Page 86 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Good heavens, Frederick. What a pleasant surprise.”

Anna looked up and saw Frederick was cutting along the path.

“Lady Oldbarrow.” He bent over her hand. “I didn’t know you frequented the park at this hour, godmother.”

“I have been frequenting the park at this hour since before you were born, dear boy. You simply haven’t been paying attention.” Lady Oldbarrow patted his cheek. “You know Lady Birchall, of course. And this is Lord Wexford.”

“Lord Wexford,” Frederick said, looking him up and down, as if his name was a question.

“Your Grace,” Lord Wexford smiled, which Anna recognized as genuinely pleasant of him. “Lovely morning for a stroll.”

“Quite,” Frederick agreed, and fell into step on Lady Oldbarrow’s other side, and the four of them continued along the path on what must have been the most awkward walk ever. The quiet lasted about four steps before Lord Wexford started.

“I’m sure you have your fair share of tenants,” Lord Wexford started. “But I have been thinking of some improvements before the winter for my tenants’ cottages in Derbyshire. The work never ends.”

“Indeed. What of drainage?”

Wexford was encouraged by Frederick, and they began to discuss. This was a topic Anna had found mildly interesting on its own terms. As a bright woman, she had views about estate management, which she had developed over a year of living adjacent to one. She was about to share those thoughts when Frederick interjected.

“That particular approach to drainage rarely holds past the second season,” he said. “The cost tends to compound.”

Lord Wexford received this with good humor. “Indeed, though I’ve found with proper preparation?—”

“The preparation is precisely the issue,” Frederick snapped. “Most contractors will tell you what you want to hear about preparation and let the flooding prove them wrong once they’ve been paid.”

“I have a good man in Derbyshire,” Lord Wexford said, and a faint crease appeared between his brows that had not been there before.

“Do you.”

It was not a question.

“Your Grace.” Anna’s voice was very pleasant.

Frederick met her eye briefly, and something shifted in his expression. It was a sharp awareness, and the flicker of something that might have been self-reproach. But by the time Lord Wexford had picked up the thread of the conversation again, Frederick had already found a new, quieter objection.

Lady Oldbarrow, Anna noticed, was watching the conversation with an attention she was disguising as an interest in the ornamental pond, and said nothing at all, which was very unlike Lady Oldbarrow.

“Lord Wexford,” Lady Oldbarrow said, at last. “I have been meaning to ask you about your mother’s garden in Derbyshire. I believe she and I once corresponded on the subject of her rose beds.” She took his arm, not asking permission. “Do walk with me a moment, won’t you. My godson can keep Lady Birchall company for a few minutes, I’m sure.”

Lord Wexford, who could hardly refuse Lady Oldbarrow anything she asked with that tone, or that grip, allowed himself to be carried off. Anna waited until they were out of easy earshot.

“What,” she said, very quietly, “is the matter with you?”

“Nothing is the matter with me,” he said evenly, which only made Anna terribly uneven.

“You have spent the last ten minutes challenging everything that poor man has said.”

“I have been making conversation.”

“You have been making him miserable, which is a different thing.” She glanced ahead to where Lady Oldbarrow had occupied Lord Wexford. “His opinions on drainage are perfectly reasonable.”

“They are poorly thought out.”

“You barely know the man!”

Frederick glanced toward Lord Wexford, ahead on the path, and his jaw was set in a way Anna recognized but did not find reassuring. “Perhaps I know enough.”

“Perhaps you…” She stopped, collected herself, and lowered her voice again. “He has been nothing but polite to me. Consistently,and without any effort to make me feel otherwise. That is not a small thing, given this past year.”