at her more closely.
“If I forbid you to visit that miserable old besom who claims to have whelped you,” he asked, “would you cry less?”
“I haven’t been crying.” She drew herself up in her sidesaddle as she emotionally somehow drew herself away. “And you should not refer to your mama-in-law in such terms. For shame.”
“What did she say this time, Margie?”
“She is concerned for her daughter.” Marjorie tossed a glance over her shoulder at her groom.
“Will you walk with me?” Aaron posed the question quietly, because the groom had ears, and Marjorie must have caught the urgency in his tone, because she nodded and waited for Aaron to get down and help her dismount. He handed the reins to the groom and considered how one broached the topic at hand.
First, one waited for the groom to lead the horses away. “We’re married, right?”
“For two years now.” Marjorie regarded him with patient curiosity, while something flickered in her eyes. Something a proper husband would have been able to interpret.
“Is that what her mama-ship was beating you with? There’s no heir on the way, and this must be your fault? If she doesn’t leave you in peace, I swear I’m going to have to do something.”
“She means well.”
“Right, good intentions make every cruelty forgivable.” Aaron silently vowed to have a talk with dear Mama-In-Law. “I’ve some astoundingly good news, Margie.”
She fell in step beside him, and Aaron wanted to take her hand, which was silly really, when Marjorie Wendover would never be so indecorous as to physically flee his presence without being excused.
“Nobody calls me Margie except you.”
Aaron’s lips quirked. “I’m sure if we were honest, there are names only you have applied to my own person.”
She looked puzzled, then caught the humor in his eye. She was young. Not stupid, merely… inexperienced.
“What is your good news, my lord, because you don’t look like a man with good news.” She turned from him as they walked along, pretending to study the undergrowth dying back with winter’s approach.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit, but first tell me, was your mother harping on the need for an heir?”
Marjorie strolled beside him past some purple chrysanthemums. “She was. Again.”
“Do we need to have that argument again as well?”
“No.” She said it quietly, resignedly. “I understand you grieve for your brother, and haranguing you on this topic is not productive. Your decision still hurts me.”
“I know,” he said, wishing this quiet, steady honesty had remained beyond her. “But what I have to tell you should come as a relief in this regard, Margie. It really is good news, at least for us.”
“Us?” She imbued that one syllable with such a wistful longing Aaron felt it in his gut.
“Let’s take the bench.” He nodded to a low-backed wooden bench sitting among pots of asters. “We need privacy for this.”
She held her peace, but when she’d arranged the skirts of her habit, Aaron took the place immediately beside her, wishing there was some way to spare her this. He had the strangest urge to tuck her against him, to put his arms around her when she learned she wasn’t the Marchioness of Hesketh, and all her effort over the past two years had been for nothing.
What he ought to feel, what he was entitled to feel, was resentment.
He took her hand. “Gabriel did not die in Spain as we thought. He’s alive and well, and probably at his bath up at the manor.”
Her eyebrows—she had the most perfect eyebrows God ever gave a woman—knitted, as if he’d merely told her rain was likely later in the day. “Your brother, Gabriel, is alive?”
“Very much so. Upright, walking, breathing, and making grouchy remarks to all and sundry. He’s alive, Margie.”
“This is… good news.” She nodded, as if she’d reached for the words blindly and was relieved to have seized the right ones. “This is very good news. I’m