“Doessheknow that?” Scovell leaned back in his chair to cross his arms over his chest.
“Of course. She and her mother go regularly to Bath to make use of the hot springs.” He sat down with his cup. “Her mother has rheumatism.”
“Ah. Well, as long as you have a chaperone …”
Heath scowled at him. “Since when do you care if I have a chaperone?”
“Since you started sniffing around Tory’s half sister. I like Miss Bernard. I always have. And if you have designs on her—”
“Don’t put it like that. I’m not really … That’s not …”
Scovell laughed. “She’s got you tied up in knots, doesn’t she?”
Letting out a sigh, Heathbrook stared blindly at his tea. “You have no idea. Day before yesterday, she came over with her mother to plant hyacinth bulbs in my garden. For my birthday, of all things!”
“You don’t celebrate your birthday.”
“I do now, apparently, with a cake and everything.” He swallowed hard, but it didn’t remove the lump in his throat. For the first time in a decade and a half, someone had cared enough about his birth to celebrate the very fact of it—to even make sure he had his favorite galette for it—and it had touched him more deeply than he cared to admit.
He cleared his throat. “Then she headed out to the garden armed with garden gloves and a smock and the lot, to start digging around in the dirt. Damned if she didn’t look fetching even with a smear of soil on her cheek and a grubby spade in her hand. I wanted to—”
He halted before he could reveal that he’d wanted to carry her up to the big tub in his master bedchamber, bathe every inch of her, and then make love to her right there in his tub. Or his four-poster bed.
And then beg her to stay with him for the rest of his life.
He scowled. Not that. He knew better than to wish for that. When the fog of romantic love encircled him, he lost all common sense. That inevitably led to disaster. He refused to risk going through that heartache again.
“Youwillbehave yourself with her, won’t you?” Scovell said sharply.
He gave a start. “Of course. What kind of gentleman do you take me for?”
Scovell watched as Heathbrook sipped his tea. “The kind who doesn’t know what to make of a woman like Giselle Bernard.”
Well, he hadthatmuch right.
“Have you told Jon and Tory about your pretend betrothal?”
“Are you daft? They’d come rushing back to London to put a stop to it. Jon would never let me near his wife’s half sister. And you’d better not tell them the truth, either.”
“I daresay they’ll hear about it soon enough.”
“I hope not. Even if Jon believed our betrothal was genuine, he would never approve of me as a brother-in-law, but if he believed it to be false, he sure as hell would never let me dally with Giselle.”
“Are you dallying with Giselle?”
Damn. He shouldn’t have let that slip. “No, of course not,” Heathbrook lied. He had to change the subject before he revealed just how much he desired his faux fiancée. Because if he did, Scovell would tell Jon and Tory, and then they would definitely try and stop all of it. “By the way, you’ll never guess who was at Thanet’s party.”
“Sir Percy.”
Heathbrook lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you got that from servant gossip, because I won’t believe it.”
Scovell ate some eggs. “Actually, he paid me a call yesterday. Said you told him about my brother.”
“Ah. Then I guess you’ve heard the whole story of his escape.”
“I did.” He shook his head. “Sounded rather harrowing.”
“Considering the months he spent traveling through enemy territory, I would say so. And, of course, he didn’t have the papers Beasley had forged for him. I’m not even sure how he got into Austria.”