“Don’t you have other things to do than keep tabs on the comings and goings of everyone in this house?” Jeremy asked peevishly.

“Not particularly,” his grandmother said serenely.

“And Lady Templeton is not my widow,” he added belatedly, though this conversation was beginning to make him wish he were deceased.

“If you say so.”

“Was there anything else you wished to discuss, Grandmama?” He tugged at his neckcloth; was it warm in here? He was beginning to think it was just as well that he’d never joined the army—he didn’t think he’d hold up well under interrogation.

“I would like you to go apologize to Lady Helen for whatever it is you’ve done to offend her,” his grandmother said simply. This, he suspected, was the real reason he’d been dragged up here in the first place.

“I have done nothing to offend the lady,” he said with an air of wounded outrage that he didn’t feel was entirely unearned. He, after all, had been nothing but unfailingly polite to Lady Helen for the duration of the house party thus far; he was certainly not to blame if Diana was practically flinging the lady at him. To be fair, Lady Helen hardly seemed to need any encouragement in that vein.

“I won’t deny that she’s a bold little thing,” his grandmother admitted before pinning him in place with a sharp look. “But, tiresome as Lady Rothsmere is, she wields a great deal of power in the ton and I won’t have her complaining to all and sundry about my rake of a grandson leaving her daughter heartbroken. She entrusted her daughter to my care for the duration of this house party, and if the lady returns to London giving even the slightest impression of a woebegone calf, I’m certain Lady Rothsmere will be more than happy to lay the blame at your feet. And mine.”

“If the lady is heartbroken, I’m hardly to blame,” Jeremy objected. “I’ve certainly done nothing to encourage her.”

“I’m not saying that you have, but the fact is, Willingham, you have something of a reputation—one that you’ve very intentionally created for yourself, I’ve no doubt. As I told you just the other night, the act is wearing thin with me, but if you’re going to insist on behaving like a man without a scrap of conscience, then the very least you can do is not embarrass me publicly by creating a scandal with the daughter of an earl. It is apparently too much to ask that you sincerely consider the idea of courting her—”

He could not allow this to pass without comment. “You cannot be serious.”

“I’m entirely serious, my boy,” the dowager marchioness said, surveying him in a way that made him wonder what, exactly, she saw within him. “It’s high time you were wed, as I’ve made abundantly clear, and one could hardly ask for a more willing candidate for a wife. You’d barely have to expend any energy at all—it seems the perfect solution.”

“Barring the minor detail that I would be utterly miserable for the rest of my days!” Jeremy said, nettled.

His grandmother waved a hand dismissively. “I never took you for a romantic, Jeremy.” Before he could offer a vehement protest to that particular bit of commentary, she rose, rubbing her hands together in businesslike fashion. “Now, go soothe the lady’s wounded sensibilities. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Somehow, in short order, Jeremy found himself out in the hallway, rather like a subject whose audience with the king had been declared at an end; he had no doubt that his grandmother would not object to this characterization of their relationship. Deciding that there was no point in putting off an unpleasant task—and shuddering to think what the dowager marchioness’s reaction would be if he did not follow her instructions—he walked a few doors farther down the hall, stopping before the bedchamber that had been given to Lady Helen.

He had a vague thought of knocking on the door and asking her if she would like to accompany him downstairs for another cup of tea, but he paused in the act of raising his fist when he realized that the door before him was slightly ajar. Elderwild was an old house, and many of the heavy doors, if not shut sufficiently firmly, would fail to latch and swing back slightly, which was what appeared to have happened here. He was about to go ahead and knock anyway when a sound from within made him freeze.

A moan.

Jeremy was a man of simple pleasures: a fine glass of brandy, a hard ride on a horse, a good round of boxing at Gentleman Jackson’s, a tumble with a willing woman. None of these occupations provided him with expertise that he generally had much cause to call upon, but in that moment, he knew one thing with the utmost certainty: that moan had not been one of pain, but of pleasure.

He lowered his fist, the rest of him frozen in shock. Lady Helen with a lover? He would never have thought her capable of it; in truth, he was a bit impressed. Her reputation was impeccable—never so much as a whiff of scandal. Who could the gentleman possibly be?

He knew that the honorable thing to do now would be to attempt to shut the door without the parties within noticing, and walk away, but he found himself leaning forward slightly, pressing his face to the crack in the door.

And then he blinked. And blinked again.

For Lady Helen was indeed within, pressed up against a wall, her skirts rucked up and a lover’s hand working beneath them. But the lover in question was not one of the gentlemen of the house party.