dr. Ibbottson,